GRRRRRRR!!!!!!!

Well, before I go into a bit of a rant here, I hope everyone had a pleasant weekend. I did, for the most part. The weather has been beautiful, the company pleasant, and all the animals that live here, have been well behaved. Even Oreo, who tends to enjoy terrorizing Gracie and Maya, occasionally, has been a perfectly sweet kitty. But, there is a GRRRR, in this story.


Friday, Eileen and I drove to the Purple Castle. Well, actually, it's only a purple house that sort of resembles a castle, and it's about 15 miles from where I live.

Have you ever been charmed by a house? I don't mean impressed by it's grandeur, but charmed by it's uniqueness? That is what I have been by this extraordinary purple house, with the purple picket fence, and purple mailbox!

So we drove to look at it again. I had my camera with me. In the past, I have never seen anyone by the house. So this time, as we sat in the car, in front of it, I contemplated if I should get out and try and take pictures of it.

"What if the people don't like strangers taking pictures?" said Eileen.

"Well, we'll find out soon enough," said I, getting out of the car, while Eileen stayed put. Just as I was aiming my camera at one side of it, for it's a large house, an older woman came out. I introduced myself and asked her if it was okay for me to snap a few pictures of the house. She not only agreed, but after chatting, she invited me inside, to take pictures of the interior. Eileen insisted on staying put again, when I walked back to the car and tried talking her into coming along.

"No, you go, if you want to, and if you don't come out of there within a short time, I am going to call the law. You don't even know these people. They may be strange or something. After all, they live in a purple house!"

Now, if my daughter reads this, she will more than likely think that Eileen was right, and her Mom, me, a bit too daring, as usual.

The woman, Sandra was perfectly gracious. She told me she and her husband designed the house themselves, and have been working on it together for 14 years! And it's still not nearly finished, which was quite obvious, with lumber and even furniture, still stacked up on the numerous porches of the house. And Sandra, who is now in her sixties, is an artist. Much of her art is also stacked up in the various unfinished rooms. Oh, but the few rooms that are finished, are something else! Beautiful, stone fireplaces, a huge mural of a white tailed buck, on one of the walls, which Sandra had painted, stained glass windows, beautiful detail work on the walls, etc.

If I continue with the praises of the uniqueness of this house, this post will turn into a book. The photo's would tell some of the story....would, if I could only upload them onto my pc! But no such luck!

I have tried uploading them since Friday evening, but no success. The message keeps telling me to connect the device, which is connected! GRRRR! I have put freshly charged batteries into the camera, I have taken the little card in and out several times, at my daughters suggestion, I have done everything possible to make it happen, but it's not happenning. GRRRR! So I can't show you the Purple Castle, just yet. Or maybe never. It's stuck in my stupid camera! I am pretty aggravated over this! Can you tell? LOL.

So, I will have to take my laptop and camera in to our PC Guru, Patrick, sometime soon, and see if he can figure it out. But this week will be pretty busy, being that the 4th of July weekend is coming up, and I am determined to enjoy it all, even with a GRRRR, that will be in the back of my mind all week.

Thank you for reading my rant. Hope you have a great week!

Country Critters-Oh My!!!

I'm an early riser, and this morning as I made my sleepy way to the sink to rinse my coffee pot before making my morning coffee, I happened to notice a pair of tiny eyes peering up at me from the bottom of the sink. Eek!

"Little froggie, how did you get into the kitchen sink? I almost turned the faucet on, and flushed you down the drain," I said, reaching down and capturing the tiny jumper from his sink prison. Then I placed him in a jar, until daylight broke, and traipsed down to the pond to release him.

How did he get in my sink? A good guess might be that he was carried into the house by one of the cats, the night before, and somehow managed to escape from said cat's mouth and hopped away and hid until he somehow landed in my sink. Many a times out in the yard, I have rescued little frogs from a cat's mouth, and carried them back to the safety of the pond.

But little frogs in the sink do not cause a big problem. Of course, I didn't appreciate the tiny critter wetting himself right in my hand, but I figured he must have been pretty scared and couldn't help himself!

On the other hand, critters under the hood of ones car can cause big problems! Especially, when it's hotter than heck, and one suddenly finds the fan of the car's
air conditioner clanking like heck, and not cooling things off too well. That's what happened to me, heading to town one scorching hot day, recently, and heading home was even worse, so I called the garage and asked them if they could check things out as soon as possible.

"Sure, bring it in tomorrow morning, and we'll look at it," some guy informed me. And the following morning, bright and early, I was in there waiting to hear what the mechanic had to tell me, fearing a major repair possibility. After an hour or so, my mechanic at the garage came in and told me my car's air conditioner fan was working just fine again, and I would be as cool as a cucumber on my way home.

"What was the problem?" I asked.

"A chipmunk, Ma'am. He made himself a home under your hood, and discarded all the shells of his lunches in your air conditioner's fan." He showed me a pile of hickory nut shells, and half eaten acorns that they had cleaned out of it.

" I went ahead and sprayed real good under the hood with pepper spray. I don't think that critter will be back there anytime soon."

"He wasn't under there when you sprayed that pepper spray, was he?" I asked a bit anxiously. Although I didn't want a cute little chipmunk under my hood, I didn't want him hurt, either.

"No, Ma'am. He wasn't there," the guy said, giving me the bill and walking away, shaking his head. I wonder why?

And, would you believe just a week or so later, another critter decided that my car was a good place to live in? Suddenly, mouse droppings were evident in several areas, and when I opened my glove compartment, I found the chewed up remains of my car insurance papers that a mouse must have deemed tasty! My son suggested mouse traps, but I nixed the idea.

"I don't want to have to be removing dead mice. Isn't there a more humane way of getting rid of them?" I asked.

So he sprinkled generous amounts of moth ball powder throughout the interior of the car and trunk. I don't know if the powerful smell got rid of the mouse or not, but it almost got rid of me! Well, at least it felt like it would. Phew!

Oh, I do have one more story, a big blacksnake in the bathroom, but since I consider snakes varmints, I'll save that for another time.