What's Been Going On Around Here?

Not a whole heck of a lot.

Mimi (and Buddy on occasion) has been sleeping in her new boot box cat bed all day every day. The few times she gets out of the box Buddy takes over. I guess the box is just the right size for kitty cats.

Genie (the murderess) caught a bird the other day that was innocently eating seeds at the bird feeder. I had just happened to glance out the back door at the moment of capture, she jumped up and got that poor little bird right off the edge of the feeder, which is actually a bird bath but works really well as a feeder. I disposed of the bird and she kept going back to the kill site looking for it. Then she killed another one a few days later, so I put the feeder up on a stack of paver bricks to make it too high for her to reach. So far no more dead birds but a rather frustrated cat.

Keith got home from work in the middle of the night yesterday and was sound asleep by the time I woke up around 6:30. He woke up for a little while in the middle of the day and checked the lineup and it looked like he would be going back out in the early evening so he went back to bed and slept all day long. He got up long enough to eat some dinner and watch a little TV and then went back to bed. His call time got moved back a few hours and he ended up going out on a 3am train. I think he got enough sleep though!

This morning Mimi was tired of waiting for breakfast so she sat outside my door and meowed very loudly over and over and over again. MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW. It worked and I got up and fed everybody.

It hasn't been as hot the past few days so on Thursday I did the front yard mowing and weed whacking, then yesterday tackled the back yard. It's mostly dirt where it should be grass, so no mowing involved but I did get the Webster spiderweb remover brush thing out (which works really well if you have spiderwebs) and knocked down all the webs on the patio cover and fence, then swept up all the cat hair that Genie has been so copiously shedding, also the stray leaves and such here and there. Then, despite the extreme drought and the don't wash down things that don't need washing down rule during a drought, I washed off the patio bricks and garden furniture. I've also been watering the front yard on a daily basis, I know we are supposed to let our grass go brown but if you do that in this neighborhood you get nasty letters from the homeowner's association about how you need to water your grass. It is starting to look greener out front, the dead spots are slowly filling in with grass.

I did research fake green spray for the dead spots in your lawn and they do make such a thing. I've been sorely tempted to just spray paint the front yard. Someday we will get rid of all the grass and get that fake grass that looks incredibly real. The town of Wasco a little north of us has been replacing the grass in public areas with fake grass and it looks great. It also saves someone having to mow the median of a very busy highway that runs through town. I'm sure the public works gardeners aren't too thrilled about possibly being put out of a job by fake grass, but it sure saves a lot of water.

Other than the usual home maintenance, keeping the house sort of clean, feeding cats, cleaning cat boxes, we really haven't done anything. We go out to eat once in a while because I am too lazy to cook and really hate cooking anyway, but this week we are trying not to spend any money because payday is still a week away, so pretty much staying right here at home.