Today we went out to give it one last shot to get the truck down here.  We failed.  It still wouldn’t start.  I tried jumping over the starter relay (even though I can hear that it’s working), and all it did was spark, so either the cable to the starter is bad/dirty/loose, or the starter is dead.  I didn’t investigate it much though, because it was snowing really hard and I didn’t really feel comfortable driving the truck in those conditions anyway.  We got the generator (which we loaded into the Expedition without waking Henry!), and that was it.  I still have to get the patio table, grill, big tote, plow, and potato digger, and hopefully the truck topper as well.  I guess we’ll just have to promise our buyers that we’ll move the truck first thing in the Spring.

We ate lunch at Pizza Hut in Ely, and then came home in time for Delia to ride her Kitty Cat before it got dark.  She’s so amazing on that thing.  She rode all around by herself, and I was amazed at how natural she looks on it.  A few times I lost track of her and then found her way on the other side of the house, or out by the driveway, or on a trail through the tall grass.  I let her chase me around, and then I’d let her get close and dive out of the way, which made her crack up.  Her little sled is going strong.  It started right up on the first pull, and plowed through the deep powder with ease.  The deep snow kit I put on it last year makes a big difference.  I rode my Phazer a little too.

After that I worked on shoveling the pond.  We’re going to need a giant snowblower or maybe a plow for the 4 wheeler if we want to keep it clear of snow, because shoveling it just doesn’t cut it.  I cleared a rectangle and then shoveled off a big circular path, and that’s all I had in me.  Delia made snow angels and intentionally slipped and fell on the ice over and over.  Luckily she had a lot of padding on!

The new Ely Shopper came out today with our kitten ad, and we got two calls.  One was from a former tenant – our worst one ever.  The people that poisoned our tree.  The guy who begged me to give him some of their rent money back to buy medicine, and then went to the casino instead.  The guy that assured me that “they don’t rip people off” and then skipped out on two months rent.  And so on.  I saw their last name on caller ID but still wasn’t sure if it was them (there are other people in town with the same last name who are good people) but as soon as I heard her voice, I knew.  She asked me a few questions about the kittens, and then I asked her if they were the ones who rented from me.  She said yes.  I told her I wasn’t going to talk to them.  I wanted to say several other things to them as well, but I managed to control myself.

The other call was from a nice family who brought their kids along to surprise them with their first Christmas presents!  They took two, and I felt really good giving them our little kittens, whom as hard as I tried to resist, have grown attached to.  They took a calico and one of the fluffy gray tabbies.  The kids were thrilled.  I was afraid that Delia might be sad, but she wasn’t at all.  So now we have seven.

Delia was an angel today.  These trips to our land and old house aren’t fun at all for her, but she never complained.  She was very cooperative and sweet and funny all day.  After snowmobiling, she set up an Easter egg hunt for me.  She drew several little pictures and put them in plastic eggs and then hid them around the living room.  She picked really good hiding places.  I didn’t even really know she was doing it.  She kept saying something about an egg hunt but I didn’t really think much about it until she declared “egg hunt time!” and led me around the room.  This evening she cuddled with one of her new kittens (Chubby – the orange one) and tonight she wanted to sleep with both of them.  I brought them in and we tried, but it ended up not working.  Chubby cuddled with her in bed for a little bit, but then he and Tot got the itch and started running around the room and wrestling with each other.  They had to go back downstairs.

We have about 7 inches of snow on the ground, and we were supposed to get up to 9 tonight, but it’s not snowing at all right now and there’s nothing on the radar.  I have mixed feelings about it.  On one hand, I’d rather it didn’t snow so the lakes could keep making ice and I can go out and get another load from our land, but on the other hand, I’ll take snow whenever we can get it after the last two pretty snowless winters.

Today I put an ad on Trader Craig and also in the Ely Shopper for free kittens, and Blackie and Snowy are both spayed now, so it’s time for them to move back into the barn. We figured they’d be glad to get out of the house, but we were wrong. They practically kill themselves trying to get back in. I guess it makes sense. They’ve spent other winters outside, and it got a whole lot colder than it was today, but they haven’t had a chance to get used to it. Our plan now is to put them outside during the day and let them in at night for a while until they get adjusted to the cold and can stay out full time. I’m also going to make them some kind of little cat house (har har) in the barn so they can get shelter from the extreme cold. There’s an old kitchen cabinet out there that is a good candidate for conversion. Snowy keeps fighting with Coby, so I finally got fed up and threw her in the garage temporarily.

I built a little heater for the chicken coop today. I got a heat lamp at Ace, and a thermostat, and the rest was made from stuff I had lying around. I used a simple light fixture that I made when I was a kid and made a little tri-pod type thing out of scrap 2×2 to hold it upright. The fixture is attached to the wood with a hose clamp that came from the old dishwasher. I set that in a cookie tin that I got at an auction filled with an assortment of bolts, hooks, spark plugs, and other random items.

I have to interrupt at those point to say that I just heard a noise at the front door. I looked back to see Snowy hanging from the bottom of the window, peering in at me. I guess she managed to get out the dog door in the garage. I don’t know why she bothered since it’s plenty warm in the garage, unless maybe she missed her bed. I guess all the time indoors has made her soft.

Anyway, I covered the whole thing with an old piece of hardware cloth I found laying out by the wood boiler, so the chickens can’t actually touch the bulb. Oh, and I screwed the wood together using pieces from the 5 gallon bucket of screws I got from Freecycle.

