Archive for ‘July, 2007’

Bob the cat

Bob 

Is this normal for a cat????  He actually does this a lot as in sleeps on his back with his legs at odd positions… but so does Karl and so did my beloved Gus and also Zack.  I need to write about Gus and Zack at some point… but back to Bob.  I suppose funnier as he is such a big cat and kind of spreads out.

The story of Bob as I know it is this – Bob came to me from Rob, a past love. As Rob told it, he was doing some carpentry work for a women who had 3 older cats.  She had a cat door in her home.  One night she wakes up and there is an extra cat in bed with her – Bob – wearing a pink harness.  He appears in good health, has been neutered, and the harness – well, obviously someone’s dear pet who lost his way.  However, there are no responses to her flyers or newspaper ads for the “found” cat.  Rob is working away on her kitchen cabinets – he has disclosed that he recently lost his dog to illness.  Bob the cat has taken a liking to Rob.  Bob is much younger than the resident’s cats and not fitting very well into the household…. Bob goes home with Rob.  About a year later, Rob and I meet, etc. and when Rob moves in with me so does Bob.  A year later, Rob moves out and asks if Bob can stay until he (Rob) gets settled.  It is now about 4 1/2 years later – Rob and I stayed friends for a couple of years and it was eventually mutually agreed that Bob was happy in my home and that’s where he should stay.

I don’t know at what point in the story that Bob came on his name, but it fits and although people laugh, I never thought to try and change it and he is Bob.

At the time Bob came to live in my home, I had a tuxedo (black and white) cat, Gus – an extremely dear to me, angel cat, hunter extraordinare – but this is not Gus’ story…  Bob was “low man on the totem pole”.  When Gus disappeared and Bob became “only” cat – he decided that he REALLY liked being only cat.  I truly believe that he would like being “only” pet but he hasn’t quite figured out how to do away with Karl. 

When I got the motorhome and introduced Bob to harness and leash for travel, I did get a bit worried.  Since his original “flight” was “in-harness”, I wondered if another harness/leash experience would send him looking for a different home.  So far not – fine with me as I’ve become attached to the darn cat.  He is very affectionate and although he hunts it is not with the passion for hunting that Gus had – he is more of a homebody.  He is all for being in at night, although would go out earlier in the morning than I let him.  He has an extremely expressive face and “talks” – he tolerates and even is sometimes affectionate with Karl.  He even comes (mostly) when called – all in all a “good” cat.

A new attitude

I make no secret of the fact that I HATE heat – I mean I really do not like to be hot.  June – July and early August I get the kind of doldrums most people get in the dead of winter.  I’ll bundle up and enjoy cold weather but heat just annoys me – humidity is another level of uncomfortable but thankfully that is not an issue in Montana. 

But, Saturday, I was in the hardware store… I LOVE a good hardware and even the Ace here is a family hardware and the people that work there are related to ??? – anyway, same people have been working there since I’ve lived in this area – 5 years – and they know me and have no problem giving me a hard time!  Typically, it is 3 or 4 trips for any one project by the time I go back for stuff I didn’t realize I’d need.  So, Saturday I was whining about the heat and they laughed at me and scolded me also – telling me to enjoy it as it would be snowing in a few months.  I said GREAT! – love snow!  BUT, I kept thinking about it and yesterday morning as I was puttering in the early morning when it is wonderfully cool and yet warm enough to putter about in shorts and t-shirt and not much else … and I realized, that here where I live, even on the hottest day there are still nice cool nights and mornings and it is really only mid-afternoon to mid-evening when it is HOT and maybe, just maybe I could be a bit less miserable if I concentrated on enjoying the morning… so, a new attitude.

So…here I am, on the front porch – 6:30 a.m. and it is 59 and a soft morning breeze wafting… the early morning birds are quiet – and although full light, the sun is not above the mountains to the east so the sky is rosy.  Karl is out enjoying the cool of the morning as well.  Bob is in the woods hunting.  And the other thing that I thought about – no matter how far past going to school I am, there is something about summer that feels like vacation time – and maybe exagerated since I work from home – but even for me, the days seem lazier and even if only in reminiscence – there is that kid-like enjoyment of “summer vacation”.

Except for a forecast respite this Thursday, there is currently no end in sight to 90 degree days.  The meterologists seem to have a kind of ghoulish excitement about the possibility of breaking all kinds of records – daily temp, run of 90 degree days, run of 100 degree days a few places.  I hope that I can keep up my variation of glass half full, i.e. day half cool frame of mind – and enjoy this time versus enduring it and wishing it away. 

