First, cats, as you all know, spend a lot of time sleeping. Some would say that’s for the best. Here Mollie poses for a sleep shot – we call it “Cats in Jammies”.
What with the pandemic and all, Mollie spends most of the time in her jammies. In fact, she’s always in her jammies, pandemic or no.
She doesn’t know, or possibly doesn’t care, that the comforter she’s lying on has wolves on it.
Cats also spend a lot of time wandering the house, looking for places to flop down for a nap. This time she found the floor.
She’s waiting for me to leave her bedroom.
We’ve had a fire pretty much constantly for weeks. Mollie is pretty sure we made it for her.
She normally pays no attention to the fire, but she wanted to make sure it was going good. And there she is, but will she put another log on the fire? Will she clean up the ashes around the front of the stove? Why no, no she won’t, and thanks for asking. As soon as she’s sure the fire is going well enough, she’ll lie down facing away so she can roast her ample backside.
And that’s all the news in photos for “At Home with Mollie.” Tune in again for “On the Front Porch with Dusty and Chloe” and later, “At Home and On the Road with Sylvester.”
As of he date of this1 post, I am as old as my brother Henry was when he died in 2018. Still, when I think of him, I see my older brother. But now he’ll never be older than me.
I had thought to write more about Henry, but other things occupy my mind right now. On Monday morning Leah and I arrived at the hospital around 5:15 am for Leah’s surgery. After she went back to the operating room, I had to rush home to let the dogs out. The doctor called as I was on my way back to the hospital and said everything went well. She was in her room before 10. She was groggy for a while but seemed to be coming around pretty quickly. I went home for lunch, and when I got back to the hospital she had been walking around and seemed alert and aware.
I had to go home again to feed the animals and walk the dogs around 5 pm. When I got back to the hospital, Leah didn’t know where she was. We (the nurses and I) kept telling her that she was at the hospital; she said she knew that, but she seemed unable to hold the idea in her head. She would acknowledge that she was in the hospital, and then say she needed to get her shampoo, or toothbrush, or hand lotion out of the bathroom — our bathroom at home.
As I said in an earlier post, post-operative cognitive decline is a known problem. It can be temporary, long term, or permanent. I don’t know what to expect in this case. As I write this at a little before midnight, she is sleeping. I hope she’s better when she wakes up.
We’ve had some problems lately. I posted about our power outage. After we lost our power for four and a half days, we learned the value of water. And then a couple of days later our septic system backed up and we couldn’t use any of the plumbing fixtures, including toilets. And then we learned the value of indoor plumbing.
We were without indoor plumbing for a little over two days. I called the company that installed the system the day after I found our problem, but they couldn’t come for a couple of days. When they came, it was some of the same people who installed the system, and then the next year repaired damage to the system caused when one of the contractors drove onto the leach field. So, they knew the system. I was fearing the worst, but the problem was caused by a clogged filter that keeps solids from getting into the leach field. The repair was fairly quick, and not nearly as expensive as I was fearing.
So, what else can go wrong, right? How about a microwave oven? Yes, it can. And it did. It simply died. And then we learned the value of a microwave oven. Leah couldn’t warm up her coffee and I couldn’t warm up the beef broth I put on the dogs’ food. And we couldn’t prepare frozen dinners, which we have been eating lately. Nor could I heat up the gigantic marshmallows I sometimes eat as a dessert, although they are big enough to make an entire meal. You should see them when they puff up in the microwave. OK, it’s not as serious as no water or no plumbing. But, still.
I did some online investigations and found a reference to a couple of thermal protection devices that could be reached right behind the control panel. I pulled the panel off and checked the two devices. They are like fuses, only different. One is normally closed (that is, it makes a continuous circuit unless it fails). It fails when it gets too hot. It was fine. The other is normally open; when it fails, it makes a connection and a fan comes on. It was fine, too. There are other places to check, but it requires getting into the back of the microwave, and that means taking it down from over the range. At that point, I decided that replacing a part on the oven, replacing it, and then possibly having it not work, or fail again, was not worth the effort. So we replaced it.
Installing an over-the-range microwave oven is not exceptionally complicated, but it is a little bit of a hassle. They are heavy, and it’s hard to lift them into place when you’re leaving over the range. But we did it.
Installing a new microwave from a different manufacturer means taking the old bracket out and putting in the new one. It also means drilling new holes in the upper cabinet floor to match the two bolts and power cord on the top of the oven. Drilling the holes in the right place means some fairly precise measurement and marking. That’s not my strong point. My practice is usually measure once, then cut two or three times. But this time everything was in the right place.
The microwave failure was disappointing. It’s the second appliance to fail in the three years we have been here. We put in all GE appliances, all in the same finish, when we moved into the house. The dishwasher logic board failed about a year ago, and then, a year later, the microwave oven failed. That is not a good record. I couldn’t recommend getting GE appliances at this point. We have two more GE appliances, a range and a refrigerator. So far, so good with them.
Our record with various problems at the house is making me wonder: is it me, or is this house jinxed?
This large toad was sitting right under our garage door Saturday night.
Toads have been almost nightly visitors since we moved into the new house. I think they find the driveway in front of the garage good hunting grounds because we almost always leave a light on all night. The light attracts bugs, and bugs suit toads’ appetite quite well. They are ambush hunters, so they just sit and wait. This one was pretty fat, so it must have ambushed quite a few bugs. And that’s OK with us.
I call it a toad, although frog would be equally accurate. All toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads. Frogs tend to have slimy skin and they seldom venture too far from water. Toads have dry, warty-looking skin (sorry, fella), and can stand dry conditions longer than frogs. We have almost no water around our driveway, so even without the characteristic dry skin, it would almost have to be a toad rather than a frog.
Toads are mostly nocturnal. I don’t remember ever seeing one during the day. You might wonder where a toad goes to sleep during the day. I know: shoes. At least sometimes.
Leah and I leave some shoes in the garage close to the door into the kitchen. Leah has one pair and I have four, each with its specific use. When I go out, I take off my slippers right outside the kitchen door and slip on one of my shoes. Once when I did that, I found that something was already using it. It was a toad about the size of this one. I figured out pretty quickly that my foot wouldn’t fit with the toad. The toad jumped out and disappeared into the clutter in our garage.
A few days ago I went out and put on my dog-walking shoes. I was getting ready to lace them up, but stopped because there seemed to be something in the shoe. I almost ignored it, because sometimes it’s just my sock acting up. This time I took the shoe back off and a little froggie jumped out. I can’t believe I didn’t crush it, but it hopped away, disappearing into the clutter just like the bigger frog. I can imagine their conversation. The little toad told about the monster that tried to crush him, and the big toad said, “I told you so!”
Encountered infrequently during the summer, American toads are inactive during hot, dry periods and from late fall until breeding begins early in the year. They are most active at night, spending the day hiding in burrows or underneath logs, forest ground litter, or rocks. These toads show hiding spot fidelity, sometimes returning to the same location every day. During the non-breeding season, individuals have a home range of several hundred square feet, but adults may travel more than half a mile during the breeding period. Adult American toads eat a variety of small insects including ants, beetles, moths, and earthworms.
A little later on, the article mentions that fact that these toads produce a poison in their parotoid glands and skin, which means, don’t lick toads!
The cats have never shown even the slightest interest in the toads. Sam seems to ignore them, but Zoe wants to investigate. Fortunately, all she does is sniff them. I’m not sure whether something in the odor warns her off, or she just isn’t interested because their most usual defense from predators is to just sit still and let their poison protect them.
