Spider Pix

 

Annual Family Christmas Portraits

I've been forcing David and the cats to do an annual portrait since Nummy and Pita were babies. You can gradually see the cats become less tolerant of it through the years. Here is the whole collection of portraits for your enjoyment, or horror, depending on how you feel about making cats pose for pictures:

December 25, 2023 - David, Maggie and me. Lisa, as usual, refused to pose. Sadly, we lost my sweetheart NummyMuffinCoocolButter on Dec 5.  

December 25, 2022 - NummyMuffinCoocolButter, Me, Maggie and David. I love the way Maggie looks evil and Nummy is looking at her like he is surprised at her being mean, whilst he is totally all chill. Hah! You can't tell, but Nummy really didn't want his picture taken today either!

December 25, 2021 - NummyMuffinCoocolButter, Me, Maggie and David. Sadly we lost our little bitty Barty on Dec 8 this year. Lisa is still around but alas, still refuses to pose. 

December 25, 2020 - NummyMuffinCoocolButter, Me, and David. Bart, Lisa and Maggie refused to pose this year. Nummy didn't want to pose either, but I was able catch him and make him. You would think that I was torturing him. He takes after his father. 

December 25, 2019 - Maggie, David, Me, and NummyMuffinCoocolButter. Barty and Lisa declined to pose this year.







December 25, 2018 - Barty, David, Me.









December 25, 2018 - Barty, David, Maggie, Me. I don't think we will ever get Lisa to pose with us again - in fact I was surprised when I looked back and realized that she posed in 2010 - I think that might be a typo.




December 25, 2018 - Barty, David, Me, NummyMuffinCoocolButter. Sadly, we lost PITA to diabetes this year. On the one hand, we miss him, on the other hand there is less bloodshed in the house during picture taking time.

December 4, 2017 - David, Pita, and me. Pita was not a happy camper. He is our grumpy old man now.

December 4, 2017 - David, NummyMuffinCoocolButter, and me. Nummy posed nice, but he sure didn't want to.

December, 2016 - Maggie, David, Me and NummyMuffinCoocolButter. We rejected this one from being on our card because David's hat was in front of my face. But I do like the way Nummy looks somewhat angelic here. But we all know better.

December, 2016 - Maggie, David, Bart and me. We rejected this one because David's hat was covering my face again and the back drop was crooked. But Maggie and Barty posed pretty well.

December, 2016 - Maggie, David, Me and NummyMuffinCoocolButter. Third time's a charm - this is the version we put on our holiday card.

December, 2015 Pita. Little twit can't pose this nice when it's a group shot!

December, 2015 with Nummy and Pita.

December, 2014 with Pita and Nummy.

December, 2013 with Pita. No one else would pose this year, what a bunch of party pooper kitties we have. This year, Barty refused to pose at all, even after being offered salmon treats. Pita was surprisingly tolerant this year.

December, 2012 with Nummy looking particularly psycho.

December, 2012 with Pita looking quite photogenic, but I forgot to take off my glasses

December, 2012 with Pita.

December, 2011 - Test shot with me and Pita

December, 2011 - with Barty and Nummy with an evil eye

December, 2011 - With Nummy and Barty, but I forgot to take off my glasses.

December, 2011 - with Barty and Nummy

December, 2010 -  with Pita and Barty

December, 2010 -  Rare shot of Lisa and Barty

December, 2009 - with Pita looking psycho and Nummy. In fact, you can see that my forehead is bleeding. I think it was Pita who whacked me right before we took the picture.

December, 2009 with Barty

December, 2008 with Barty

December, 2008 with Pita and Nummy

December, 2007 with Pita and Nummy

December, 2006 with Pita and Nummy

Injured Scrub Jay

 Here are 4 pix from May 12, 2023. The bottom part of her leg has fallen off.   

Note the jagged look where the leg is broken.
Not sure that is indicative of a predation injury.

The thigh looks pretty swollen. At the least I think we should continue to
monitor her and check the condition of that leg.

I am thinking that the pink thing might be a cyst or something?
Notice that it does not go all the way around the leg.

  

Overall, she looks good and was eating. 

Dee's Critter Bucket List

I decided that I need to start a bucket list. Before I die, I need to see:

1. A Hellbender (actually, they are pretty endangered and might be gone before I am:-(
2. A Cock of the Rock
3. A Green Jay
4. Calceolaria uniflora (syn. Calceolaria darwinii, known as Darwin's slipper) 
5. A Bearded Reedling

How I Spent My Summer Vacation Part II

 So, I was pretty happy with the living room and offices, but then I walked into the kitchen. Ugh. At first I thought it just needed the floors cleaned so I asked David to vacuum and figured I'd call it done. One thing led to another, $350+ at Lowes...

