Rural Dreams

Aidan has a stomach virus

Aidan has a stomach virus and our washing machine is broken. I don't think I need to say anything else.

I think it's about time

I think it's about time I tell you about our kitten. We got her three weeks ago and I've only made a vague reference to her (that thing about not acquiring too many animals). I feel like the humane society might find me unfit if they find out I don't talk about our cat on our weblog.

You see, I am not a cat person because I'm allergic to them. When I was a kid I couldn't even be in the same house with one. So I go blah blah blah about our dog and who would even know we had a cat.

She doesn't even have a name really. I made a vet appt today for her and Wes and they put TBA in the space for her name! Maybe we'll call her TBA. We named her Roxy at first because she had this pink collar that looked really rock-n-roll on her. Somehow the collar came off and I didn't put it back on her because I could see that it bothered her. She just doesn't seem like Roxy to us - we've referred to her as Roxy maybe three times. Mostly we just call her the cat or the kitten.

She is a six month old domestic shorthair grey tigerstripe kitten. She plays with big plastic beads upstairs on the wood floor for hours. At the shelter she was the biggest fraidy cat there, but when we got home she was tough as nails. She doesn't run from Wes - thank goodness. She is very affectionate which is kind of sad because I can't pet her a lot. I pet her when I go to the bathroom because I figure I'll be washing my hands anyway. When she hears me put the toilet seat up, she comes running. Its pretty funny. Poor thing.

These pictures are outside, but she was only outside for a few minutes for the first time yesterday. The folks at the humane society told us to keep her inside for six weeks or she might run away - especially since we have a dog. I haven't really had trouble with her and allergies even though when Steve went out of town for four days she insisted on sleeping next to my head every night.

We got her for mouse control and although I haven't actually seen her with a mouse, she does look like she's hunting sometimes and there is less evidence of mice.

Ticks are arachnids - that

Ticks are arachnids - that means spiders - blood-sucking spiders.

Female ticks lay a thousand eggs at a time.

Ticks can live a year without a "blood meal".

Ticks can go several hours without breathing.

Ticks consume a maximum amount of blood in a single feeding by regurgitating the water from the blood back into their host.

Kill ticks by dropping them in alchohol. I don't know how they know this, but apparently flushing them down the toilet won't kill them.

The number of ticks we pulled off of Wes today: 10

The number of ticks I pulled off of myself: 1

The weather here is springlike.

The weather here is springlike. The high today is 54. Its very strange. We went over to Will and Val's yesterday and Will and Steve bar-b-qed outside in short sleeved shirts. Aidan jumped on the trampoline with Wills kids and almost gave Steve several heart attacks. Aidan fell asleep at 9pm instead of his usual 11pm.

Someone just pulled into our driveway and Wes was barking and jumped up on their car. I figured it was realtors or someone looking at the house. It was Jehovahs Witnesses! I wonder what they would have done if I hadn't come out of the house - if they would have gotten out of the car and braved a big barking dog in order to spread the message. So now I know - living in the country where the houses are half a mile apart doesn't make you immune to door to door preachers.

How do you like my chicken? She's watching you!

I bet you thought we

I bet you thought we were buried in snow here.

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I found a tick on my arm last night - it was in the process of burying itself into me, I was in the bath and I called to Steve for help because I wasn't sure how to get it out. He said to twist like a corkscrew. That's not an easy thing to do with tweezers. It took us a few minutes. I wasn't even worried about ticks this time of year. We puzzled for a while about how I could have gotten it and Steve was saying how I go up into the trees behind the barn to collect kindling. But I hadn't done that in days. Then he said it must be from the pile of kindling that we brought into the house. Yikes. No more kindling in the house.

A funny thing happened last

A funny thing happened last night.

Meg and Jurgen and the kids were here for a visit. About half an hour after they left there was a knock at the door. I thought, oh no, they got horribly lost and they've come back here. When I looked out the window, I see two police officers, Im thinking that someone died or something.

The officers want to know if I know Mr. so-and-so who lives down the road. I say that I don't and that Ive just moved here Jan 1st and don't know anybody. Well, they explain that Mr. so-and-so had a truck for sale parked just off the road and that someone had broken his windshield. Mr. so-and-so thinks that it is his neighbor who used to work for him but he fired him. The police were just coming around to see if I knew anything about it.

It was 9:00 at night.

I almost cracked up in their faces. They were state cops and they were doing a door to door investigation of windshield vandalism. I really was grinning and almost laughing so I explained that I was amazed at how thorough they were. They said that Mr. so-and-so was friends with their boss so they had to be thorough. Then they took my name and phone # for their report.

One of them was from Queens so I asked him how he says Claverack. He has the same problem saying that we do.

Im glad nobody was dead.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness;

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

This is the view I

This is the view I saw when I let Wes out the back door this morning. We had a nice snow last night and it was all misty and fresh and beautiful.

Faces of Death
Right after I let Wes out I discovered another dead mouse on the kitchen counter. It really broke me out of my happy dreamy - we moved to the country and its so beautiful here - state of mind. Out of sheer laziness we had put two traps right next to each other. The mouse's leg was in one trap and the middle of his body in the other. That means I could see his face. Poor mouse.

Last night I was running a bath for Aidan and he was running around like a crazy man, throwing balls and playing. I ran downstairs for a minute to pick up some of his toys and when I came back up I sensed that something was not quite right. Aidan had decided that he was ready to get into the bath and had started to take his clothes off - which is really unusual and he wasn't very successful. It worried me a bit - like what if I had been downstairs a little longer and he had actually tried to get into the tub? The tub has very high sides and I wasn't sure about the temperature of the water. Our hot water is VERY hot. As I got a little closer I could see that there was in fact a casualty, Tigger was floating in the tub.

This was taken yesterday AM

This was taken yesterday AM - it was really snowy in the morning but by the afternoon there was even less snow than the day before.

This is the front window of the upstairs of the barn. There is an identical one on the other end and the bathtub is in front of it. There are no walls. It feels very luxurious to take a bath in this huge long room with no walls and these extravagant windows. The impractical drawbacks are that you have no privacy in the bathroom and that there is no shower - which is hard because Steve and I have a lot of hair.

I figured out why Wes'

I figured out why Wes' nose is red this morning. He's taken to burying bones and I saw him this morning filling the dirt in a hole with his nose. Dogs must have a better way of doing that that using their tender noses. Maybe his nose will toughen up, or maybe a real country dog will have to show him how its done.

Would you believe that there is a website about dog noses?