About 3,400 voters in a key Georgia county received their mail-in ballots just days ago, or not at all — and on Monday, the state’s Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s ruling that gave them extra time to get their ballots in.
Does anybody else see something fishy in this? r maybe Dejoy-ful?
Eldest Daughter flew up from SC and she and her best friend came over on the 22nd to help us finish packing up. Those two hit the living room like a whirlwind! In less than two hours they had the place cleared out, with all the boxes stacked along the wall.
The movers came around 10:00 on the 23rd. While the girls and I went up to the condo, I left The Squire at the house to direct things down there. I told him what needed to come to the condo, and the movers brought stuff we didn’t need and left other things behind. The biggest thing was a 10 x 12 Karastan carpet that is still in the bedroom but belongs in the condo dining room. It weighs a ton, and I did not exactly leap for joy at the suggestion we leave it behind. I think I’m going to have to call the mover and ask him what he’s charge just to move that one thing.
So – with all of that going on, The Squire was driving up from the house to the condo in the van with a load of boxes and managed to rear-end a pickup truck. To be honest, the truck driver slammed on his brakes and The Squire didn’t have enough time to stop, but that doesn’t change the fact that we are now down one small car. The accident happened around 6:00 on Thursday. The Squire called the insurance agency early on Friday, and they sent somebody to look at the van on Monday. Things went rapidly downhill from there. Apparently, Erie has moved a lot of their business operations to NC, and outsourced other things to Heaven knows where. We do know that somebody came and looked at the van, but obviously that information was not relayed to us. The accident was a week ago today and we still have NO idea what’s going on, and neither does our agent! The car is still on the mechanic’s lot, and no decision has been made about trying to repair it, or junk it or whatever. The Squire did talk to a nice lady in NC, and she was the same attitude we do.
And now we are doing battle with Comcast. After telling us repeatedly that we couldn’t keep our old phone number when we took the phone out of the house and plugged it in here, it works perfectly with the same number. We’ve had this number for over 50 years, and it is a nice one – easy to remember, and with a nice “rhythm” to it. Of course, threatening to go with Vonage might have had something to do with it. That being said we are still trying to get bother my computer and The Squire’s to work, and that poor man still doesn’t have a TV. We’re missed two weeks’ worth of Ghosts!
We won’t go into the agony of trying to fit all of our groceries, pots and pans, and other oddments into what seemed to be a lot more closet space than we had before. Yeesh.
I have no idea where all of these came from. They are obviously from Advent Wreaths Past, but Lawsy! how many years’ worth are there?
At any rate, I could probably light the Vatican – or the Washington Cathedral, at the very least.
All of The Squire’s family lives in areas that are flooded – two sisters live in Asheville, NC, and one in Newport, TN.
We did hear from his sister in Newport, and she said they have no running water or electricity. A friend brought her some bottled water, but she is “scrounging” water for her dog and to flush the toilet. the forecast is for more rain – oh, joy – tomorrow and Monday, so she will put out pots and pans to catch rainwater. It is impossible to get out of town; there are no bridges left, and most roads are blocked by fallen trees. Of course, if residents can’t get out, help and supplies can’t get in. She said she has plenty of food in her pantry and freezer, but no way to cook it.
Asheville is in even worse straits. One sister lives on the side of a hill, the other in a valley with a stream. At this point the cell towers are also down, so other than the news reports, we don’t have any idea what the story is there, but what we see is bad enough.
Pray for us all!
After 50 years at the Rice Paddy, we are moving. If that isn’t scary enough, we are going from a four-bedroom house to a two-bedroom condo. We might as well be going to Mars!
We settle on the new place of the 22 of October – always subject to change without notice, of course. Oddly enough, this is the same date we settled on this house.
We had originally planned to hire a U-Haul and gather our friends, but when we consider the amount of gear we have to move and the average age of our friends, we decided the better part of wisdom would be to hire a professional to move the big stuff and we’ll tote the smaller items along as we figure out where – and if! – they will fit. Speaking of wisdom, we have decided to board Boris with the vet for the day. He zings around here like a low-flying rocket, and he’ll either be underfoot or manage to get out, neither of which are good.
We’ve been playing Let’s Pretend We’re Moving for several years, but the real thing is a lot more complicated. I’ve been tossing scraps of fabric left and right, and The Squire has been sorting through papers, disposing of manuals to equipment we no longer have, and putting other manuals with the pump and the weed eater, neither of which we will need.
When my mother moved out of the last house where she and my dad lived, my sister and had to be very careful how we handled things. The dear old lady placed several cut-chrysal pieces in a large box and then surrounded them with scraps of fabric the size of postage stamps and post cards. More than one family heirloom nearly went out with the trash. And nobody has ever come up with a good reason for her to have a garden hose under her bed in the retirement community, or a 1950s crinoline in the closet. I’m trying my best not to follow in her footsteps!
