The Trouble With Toads

Yesterday we started and ended our day with a toad. I took the dogs out early and when I came around the corner Charger was backing up shaking his head violently. There was an injured toad in the drive that I put in the bushes - Charger was gagging and foaming at the mouth to beat the band. There was so much it was pouring down his chest, so I dragged him to the hose and preceeded to irrigate his mouth which in case you're wondering, he did NOT like. So he was foaming and spewing and I was catching the worst of it, we were both a mess when I was done. I called Kim later and she said since if you pick up a toad it will pee, well, if you bite a toad it will pee in your mouth and that's the cause of the foaming. Needless to say, I won't be sinking MY teeth into any toads soon. David left Jackson home so we spent the day messing around, went to exit 7, swam in the pool - a nice day after such an awful week. The heat continues, the 2nd picture is of my lawn -  we have clay here instead of dirt so when  it gets very hot the ground actually cracks! David got home at 4pm, he said it was 95 in the shade, so he was glad he hadn't brought Jackson. The 3rd picture is of Charger - "stuck" behind the split rail fence, if you call him from the other side he can't figure out how to get around it.Sigh. We played in the woods for a bit and then after supper I found a big toad outside. So of course unable to resist it's toady charms I picked it up. You guessed it, all over my feet. Charger and I never learn.

A New Angle

West Virginia is not a flat place by any stretch of the imagination - the flatter the property the higher the price. But people build anywhere around here and some of the driveways are amazing. If you go to larger on this picture, not only does this drive go straight up but it's also tilted at almost a 30 degree angle - can you imagine using that in January?? I've been all over this week, from Carmicheals, Pa to  Clarksburg WV.The other nurse got married last week and is on her honeymoon, so her visits were divied up. The first 3 days of this week really sucked, NOTHING went right but yesterday went well and I enjoyed Clarksburg. The buildings there are very old and the details on them are beautiful - I  wish I'd had more time to take pictures. There's a few blocks of restored Victorians and 1800's houses. My favorite store is there too - AC Moores so I finished up my jobs a little early and zipped over there. I bought a nifty gadget I've been looking for - an I-Cord maker so I was playing with that and it works well. The weather has been terrible all week with the heat. It's hot all the time, even at night.. David and Jackson quit early yesterday, around here the heat is the worst around mid to late afternoon. David thinks he's going to leave Jackson home today and just work for  2/3 of the day by himself. I've got to call the school today too to make an appointment for him to make his schedule, school starts on the 26th. We've been letting the cats out in the morning, we still can't get Vincent to do his business outside. He actually comes IN, uses the sandbox and then goes back out again, thereby missing the entire point of being let out in the first place. I've thought about refusing to let him in until he goes, but I'm sure the little booger could hold out longer than I can.

Down The Garden Path

David has been a busy yard bee as of late - he bought an old Gravely walk behind mower which will mow down the thickest of growth. We own two acres or so of woods so what he's been doing is making a truck-width path that winds around inside so we can walk through it. We're leaving it wild, but David thought if he put some paths in it we could get some use out of it. The only thing I worry about is the local ATV riders will also get use out of it - more from an insurance point of view that a noise problem. Jackson was happily carving right alongside of David - he LOVES this sort of stuff since the woods around here are almost jungle-like. Picture #6 is the requisite pile of trash. David's been getting a bit out of control as far as the mowing is concerned, he's a little psychotic in my opinion. I told him to leave the pasture behind the barn alone since that's where all the bunnies live. We've been having rain off and on so he wasn't able to go to work yesterday so in between showers he went outside and destroyed nature a little at a time. My job is picking up, I've been going to more visits further and further apart. For some odd reason they seem to like to bunch EVERYONE on Monday which makes no sense because that makes one day impossible and two days a waste where I only have a couple of visits. I'm trying to space it out differently so I can actually do it. Jackson's fine, Becky went to band camp this week so that would make him Mr. Lonely. We're planning a trip to Washington Pa mall on Sunday so Becky can go too.

