Kitten goes psychotic

They say animals know when a natural disaster is coming, If so, it must have happened while Silly was cleaning, eating or out and someone just forgot to notify her to pull her off alert. For some reason, unknown to the humans who live here, she has had ants in her pants all day long. I mean, this cat, who normally sleeps 6-8 hours during the day, has not sat still 5 minutes. She has paced, looked startled, and gone in and out of the cockpit about 10 times an hour since early this morning. She has wanted to go in the bilge, behind the drawers, behind the cushions ..... What ever she is looking for she can’t find. What ever she hears, no one else hears. We thought at first the pile driver working across the way in the housing development was upsetting her. It stopped at noon, and she still is checking for boogers at midnight. She has not had a cap nap, or even a mini cap nap all day.

So, what have the rest of us done today? I can say, proudly, I have finished two pairs of socks. Not one, but two! DH now has a spare, significant now that the temperatures are moving beyond sock weather. At least he will be ready for next winter!! He played on the computer, picked up mail, and let the cat in and out of the door 500 times. The cat paced. I knit. Then, I went out in the sunshine. Then I went to yoga! It was all in all a fine day, inspite of psychotic kittens.

Happy Easter to Everyone!

Happy Easter to Everyone! Here's a picture of Zack and Maddie sent to me this morning by Tom and Becky. Sorry I have't gotten one of Skyler yet, but expect I will before the day is out!

Mom is 85 Today

Let me be the first to say, Happy Happy Happy Birthday Mom!! Since it's 12:13 am I should be the first! Of course I know you'll be asleep right now, but you can't say I didn't try! I do hope you are going to have a wonderful day and have good things to eat! I only wish I could be there with all of you to celebrate and enjoy all the fun of watching you open your gifts. I know it will be a great day.



Here's the scarf unwrapped, so if the presents haven't been opened yet, don't let mom read this! (LOL) Anyhow, I enjoyed this project alot, and think I'd really like to do it again sometime.

Monday, Monday

Things are moving along here, it actually seems like Spring has decided to head in our direction. The sun was shinning brightly when I came up to the office today to work on the blogs. Anyhow, I don’t see any sun now, a few hours later, so I hope it is not cold out there when I head back to the boat.

Eric and I received the hard copy of our home contract in the mail, so I guess it is official. We also got an information letter telling us about selection. We have received an appointment, for April 4, at 1:30 in the afternoon. So, we’ll head to Richmond and pick out all the fun things, like carpet, paint, flooring, fixtures, counters, tile, etc, etc.!

Zack turns 3 on the 3rd, so we are thinking we might go up to Richmond then and spend the night in a motel, as Beck’s house will be full with Tom’s parents. They are flying in this Friday (25th) and staying until the 6th of April. I think this will be the first time they have not driven up. Tom will take the week off while they are visiting, so much fun should be had. He will get a break and the kids will have lots of entertainment.

Not too much happening here, as the weather warms up we will begin working on the boat again, scheduling the repairs that have to be made and trying to outfox the weather as we plan to take the boat to the yard. We are also thinking we might make a trip up to Baltimore to visit with Mary, maybe at the end of this week.

Erin-Go-Brah

Well Erin Go Brah to all of you Irish out there .... This fellow may really be flipping that coin to see if winter is over here as advertized today on the news.

The noon TV news today, St. Patrick’s Day, retired the “snowflake” the weathermen wear on their coats during newscasts to show they are predicting snow. I’d say not a day too soon, spring is coming this weekend some say. The news anchor said, “we have seen the last snow until next December”. Well, I don’t want to go crazy here, but that would be a nice change! We have had really ugly weather the last two days, and a change would be nice. Although we only saw a few flakes, the area has been getting on and off snow for two days because of very cold high altitude temperatures. Hampton Roads has been about 17 degrees below normal for weeks and weeks. A very long winter. Not ugly, but long.

Water – frozen snow, right? Well in this case I am referring to running water. Yes!!! We now have water to the boat again. Since January 11th, we have had water 4 days. Both those times it was turned on briefly to allow people to fill their tanks. I figure that is about 60 days without water this year alone. Oh boy, maybe this is the last time to be without water!

Other news of note, in case you didn’t notice, there is a link now in my main blog for the new house news. I thought I’d separate it too, as how exciting is a house to some people. Anyhow, the link is in the sidebar .... Just a click away.

Mom and Dad, I know you’ll be excited to be at Mike’s house. I say, next year, we all meet in Richmond! Maybe in April, we can celebrate Mom and Dad’s birthdays together.

New Blog for New Home

Here's the promised blog about the new house.

Confucius Says . . .

I’ve always been one to eat the cookie and read the fortune after a Chinese meal. I’ll even take the one's left behind if others don’t want theirs. I like the cookies, but always get a laugh from the fortunes. Even the funny joke of always adding “in Bed” to the end of the fortune verse cracks me up. I guess the fortune’s are fun because they are all so generic – it seems like they always applies somehow. Of course, if they are closely on target, that makes it even better and keeps the fun alive. And then you wonder, could this be true?

