C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 2

…into the safely-walled garden, thus letting Tanner out of the basement.

We are going to have to let them meet. We thought about doing it yesterday. But we decided to do it on a day when the vet is open. Not that we’re pessimists. In my fondest dreams, they will establish the basement stairs as no-cats-land and reenact the Maginot Line.

But probably somebody will at least get slapped. Best we can do. Getting them stoned on catnip is not guaranteeing they’re happy drunks. I’ve seen it go pearshaped.

But, well, we will see.

I’ve moved the sonic device to the garage to deter mice. Hoping so.

We did get the window wells in, but have not finished refilling the holes in which they sit.

I have located the pond winter cover, but Jane set it outside the fence and locked the gate, so I do not feel like retrieving it on this rainy day.

We’re approaching the point we trade power to the waterfall for power to the winter floating heater, that keeps gas exchange going during the winter—the fish need one hole in the ice.

Otherwise most of our troubles are allergies.

We are doing the page proofs for Alliance Rising. Looking clean.

Doing raisin-bran meatloaf again tonight. It’s great for this weather. Kinda chilly out, 36 at night, 40’s in the day. We’re going to work up to a sunny 61 on Friday so we are not totally out of cat-exercising weather, but we want to see if we have war or peace while we still have SOME options. I really don’t want to have to get Tanner a kitten for company. I don’t, I don’t. Two is company, three is a crowd, and 4 is crazy cat lady territory.

Thursday we took delivery of the window well inserts, read, two six foot x six foot curved forms that have to go into the 7x 6 pits the basement window installers dug while installing the new basement egress windows. And while the SAIA truck driver was kind enough to get them off the pallet and up to the house (we tipped well!) we were left with two very expensive items standing outside until Scott could get here to help put them in. So I slept in the chair in the living room all night to scare off insert-thieves (it would be impossible to cart one of these off silently, and given the size and 75 lb weight, difficult to do solo and without a truck.) So the next day Jane and I decided to try to get them down into the pits, and succeeded with one, but the other being surrounded by thorny rose bushes, we decided that we could just trust the rose bushes to deter pilferage. Then that night I began coughing like crazy, upper back of the throat misery, and became real nasty coughing spasms, and then genuine symptoms of head cold. Stuffy nose, headache, and insane coughing.

So I have spent the last couple of days coughing and being miserable, and finally, Monday, Scott came to attach these forms to the house, so the next step will be some finish work and some fill in behind them.

Today I think I am on the downward side of this misery—over the hump and on toward normal. I can breathe and the coughing has stopped. Hurrah. Scott will be back to help finish, and also to replace our top-of-basement-stairs door with a screen door, our brilliant notion to try to get Tanner and the dreaded Shu-shi unit to co-exist. We found a 30 dollar screen door at Lowes, and will install it temporarily to see if we can’t get these fellows acquainted without a vet bill involved.

On the good side—Jane cleaned up the living room and polished the floor and it is now free of boxes and spacious and pretty again for the first time since construction began LAST September!

I’m organizing things in the basement.

And…the middle ‘healing abutment’ of the 3 posts fell out, so I have to go to the dentist today to get that sorted out…

While we discovered we do not have a 2019 tab for the car tag, and should have had it a month ago—a very kind officer waved at us from an adjacent lane and reminded us of this problem, and that was Friday. Now we have bought it and paid online, but have to slip over to a tag office and get a sticker without getting stopped. At least we shall carry the receipt with us, so that should be no problem.

No improvement in cat wars, but we have a system that worked yesterday: let Shu-Shi out into the garden for their morning sun and let Tanner upstairs to walk about and get petted, then back Cinderella goes to the basement when Shu and Shi come back in for lunch. We figure a little of this may acclimate them to each other indirectly.

The little rusted windows (we broke one the night we got locked out) are now history. We replaced the 3 garden-side windows with modern screened windows. And then because we’d like to finish the finished side of the basement, and not have it be a junk storage, we have replaced the frontside basement windows with two egress windows, which brings the basement into code for a guest room. In the event of fire in the kitchen, a guest could easily get out of either of two basement rooms via a sliding glass mini-door, with screen, and a step inside the outside window-well. That adds 700 feet to our floor plan, legally speaking, which is not to sneeze at, were we ever to sell this place. Since we don’t have such plans, what we do have is a basement now with large windows that let in a lot of light. We may build a couple of closets, and end up with multiple bedrooms/craftroom/library places.

Our cats were getting very antsy about Tanner being between them and their normal litter pan, so we did move him to the basement and let him free to roam again—he’s not destructive, and he is very active. He now has sunny windows to sit in. We haven’t yet had our cats willing to approach him, and we may (sigh) end up with one cat ruling the basement and two ruling the upstairs and garden. It’s just going to take time.

