Hello hello, welcome to your grumpy Monday morning post. 🌞 💀
It’s almost time for our End of Summer LAN, and I am so sad that it won’t happen this year. 😞But I did get to have my first Pumpkin Spice Latte of the year yesterday, so not all seasonal pleasures are lost… 🍁 🍂 🎃
I went to bed with a headache and I woke up with one as well, but overall, it was a good weekend.
On Saturday I went to Hobby Lobby crossing my fingers I’d find everything on my list, which doesn’t usually happen, but I did! I got a garland to decorate the library, some boxes to organize things there, pebbles to use with my snails’ water dishes so I can have more water in their tanks without risk of drowning and so improve the humidity, two necklace chains (one for a key my husband gave me on our wedding day, and another for a bunny key I got last year with my Charlie Bear Best Friends Club necklace from last year) and a cork board for the library also.
Here are some photos of the library remodel:
I decided to start using the top of the bookcases for my comics and graphic novels.
The vine on the window is my favorite new addition. I hope to wash the window next weekend.
A permanent fixture in my library is one of the best presents I’ve ever gotten, this Schleich castle from my friend Mwako.
I added new labels to all the shelves, and couldn’t resist this one…
That afternoon our friends Kris and Fern came over to help us make a hole in the wall for our new cat door. 🐈 🚪
We “jokingly” call it my “r*pe prevention kitty door” 🤦♀️ which isn’t something to joke about but the truth is my fear of that happening (or someone entering the house during the day and hurting me) is very real. I’ve been keeping the back door to the porch open for months during the day so the cats can come in and out at their leisure, and this is just not the kind of neighborhood to do this.
It’s not a bad neighborhood but crime does happen, as well as breaking and entering, and an open door while I am upstairs, sometimes showering or napping, is an invitation to a tragedy. I’ve been very worried for a long time, but a lot of the stressed and destructive behavior of the cats improved so much when I began to keep the porch door open, that it seemed worth the risk.
Installing the cat door was no joke; it took both of my friends and my husband hours, with all kinds of power tools, and between buying tools and renting them, and the cost of the door and the tunnel segments to go through the thick wall, it ended up being a painful close to $300. 💸💸💸
The guys worked really, really hard. They had to go through solid block. But they did an awesome job. Now I’m trying to get the cats used to it. The tunnel is a bit long, so I worry about our older cat, Kotoko. But so far all other cats have at least come out on the porch.
The next day Kris and I went out on a long drive to Ft. Myers. We never really went out just the two of us to talk and have fun before, and it was really enjoyable. 🌈 💕
My outfit for that day!
The drive was wonderful, we had lunch at a great little Tex-Mex place in Downtown Ft. Myers, I checked out a small toy store that had some Jelly Cats and evening a single Steiff bear, and then we went to Six Mile Cypress Slough Preserve. That park is supposed to have plenty of wild life, even bobcats, deer and black bears! But we didn’t see any. We could hear the otters in the distance but didn’t see any at the otter pond. We saw some turtles, and some colorful locusts and butterflies, and some apple snails. Oh, and a woodpecker, too.
Mostly, it was too hot for any animals to come out. The water was perfectly still. Even though we didn’t see many animals it was a wonderful time and I hope to go again. Kris told me many stories about fateful animal encounters in his youth as we walked.
Here are some photos I took during our walk:
One of the big butterflies we saw near the Otter Pond.
The Otter Pond itself.
It was the prettiest spot on the trail. The heat was so terrible though. It crushed you down to the ground.
Once we walked through the trail, we began to drive home. Kris tried to show off his truck’s four wheel drive but the truck got immediately stuck in sugar sand which was hilarious. We were incredibly lucky because we had not even been stuck five minutes when a Good Samaritan stopped by to help with a chain, and we were soon on our again.
We stopped on our way home to look for gators, and we found one!
You can barely see it in this photo:
That whole area was pretty in a way. Florida can be very pretty at times.
I also got to chase some vultures, but secretly I was afraid they would chase me back. 🙃
We stopped by Tijuana Flats on the way back and brought back dinner for us and Christopher. Kris left soon after we ate.
It was a really good day but by the time I got home I had a headache and was too exhausted to think. I went to bed early, and I am still tired. So with this post written, I’m going to try to rest a little more before I start my day. This cat has me trapped anyway (and she’s made typing this post really hard):
