A Conservative Liberal Right Wing Greenpeace Point Of View

I had posted about Obama flying the flag at half staff for that drug addled Whitney Houston and not the five soldiers that were gunned down in Chattanooga. I was of course, instantly corrected - and I was wrong.The governer of NJ flew the flag for that waste of space, not Obama. My fault for listening to AM radio, I should know better. But I was asked if I was a conservative since I hate Obama so much I actually voted in the last election just to make one more vote against him. And I do hate him, I could not believe he was re-elected. But that does not make me consevative. Obama has complete disregard for our military - he will allow illegal aliens to collect benefits and stay here if they have "family ties" (pregnant criminal that managed to give birth over the border). And yet he's cut our military - you know, the people that keep America free. And yes our military is overblown but I'd rather be up to my ears in military than illegal aliens. And yes he did sign for gay marriage, but seriously that was coming anyhow, wasn't it? Just like civil rights and women being able to vote, you can't stop change. Saying he was responsible for the enactment of gay marriage would be the same as taking credit for the lake filling just because you're standing at the head of the stream. Gonna happen no matter where you stand. His health care is a mess, he managed to raise the insurance rates in all but six states and yet I think Obamacare covers, hmm, not many I believe. And most doctors won't take it. I don't disagree with everything he does, equal pay, paid for birth control - but most of what he has done is ineffective at best, destructive at worst. But all of this - is usually why I rarely post anything political on my facebook page. Because it does nothing but irratate others and well, me. You end up fighting and making Grand Statements to a group of people that do not want to hear it. Which is fine because I don't want to hear anything you have to say either. There. I said it. I have no interest in your politcal view and no matter what you say, you are Completely and Utterly Wrong. Which is ok because I heard you say that about me. Yes you did. Did too. Did too. Shut up. See? Fighting already. Your politcial view is your own, just like your opinion on god, abortion and Coors Light - and nothing anyone says will change it but you. I have changed my opinon on some things just from reading and hearing what the candidates have to say, but never from getting lamblasted on Facebook. So I will continue to make snarky comments about Mr. Obama and you can choose to ignore me. Free country and all of that!

How Does Your Garden Grow

I have always been a bit of weird gardener - not intentionally of course, but there it is. I do have a green thumb but it's pretty selective. The neighbor rototilled a garden for me smaller and closer to the house - the original one was way too big to manage and it was right near the edge of the woods. There was too much to fence so every night at sunset the deer would pop thier sneaky selves out and it was a free for all out there. They even ate my cornstalks to the ground, nothing had a chance. So this garden is fenced and it's close enough to water when we get no rain. Perfect you say. Hmm. First of all only half the garden grew - it looks like someone drew a line straight down the middle - on the right half 4 Mystery Plants that are obviously not weeds is all that has appeared, and that is all. The rest are scraggly weeds and clumps of grass, dirt abounds.  The other side - is growing so big, so thick you can't even see between the plants, the leaves are about 8 inches across, the blossoms are huge - I've been joking that the bodies must've been all buried on the left. So - what am I growing? Zucchini is my secret weapon, all of it came up and it's been producing like something out of a science fiction movie. I've eaten it and have taken two loads into work, yesterday I counted almost a dozen more. It poops out a zucchini every hour I think, but my saving grace is my big office full of people that want it. I brought in a bag full and it was gone in the time it took me to go to the bathroom and sit at my desk. If I run out of recipients in my office, the next door office is full of takers too, I'm in a strange position for once of possibly not being able to produce enough as I have a waiting list going. The plants in the front I had no idea what it was , I never mark or remember what I plant so it's always a big surprise. The vines grew up the fence and looks very fairytale like, I loved it untl the mystery was solved. It is watermelons and I have 3 or 4 so far starting to appear, at the top of the fence of course. I cannot unwind it as they will not fit back through and eventually(soon) the weight of them will either pull the fence down or it will fall off from sheer weight. So I have to figure out how to support watermelons in the air. The other plants might possibly be pumpkins which would be fun. There is a tiny rabbit living in the garden too, I have not addressed it as he is very tiny and does not appear to be hurting anything, he might be living in there for the safety factor as he's small enough to squeeze through and the dogs are not. They peer into the garden with malvolent intentions which is too bad for them, the rabbit is not coming out. Ever.  