We had tons of stuff that just sat on counters and on top of cabinets. Just way too cluttered. Had to move stuff every time we wanted to cook. I added the counter here with the Ninja on it a while back, but again that too is cluttered now.

The two counters beside the stove were the only counters in the kitchen and they are tiny. And, (our bad) not particularly clean. I'm not surprised we have ants now and then, but what's surprising is that we've never had THEM. It was a tad gross. 

The dust had been accumulating for way too long. In my defense I'm too short to reach above the cupboards to dust.

So, the first thing we needed was new cupboards. Out of the entire purging project, these 2 new cupboards were the only major purchase. The only other expenditures were some new drill bits, some screws, wood glue and 2 rolls of Contact paper. Everything else was reused or made from scratch. In fact, I made some additional shelves for inside these cupboards out of some left over wood from the previous bookcase and shelving in the garage. One other piece of trivia - I brought both of these cabinets home from Lowes (at the same time, one load) in my Honda Fit. I am the all time Queen of Trunk Tetris. I think the people who loaded them into my car thought I was nuts, but I've done this before and showed them the exact angle that they needed to put them in to make them fit. I love my car!

With the exception of a few decorative items (the three cows, a few cats, and a few ceramic pieces that Shirley and Lynn made) shown in the previous photo, nothing is on top of the cabinets or left on the counters. One thing I still have to do is wash the lower cabinets and maybe cull (or at least clean) my magnet/picture collection on the fridge. I have a photo of my friend Wayne and his wife and first baby hanging on the fridge, and I think the baby and her younger sibling are both in college now. 

The dish drainer stays on the counter, that is a necessity for the stuff that can't go in the dishwasher, which is pretty much everything since the dishwasher has been broken for weeks and the repair guy won't call me back. But that is a story for another day. 

One more change to my office - I moved the pie safe into my office. It now houses my sewing supplies and projects. I like having them all together in one place, they were previously spread out. I moved the printer to David's office and will be donating/giving away the small chest that was there before.

I had planned to take this last week before I go back to work as my actual vacation where I do nothing but goof off. That didn't happen. But at least I have a nice clean house (Both bathrooms need cleaning, but I already purged them when we had the floors done back in 2014. But they DO get cleaned fairly regularly and have been cleaned since 2014, for those who know me and were about to ask.)   The last frontier is the garage... maybe this winter when it's cooler out there.

One last thing - someone wanted me to model the Magicarp hat shown in the previous post. Here I am doing my best Blue Steel (Zoolander reference).

How I Spent My Summer Vacation...

 So, I decided to take a sabbatical from work, felt like I needed a break from sitting at a desk every day. I made a list of stuff I wanted to get done during the break. One of the big things was that I wanted to build some shelves in the garage so I could empty out the guest room so I could build David an office, which would mean we could have a living room. 

The issue is that David didn't really have an office to call his own, it was kind of half of our living room. 

It tended to slop over into the livingroom...

...and elsewhere. It was driving me kinda crazy.

There were a few times over the last few years that I have tried to clean/reorganize...

I added some cabinets,

 moved the couch, but ultimately, it always went back to the way it had been before...

usually worse. So I decided that the solution was, as outlined above, 

to start by building new shelves in the garage. I did this the first week of my sabbatical.

Next, I had to attack the guest room. The light had been burnt out in there for months so when we had to "put" something in there, I opened the door, and tossed in said item into the abyss. Before I could start we had to replace the lightbulb, but to do that, I had to clear a path for the ladder. Once that was done, 

I had to take stock of the room. 

What was in here? Lots of crafts, lots of stuff for recycling, all of our BWDS class materials, puppet making supplies, I could go on and on....

and on and on (Yes, that is a Magicarp had on the second shelf down - I made it myself, let me know if you want it.) So, David was going away for 3 weeks in August. I knew that I wanted to do most of the work during those 3 weeks. So I spent a while on the computer figuring out where to recycle/upcycle/donate everything that I could. (See details below.)

I wound up making a built in bookshelf (with the BWDS sign hanging from it). That alone took the first week. I then had another issue - I had to get rid of the guest bed before I could do any other work. David texted me on Friday to say he was coming home a day early, which meant I had less thann48 hours to get everything else moved into the office...

...which I could not do until the bed was gone. I posted it to Facebook Market place and said that if someone could take the bed before 5:00 on Saturday, they could have the bed for free. A neighbor showed up with a truck and the bed was gone by 9:00 Saturday morning. See all the furniture in the office? 

