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I saw this on Facebook over the holidays and thought… how weird.
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What a silly cat, afraid of tangerines.
And then I put down a bowl of leftover milk with a few soggy Rice Krispies in front of His Lordship and watched him freeze in fear.
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He was having no part of it and ran under the bed shortly after I snapped the picture.
Cats are weird.
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Since I hadn’t heavily decorated the inside of our house for the holidays in a few years… I’d forgotten what a time sucking nightmare it was to put everything away.
Three days after I started…
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With help from Lord Dudley Mountcatten…. I was done.
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And after buying a fresh cut ( I use that term loosely) tree from a roadside stand instead of cutting our own as we usually do, I’m seriously cursing needle drop again.
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While I do love a real Christmas tree…
( Note the lack of snow and abundance of green grass in our yard. In Maine. In January! 😠 )
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I do not love clogging up my vacuum with 20lbs of dry needle droppings. Though I have to admit, it does smell wonderful.
How about you?
Are you de-Christmased yet?
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I often wonder how Lord Dudley Mountcatten manages to looks pudgy when the silly cat actually eats very little. Maybe half a Fancy Feast tin in the morning and another half at night… on a good day. Sometimes he just turns his nose up and walks away.
He won’t eat fish, or treats, or any human food. He won’t eat anything sliced, diced or shredded. The husband laughs at my attempts to stimulate his Royal highness’s appetite… and it’s not uncommon to see me following the little bugger around the house at mealtime with a bowl of food and a spoon. ( the cat, not the husband )
So when Lord Dudley recently expressed an interest in being fed on the laundry room windowsill?
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His loyal minion obeyed and fed him on the laundry room windowsill.
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Dinner with a view, you can’t blame him. And I’d already covered the dryer with a soft towel for his comfort… so why not?
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Well, that wasn’t necessary.
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No. Not spoiled at all…
😉
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I woke up this morning to one very relaxed cat.
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Went to a craft show where I didn’t buy anything but did have a few laughs.
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Lunch?
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It came with a flight of margaritas. Blood orange cranberry, traditional and passion fruit.
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It’s $500 more for the W.
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I’m not sure how I rated $2,035 change from a twenty dollar bill,… must be that new math. Sadly I was unsuccessful in procuring the change, no matter how many times I argued computers are never wrong.
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The husband is still hard at work down in the basement.
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And has turned the proverbial as well as literal corner.
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Although safety is clearly not a high priority.
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Does our basement need a ceiling? No.
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But it’s certainly getting one.
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And a white one at that.
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Lord Dudley Mountcatten? He seems baffled by the strange noises rising up through the heating vents and is keeping a close eye (ear?) on the progress.
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We will start and end this post with photos of His Lordship.
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Seen here giving me the evil eye for lowering the blinds and blocking his morning sun.
I had a birthday recently… yay me, another trip around the sun and straight down the road to decrepitude.
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The husband told me to pick a place for dinner but I’d skipped lunch and decided we should go cocktail hopping early.
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Enter Royal River Grille, one of my favorite spots.
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We settled happily at the bar… but were presented with brunch menus since it was a Sunday. I’m not a breakfast person so the thought of scrambled eggs with my Cosmo at 4:00pm did not please me, not one little bit. Brunch until 5:00pm? Come on.
We decided to move on and got the check.
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With tip, $30.92 for a drink and a beer. What’s the world coming to?
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Next stop was Goodfire Brewery, a new place I’d been wanting to try. On arrival we discovered they were almost out of beer and only had three left on tap. Thankfully one was a blackberry currant sour, but at $9.50 per for the small pour and a virtually non existent menu, we paid $24 for two beers and moved on again.
We ended at a nice seafood place we hadn’t visited in a while and I had a lovely crab, shrimp and scallop lasagna which I didn’t photograph.
So we end with me another year older and a very innocent Lord Dudley Mountcatten.
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Well, maybe not that innocent.
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Wishing all my blog friends, near and far, a very Merry Christmas.
And in case you get thirsty after opening all those gifts?
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Cheers!
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I’m sure I’m not the only who’ll be complaining today as it seems the entire United States was slammed by what they called a bomb cyclone event yesterday.
The wind? Insane. It gusted almost 70mph at our house.
The rain? A deluge that flooded roads, businesses, and homes.
Our nightmare started yesterday at 8:00am just as I was about to step into the shower. Bam! No power. Which meant no shower, sandwiches for lunch and dinner and an epic 13 hour gin rummy tournament by flashlight. Temperatures during the day were mild with a high of 52 degrees, but by nightfall it was frigid.
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Thankfully we have a fireplace…. and while it won’t heat the whole house, it did manage to keep the living room at 58 degrees when the outside temperature dropped to 7. Of course my husband the Marine runs the operation.
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Which means throwing giant logs on the top to get it truly blazing.
This does not always end well.
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Because sometimes the logs revolt and pop back out. Giant cloud of smoke, sparks that burned the carpet? You betcha!
But as we sat in the dark enjoying the smell of smoke and scorched Berber, the fun was just beginning. Yes, just as we were about to call it a day and go to bed… shingles started lifting and literally flying off the roof. We watched them sail into the backyard, the neighbor’s driveway and the road. Good times!
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Or not as it turns out.
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Five new leaks as of this morning.
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Did I mention Lord Dudley Mountcatten is utterly terrified of the fire? Positively and absolutely. He fled to the furthest reaches of our bedroom and cried nonstop. Which meant instead of sleeping on the relative warmth of the living room couch, I had to snuggle his highness in the frigid bedroom all night and got no sleep whatsoever because to top it all off? Our neighbor’s wood stove caught fire at midnight.
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Thankfully no one was hurt.
It’s 1:00pm now and we’ve been without power for 29 hours. I haven’t slept nor showered and just discovered it’s not easy to make tea and toast in a fireplace. I have to say …. I’m more than ready to fill the house with electric current. This pioneer woman thing is getting old.
🥺
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Here are a few pics I grabbed from friends.
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Our little downtown park.
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Not sure if you can tell, but the water is right under the bridge.
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Yikes!
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You’re looking at a pier and a parking lot. Or rather, you should be.
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We may be cold, dirty and hungry… but I’m still glad we don’t live there.
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The last vintage beer crate we found had one issue…
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Wooden bottle separators that would have to be removed in order to house my vinyl. This was not simply a matter of pulling and popping them out. They were old, warped, and not in any hurry to go.
Ergo… it required tools.
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And since my husband turned his barn and workshop into a man cave …. this meant doing surgery in the living room.
Lord Dudley Mountcatten did not approve.
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After the first twenty minutes the husband was grumbling.
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After the second twenty minutes he was sputtering.
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But when the clock struck a solid hour of remodeling?
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One empty crate ready for part of my record collection.
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Although judging from the price of an old can of that beer … I think I’d rather have it filled with those.
😳
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I have a friend who does a different type of Christmas tree every year. Some years it’s weird and funky, some years it’s traditional. This year I made a suggestion I wish she would have followed…
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She was not amused, but damn. That’s epic.
Every couple of years the lazy Susan cabinet in our kitchen goes off track…. and every few years my husband asks why we need so many cans.
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Someday I’ll have an answer.
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I need this in my life.
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Who needs pie when you have martinis?
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Isn’t it sweet my cat loves rocks as much as his human mother?
And finally, a Christmas tree for Mark who has an affinity for awkward pink birds….
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River's world..... 