thisendoftheswamp

We live way out in the country, surrounded on three sides by woods, and often see deer, opossums, foxes, raccoons, and other wildlife in the yard.  In the summer and fall,  one of my favorite early evening occupations is to sit on the bench beside the stream and watch the foxes race and chase in the area behind the barn.  We feed them out in the back but throw dogfood on the patio for the raccoons.  (We used to feed the foxes on the patio, too, but decided that it wasn’t wise to encourage them to approach houses. Not everyone is as kindly disposed to wildlife as we are.)

I always buy the cheapest food I can find for the critters, but I outdid myself this time. I don’t know what it is – I dump the food into plastic tubs to keep the mice from chewing holes in the bags – but the animals won’t touch it. Not even the squirrels will eat it! So now I have twenty pounds of this stuff, and nobody will eat it. I’ll take it over to the park and see if the wildlife there will take it, although that bunch is pretty spoiled, with every one who walks handing out peanuts and dog biscuits.

I have just finished reading two marvelous books, both of a religious nature. One is by Nevada Barr, who is better known for her mystery stories. Seeking Enlightenment, Hat by Hat tells of her path from skeptic to believer, stumbling along – as we all are – and discovering the truth was there all along.

The other book is much more moving. Heaven is for Real was written by the father of a little boy – not quite four when this all occurred – who died – and recovered –  during the course of an operation for a ruptured appendix. The child casually discusses the time he spent in Heaven, describes meeting his “big sister” – a child his mother miscarried before he was conceived – and says he sat in Jesus’ lap. All in the same matter of fact way he would have told you he had Lucky Charms for breakfast.

I have never been afraid to die, but now I am actually looking forward to it! If you are ill, or know someone who has lost a loved one, or is facing a life-threatening illness, I would recommend this book without hesitation.

We had to have our old dog put down two weeks ago, and Blazer spent the first week looking for her. He’d go into our room and circle the bed to see if Pepper was on the other side, wander into the guest room and do the same, come downstairs and wait under the computer desk for a while to see if Big Sister would show up, and then circle the house again.

We put an old pillow in the hallway where they used to sleep at night, and Blazer would flop down with a sigh, patiently waiting for his buddy. It about broke my heart. I suggested to the Squire that we get another dog, and he suggested I might want to contact a lawyer. Well, so much for that idea.

However, Blazer seems to have decided that if he can’t find Pepper, perhaps he can call her, and she will come. He spent the last two nights barking. Monday night, it was practically non-stop. I got up several times to fuss with him, and finally locked him in the kitchen at 4 AM. Even with the kitchen door closed, and our bedroom door shut – the two rooms are on opposite sides of the house and on different floors – and the fan running on the window a/c unit, I could hear him barking. Constantly. I finally got up at 6:30.

Last night, it seemed to be on a two-hour schedule. Blazer settled under the computer desk when I went up to bed, but around midnight he was standing in the dining room, barking. I fussed with him, and he went in to lay beside the kitchen door until 2:30. I called him upstairs and tried to get him to come into our room, but no dice. He always sleeps between the bed and the door when I take my nap, but has never attempted to enter the bedroom at night, so this didn’t surprise me. I got him to lay down on his pillow in the hall, but we were up again around 4:30. I rolled up a magazine and shook it at him, then coaxed him back up the steps and he did stay put until morning.

It’s like having a new baby in the house!

The Squire, bless him, is very hard of hearing, so most of this was lost on him. He told me the dog was sleeping quietly in the hall when he got up, and since Blazer never comes downstairs until I do, he wasn’t aware there had even been a problem.  He’s right; I do need a lawyer!

  The Squire and I completely disassembled the house (no problem – eight screws and we were done) and I took it out onto the patio to paint all of the inside surfaces white.

True to form, I managed to get paint all over myself and the concrete, in spite of having spread newspapers everywhere.

Reassembled on the dining room table, and I just set the upper floor in place with two screws (you can see one sticking out above the kitchen wall paper) to mark the floor level. I try to get as much as possible of the ground floor completed before I start on the next level.

One sheet of paper propped up in the kitchen. Need to give that some consideration. That white thing in the kitchen is the open door. I found a lovely bed in my “stash” – completely forgot about it; I don’t remember ever having seen it before! – and that will go in the bedroom.  It looks as if there will be space for the armoir – or even a nice double closet – between the stairwell and the outside wall.

Placed a large order for kitchen appliances, window framing, etc. Should be able to really do to town within the next week or so.

She says bravely.

Well, not exactly new. I just decided I needed something to take my mind off things at church, and this is it.

Two years ago, I sent my Tennessee granddaughter, who was then seven, a kit for the Bombay dollhouse and a $100 gift certificate for a mail order miniature store. Her birthday is in late November, and this was a combined birthday and Christmas gift. The Bombay kit is front opening, so it takes up very little space, and goes together in under a half an hour. The gift certificate would have gone a long way towards wallpaper and furnishings.

When we went down to visit last summer, my daughter gave me the unopened box, telling me the gift was “not appropriate”. Since I had sent her brother a Christmas gift, I can only imagine how my granddaughter must have felt.