The hardware guys are right of course, in a few months we will have snow… and it was only a few months back – May 3rd that I took this photo of the snow storm that interrupted the logging – so, I’ll try to keep this in mind and also take a page from Karl and Bob’s book – they know how to relax in the heat!

Snow

Bob

Karl

“Journey or Destination” or “How I got into RVing”

My friend, Carolyn, who I credit for some marvelous health improvements (see bioflavanoids in previous post this morning…) made the following comment about travel after having perused my recent travels on this blog:

“For me travelling is simply a way to get from A to B. I LOVE to go places but the getting there is not that fun.” 

The classic “Journey or Destination” paradox…  It really made me think – which I LOVE by the way!  And as a side note, if you want to read about some young women who are living – and I mean LIVING life and being thoughtful, world-caring, world-changing people – visit Carolyn’s blog and then her blogging friends (links from her site) – and their friends….  These are people that give me hope – they have committed to God, marriage, family, people in need, the environment – and they have committed in LOVE – not necessairly huge “in the news” things – but simple daily acts of thoughtfulness, random acts of kindness, “doing unto others as we would have done unto us” lives…  Sharp contrast to the “me-me-me-ness” that seems to make the news. 

 

So, back to topic… Before I had the motorhome, I would have said that the same was true for me – “the getting there is not that much fun.”  Somewhere/somewhen after much business travel and a few cross country car trips my travel philosophy changed a bit.  It was so gradual and sneaky that I didn’t consciously see it happening.  The last car trip in 2000 – Montana to Maine to Nova Scotia and back – that was the first conscious thought of RVing.  I spent 7 weeks “on the road” and except for one week in a Maine cottage, I was in a different hotel every night – with a dog and cat and their respective beds, food, dishes, litter box…plus my computer and my stuff.

 

There were many times that trip when I fantasized about being in a little rv… and that’s where I started – looking at camper vans – mini-motorhomes.  It wasn’t just the in and out of motel thing, it was also that I realized that I really LOVED “road” travel – wandering around the country on the highway, listening to local radio and at night, tv – talking to people – What’s important to people here vs there?  What’s life like in this place?  It was realizing that I loved the journey.

 

Fast forward to summer, 2005.  I had off and on looked at vans, travel trailers, truck campers, motorhomes – everything!  They each have their plusses and minuses and I dithered.  But in early summer ’05 a number of things happened – I had sold a house I loved and did not find another, a relationship ended, I had a 1-2 year work committment with a long-standing client, i.e. didn’t matter where I worked from – short story, I was “footloose and fancy free” and somewhat in need of a distraction… oh, and I turned 50…

 

In true mid-life crisis fashion, I went to an RV dealer and bought the Winnebago.  As it turned out, it was perfect for me and the boys (Karl and Bob).  At the time, buying the RV was a “means to an end” – a way to look around the country and see if there was somewhere else I’d rather live – while having the comforts of home and ability to take my pets easily.  I never expected to like the “rv lifestyle”…I thought – I’ll look around, decide where I want to live and then sell this thing and get back to “real life”. 

Ha!  Turns out that I love travelling in my “300 square foot 1 bedroom/1 bath home on wheels”.  The pets adapted beautifully and now I can’t envision traveling any other way and additionally the whole rv thing has become a hobby and the travel an addiction of sorts.  I haven’t really had a hobby before – it is incredible to me that I have become so enamored of all things RV and in the process, I hardly care WHERE I go, I just enjoy the going – with the paradox of loving Montana, my little house and the beautiful forest I live in.

 

So, maybe it is more than the RV journey – the journey of life and of discovering my place in it – on wheels or on ground.  Either way, now, for me, it is the journey.