I cleaned and moved every single piece of it by myself. I was pretty tired by Saturday night, but really wanted to get it done. Because...

I still had to finish cleaning the living room and moving furniture in there. I was giving away a bunch of stuff. David said he wouldn't be home till 5:00, and someone wanted to meet to get some packing material from me. I drove downtown to give it to her at 3:30. And David called me shortly after 4 to say that he was home. I was devastated. After all that work, and I couldn't be home for "the big reveal." But I did at least had the foresight to put a bow on the door to his office, and he didn't go in till I got back. 

Meanwhile, a LOT of the stuff that was in the guest room of course wound up in my office, so now I had to clean this mess up. 

Again, I went through everything. I have already filled up our recycling barrel once (with just paper and cardboard) and will have to wait till next week to put out another full load. 

In case you are wondering, I seriously LOATHE dusty books. I decided to hang a curtain in front of my bookshelf to try to keep the dust down. I plan to do the same for David's office.

This was my office closet before...

...and after. I whined to David about WTF did you keep all that crap (papers, empty boxes) and was horrified to see that I did the same. 

One odd thing. I found this thing I made... it appears to be armature for a clay piece, but I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what the heck I was going to build. 

Anyway, one of the big reasons that I tend to hold on to a lot of stuff is cause I feel guilty and wasteful throwing stuff out, so I hold on to it thinking that there has to be a use for it. 

So, just in case there are any other pack rats reading this, here is a list of how I got rid of more that half of what was taking up so much space in my house:

• Furniture (a small chest of drawers,  a bedside table, and a bed):  I listed these on both Facebook Marketplace and the Buy Nothing app and Facebook page.  I also listed a desk and a coffee table that will be going to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore this week. 
• Packing Material - EVERYTHING I get in the mail, including books and completely unbreakable stuff like cat treats, comes wrapped in !!@#!@ bubble wrap and packing peanuts. I had 3 enormous bags of packing material. I have so far given away one bag to someone from Buy Nothing who is moving, but still have 2 more to give away. Let me know if you are local and are or know an Ebay or Etsy store owner who could use packing material.
• Christmas giftbags, boxes, tissue paper, wrapping paper, etc. I made fabric gift bags years ago and stopped using wrapping paper altogether. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to convince anyone else to do the same, so have been amassing this stuff for years. I gave away many bags/boxes of this to a local woman who still wraps, but looks to reuse. Works for me!
• Jeans - I've been saving jeans for a quilt, to make bags, yada yada. Between David and I, we had probably amassed a good 20-30 pairs. I found this store called Madewell where, when you donate your jeans, they give you a coupon off for their store, but the best part is that they recycle the jeans into insulation for houses. Dropped this off today.
• Clothing - I never throw away clothes, I "might" wear it again some day, I "might" make something out of it, etc etc. I found a great resource called For Days, where you order a bag for $20, they send you the bag, and you send back any old clothes, linens, even fabric scraps. The $20 includes the return postage for a pretty large bag. I ordered 3 and have already filled up 2, and I haven't even started on the garage or storage unit yet. You also get store credit when you return the bag. 
• Pens - As you know, I LOVE pens, especially my Sharpies. But how to dispose of them? Remember the old days when you could refill a pen? I looked up refills for ball-point pens recently - they cost more than buying a new pen. So insanely wasteful. But at least there is a place that will recycle pens. In fact, Terracycle will recycle just about anything - for a price. I have a ton of (non-refillable) pens that I hate to just throw out. I am looking for one or more people who would like to go in on a Terracyle pen box with me. If you are an artist or teacher, let me know if you are interested and we can share a box. I just can't justify getting one for just my own pens yet, but will someday. But would be nice if one or more people would like to share a box now. 
• Pill Bottles - I've been saving these for years. I have on a few occasions washed, then decorated pill bottles and stuffed them with money for gift-giving occasions, but that gets old pretty quick. I read about this place called Matthew 25 Ministries that will reuse pill bottles for humanitarian aid. I have also heard that the Humane Society also can reuse clean, empty pill bottles. I will be contacting my local Humane Society and animal rehab/shelters first, then will split my collection between the charities that can use them. 
• Other random stuff will be going to either Habitat for Humanity, Halo (local cat/dog rescue) or the Humane Society Thrift Store. 

Note: I found Madewell, Buy Nothing, and For Days on this great blog post.

Anyway, this is what I was doing when I wasn't working with Scrub jays. I must say that dealing with Scrub Jays was far easier, and even when the deer flies were biting, it was better than cleaning.