April 25 through 30

[chochiyo_sama]

Monday, April 25

I had all kinds of crazy dreams last night.  In one, I was with a family in a haunted house.  One of the children disappeared, and we could hear him calling, “Daddy!  Help me!” but we could not find him.  I thought he was down in a damp and nasty basement, but I could not see him.  There was some sort of small, white creature down there—it looked like a miniature big foot.  It was stomping around and aggressively lurching towards us.  I was moving away from it, but the mother of the boy let out a banshee scream, tore off her jacket, and lunged at it.  She had murder in her eyes, and the thing cringed back and away from her.  I yelled at it, “Yeah!  Be afraid!  You don’t fuck with a mother’s child, you creepy shit!”  (or something to that effect).   Don’t mess with the momma!

In another dream, I was in the house I lived in from the age three till third grade.  I was a child of about 9 or 10 in the dream, with a mother, father, and two other children—one a boy of about 12 and a younger girl who looked about 6.  They were not my actual family.  In fact, the father was Jeffrey Dean Morgan.  I was in danger, and the mother and father were going to take me to the airport to get me away from whomever was threatening me.  It was very cold and snowing.  “Dad” told me to put on my shoes and coat, but instead, I was digging through my box of dolls as I didn’t want to go away without anything to play with.  I dug out my blonde Tonner “Marley” doll (whom I call Savannah) and wanted the red headed one that I call Erin, but I could not find her.  I kept pulling out Skipper dolls instead.  Finally, I got a dark haired Tonner “Marley” and decided just to take her.  “Dad” was irritated and yelled at me that we had to go NOW. 

So, I grabbed my coat and ran out to the car.  It was so cold out, and I had not put on my shoes.  “Dad” went back in to grab my shoes while I got into the back seat.  I was worried about my two siblings as they were being left alone in the house.  I guess “Grandma” was coming to get them, though she wasn’t there at this point.

That was basically all there was to that dream.

There was another dream too, but that one has fled away from my mind.  The above two were more interesting.

My cousin Hope came to clean for me today.  She worked for four hours and did a very thorough job.  Cynthia was faster, but Hope was equally thorough.  She took down the shower curtain and liner and washed them along with the bathroom rugs.  She cleaned the bathroom within an inch of its life and even dug all the hair out of the shower drain.  She brought her steam cleaner with her and used that to clean the entire area of the bathroom.  She probably spent an hour or more just on the bathroom. 

She put fresh bedding on my bed then she vacuumed all of the upholstered furniture in the living room and the upholstered rolling chair in the kitchen, vacuumed the living room floor, and used Orange Glow to polish all the wood furniture and dusted all the knick knacks in the living room.  She took the recycling bin to the curb, took two stacks of boxes to Lily’s garage, and dragged all the throws and afghans to the laundry room. 

She needed to leave at 2 pm in order to get home by 3 when her kids would be coming home from school.  Because it takes her an hour to drive here, I paid her $25 an hour.  I paid Cynthia $20 an hour, but she lived about ten minutes away from me.  I feel she deserved the $100 I paid her.  When she left, I gave her a handful of bills that needed to be mailed, and she dropped them off at the post office on her way out of town. 

She is going to come every Monday until my house is back to “normal,” then we will revisit the issues.  I might have her come every other week after the house is back to what it should be.  Then Lily and I may switch off—one Monday at my house, the next at Lily’s.  If she is willing, I might hire her to do some painting for me.  I really want the whole interior of my house repainted. 

While Hope was working, I worked on the pile of stuff by my recliner.  It was putzy work, and it looked much better once I went through all of it, recycled some, and threw a bunch of garbage away.  I figure I will work on that kind of thing while hope is doing the more intense work. 

After Hope left, Lily, who had been in Owatonna at some doctors’ appointments and doing some shopping, stopped in and gave me the two loaves of French bread she had picked up for me.  I love that bakery French bread.  It is so fresh and chewy.  They are pretty small pieces, so I ate four slices with butter for my lunch.  I didn’t even make them into a sandwich.  I just ate them with butter.  So delicious.

