Happy New Year to all our readers. Hopefully 2021 will be a good year for everyone.
I bought my wife a 1000 piece puzzle of Neuschwanstein Castle for Christmas and no, it was not the only thing I bought for her. I just thought it would be something nice to do together instead of watching television. Her son and his girlfriend came on Christmas eve for a week and we all worked on it together, on and off, finishing it in just over two days.
Of course Frankie had to help, too.
I have never made an online puzzle before but I thought this would be a good excuse to try it.
I stopped working three of my four jobs before moving to our new home but I feel like I now have less time than ever. This post, for example, probably should have been written two weeks ago.
I don’t remember what prompted me to pick up Chris and put him on my shoulders like I did when he was young. Perhaps he “asked” me to pick him up by clawing at my leg. However it happened, he ended up on my shoulders just before I walked from the kitchen to the dining room. Along the way, I passed the China Cabinet. If anyone has been reading this blog long enough to have seen the post named Chris’s Springboard could probably guess what happened next.
Chris used me as a springboard and jumped to the top of the China Cabinet.
I was surprised Chris was able to get up there given his age and weight but he seemed to manage just fine. I’m not sure then why I have to pick him up when he wants to get on my lap.
Since it is “kitty see kitty do” in our house Frankie also had to get on my shoulders and then up onto the China cabinet.
Next up was Floki. He got on my shoulders but was too scared to make the leap onto the cabinet. He does have a reputation for being a bit of a scaredy cat and this did not help it.
Chris has slowed down these last couple of years but it is good to know he still has some of that youthful spirit in him.
Last week we took a drive to Parkersburg. It is about 45 minutes from home but if you need to do any serious shopping at a store that is not Walmart than that is where you need to go. I think we needed to go to Home Depot and Rose wanted to do some Christmas shopping at T.J. Maxx.
I bought Rose an Advent calendar a couple of years ago and gave her a gift for each day on the calendar, 24 in all. Now it has become a tradition so I need to come up with 24 gifts for her every December plus a birthday gift four days after Christmas. So I was happy to go to T.J. Maxx to look for gifts for her.
While I was looking I saw a cat bed there that looked pretty cozy. There was only one so I couldn’t get one for each of our cats but I wasn’t even sure if anyone would like it. They did.
Chris, of course, took it over.
Frankie and Floki did, eventually, get a turn.
After we moved in we let the cats sleep with us for several nights but Chris is far too annoying at night so now we have to close our door before we go to bed. I thought it would be nice if there were three cat beds outside our door so a few days ago I picked up two more while we were in Walmart. The new ones are a little bit smaller but Chris still manages to fit and he seems happy with them.
I have not yet seen all three cats enjoying the cat beds at the same time but I like to think that is where they are at night.
My wife ordered a mattress and bed frame for one of our bedrooms. The mattress arrived in time for guests but the bed frame was delayed. It arrived last week and I was tasked with putting it together. A normal bed frame can be put together in five minutes with another five or ten minutes to attach the headboard and footboard. Of course, my wife never buys anything that is easy to put together.
I opened the box and was just overwhelmed by all the pieces. I imagined a nuclear submarine had fewer parts. Fortunately, Frankie was there to offer assistance.
Frankie must have realized that this job needed more that one snoopervisor so he called in Floki.
Eventually, both of them got bored so Chris came in to take over.
When I was close to being done Frankie and Floki came back to check my progress.
By the time I was finished more than two hours after I started, I was alone.
A day or two later, a box arrived with a desk for Rose. She bought an antique desk a couple of weeks ago and decided she didn’t like that I had nothing to do so she ordered a desk with twice and many parts as the nuclear bedframe.
Again, Frankie was first to offer help but soon Floki was there to help too.
Then Chris came to supervise the supervisors.
This project took me almost four hours to complete. The boys tried to stay focused but five minutes at a time was all they could muster. To there credit, they would each come back and check on me from time to time.
I just don’t know why these things always need to be so complicated. I think the designers forgot the K.I.S.S. principal of design (keep it simple, stupid).
To add insult to injury, the next day a big box showed up at the door. I dragged it inside and saw it was a bedframe. I thought it was a mistake. The company must have made an error. But nope, Rose ordered it for a bed that already had a bedframe. You know, one of those five minute frames. It just needed a headboard and footboard and it didn’t even need that. Who cares if one of the two guest beds doesn’t have a headboard? You just don’t want guests to get too comfortable.
I guess after I recover from the last two assembly projects, I will put it together. At least I know I will have three little helpers to make it easier . . . or harder.
The day after we arrived at our new house in West Virginia, our friends, Julie and Tim, came with a dining room set that they got from us several years ago. When they moved from Florida to Virginia they no longer had room for it and had it in storage.
They arrived on a Saturday with their two dogs, Harley and Link. Harley is an older Shih Tzu and Link is a young Poodle mix that Julie found wandering on the side of the road.
For the three days they were here, the house was separated into a dog zone and a cat zone. The cat zone was upstairs and the dog zone was downstairs. The divider was the bottom of the stairs and very often there was a staredown between Frankie and Link.
The dogs were kept in the bedroom at night and several times during the day which allowed our cats to come downstairs to eat and visit with us. I’m sure after that long drive here they didn’t need the stress of dealing with dogs but cats are resilient and once the dogs were gone it was like nothing happened. They were out and running through the house without a care in the world.
We adopted Puck for my wife but he then tended to be more my cat. We then adopted Frankie for her and the same thing happened. Finally we adopted Floki for Rose and I was told not to be nice to him. Of course, I would never be mean to any cat but Floki has been Rose’s cat since he was a kitten. He comes to me for attention sometimes but he wants attention from Rose even more.
Since we moved to our new home, and I think even before that, Floki has been spending more time on my lap. This does not go over well with his mom, especially when she looks over and sees three cats on my lap.