We owe this move to the unbelievable generosity of our eldest daughter and her husband, and we can never, ever thank them enough.
We’ve been feeding racoons on our back porch for years. The family dynamics change, but there’s always a male and a female, usually with a kit or two. For a while, we had only two, a couple I called Maggie and Jiggs, and if that doesn’t age me, I don’t know what does.
Recently, we’ve had a crowd, an alpha male, whom I named Vito, and what seems to be two females, plus two kits. Vito becomes highly indignant if his food is disturbed, and that includes any food he decides he likes better than his own. I have taken to spreading the dishes over a wide area to prevent any altercations.
Vito may think he’s the Godfather or Top Dog, but that doesn’t hold much where I’m concerned. Unfortunately, he gave one of the kits a rough time one day last week and I had to rescue the poor thing.
True to form, I brought it into the house, made it a nest, and gave it a name. Not being quite as dumb as most people think I am, I wrapped Rocky in an old towel before I started lugging him around, and then fed him canned cat food from a baby spoon. He ate until he burped, at which time, I figured he was full. He growled at me once or twice, more as a matter of form than anything else, since I am considerably larger – and probably meaner – than he is. We refrained from introducing Rocky and Boris, just as a precaution.
And No, I did not keep him.
We haven’t had any pets since October of 2021, when we had to have Eddie, our ancient cat, put down. I’d mentioned this lack several times, to put it mildly, and two weeks ago a gal in our knitting group brought me a tiny coal black male.
We named him Boris, because The Squire figured that was a “Godunov” name for a cat. We were talking about the kitten at Coffee Hour and after a very confusing conversation with Mac (Nothing unusual there. Most conversations with Mac are confusing.) when he kept calling the kitten by the wrong name, The Squire figured it out. It is typical of my life that I knew all about a Russia Tsar who reigned in the early 17th century but had never heard of Rocky and Bullwinkle.
Boris is a very clever cat, who managed to figure out the flap to the back room and the litter box with one shove in and out. Eddie claimed never to have mastered this trick; he would come out of the back room by himself but would sit in front of the door and wail piteously until one of us either opened the door for him or shoved his fat fanny through it. Oddly enough, he managed during the night just fine. Boris has also discovered he can push open the kitchen door rather than stay locked in the kitchen all night.
He has picky eater down to an art form. When I got him, I swung into the grocery store and picked up both Kitten Chow and some canned food, neither of which he will touch. The Squire gives him scrambled eggs with cheese, but the other day I found a can of tuna in oil, which we don’t eat. I opened that and put it down for him, and he ate about 3/4 of it! Great! Later in the day, I poured a little extra olive oil on it, and he made burying motions all around the can. OK. You don’t need to be so dramatic. We’re back to scrambled eggs.
The kitten’s favorite place to sleep is on my shoulder. If he wants to see what I am doing, he will crawl all the way around, so his head is on my left and his tail hangs down on my right.
Most evenings I go out around dusk and feed the snapping turtles in our pond. have three, which about four more than I’d like, but my mamma didn’t raise me to be an alligator wrestler.
One of them doesn’t want to take bread that is thrown into the water. He expects to be handfed and will climb out of the water for it. Usually, I put a chunk of ‘Store Bought White Bread” on the end of a small stick or one of the many chopsticks we have around the house. This particular “alligator” decided I wasn’t getting the bread to him quickly enough and decided to take a chunk out of my shoe. I’m fairly sure he figured he was biting my foot, and I am eternally grateful he was mistaken. Cn you image the damage he could have done to mere flesh and blood?
. . . but stupid instructions are another matter, entirely.
The Squire and I have been taking showers for so long that we no longer have a stopper for the bathtub. About three weeks ago, I was exposed to poison ivy, and as usual it got into my lymph system and proceeded to get all over. It moved from my index finger, up my arm, to my hip, the middle of my back – places I couldn’t even reach! I went to the local Doc-in-a-Box and was given two prescriptions and a suggestion that I take oatmeal baths to help soothe the itching.
I had to go several places to find a plug – apparently so many new-fangled faucets have the put hard-wired into the spigot that every few stores bother to sell them anymore. I did finally find one at the obvious place – Home Depot.
What threw me into absolute gales of laughter was that not only does the general public need to be told not to use the hair dryer in the shower or don’t pick up a chain saw by the round end, but they now need instructions on how to use a stopper! If you can’t read it, it says,
1: To insert, push stopper into drain opening.
2: To remove, pull stopper out by ring.
I weep for our young people.
thisendoftheswamp 