We are ripping out the ultra-nasty carpet down there, probably older than the disgusting living room carpet, and replacing it with vinyl plank flooring, that is waterproof, stainproof, and pretty darned durable. We used it in the bathroom, where it has been immune to water, as regular plank is not.

Sigh. I wish everybody had been sweetness and light, but realism dictates this is just going to take the time it takes. We are not willing to have 4 cats if we can avoid it, and we hope that Tanner may gradually get people-ized, let alone other-cat-ized, enough to let us work out a solution. He is gentle and friendly to being petted, but he does not understand being touched when it is not feeding time—not violent, just stand-offish. And this will take some catnip and some work.

Tracker, age between 15 and 18, to kidney failure. Nothing they can do. So we’re headed to the vet’s in a few minutes. Very sad day here. This is one of the two we brought from Jane’s sister’s place.

Every year that we can, I like to take the Coeur d’Alene lake supper cruise for my birthday, with friends, and we are booked with temperate and clear weather, which is nice, because I like to do it in the open air of the upper deck, where we do get wind.

And because we’re going to do it a day after, I still the the free steak the Swinging Doors offers on your birthday.

STay dry and stay safe.

but, funny thing, the human body has absolutely NO compunction about piling on 5 of them in one 3 day period of bad eating. So off with 8 is not a bad thing, at least in this particular first week.

We’re holding up very well in the not-getting hungry department. Our diet consists of boiled (steamed) egg with no butter; dab of mayo on half an English muffin. And half a serving of fruit. Lunch is a slice of bread or half a muffin with peanut butter, and fruit; or a helping of tuna instead of the pb. Supper is half of anything we’d normally eat.

Our great sin is not what so much as how much. And eating too fast.

We’re going out with friends for the first time since starting this, and we will split a burger and fries. Have our usual drinks. And not sin greatly.

I would SO love to fit into some of the clothes I’ve refused to get rid of. Jane is the same.

Weather has moderated—we hit 105 early in the week and are now into the low 80’s. Much nicer.

Jane’s still fighting the copyedits.I’m working on her notes on the Foreigner book. We’re keeping each other sane. Playing Guild Wars 2 in the evening. Doing it all again tomorrow. At least I’m not having to cook creatively.

Ever used an egg steamer? Mine from Krups is having thermostat woes, and it’s such a good little unit used ones are going for 150 dollars on Amazon, absolutely nuts. I can make mine work, simply by pulling the plug when it stops steaming (meaning the eggs are done)but I don’t like shot thermostats, and I watch it carefully. I’ve got one coming from Hamilton Beach for 18 dollars that claims to poach eggs as well as boil them. We’ll see.

But you can say it cuts down on the dishwashing as well.

The beneficiaries of the copyedit are Jane’s sisters 2 cats, who get to get out in the basement and prowl while she’s working. I’ve gotten one of them to accept being picked up and petted for a bit, but the other is even more suspicious since his brother has started accepting that. So we’re working on it.

While trying to clean up the copy-edits. Jane’s been over it, I’ve been over it, Jane went over the front end and read; we both agree that the c/e first section has to be fixed and fixed with some major work to get back to where we were before we tried to follow the suggestions made (as it turns out, in a bit of confusion), so I have stopped work on the Bren book to sit by Jane as she re-edits the chapter. I read a book, the not-too-deep novelization of Guild Wars, the game we both play, and wait until Jane wants to read her fix aloud. This is the best way to get back to where we were without totally tossing out the c/e’s and the designer’s work. It’s a real headache.

While we were gone we had to trust the pond to just leaving the back porchlight on, and we invested in some advanced tech critter-specific sound repellant, which I have now set up. Next is to turn out the light and see if this works.

The post implanting went pretty well. Some jaw soreness, just from the length of the procedure. Not awful at all, if you have a good dentist, and this one is.

We’re just real tired, real sore from too many potatoes while we were on the road, and needing to drop some weight. So off we go on another diet, this one just dedicated to food excepting potatoes, and more balance, less of everything else. Typical breakfast: a boiled egg, a half an English muffin ‘buttered’ with mayo, a slice of fruit or half a small banana, and a tablespoon of cottage cheese. Typical lunch, half a piece of 20-grain toast, a tablespoon of peanut butter, slice of fruit. Typical supper: 3 meatballs, small serving spaghetti with tablespoon of sauce; serving of green beans. Measurement. Restraint. Balance. LESS. And no potatoes.

Both of us are just real tired from the whole year. We’re not going to Worldcon. There’s no way we’d have the energy if somebody handed us first-class tickets and a suite at the Ritz. We just haven’t got it, and we’ve got the c/e to deal with and a book to finish and another to start.

Two of us going over the copyedits in succession… way to go. We’re exhausted. And I have the implant posts done tomorrow, so I don’t think I’m going to be too spiff tomorrow. Sigh. Another pasta diet.