Well, I will add the ONE photo (or two) of the things I DID take pictures of this weekend, but there aren't many. I have become really bad about taking photo's during events (or is it really good about living in the moment?).
Butch had loaded the truck with all sorts of goodies before I got home from work on Wednesday so I was able to grab a suitcase and get it all packed and ready to go in a matter of minutes and off we went! What was IN the truck you ask? Well, things that we will store at the little house while we are gone due to either a) lack of ability to pack it or b) wanting to have ease of access when we come home for visits. Aka, Propane tanks for one and some of the poke sticks for Butch's scuba for another. SO... those and a few (few????) coolers went to Florida to reside for a few years. Folks can use the coolers while they are there and we can have easy access to them if we need them for whatever. Oh, and a few chairs also went there as well.
When we get to the house it's dark and I dashed into the potty... only to have Butch come by the door and holler in "NO!"... I'm like "WHAT????" So he simply repeats "just NO, you'll see"... uhm, OK... I go back out to help him get the important stuff into the house for the night and there was this CUTE adorable super friendly black cat... OK, now I get the "NO" as you can NOT have her... but I loved on her and went about my business. A while later Elizabeth made it into town and calls me to the door. I let her know I had already seen the cute kitty... then she tells me she was here the last time they were in town. Hum... they were tempted to steal her then... so the plot starts here!
Thanksgiving was full of food, card games, naps and just visiting. We had a huge spread, but missed having Angela, mom and dad there with us. Angela was working the holiday so she can have Christmas off for the week (yay!) and Dad isn't up for traveling as we don't have a lift chair and easy in/out access for him to get to and from Sally's. So, it was just Liz, Butch, Me and Sally this weekend. It was also to be some lonely airmen, but they didn't have anyone to join us, so it was just us for dinner...what a dinner!!! LOTS of food as usual! Every bit of it delicious!
SOOOOO Friday, my job was to empty out the shed of all the GARBAGE that was out there... what was there?? Well, about 7 drawers from the old cabinet we tore out when we removed the wall from the kitchen AND the cabinet doors from that side as well - top AND bottom doors... yes, they were heart pine, NO, I did not want them. Really... what am I going to do with them? Another project? Nope, thanks. So, out to the side of the road they went. There were also three doors from inside the house. Yep doors with handles and hinges and all - they were from the hallway and the living room/kitchen where the entry hall enters into the house... it used to end in three doors. One straight ahead to the living room, one to the left to the kitchen AND one to the right to the OTHER hall to the bedrooms. Who on earth needed that many doors??? Not us and certainly not the folks before us as we had removed yet another door from the kitchen to the living room on the OTHER end of the center wall... so some doors were obviously missing from ages ago. One was from the laundry room as it had a grate on the bottom of it to allow air flow into that room... it had since been replaced by a "solid" (hollow core) door some years back. So, all the doors went to the curb as well. What else went out there? The storm door from the back of the house along with the frame from it - aluminum that someone picked up for recycle I'm sure. There was also a set of vertical blinds (unsure why we kept those) and an old tube TV set, a large piece of plywood, AND a kitchen sink. So, I find that funny... but yes, the kitchen sink from before was out there as well. SO it all went to the curb along with random pieces of wood from what appeared to be an old bunk bed. It was a good size pile and would have been bigger but Butch stopped me from chucking the old counter that was in there as well. He now has plans for that to be inserted as a work bench for him. Uhmmmmm OK. So, wood all stacked in the corner, all the other smaller junk that was motorcycle parts and frames and just junk were tossed in the regular garbage can and the place was in decent shape! What's even funnier is that someone went through the stuff and actually cleaned up my crappy pile - I was trudging all this stuff from the backyard by hand - took what they wanted and stacked the rest of the other stuff up in a nice neat pile! VERY sweet of whoever it was.
The truck was unloaded and Butch started to install the Ring doorbell onto the house. Now THAT was a challenge as the child was the one who went into the attic. It was OK when it was from the center to the kitchen, find the end of the insulation and get a piece of wire shoved down the hole for us to fish out to hook up the new powered doorbell that Butch picked up for us.... because of course the Ring needs POWER.... ugh. SO... this was a LONG affair to get done. Liz pulled the first wire, cursing the whole way and coughing due to something up in the attic. Once that was done, we hooked up the old wires on the front of the house and the bell lit up. Good... but it would NOT carry enough power to get the bell to ring. WTF? So... we attempted to get Liz to pull the sire up while we had attached the new wire to the old, only to have the old brittle wire break and come apart. Drat it! So... there we sat with no wire going to the attic for that part.... and Liz NOT happy up there... I don't blame her. SO... she comes back down and I finally convince him I do NOT need a front doorbell just now... it's not critical in the whole plan. So we leave it. He concentrated on the RING and gets it installed. The good news is this was most of this was done on Friday as Liz was leaving on Saturday to head to the house and take her cat home with her. She was going to leave on Friday but she ended up staying as her plans at first were to drive to Nashville to see her boyfriend Alex play at a bar up there.... those plans changed with a cat in the picture.