Breakfast on the front porch and THE blender…

Berries

I’m still in my VERY early morning wake-up pattern – 4 a.m. this morning, but it works with the heat wave. After coffee and a few quiet moments it is starting to get light and cool enough to do outside stuff… this morning checking the strawberry patch was on the agenda.  You can’t see in the photo but there were a couple of raspberries also!  I also messed with the motorhome as it is driving me crazy that I can’t get to the fuse box which I think has the fuse which I think blew causing the hydraulic failure – shop appointment next Tuesday and I guess I have to wait as this morning’s attempt was unsuccessful.  The last morning chore was a bath for Karl as he spent some of his morning finding something horrible to roll in…

While I’m on a food topic… a short story about THE blender…  A young woman that I worked with briefly and since have kept in touch with – now via her blog – took a nutrition course and then wrote (with the help of her new husband) a really great and fun poem about bioflavanoids.  And since bioflavanoids help with some minor problems I was having – I paid attention and did some more reading and started adding whole citrus particularly to my smoothies.  However, an older “regular” blender left things pretty thick and pulpy and not all that appetizing and to get things smooth I had to food process and then blend which left a lot of cleanup.  Then, oh darn, the blender gave up the ghost – quit, kaput.  So – great excuse to now buy my dream blender – a Vita-Mix – mondo, 5 hp blender said to liquify most anything – and it does!

Drinks

Pineapple

In goes lemon-ginger green tea, pineapple (which I learned how to cut at my Mama’s), swiss chard (fresh from my folks garden and transported home), cabbage, ginger, parsley, jalapeno (NOT very much jalapeno!), beets, orange (peel and pith – the bioflavanoid), some lime also, blueberries, stevia extract (natural plant sweetener), protein powder, plain yogurt – I know how it sounds – it tastes great!  Fills me up between meals and I get rid of a couple of the annoying problems!

The thing whirs so fast that there is enough friction to heat things up so soup for one is a breeze.  I love the darn thing and it is now on the load list for the motorhome – yea, I try to have the motorhome stocked so there is not much to load/unload but I can’t swing 2 of these – however, said young friend who got me going down this path just acquired one of the magic bullet blenders – similar thing just smaller – might work!

TGIF! – this weekend through Tuesday – high (100-102) heat forecast, plus very low humidity and possiblity of dry thunder/lightning storms – I dearly hope we come through it without a fire start(s) – now until September rain/mountain snow is always a scary time.

Electronics, water and weather humor

Several weeks before I even thought about the Colorado trip I spilled a glass of wine and a bit splashed into my 2nd/backup notebook computer…  Now, I have spilled liquid in every computer (all notebooks) I’ve ever owned and feel that I have the dry out/clean up sticky key procedure down.  Ha – this one apparently splashed on some very sensitive something as it is well and truly dead.  It was due for replacement but I was trying to drag it out as I’m not really ready to go to Vista.  So much for “my” plans… 

BUT – if you happened to read a few posts back of my washing my Bluetooth headset – and I mean fully submerged – through the first rinse cycle even!  By the time I realized I had left the thing in the shirt pocket of a shirt I knew was in the wash, it had gone through the wash WITH detergent and the first rinse and I opened the machine which was full of water and had to find the shirt at the bottom.  Anyway, I let it “dry” for 24 hours and then plugged it into the charger…it’s little light came on indicating it was charging – huh….  The light starts at red, goes to yellow and then green when fully charged – it did all this.  I turned it on – got it’s blue light – the DARN thing is fine!  Well, I’m glad but it is a mystery to me how the headset could go through all it did and recover and a splash of wine wiped out the notebook computer.

Headset

Weather humor… it is HOTTTT!  90’s – that is HOT in MT – upper 80’s is hot in MT.  We had upper 90’s and even 102 last Friday – then some normal and now on our way for another heat wave.  I’m kind of a weather junky – one of things I like is the Forecast Discussion on NOAA.  This is where the meterologists write about what the various models say and what they (the people) think and how they are coming up with their weather guesses – serious weather lingo usually…  So today:

 NOAA:  “Sunday there is another small change to the pattern as a disturbance rides the west side of the ridge and brushes northwest Montana.  Areas South and East of Missoula (NOT ME in Kalispell area) will see only minor changes in air mass.  North and West of Missoula (ME) will feel a more noticeable drop in temperatures.”

 here is my favorite part… “(Most valleys still in the 90’s – so you can leave the parka packed away)” – VERY funny…

Straawberries, Raaaspberies, Chee-eeer-ies!

Planters 

Straawberries, Raaaspberies, Cheee-eeer-ieees! – that was the cry of the street vendor who used to sell from a cart when I was a little girl.  You have to say it sing-song and draw each word out. 

Back to present time and my own garden – well, one raspberry, but it is early – they are August fruit here, no cherries – they did not recover from last year’s neglect – BUT, strawberries…

Bowl of Berries