There's Plenty Of Rest For The Wicked Around Here

Vincent is not behaving as usual. We've started letting him out more in the past week but he doesn't really come when he's called. He comes when he feels like it. Yesterday I  must've called him for 45 minutes while working in the yard, only to discover him sauntering along behind me to see what I was doing. I'm pretty sure he hides in the bushes since he knows when we're calling it's time to come in. I noticed when I called him later in the day around dinner time it only took 5 minutes for him to appear. The hot weather is finally breaking a bit, yesterday I think it was in the 80's which is very nice. We're currently starting to make tentative plans for the house in the winter, there are a couple of rooms under discussion as to what we're going to do with them. The hot tub room is one of them. David wants to take the old tub out and turn it into a den. I'd like to put the nicer hot tub in, put up bookshelves and a small woodstove and make it into a sunroom. And there's the issue of Jackson, Below The Ground Boy who is vehemently campaigning to stay there. Given the fact we  can't deal with the space we have now I doubt we'll be furnishing the familyroom he's occupying currently, but our main concerns are the heating issues. Right now he's got it made because his room stays cool whether the air is on or not, but I'm a bit worried when the snow flies if it's going to be warm enough.  The room we'd like him to have has a full bath, is on a different floor than the other bedrooms and a great view of the mountain range but he still insists he prefers his 70's throwback digs. The family room is painted that hidious avacado green with some dark wood trim and the pool table is a fake Mediterranean style if anyone remembers that. There's even some black velvet display with a ship printed on mirrors. Of course he loves that too, very classy you know!

The Third Dog

That's been Claw's nickname for most of her life. She's not the nicest cat in the house but once she gets outside, she's a whole new girl. She follows you like a dog  and meows constantly - when you stop she rubs against your legs and purrs. That's a picture of her trotting  along side of me as I'm walking the property. The 3rd picture is of the property that David reclaimed from the neighbor - that area between the tree and the unmown land is OURS, pretty big chunk, isn't it? And we're suspecting she also put her septic system in our yard too! It's not like her yard is that small, it's about an acre and a half, but I guess whatever you can get away with you do. I think she's interested in owning it, but not paying for it so David mows it once a week to keep her from doing it. The 6th picture is of the Washington Mall - we drove up to Washington,Pa on Wednesday to see what was what. David dropped us off at this mall and he went to Home Depot right next to it. David was surprised to find Jackson and I standing next to him 20 minutes later in the plumbing aisle. The mall was awful  to say the least - only 9 stores were open and Jackson  thought we were the only people under the age of 100 in the place.( The Scooter Store seemed to be thriving). Everyone was sort of huddled in the middle at the tables and it was so quiet you could hear the plastic pretzel rotating on the display. It was just sad, they'd even turned off all the fountains so they were full of dust and old pennies. After we left we tried the other mall about 5 miles down the road - THAT was where everyone was!(picture #7) There was a big Gander Mountain - David's favorite hangout and the usual mall stores. There was a Grateful Dead sort of store that Jackson fell in love with and I ended up spending $20 on a tiedye Tee that looked like the ones we used to make as kids and Jackson was eyeballing the giant batiks. We're planning on a return trip and might bring Becky.

If Trouble Comes In Threes....

.....I will be hiding in the bathroom for the rest of the week. First the water thing, then Harry the RE agent calls last night - the latest prospective buyers are not happy with the roof  report and want to re-negotiate. At this point I'm more than willing to bite the bullet, get the hell out of Dodge and sort the bodies later. We must be setting records for the amount of times a house can be sold. (I probably also just set the record for the amount of cliches used in one sentence...). So Harry is sending someone over to give an estimate on the roof and we'll work from there, I just want it to be over and done with. At least I have my little toad friend to comfort me.- he's sort of cute, isn't he? You can pick him up and he doesn't pee so that makes him a friend in my book. David did the DMV yesterday and then in a couple of weeks it's my turn. He said it wasn't that bad. We were a little afraid because we never turned in our old plates when we left here, but no one seems to have nocticed. In NY it's a big deal and they fine you daily.No one here seems to return them, even the people that moved - they left a set of plates here too, so we can change them all the time if we wants to. I suppose we could even put them on the dogs. David has been further investigating the water thing, he might just put a new water line in that runs parallel to the driveway instead of under it. It seems to be almost an overflow effect, the water only pools there at night when we aren't running anything, in the daytime it dries up and it's not near the house so we have some time to decide how to deal with it.

Here We Go Again.

SO. David fixed the leak down in the pasture yesterday and we checked to see if the meter had stopped to make sure. We thought it was fixed but this morning we get up to a puddle in the driveway - hmmm. Coincidence?, I think not. David thinks because he fixed the leak down there it's made a lot of pressure on some small leak up here. No, we cannot go after the former homeowners before anyone asks - we would have to not only sue across state lines, but also prove without a doubt that the former homeowners were aware of this problem before they sold the house. It's not really that big of a problem nor does it need to be addressed right this moment and David can do most of the work himself  when he gets to it. Today he has to take off to tangle with the DMV and that'll be most of the day at any rate. Jackson goes to orientation on Wednesday, it's actually for freshman but they said he was allowed to go because this would be his first year. He was a bit worried about how it would look but I pointed out I seriously doubted his attending freshman orientation would be a big topic the first day of school so he'll most likely go.