Good Morning!

Sometimes little things go unnoticed in our busy lives. But I couldn't possibly ignore this sunrise yesterday morning...unless I was dead.

This picture and the next were taken from the backyard before I left home.

For the next ones, I pulled off into the parking lot at a local park.









It was well worth the effort even though I was a few minutes late for work. I'd do it again in a heart beat.

Bodies in the Compost Heap

Don’t tell anybody; it’s a secret. I’m burying bodies in my compost heap. So far there are three, and I check everyday for fresh corpses.

My biggest concern is that Herald (the cat) will find one of them and use it for a chew toy. Seeing as how the victims were poisoned, I don’t want him eating one and getting sick…or worse.

No, I don’t have a covert career as a hit-woman. If you read my post from a couple of days ago, you'll know I’m talking about rats. What utter satisfaction to go home and know that the nasty vermin are succumbing one at a time to the lure of the sweet bait in the trap, never to return again! If there were babies, they should starve to death before long. YAHOO!

HUMANS-3 RATS-0

Strange Encounters Three of a Kind

I know I’ve used that title before, but last weekend was one of those filed under “ODD”. It all started on Friday when I stopped at the local mall to go into JCP for new make-up and I decided to run into the mall proper to an intimate apparel shop. I haven’t been really in the mall in about 5 years.

Encounter #1 For once the lingerie shop wasn’t the strange part. But then, I was on my way back to JCP when a young man approached me and handed me a card. Before I knew what was happening, he drug me back to his kiosk and started cleaning one side of my face. I suppose I could have gotten outraged, but I wasn’t in a hurry and I was in need of make-up, so I went along with the half make-over.

When he started telling me I looked like I was in my forties, I laughed and decided I didn’t want whatever he was selling, whether it be BS or foundation. It took me a bit to convince him, so I lied and told him I hadn’t come to the mall for make-up. Then I went to JCP and got what I needed from someone I trusted.

Encounter #2 Saturday, a friend and I decided to go to a spice shop in Dallas. She went with me first for a haircut but we were way early, so we stopped at a local nursery that specializes in orchids. We were there at least 20 minutes and in that entire time, not one person acknowledged our presence. I think we could have taken whatever we wanted and gone out the side door and no one would have known.

Encounter #3 Next stop was Penzey’s Spices but we were getting hungry, so we went into a Greek Café for lunch. It looked like a nice place. It was clean and well lit. The hostess seated us, asked what we wanted to drink and then disappeared.

I finally got up and got two menus. We waited and then waited some more, and no one came to take our order. We saw the hostess again ten minutes later with our drinks and managed to place our orders. We both had the distinct feeling we were invading the place.

When we left, there was no register up front and our hostess/wait person had done her magic disappearing act again. There was a counter near the door so we went up there and after waiting another 5 minutes, some guy walked over and took our cards into the back room. Had we stumbled into a rendezvous place for the Greek mafia?

Call me silly, but I checked my bank account this morning to make sure there were no bizarre charges against my card.

They'er Back!

A couple of years ago, we had a problem with rats invading the backyard and attic. The exterminator said we didn’t have rats, but he was magnanimous enough to set a few traps around. Between the garage and the attic, we killed 19 adults and babies. But we didn’t have rats.

Now…THEY’RE BACK. I was watching the bird feeder the other day when I realized that what I was seeing was not a new, four-legged species of bird. It was a very brazen *&*%$# rat come to help himself to the bird seed.

I scared that one away but an hour later there was another, smaller critter doing the same thing. It makes me cringe to think about them getting into the attic again. I had to empty all the traps last time because the exterminator never came back

Jimbob called our new exterminator the next day and he came out and left a baited trap. I didn’t see any more of the vermin openly raiding the birdfeeder but there was evidence. Their nasty droppings in the seed they’d thrown out of the feeder and didn’t eat.

Then on Monday I was talking to JC (number one brat) and looked out the back window just in time to see a very large rat scurry from one side of the patio to the other. I wanted to run out the door, screaming and flailing my arms and throw something at it. When I came to my senses and figured the only thing I had to throw was the cell phone, I reconsidered. I’d probably miss anyway, and the rat would just laugh.

I did remove the bird feeder, but I felt bad when the birds came looking for food. (I feed the neighborhood stray cats, too.) Yesterday evening when I got home, I went out to the backyard and happened to look over at the compost pile and there lay one very dead, very large rat.

Humans (1) Dead rat (0)!

Conspiracy

Do I dare say the word conspiracy? John at Romantic Ramblings says that if you talk about it, it's sure to happen. Well this time, the big "C" struck without warning.

We got up Sunday morning and I put a cup of coffee in the microwave to warm it up. I noticed that it was a little louder than normal, but didn't think too much about it. The interior light was on, the clock was working, the timer worked and the turntable went round and round. Do you notice one missing element here? No heat.

And then...and then...there's the computer. Right in the middle of what I'm doing the cursor freezes up. The only way to get it to work is to do a hard re-boot which I understand isn't the best thing for the computer. In addition, we get this weird error message that the display has quit working properly and to save whatever is on the screen. Problem is, the minute you touch anything, the screen goes black. Another hard re-boot.

I'm afraid to think what might be next. I replaced the microwave yesterday. Sam's always has a bargain on that type of stuff. Today, I ordered a new computer from Dell. Yes, I know, I could have repaired the one I have. But it's already 6 or 7 years old and in the computer world that's not old, it's decrepit.

Now that I think about it, maybe there's already a third incident in the conspiracy saga. Remember the saying is that bad things come in threes. My sister called Sunday evening to say her mother-in-law had passed away that morning. When I talked to her on the way home to day, she told me that her father-in-law's sister-in-law (you got that?) died yesterday. When they called the undertaker for her mother-in-law he never returned the call. Come to find out, the undertaker had died in between the two ladies.