No more roommates
Back on the home front, our roommate of nearly a year and half moved out the last day of April. Tyler spends summers working in Boston anyway, and with the closing date on our house being so uncertain, he opted for saving rent money and putting his things in storage for a few months. He and Terry were out by midnight that last day.
The cats are thrilled to not have to share the house with an active little dog. We are enjoying the extra space we now have…Tyler’s bedroom is now our main packing and storage area, and Chelsea has her own room for the first time in four years. The interlude is much appreciated, especially since we’ll soon be back to sharing the very small space of a two-person tent.
We were on opposite schedules from Tyler, so that’s been another plus – not having to tiptoe around in the mornings, and not being awakened at night. We start work earlier and tend to work at odd hours now that we know we aren’t bothering anyone.
We’ve heard from Tyler a few times while he’s in Boston – he’s doing well, and will be back for work and school down here within a few weeks. We’re definitely looking forward to catching up with him and hearing all his stories.
Yard and leaf project
You may remember reading our stories from last year about the record pollen, leaves, and acorns from all the trees on our property. This spring continued the trend. By the time Chelsea got back from Lompoc we were nearly shin deep in leaves. Within the first few days we were out raking and bagging. I lost track of how many bags we went through, but it was impressive. I took us two solid days of raking and bagging to get through the worst of it.
We’ve gotten to be friends with our bulk trash guy, Willo, as we’ve had so many collections for him to pick up over the last two years. He’s a handsome slender guy in his late twenties or early thirties (hard to tell) and is incredibly kind to us. We’ve been promising to have coffee together one of these days. (Update: found out yesterday he’s in his very late thirties…wow! Missed that one by a mile!)
Meanwhile he frequently does little extras for us, like helping us carry the bags of leaves and some of our bigger items out to the street for us. We love having the help, and it’s so awesome to realize how many wonderful people are around.
Pool
Our pool remains looking gorgeous. What can I say? We didn’t do all that work to have it go downhill again. In fact, check out the photo of a little snake enjoying the sparkling clear waters.
Cassie and the roof jump
We have two cats we’ve had for ages, both really friendly and sweet cats; very lively too. One is a little bitty thing, no more than eight pounds (Sasha); the other (Cassie) is a good-sized cat, around fourteen pounds. Cassie is bigger than Terry, Tyler’s dog.
One day we were relaxing in the hot tub when we saw and heard Cassie going nuts in the back yard. She was racing wildly from edge to edge, finishing each edge by climbing straight up a tree. After what appeared to be practice runs, she ran full speed from across the yard and shot straight up a four-by-eight post next to the hot tub. Our jaws dropped. Here was a good-sized fourteen-pound cat balancing calmly on a four-inch surface seven feet in the air!
She stood for a while looking around, on this bitty four-square-inch space, then calmly jumped onto the roof of the porch where she settled for a long sight-seeing session. Chelsea hopped out of the tub, got her camera, and photographed it for proof.
Mr. Squirrel goes for a bike ride
With all our oak trees we have many, many squirrels. This last year was a bumper year for pollen and acorns, and along with that came a bumper crop of squirrels. We’d been watching them for months, racing constantly along the tree branches and the utilities wires.
I have an oak tree next to the porch off the back of my bedroom and a huge oak right in front of my bedroom. That back oak tree connects with a utility wire that connects with three other oaks in the back yard, so my bedroom room is in the middle of a major squirrel highway. What an unholy racket they raised for months, landing on the roof of my bedroom! Thump. Thump, thump. Thump. Thump, thump thump.
Tyler and Chelsea and I loved watching the cats watch the squirrels. We’d lay bets as to whether the cats would ever catch one.
One day before Tyler had moved out Chelsea called for help. She had that sound in her voice that said “Hurry!” I didn’t have my glasses on and didn’t have my contacts in, but I came running fast. She pointed across the living room.
All I could see was a good-sized brown blob on the floor against the far wall, running up the wall a ways. My mind ran through a number of possibilities. Could Terry or the cats have upchucked in the corner? Nope, way too big a blop. Could they have pooped? Unh uh…way too big…the blop was bigger than they were.
I tiptoed closer and closer. Meanwhile Cassie was staring fixedly at whatever-it-was from about eighteen inches away. By the time I got right on top of whatever-it-was, I realized it was a squirrel, plastered tightly against the wall, absolutely immobile. This was definitely one of those what-on-earth moments.
However it got in, we did have to get it out. We tried shooshing it with a broom, which only caused it to rocket wildly up the furniture in mad dashes around the room. Chelsea kept screeching intermittently while I was nearly helpless with laughter. Cassie kept a close and very interested eye on the situation.
The squirrel finally ran up the back tire of Chelsea’s bike, taking temporary refuge under her bike rack. In a moment of brilliance, I grabbed a towel, tossed it over the squirrel (well, I tossed it on the rack so the squirrel couldn’t see what was going on), while Chelsea and I very carefully picked up the whole bike, walking it oh-so-carefully out the front door, making sure the rear wheel didn’t move.
We managed to get a few photos before we poked it a bit to get it off the bike and off to freedom. Wonder what kind of stories Mr. Squirrel told his buddies that night!
We never did figure out how it got inside. This is air conditioning time in this part of the world, so doors are never open unless someone is actually going in or out. We have no holes in the house. We have a back porch that runs the length of the house with a cat door at one end, and another cat door leading from the porch into the house, but having a squirrel navigate two cat doors and the length of the porch seemed highly unlikely.
It looks to remain a mystery for all time.