Stuff

 Random and varied...

1.  I would like to go to bed, but I don't feel like I can sleep.  Yet I have to get up in 6 hours to call the vet about one of my cats (Lori) who is having bouts of diarrhea.

The 2 new ones I adopted in late November (Loki and Binq) came with some difficulties.  Loki had a head infection, eye goop, and lack of appetite.  That's all cured.  Binq was very claw-grabby and finger-bitey but with some steady and gentle discouragement (and me wearing heavy jeans), she is getting over that.

2.  I finally buried Laz last week.  He was bagged in the basement freezer for 45 days.  I just kept putting it off.  I have a dedicated Memorial Garden for past cats.  But the soil is very hard 6" deep and I go for 2'.  Took 2 days, and I have bad knees, which makes pounding on a shovel and jamming a breaker bar miserable.  But he is part of "The Remembered" now.  I miss his good days as BFF with Lori so much.  But that ended as he slowly went crazy.

I still have to build the aboveground marker boxes for Laz and pre-deceased Ayla now.  Like these...

Angled fronts for brass letters of the names and a brown resin statue on the top.  Those simple brown resin statues are getting harder to find.  Best I could find for Ayla and Laz are...

Not what I really wanted, but they will have to do.  

3.  I feel like visiting some obnoxious discussion forum (that I disagree with entirely) but I won't.  I don't live to annoy others.  

4.  Turned off the Holiday lights last nights.  This year, I may actually remove them.  I have some ideas of different ways of using lights in the yard next year.  The lights have been up since 2020, (only lit for the holidays of course).  Time to change things next holiday.  I'm thinking an artificial tree on the lawn with blue lights.

5.  With all the rain lately (so soft soil), I decided to pull the birdfeeder pole more upright (it was leaning slightly).  So I tied ropes around the feeder pole and 2 trees.  By Spring, it should be fairly well set in place.  There is a lot of clay at the bottom, and that 2' deep, it tends to keep things in place.

6.  Need to do the same with the post the hose reel sits on.  When I first set it up 10 years ago, it was upright.  But pulling on the reel pulled it forward a bit.  It still works, but the angled post annoys me.  If I rope it straight up over Winter and Spring, it may lock in place horizontally.  

If not, I will wiggle it around until I can pull it out and than enlarge the hole to set in in concrete with some rebars pounded in at angles to really hold it in place.

7.  Replanting all the lettuce trays.  When a hard frost threatened back in early December, I brought them all in.  But didn't put them under lights.  Most died.  I have to start again.  

8.  But that means a lot of cleaning in the basement.  So that is the primary task tomorrow.

9.  So many things I need to do around the house.  And most of them I can't do myself.  So I have a list of contractor projects.  Windows, doors, linoleum flooring in the computer and cat rooms, new appliances, new water heater, get the emergency electric generator hooked up, change the decrepit asphalt driveway replaced with concrete.  Well that's what money is for.

10.  Get the computer cleaned up.  Get the laser color printer printing in color again.  Get the laptop working.  Learn to use my smartphone.

That's enough problems for a year.