Yesterday we went to Richmond to CrossRidge to sign the contract for our new house. Right outside the gate to the development we stopped at the local Chinese Take- out for me to get some hot and sour soup. I thought (hoped) the soup would open up my head and calm my throat, as they were still bothering me. I ate the soup as we drove over to take a look at the lot again. We wanted to calm those jitters you always get after you’ve made a big decision, and then doubt yourself. Anyhow, the lot looked fine, actually better than we remembered. We were excited! I climbed back in the truck and picked up the trash from my lunch and saw in the bottom of the bag the fortune cookie. So this was my fortune:



I guess the big question I have now is, “how long is the statute of limitations on a fortune?

Crazy Crazy Weather

When we drove to Richmond on Saturday it was snowing, enough to stick to the ground, but the roads were clear. Zach already had a snowman made, which was waiting at the curb. By afternoon it was sunny and most of all the snow was gone. Sunday, Rebecca and I took the kids to Maymont, a park, zoo, garden and more in downtown Richmond. It was chilly, but the sun was shinning. Monday the temperatures were close to 70. Beautiful day! Tuesday we drove home in more snow, and the closer to home the heavier it got. The wind blew up to50 MPH, and even blew down a hanger in the red-iron stage of construction – obviously a tornado. As we got out of the car we heard multiple claps of thunder, as this as it snowed like crazy. By mid afternoon the snow was gone and we were in the 50’s. Crazy crazy weather.



Monday, as we were getting ready to pack the car and drive home I decided to made a call to CrossRidge and our agent said, “when can you come pick a lot?” As you can imagine, I said, “when do you want us to be there?” So at 2:30 we were out in that beautiful sun, looking at our choices. We were fortunate in that only one lot away from out first choice, we were able to pick one that was in the first phase of construction. As it turned out, Phase 1 contained 10 spec homes and only 2 free lots. Phase II and Phase III had the majority of lots. The base price of the homes went up $7,000 from Phase I, to II and again to III. You can imagine we were very pleased to take advantage of being in the first Phase. So lot 21 is ours and we go in the morning to Richmond again to sign a contract.


I won’t bore you too much with lot details, how exciting is a piece of dirt anyhow? But, (LOL) our lot will back to an existing neighborhood with 1950-60 era brick homes on big deep lots. Between our neighborhoods is a buffer of woods and a protected area that is watershed. To my understanding, it has to be maintained and CrossRidge even has to do more plantings behind us . We feel like this will be a better view out the back of our house where the living areas are. Had we picked across the street we would also have been backed by a neighborhood, but of multistory homes, with a fence and rather sparse trees between us. These existing homes look right down into the back yards of the new homes. So, we hope our home site will have more privacy, and afford some wildlife because of the woods, water and protective vegetation. Time will tell.

Tomorrow we go back to Richmond and sign on the dotted line. Whew, lots to think of and Eric (bless his soul) has been crunching numbers and we have compiled lists of choices, questions, etc. I think we will both feel better when we get past tomorrow. The final selections (colors of carpet, walls, counters, hardware, etc....) is April 15. The projected closing date is the first week in September. Of course all this is subjective, and depends on you know what, crazy crazy weather!

Trip to Wal-Mart

It’s Wednesday and Yoga night again. The wind today is still fierce, the wind chill was about 28 degrees this morning. The only good thing is that usually the wind dies down as the sun sets. The weather men are not being optimistic, they say it could be two weeks before we warm up. Jerry is contemplating turning on the water tomorrow for a few hours, I guess some of the other boaters are getting pretty low. We have only used half of our tank. Anyhow, if he turns it on, we can fill the tank and take showers onboard. What a concept!

Today was uneventful, though we did go to Office Depot to pick up a few disc’s that were on sale. Since we were near Wal-Mart we chose to go there for groceries. While DH looked for Aspirin (only 50 kinds with 40 prices he said) I picked up groceries. Mom and dad, for your information, the Pillsbury Biscuits I mentioned the other night were there, and at a much reduced price to the ones in our store nearby. Check out ended up being more than it needed to be. It turned out that the lane we chose had a change over in checkers. We got the fresh checker .... First she ran up my tomatoes with the wrong code. Not a huge deal, but I refused to pay for Vine ripened tomatoes when all I got was Roma tomatoes. She couldn’t get them to void, you know the drill, called for help, etc. etc. Finally got that cleared up and I paid. Meanwhile Eric looks at the receipt and found she had scanned the Fritos twice during the tomato confusion. SO she had to call for help again, and we had to wait for a refund. You know, everything is coded, you only pass things through once, how hard can it be?

No news from Eagle construction. No comment.

Tonight we are going to watch GIGI, the old movie with Maurice Chevalier. I remember going to a theater and seeing it, I think. I know it is something I saw a long time ago! We finally finished up the Winds of War, and now have requested that the library get War and Remembrance, the sequel.

Quilted Birds

Another colorful quilt. These birds with sunglasses were pretty funny. I think this quilter had a great sense of humor, and I loved her colors. This looked like fused applique, but I won't swear to it. It was very neatly done and would be great as artwork in a child's room.