October Lull

We are home this weekend taking care of chores and finishing small projects. Here is what we have been up to.

Last Friday night we delivered our last big load of firewood to Kathy Hall. While we will probably be up to the lot a couple more times this fall we probably won’t be bringing home loads of wood, just some wood in the back of the truck, so this is the last major load of the year.

Load of wood in the truck

Fully loaded trailer

Pam came up with the idea to put vertical pieces of wood around the perimeter to increase the load capacity of the trailer  — else we would have had to make two trips. Over-all we delivered between 2 and 3 cords of wood to Kathy this year. This wood will help keep the kitties warm in their rescue building.

A home visit by a potential kitten adopter late in the summer led  Pam to formulate a “home upgrade” plan for this fall, as she realized the place was embarrassing and dumpy looking. So far she has purchased a new hallway runner, a couple of rugs, a new cover for the couch, and yesterday I picked up a fire pit from Tractor Supply (upgrades the deck?).  A few more purchases are planned, and coupled with a major re-arrangment of existing furniture, the house will have a new look for fall.

New fire pit

We also bought a Keurig (K-cup) brewer. I have had one at work for years courtesy of the company, but Pam thought it was time to have one at home as well. We are not coffee drinkers but like to have tea, hot cider, and hot chocolate on hand. I think we will get a lot of use out of this purchase.

Otherwise it is more of the mundane. I winterized the swamp cooler, went to Walmart to pick up cat supplies, washed the truck by hand, did the normal auto routine (oil levels, washer fluid, tire pressure checks), put away the fans and brought the heaters down from the garage attic. I spread the last of the grub killer and lawn fertilizer before I put the spreader away.  Today I need to change the Honda oil and filter, clean the mower decks, and paint the snow plow blade that is mounted on my little red Gilson lawn tractor. (The paint is a super-slippery type designed for snow blades.)  Maybe I’ll even get back on the roof and replace several shingles lost in one of the summer storms.

Ebony’s kittens have their eyes open and are just starting to move around a bit. I’ll have a few photos of them in my next post.

Sinbad the Cat has gone missing, along with another adolescent kitten that was living in our garage. We know a couple other cats are missing – flyers in the Post Office and people out looking for their cats – and suspect foul play but have no proof. It could be Sinbad was picked up to be a house cat as he certainly was friendly enough. We hope that was the case.  Not knowing what happened is hard for Pam.

There has been snow around us but so far none down at our level. Below freezing temps at night are now pretty common. Weather people say we are having below average temperatures and the extended forecast shows this trend continuing. We are not ready for winter and keep hoping for a spell of Indian Summer. Pam has been covering some of the flowers and plants to try and keep some color around the house. How much longer this will be feasible is in doubt, but it’s nice to still have some Mums and other flowers still giving us some color.

Leaves are beginning to fall and I suspect I’ll have to start raking and mulching in the upcoming weeks.  Our neighbors have already left for their place in Arizona (which they do every year), and  I take care of their leaves as well. It’s a busy time of year.

Our son Toby had plans to be out for a visit near the end of the month, near the date of his birthday. He and I would attend the Notre Dame – Air Force  football game in Colorado Springs, but we haven’t heard if Toby has firmed up these tentative plans.  We’ll have to wait and see what transpires in that story.

The truck had been running poorly and the engine light had been coming on. I bought one of those code readers and eventually found one of the O2 sensors had come unplugged. Fixed that and the truck is again running fine. Code reader was $18.00 from Amazon; the local Ford dealer wanted $118.00 (1 hour of labor) to hook the truck up to their system and trouble-shoot the problem, so I figured I saved $100.00 by doing the work myself.

So, life goes on. Pam is entering a slower part of the college calendar as far as transcript evaluations are concerned, and I just finished a major project of getting our Rifle Sheriff’s Office Annex wired with fiber-optic cabling to our internet provider. (Connection went from 4.5 mb to 500 mb.) Now I can get started with other projects that were dependent on getting the high-speed connection in place, but those can wait a week or so. So, for both of us, there is a lull in the action. It won’t last long, but we hope to enjoy it while we can.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

When the Habitat Recycle store has better furnishings than anything in your house, it’s time to upgrade a bit.  What with puppies and kittens running around the place the last 5-6 years, I’ve been letting “style” slide.  The mobile is clean (wet mopped with Pine-Sol every other week) but shabby.  And not shabby chic. So I decided just because we live in a mole-on-the-bum-of-Mesa-County type town doesn’t mean we need to descend to being low-lifes ourselves.  The refurbishing is greatly overdue and, in the scheme of things, won’t cost as much as mountain land, an RV, or a truck.

Happy trails.