So... how did the cat come to be? Well, she went around the neighborhood asking if the cat belonged to anyone and found out that no, it did not! She was a cat that someone had meanly left after they moved. Poor kitty, and she was so loving too, not sure how someone could do that!!! She was so enamored with Liz that she would pad at the back door to be let in... as in pawing frantically at the glass door. If it wasn't so pathetic, it would have been cute, so on Friday evening while we were all chilling out at Sally's house, we let the kitty in to visit... she slept on Liz's lap for a bit, then found a blanket on top of a pile and slept on that for a bit, then I convinced her to sleep with ME on the recliner... she stretched out on the footstool next to me and enjoyed a good thorough rub down by me :) She stretched and loved every second of the attention!! What was even funnier is that the two NON-cat people spent a lot of time watching her enjoy her time indoors laying on the floor and batting at my toes as I was wiggling them at her. Ha! They watched her more than the two cat lovers did :) Maybe Butch will be a convert at some time as he did talk to her a LOT when she was in and out of the little house while he was working on stuff :) ha!
So - Liz and I went to Walmart on Saturday morning and got a carrier for the cat, some litter, a litter box, food and such... so now she was all set to go home with Liz and start her new life. Ah... so sweet!!!
Saturday afternoon Butch and I tackled the azaleas at the corner of the house.... good heavens! They had three of those bramble sticker trees that come from a tuber... those things are hateful to say the least... I cut my thumb a few times... three nice scratches across it that bled SO badly!! Then by the time I got to the other two/three of the stickers, I had a few more cuts on my right arm and looked like I had done some serious battle! BUT I won. Butch got the tubers all dug up and hopefully we didn't miss any of the pieces and they won't grow back... and the azalea that was 6' tall and about 8' wide is now tiny little nubs at less than 6" tall. I may have gotten a little aggressive with it, but honestly if it comes back, it comes back, if not I will not cry!! NEXT one to get cut down will be the camellia at the front of the house. That thing is so OLD that it has a trunk the size of a tree... I swear it's about 6" in circumference or more... and it's 6' tall plus. I did trim it down just a little ... it wasn't really time to trim it back as this one is a white flowered winter bloomer, but it had some straggly sprouts on its top that had to go!
After all that I sat down for a bit and just enjoyed the beautiful warm day! Liz and I sat out on the drive and played with the cat who was batting around acorns while we were sitting there... again, she is really cute! Liz took her to the vet on Sunday and they estimate her at about a year and a half. It makes sense, she sort of looks/acts like a teen. A well behaved teen kitty, but a teen in looks for sure! Shortly after that I helped Liz put her in the carrier crate and sent them on their way... kitty strapped in the front seat and not looking too awfully panicked in there...Liz said she traveled fairly well and was eventually asleep in there. GREAT news for her and the kitty alike!
Butch and I wrapped up the last few bits of clean up and called it a day, rested and relaxed, went to dinner then got up early to hit the road back home. We went through Marianna during daylight hours this time and WOW the devastation from Hurricane Matthew was VERY far north!! I was surprised at the amount of snapped and pushed down trees along the freeway just to the west of Marianna, then driving north through Donaldsonville - just WOW at the amount of trees down everywhere, big oaks, lots of snapped pines... there were snapped trees as far north as Colquitt and beyond... not quite as bad when we got north of there, but enough to make us really notice how much devastation was there... north of Donaldsonville there was a house where it was surrounded by trees and you NEVER saw the house, not really... it took me years to see it tucked in there in the dark trees... and it's a LARGE two story brick home (granted gray brick that blends in with the shadows)... and it's VERY open now... more than 50% of the trees in there were down! Wow... just WOW... When we talked to some folks there in the town while getting Gas, Butch said they were planning on cleaning up for a YEAR! Yeah, lots of HUGE trees... some of the root systems/balls were taller than Butch's truck... there were pecan orchards where a good 80% of the trees were pushed over or snapped off. Even Albany had an orchard where the older trees were toppled in a large number.
So, long weekend, fun weekend, productive weekend with the shed cleaned out, stuff put in storage down there, azalea cut back, and Ring doorbell being put in, (a hole in the drywall cut, patched and ready to paint... I need to find those paint colors for that house!! )...
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