Wednesday evening, I opened the box, got my screwdriver, and had the thing nearly completed in about twenty minutes. I do want to dis-assemble it and paint the entire inside white before I install wallpaper, but that is no problem. So, the next couple of weeks, once my order comes from the mail order company, we shall see how this all goes.

And when we return to Tennessee, the house will go with us, with a plaque on the back – To you, from me: Christmas 2012.

For the last two and a half years, our parish has been blessed with the most wonderful rector. Dr. J has been everything one could possibly desire – a truly Godly person, kind, witty, always with the exactly right word, courteous as only the British can be. Simply perfect. She has led us into new paths, and encouraged us to take risks.

Tonight, she announced to the vestry that her husband is winding down his law practice, and they are putting their condo on the market and moving to Florida.

I came home and put my head on the table and sobbed.

OK, it’s “Thy will be done”, but I hope the bloody condo doesn’t sell.

So there.

The Squire and I “spun” our mattress top to bottom this morning, something I try to do every six months.

My mother insisted that I do something to her mattress every week when I visited her at the retirement center. One week the mattress got spun, and the next week it got flipped. Modern mattresses are not made to be flipped, but my mother insisted I do so anyway, which left the underside exposed. I would have to lay every available blanket and quilt on the surface, and then top it with a lambs-wool pad, but it still must have been akin to sleeping on a railroad track.

Even when I was a child, this was weekly S.O.P., and one of the few things I ever heard my dad complain about.  Making the bed was also a Big Deal. Both sheets were removed, and the bottom sheet set aside. The top sheet was turned head to toe and put back on the mattress as the bottom sheet. The original bottom sheet was now used as the top sheet.

This was done every morning. My mom did it for me when I was “little” but by the time I was in the first grade, I was doing it alone. Before I left for school in the morning.

It wasn’t until I started boarding school in the fourth grade that I learned not everybody in the world did this. I was delighted to make this discovery! I still turned my mattress every Saturday, but I could get away with “zipping up” the bed – at least until I went home for the summer.

After a particularly messy bed-making job (I was out of practice!) my mother made some crack about the fact that my sister’s bed always looked perfect. One look at Lynn’s face, and I bit my tongue.

She slept on the floor, wrapped in a blanket, which she folded across the foot of the bed in the morning. Her bed always looked perfect because she never used it!

Fink.

One of the blogs I follow is written by an Episcopal priest somewhere on the West Coast, and he mentioned that his parish was having their “traditional” Sunrise Service on Easter morning. Hadn’t thought of that in eons.  We had Sunrise Services when I was a kid;  however it’s one thing when the rectory is across the parking lot, and another when the last three people we’ve had lived about twenty-five miles from the church.

When my sister and I were growing up, my grandmother always made us eat dinner either in our slips, or with a tea towel around our necks. (Something else Princess Anne never had to do, I’ll bet. See my old Blogger site for that story.) http://endoftheswap.blogspot.com/2012/01/let-me-introduce-myself.html  Mind you, I went to a boarding school, and was perfectly capable of eating a meal without spilling it, but apparently this talent disappeared the minute I crossed the family threshold.

The year I was a senior in highschool, the fellow I was dating came to Easter service with us and then to my grandparents’ house for breakfast. I was TERRIFIED that she was going to deck me out with a dish towel, but after looking me up and down, she decided not to, and my sister also got a break.

But the next time I ate there, and Jerry wasn’t with me, it was back to eating in my underwear.

We had a funeral at church this afternoon, and I volunteered to make a carrot cake for the reception. I’ve made this cake a zillion times (Mary Anne’s Carrot Cake at allreceipes.com) without a hitch, so no problem, right?

Well, this time that blasted cake stuck to everything. It came out of the pan easily enough, but stuck to the rack when I turned it out, stuck to the second rack when I turned it over, and this morning when I cut it into squares, it stuck to the knife with every stroke.

I managed to salvage enough cake to lay out on a platter, sprinkled it liberally with powered sugar, and left the rest on the cutting board. We’ll eat it with a spoon.

Our organist is on vacation, so there was no music, but at the end of the service, the rector annouced that the family had particularly wanted the hymn Amazing Grace, “so I’ll ask Dani to start us off.” I heard the Squire snort, and several people told me later the look on my face must was simply priceless.

I hate when that happens!

Like everybody else who puts out seed, we have a terrible time with the squirrels getting into our bird feeders.  They even used to consider our original baffle as a sort of al fresco dining area.

Well, today I spied a conical baffle that is simply impossible to outwit. (Ha! We’ll see how that goes.)

OK, so now the little buggers can’t get into the feeder, the seed should last a lot longer, right?  I went inside to answer the phone, and when I came out, they had already chewed a hole in the bag. I hadn’t even had a chance to pour the seed into the can! Said can, by the way, is topped with a foot long piece of rail road track, ‘coz if I’m not fighting off squirrels, I’m doing battle with the raccoons.

The worst of it is, the squirrels have their very own feeder, with corn and peanuts, and put where they can reach it. Apparently, they feel it isn’t worth having if you don’t work for it.