Home Again.

I get asked on a fairly regular basis about flipping houses - David has done it for more than a decade now and although we are not setting the world on fire, we do ok. But it's not as easy as it looks and the reason David makes a profit is because he's able to do most of the work himself. I help - I've been trash detail, I'm not bad at reconfiguring to get the most out of the space - I'm often astonished at how poorly a small house can be laid out and how you can increase the usable space just by moving a few walls. I check every clearance pile I see, you'd be amazed at the things we get at a fraction of the price simply because no one looks - or because it's not perfect. I got a $350 tub for $40 because it had a small - and very fixable crack in the corner. We have to make every dime count so David scours the classifieds for building materials,  we reuse whenever we can, scratches can be buffed, dents can be hidden. And the house itself - finding a foreclosure is easy, finding one that you can fix, will make a profit and the denizens of the neighborhood will not be walking off with the construction materials, not so much. Buying a house never goes smoothly, there's delays, glitches in the title, crazy relatives that are super pissed off about the way the will was read. We bought one house that sat for 3 years, surrounded by relatives who would not take over the payments. Instead they waited for it to go into foreclosure, refused to pay what was left on the mortgage and then got mad when we bought it! They harassed David until he called one of them - she kept hollering about a Dirty Deal, David just told her they'd had every opportunity to buy it and he had nothing to do with any of that, if he hadn't bought someone certainly would have. That shut it down thank goodness. And finding one to buy requires scrolling through house after house on the internet, going out to look,then meeting with RE if it's viable, crawling through moldy, dirty and sometimes rather shaky houses. Some of them flat out stink, the East Stroudburg house was referred to as The Cat Pee House, the one in Bridgeport had such thick nicotine we had to wear masks to spray down the walls with straight Greased Lightening. We've made few mistakes along the way, financial and otherwise, but all in all, it's not a bad way to go. And it is fun buying yet another house, standing in the wreckage imagining what it will look like when it's rehabbed. The neighbors will often give you the history and David finds them often relieved he's there fixing it up, the old eyesore being turned slowly back into a home again.

Home Alone

Before David left we were talking about vacations , we both agreed one of our favorite things to do - is stay home. Which is what I'm doing tomorrow, just me and my dogs. We have never been big travelers, I'd like to go to Ireland or Iceland, but the actual chore of doing it - nah. I think part of it is we worked so hard to have this place. I trudge off to work 5 - or more - days a week, I leave at 7 am and usually hope to be home before 7pm. We cut the grass, shop, do laundry,etc on the weekend. When I get home after work I take the dogs out, some more house work, flop into bed, roll out of bed, off to work, rinse,repeat.We have a beautiful home that David spent months on -  bedroom with a soaring ceiling and recovered antique doors, tile floors,full exercise room in the basement, gazabo out back, all sorts of fun stuff. And when do you get to enjoy it? Sometimes you even hope to be sick don't you - not puking sick of course, but sick enough to stay home, but not so much you can't enjoy it. I've been running like a loon for the past two weeks so I am taking tomorrow off. I am planning on doing a little shopping and Need To Do Stuff, but also reading, knitting and watching movies I've seen 3 zillion times that David swears he'll vomit if he sees it one more time. I've also been taking personal time since there is no one to take care of the dogs. When we had Pearl we had a dog walker - they had a mutual love of each other and it was great not to have to worry about racing home. Reuben could do a dog walker of course, he is the Dude Of Dogs, but Molly - not so much. It would be sort of like the stand off in Waco, so no strangers but it kind of leaves me in the lurch. But knowing that I saved my time and it is nice to get home at a decent hour, even if it is only for a week. I do have things I need to do tomorrow but it's nice not to have to run through it. I've already mowed the paths back in the woods - yes, they are matured enough that I can actually mow half of it. I finished clearing a large area in the center and that will be it I think. I don't want it to get to the point I work on it more than I play in it - that would defeat the whole purpose. I take my ereader out with the dogs, they race around the paths and bother stuff while I sit and catch up on my reading. It's nice because I can relax after work and take the dogs out at the same time. David is having a good time back on Long Island, visiting family and what's left of our friends. Just about everyone we know has left the area, not much left. We discuss possibly moving in the future to be nearer to family, but it just sort of dissapates after a couple of minutes. I still have a problem leaving here - just thinking about it makes my chest tight, so we are staying put, for now.  