I also caught up with my DW entries prior to today and prepared a very late Christmas present to be sent to San Diego.  Next Monday, I will have Hope take it to the post office for me. 

 

Tuesday, April 26

Today is my mother’s 88^th birthday.  Lily agreed to go to Casey’s and get a couple of pizzas for Mom’s birthday dinner and bring her to my house so she could meet the wild savage kittens who now share my home.  I bought the pizzas, a “meat lovers” with black olives added for Mom and Lily and a black olive and mushroom one for me.  I don’t really like meat on pizza unless it is Canadian bacon with pineapple.  Yes.  I like pineapple on pizza.  Don’t be a hater.

Lily had made a pan of pecan bars which are like pecan pie but in bar form.  They were delicious.  This was in lieu of a birthday cake for my mother.  They split the left over meat pizza and I got to keep all the leftovers of the other pizza since they both prefer meat on pizza.  I got to keep four of the pecan bars and Mom got to keep the rest as it was her birthday.  It was a pleasant time except that the first words out of my mother’s mouth after not having seen me for at least two months were something along the lines of my house being a cluttered mess.  Well, it’s a cluttered mess because I have stacks of boxes in here that I had saved for Lily which she now doesn’t want.  So next week, I will have Hope break them down and recycle them. 

The kittens put on quite an acrobatic (acrocatic?) show for them. 

I filled my pill caddy this morning and folded the basket full of clean laundry that Hope had set on my bed yesterday. 

It was a lovely sunny spring day.  My mother was kind enough to drag my recycling bin, now empty, back to the house. 

 

Wednesday, April 27

I was productive today.  I worked on my laundry, starting with all the throws and afghans Hope had dragged into the laundry room for me.  I cleaned the litter box in the laundry room and all three of the litter boxes in the breezeway.  I put the clean towels in the bathroom and threw a large bag of garbage into the bin, and washed a huge sink full of dishes. 

I watched two movies late in the afternoon/early evening:  Cry Macho with Clint Eastwood and School Ties with a very young Brenden Fraser.  I had never seen either of these movies before.  Both were pretty good.

On her way to her Wednesday night dinner party, Lily brought me my mail and a Cool Whip bowl of “frog eye salad.”  It was pretty good but was a little light on fruit.  I should have opened a can of mandarin oranges or peach slices and added them, but I was too lazy.  I ate the whole thing for supper. 

It was a lovely spring day.  It’s just amazing how green the grass is now.  It won’t be too long before the lawns will need to be mown.

 

Thursday, April 28

I started today with a lovely shower.  While I was showering, a long pair of orange front paws crept in under the shower curtain and grabbed my ankle!  The water spewing over him did not seem to bother him at all.  LOL.  They are savages with no concept of boundaries at all.

I continued working on my laundry.  Between yesterday and today, I did SEVEN loads of laundry.  Three of them were of the throws and afghans which were very big and bulky, so I could only wash two at a time.  I had an unusually large bunch of clothing to wash too.  It was good to get that done and folded.

I had a surprise call from Joni who appears to be doing pretty good.  She told me she had gone to town today and stopped at Burger King for an “impossible burger” which is a non-meat product.  She said it was huge, but that she thought she was going to be able to eat the whole thing.  She had to reheat it twice, though, as she has to eat very slowly in order to keep it down. 

There was some rain with thunder and lightning this afternoon.  I love a good thunderstorm.

 

Friday, April 29

I had a moderately productive day today.  I took a big bag of recycling out to the newly emptied recycling bin.  Since I was in the breezeway, I cleaned the litter boxes again.  They were already well used.  Of course, the little shits had to leap into the boxes WHILE I WAS CLEANING THEM and use them again.  On the last box, Sawyer jumped in and started taking a poop.  William jumped in with him, stuck his head under Sawyer’s tail, and stared up at his butt hole, watching the poop come out.  What a weird little pervert!  I shoved him out of there before he got a face full of his brother’s poop.  Cats are definitely weird.

