Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Finally, we're moved! and a book review

August 30, 2012

It's Thursday afternoon/early evening as I write this, and while we have electricity, due to demands of a few minor repairs that need doing, we won't be calling the TV/interwebz folks till probably next week or the week after. That means this post will be coming to you LIVE!!!! from the library local to my job, posted one day after I get off work at the plant in Huntsville. Yay, us! We are finally moved. I talked Q into stopping with the fiddling around now that we have lights, even though we still need some things up here to be more comfortable, just so we can get UP here. So we are official homesteaders now, though the homestead still needs a ton of work.

But we got 'er done last night (Wednesday) after hubby got home from work. I finished the packing up and got the car loaded to the gills prior to going to bed for a bit of sleep. Woke up when he got to the apartmnet, and while it was two hours before I usually get up, I figured I better get my butt up and moving, because he had the pet carrier from Wally World and was ready to load the boys in it, load the van up, and head out. We actually did head out about 4 AM, which is usually when I'm getting up and ready for work, so I can leave by 5 AM for that horrendously long drive. No more - both our commutes are now about 22 miles one way, and only around half an hour. Well, forty minutes for him, because he goes the slightly longer way through Alpena to get to work, so he can stop at the main gas station there and get himself a giant 44-ounce Mountain Dew to drink on the way to work and while he's waiting till he can clock in and get his gear for the night.

We got home (gosh, it's so nice to say that and mean the property not that apartment!), unloaded the boys and their stuff, and while it was later than usual for their "breakfast" of a can of wet cat food, I'd prepped for this by putting their dish, a can, and a spoon into the one drawer of the nightstand so we could lock them in the bedroom and feed them before unloading stuff. We put their litter box and food in the bedroom for now, with the intention of moving it once we're unpacked, so that they'll feel a little more comfortable near Mom and Dad (us). Bouncer, being the consummate traveler that he is, was totally unfazed by the move, and dove into breakfast. Smudge, on the other hand, apparently yowled all the way here, then promptly tried to find a way under the bed (there isn't one, since it sits on the floor), before giving up and finding his way behind the toilet in the neighboring bathroom, where he sat and screamed for what Quentin says was about three hours before his voice gave out.

He's currently exploring the bedroom but won't go very far beyond the doorway out into the hall. Despite having a happy home for over a year, since he was eight weeks old, Smudge is still very much instinctively feral, and his instincts right now tell him that this is NOT his home, so he's pretty scared. He doesn't much like being held, but when I got home from work a bit ago, and got him out from behind the toilet, he curled up in my arms and snuggled close. He knows Mamma won't hurt him or let him be hurt, and he let me hold him for nearly five minutes, which is a record with a kitty kitty who usually won't let me hold him for more than thirty seconds. But at least me being home for the night has him out from behind the toilet and exploring a bit. Bouncer? He's already explored the whole house, and met me at the door when I got here, promptly attempting his usual Houdini act (one of his nicknames is You Furry Little Houdini, for good reason), and getting nowhere with it. He is having a blast, and if we only had one of the boys and it was Bouncer, and we lived in an RV, traveling everywhere and nowhere, he would be the perfect traveling companion cat. Not to put Smudge down, he's a wonderful fellow in his own way. He just isn't a traveller.

The house looks like a disaster again, but this time it's the mess of a new move, not the mess of someone's trash that was left behind. I look forward to organizing the mess, and with all that could have broken on the trip up the rough mountain road, my little laptop is one of them that I thought sure wouldn't survive the trip. Boy, was I wrong. Guess packing it in the big tote in the middle of all the clothes really helped pad it, because it booted right up with no problems at all. Whew! That's a relief; I'd hate to have to try to get a new computer right now, with so many other things we need to work on that are more important.

And now for the book review I mentioned in the title. I won't often review products, because I don't think that's the point of a homesteader blog, or at least not this one. But thanks to a Facebook friend of mine, who is a person I've long admired as a BNP (Big Name Person) in a shared hobby of model horse collecting and exhibiting, I got my hot little hands on a good book. Marie J.S. Phillips writes some darned good stories, and she was participating in a blog hop. The prize off her site for the blog hop was a copy of her book, "Khan: A Maine Coon." I joined in for the heck of it, figuring my chances of winning a prize of any kind, let alone a book written by someone I semi-know and admire as an artist, were next to nil. You can guess who the lucky slob is that won the book. First two guesses don't count.

Khan was a real cat. He was one of Marie's babies for eleven wonderful years, before cancer took his life. The story is semi-fictional, in that Khan was a shelter rescue, so the first bit of the book, before he is adopted by Marie's husband at pretty much literally the last minute before the shelter folk took the kitten off for The Big Sleep, is, I believe, made up. The rest of the story, written from Khan's point of view, is both biographical in that it covers details of Khan's real life, and fictional, in that the story involves details in felinoid. It's beautifully written, not overly long so it's a quick read, yet long enough to give a reader a few hours of pleasure. Well, except when Khan has to go to the vet for The Big Sleep, because the cancer's just done too much damage, and what should have been a seventeen-pound or more Maine Coon was instead less than half that. I cried over that, and yes, I'm a sentimental slob. Ge the book, you'll love the read.

It is so good to be HOME!

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