Author Archives: Charles Huss

No Rest For the Weary

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It has been a week since I threw out my back. Technically, I hurt it a little last Saturday, but Monday Morning, I hurt it a lot. I could barely move for three whole days. Here is Frankie Monday morning demanding I take him for a walk.

Frankie has a habit of sitting and staring when he wants something. It really is effective, but this time I couldn’t help him. How do you explain to a cat who is used to getting morning walks that he can’t go out?

I am feeling about fifty percent better today and was able to take Frankie for a walk this morning and yesterday morning, which I’m thankful for, and so is Frankie.

Unfortunately, my bad back meant that I couldn’t ride in the car today, as my wife went to visit her 92-year-old dad on the other side of the state. He fell on Monday and ended up in the hospital. Now he is in a rehabilitation center and may not ever be able to go back to his house.

In other news, I finished the script for the fifth installment of my Last Healer Mysteries series called “Last Hope.” While I am involved in getting an artist to create the cover, I have decided to release on Amazon a short story I wrote, titled “Repeat.” It is available for free as an e-book today and tomorrow. Click here to get a copy. It is a fifteen to twenty-minute read, and I think you will enjoy it, especially the twist at the end.

Unbelievable

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I threw out my back on Saturday and by this morning it was almost better until I bent to put my pants on. Now it’s worse than ever so I decided to sit on the sofa with my feet up and an ice pack behind my back.

After a little while my wife came into the room with a shocked look on her face. “I don’t believe it,” she said.

“What? What is it?”

“Look,” she said, pointing to the cats on the sofa to my left.

“Oh, wow! I don’t believe it.”

Seeing Floki and Frankie that close can only be compared to Iran inviting Israel over for a cup of tea. Okay, so that might be an extreme example, since they are not exactly enemies, but they haven’t been that close since the days of Chris.

As I write this, Frankie has left Floki and is demanding I take him for a walk. He can’t understand I am temporarily disabled.

Photo Friday: The Return of the Rocking Chair

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The last time we were in West Virginia in 2021, or possibly the time before in 2020, we got a rocking chair at a place called Tamarack. It is a place that sells artisan goods that are made in West Virginia. If memory serves, Rose’s son bought it for her, perhaps as a birthday gift. At $400 it was an expensive rocking chair.

The chair returned with us to Florida at the end of our visit in 2021, when we decided to rent out the house there. We had the movers bring it back when we returned to West Virginia this spring, not expecting to sell the house three months later.

Since the chair was important to Rose, she left it with her manager there with the intention of picking it up during her next business trip. However, she decided she couldn’t wait that long, so she asked her manager to ship the $400 chair back to us for around $650.

It arrived here about eight days ago.

It came with so much cardboard and bubble wrap that I have been putting it in our trash and recycling a little at a time as space allows. I still have bubble wrap to dispose of.

Four O’clock Frankie

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The year I started this blog, I wrote about Four O’clock Chris. Now it’s Frankie’s Turn.

Every morning at around 4:00, give or take fifteen minutes, Frankie starts bothering me. It’s subtle at first, maybe he’ll walk across me or bite my cheek. sometimes he will bite me just over the eyes, which hurts. That’s when I will turn around and try to go back to sleep. Frankie will counter by either digging at the sheets or stepping over me so he can get at my face again.

The next phase is the sneezing. You haven’t lived until a cat sneezes on you in the middle of the night. It is almost like he is sneezing on purpose.

Often, he will settle down for a short time if I ignore him, but almost always, between 4:30 and 4:45, the meowing starts. He has had enough, and I must get up or else. So, I get up and feed him.

Later, when 9:00 p.m. rolls around and I’m tired and ready for bed, my wife calls me an old man.