They had kicked litter out of the litterbox in the laundry room and it was EVERYWHERE, so I took my battery operated sweeper in and cleaned up all of the messy litter and cleaned out the box AGAIN.  I don’t see how two kittens can produce this much excrement!  On a daily basis!

I did not order groceries from Lerbergs this week, but I had submitted a small order for the Schwan’s man.  Lily called and asked me to get a few things for her, so I did.  Larry, the Schwan’s man, delivered my order and even stuck it into the freezer for me.  He is such a nice guy.

William got his ass chewed today.  He likes to sit on the back of the toilet on the tank when I am going to the bathroom.  Lately, he has been attacking the towel bar above the toilet tank, which doesn’t bother me.  But tonight, he started attacking the ceramic butterfly (one of a set of three) on the wall above the toilet.  Somehow, using his little paw, he got that butterfly spinning on its nail like a roulette wheel.  I yelled at him to get down, but before I could get him down, he flipped the butterfly off the nail, and it crashed to the floor.  It sounded like it has been smashed into a million pieces, and I screamed and started to cry as my grandmother who has been dead for nearly thirty years painted that and it was irreplaceable.  I had planned to redo my bathroom based on the lilac and pink and cream colors combination of the butterflies.  Cats flew in every direction as I raged about how they BREAK EVERYTHING!!  However, when I went to pick up the pieces, it was basically only broken in half.  One small shard was missing from the middle near the body of the butterfly, but the other two pieces should be able to be glued together without much difficulty and should look okay after the repairs. 

Towards evening, we had a rip-roaring thunderstorm with lots of bright lightning and crackling thunder.  It was awesome!  Another storm blew through in the wee hours of night.  Also a great, noisy storm.

 

Saturday, April 30

I cannot believe that the entire month of April has already passed. 

Today is my niece Cora’s senior prom.  She looked absolutely gorgeous in her dark blue gown.  Her date is the brother of one of her friends.  He was about half a head shorter than her.  LOL.  I expect that is partly due to her heels.  He was a nice looking boy.  I hope they have fun and get home safely.

There were several brief rains throughout the day, but no thunder or lightning.  I made a can of tomato soup with crackers for lunch and had some fresh pineapple later in the afternoon.  For supper, I made a Schwan’s meatloaf and mashed potato frozen dinner with toasted French bread. 

The only person I talked to today was Lily on the phone.  I had brief text chats with Mary and my siblings as Jack was sending pictures of Cora and her pre-prom activities.

Not much happened today.  The kittens are trying very hard to play with Peaches, but she wants NONE of it.  They ate out of the same dish today. I gave them each a dish of their own, but Sawyer insisted on eating with Peaches, and she let him. 

Progress.

 

Comments

[the_godiva]

I actually had two dreams I remembered when I woke up this week but now I can't remember either one.

I think I remember school ties. Brendan Fraser is a kid on scholarship to an expensive private school and he's hiding the fact he's Jewish? Or not. It's been so long and that story line has been done before.

It's good Joni's appetite is better and she finished the whole impossible burger. But I still think it is too soon for her to get back on the strict vegan diet. She needs to at least continue with the dairy and eggs for the additional protein.

William certainly is butt-obsessive.

Does this litter box have a lid with a hole to keep the litter from being scattered everywhere?

Look very carefully. You might find that small missing shard. It likely slid a bit. Even without it you can repair it, patch that hole and do a little paint to hide it. In the mean time you are going to have to completely cat-proof the house. That is the third time that little shit has destroyed something you can't replace. They need more exercise and stimulation. Oddly enough they behave better that way. I know dogs do. What they need is a playpen with a ceiling so they are completely enclosed. A large one and inside a lot of stimulation toys. Something like this with a lot of cat toys. Some battery operated to keep them occupied.

https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Plastic-Mesh-Cover-24-Inch/dp/B07T4RLNCS/ref=sr_1_7?crid=2384GUH8FTC5K&keywords=dog%2Bplaypen%2Bwith%2Btop&qid=1651446960&sprefix=dog%2Bplaypen%2Bwith%2Btop%2Caps%2C186&sr=8-7&th=1