The Unwieldy Traveler

SO, David is home for the week visiting his family. He had wanted to for awhile, his parents are now in their 90's and he didn't want to keep saying "next year" - and then have it be too late. We've been having some upheaval at work so after looking at my schedule I told him to book a flight for this Saturday and I would see all of my clients at warp speed for the next two weeks, scheduling one for Saturday around 10am. That way I could drop him off, grab some coffee and see the client. The week he was gone would be more lowkey and I could use personal time to get home to take care of the dogs. Note to self - NEVER let David book his own flight. He took what I said as written in stone and did indeed book a flight from Sat to Saturday. The departing flight left at 5:50 - AM people, AM. I asked him (hysterically) if he realized that the flight was departing from Pittsburgh, an hour ride from our house - he did but didn't think it would be that bad. I asked if he realized he needed to be there 2 hours PRIOR to the flight leaving - oh, oops, yeah, no he didn't.  This meant of course we needed to be out of the house at 2:30 in the morning, I would get him there by 4 AM IN THE MORNING and then be free to dork around Pittsburgh until 10 am when I saw my client. Hmm. The dogs were another issue, there would be no one to let them out until noon, I tried to explain it to them but Molly kept thinking there were biscuits involved and Reuben just feel asleep. David called our kennel but they were full - but then he called back and said they could share a kennel since it was only for one night - thank goodness! David was able to drop them off Friday early afternoon and it was one less thing to worry about. We tried to go to bed early but the sun refused to set so I fell asleep at the usual time despite my best efforts.  So we bounced out of bed at 1:45, staggered to the shower, I tried to make my hair look like it had NOT be styled by a chimpanzee with a meth habit and went scootering off to the airport. David is not a good traveler so he worried and fretted til I kicked him to the curb at the airport. Then I was free to....hmm. Starbucks was not open. Panera Bread was not open. Apparently it is only NYC that is the city that never sleeps, Pittsburgh apparently does not know that rule. So I got coffee at Sheetz and read for an hour or so, then Panera opened. It was not too bad, I got my grocery shopping done and dorked around the waterfront for a little while but I was glad to get done and heading home - boy I was tired!!. I picked up the inmates around 11:30 paying cash and paying extra - I was extremely grateful to the people that own the kennel and accomadated us. I have no idea what I would have done without Kritter Cutz and Kennel. I got everyone fed, out and settled, did a few things around the house......and the electric went out. I was way too tired for that, seriously. I called and  it came back on an hour later, thank goodness. We had an uneventful night and a pretty good day. Hopefully the rest of the week will stay that way til I pick up David on Saturday next week - at 11 o'clock - AT NIGHT. 

The Unkindest Cut Of All

We only had our Scout for a short time, not even a year from when we found him abandoned in our garage. Maybe the person that dumped him thought he would find a home with us - he did, after David cut him out of the wall he'd sought refuge in. He was terrifed of course, crying himself hoarse and hiding when we came near. No animal deserves that treatment, the party that dumped him did him no favors.  After a few days we finally got him to accept us - and brought him in. We fed him, had him neutered, he was our boy and despite his short time on this earth, he had it pretty good. Had we not found him so quickly things could have gone south for him, but we did and things didn't. How he ended up on the road is a mystery to us - we never saw him in the front. Every night when I called him in he came from the fields next door, after a hard day of terrorizing the mice. He was a sweet silly cat and I miss him greatly. I know everyone likes to say Never Again, it's not fun having your heart shattered every once in awhile. But , I'm not sorry - I gave a stray kitten a fighting chance, he did not ever starve, suffer an injury, no one threw things at him, he spent not one night cold or hungry. I would have liked for him to live his full life, to grow old and skinny like my Vincent who is currently working towards the sunset of his long and uneventful life.  But it was not in the cards. Our neighbor called and let us know he had been killed, after seeing the poster David put up and for that I'm grateful. The only thing worse then having a pet die suddenly is not knowing - imaging them lost and crying, I called him for days, every morning and evening hoping to hear his hilariously loud call back to me.  I'm sad that he's gone, but grateful he went quickly, without suffering. And no, I'm not going to look for a cat - I know one will find me.