I put it in there tonight, and while I think it’s helping some, I expected more. Also, the heat lamp I got is awfully bright, and the coop needs to be darker at night. I may try to get a bulb that doesn’t light up as much and devotes more energy to heat than light, or another thought I had was to put an old roof vent (that Chris Olsen bought to fix his camper, but ended up not using) over the top of it, which would allow the heat to escape but would mostly block the light.

Today we went to Ely to get a load of stuff. We’ve been carrying loads from our land too, since it sold and it’s going to snow any time now. We have all the dock sections and patio chairs here, along with my tractor chains and other miscellaneous items. Tomorrow I’m going to go back with my newly charged battery, some gas, and a jack, to see if I can get my truck to move. If I can, we’ll embark on the perilous journey of driving it down here.

We had a great Thanksgiving.  We built a fire and Emily made stuffing, sweet potatoes, and green bean casserole, and I made a turkey breast on the grill.  While we were getting the food ready, we watched the Packers game, and Delia drew pictures and helped out.  After we ate, Delia and Emily went ice skating on the pond!

BRETT FAVRE!!  381 yards.  20 straight completions.

Delia drew a picture of him and then wrapped it up and wants to send it to him.

Delia is sick.  But sort of only at night.  The past 3 nights she’s, uh, no good way to put this really… had diarrhea in her pants and thrown up.  First night she was up 3 times.  Last night she was only up once.  Tonight she’s been up once so far, but no throw up so if this continues hopefully we’ll be OK tomorrow.  Not sure what it is, and don’t know if any of us have it.  None of us have this bad, for sure, but Henry might have had diarrhea a few days ago for 1-2 days.  Hard to tell with babies, you know, and his could have been caused by teething.

Speaking of teething, he’s got his two front teeth and they are coming in really fast.  It’s changing the way he looks, which is always changing anyway.  Lately Ryan and I both say he looks a lot like Delia did at this age.  He’s pulling up on everything he can, and today he let go and tried to walk away from things!  He can’t walk at all of course, nor can he even stand by himself, so this results in a kind of humorous twist-legged fall.  Silly boy, thinks he can walk.  He is getting up on his hands more now instead of crawling around on on his elbows/tummy, so that’s exciting as far as baby-news goes.

We’re letting the kittens out of their room almost every day now, into the rest of the basement.  It’s pretty fun to go down there and see 9 kittens dart from behind one thing to another out of the corner of your eye.  We usually bring 1-3 upstairs for a few hours at a time too.  They’re pretty timid and like to hide, and our cats aren’t helping matters by growling/hissing at them all the time.  Blackie goes to the vet to be spayed tomorrow, then she’ll be out in the barn again.  I suppose she’ll need a day or two in the house for recovery though.

We found someone to clean the house and she’s been here twice so things are improving.  The glass light fixtures in the kitchen aren’t frosted – they were REALLY dusty!!  Abigail has been coming more regularly, too.  She helps with everything from packing orders, organizing inventory, daily tidying to feeding/playing with Delia.  Ryan and I need to tackle the last few unpacked boxes, get a system down for recycables, and go through the storage room and put stuff into totes.

I’ve been soaking the column that raises and lowers the head of the saw for a few weeks now.  Every time I go out to the garage and walk by it, I spray a little more WD-40 on it, and after a few doses of that, I’ll turn it over or rotate it a bit to try to get it to soak down around the entire column.  Every few days I’d try whacking it with a sledge hammer and it never moved – until tonight!  I finally got it free!  Let me tell you, there are very few feelings as good as freeing up a stuck part.  So now I need to rub it down with a little steel wool to get rid of as much of the rust as I can, and put the saw back together.  Sears actually still sells the cutting table and fence for that saw – even though it’s about 40 years old – so one of these days I’ll order one and have a working radial arm saw!

Below you can see the can and a half of WD-40 I used, and the broken 2×4 which I put between the hammer and the column so I didn’t ding up the metal.

Delia has quite a cold, and her voice is very hoarse, but we got 2-3 inches of snow this morning and we weren’t going to keep her from riding her Kitty Cat! I got it running last night after the kids went to bed, with Emily’s help. I couldn’t get it to start without ether, and even then it wouldn’t run right and would die after 10 seconds or so. Emily suggested that it might be too warm in the garage (I finally fired up the big propane heater in there!), and sure enough, once I dragged it outside and let it cool down for a bit, it started up and ran perfectly.

As soon as the snow started to stop falling, Delia and I got bundled up. Her clothes from last year still fit her perfectly, and I got to try out my new coat. I’m not real big on matching ensembles, but when it comes to snowmobiling, you’ve gotta have a jacket that matches your sled, and let me tell you, this jacket looks like it was made for mine.

Anyway, Delia got on her sled and gunned it, as I expected. I had my Phazer out already because when I went out to take boxes to the barn, I couldn’t resist going for a few runs in the back yard. I hopped on and we rode around the yard together, which was a blast. It turns out Delia’s Cat goes a blazing 7 mph! Delia led the way, going over the septic mound, through tall weeds, and even right into her now-frozen sand pile, which stopped her in a hurry and sent her forward into the handlebars a bit. I expected some tears, but when I got off to check on her, she was cracking up. I got her pointed the right way, and she took off again toward the road. We rode all the way down to the town hall, though on the way back her sled overheated and we had to let it rest while she rode with me. That was good because while I’m breaking in my new sled, I shouldn’t be going that slowly for very long. We made a few semi-fast runs up and down the road. I can’t even tell you how much I love my new sled. With that suspension, it’s like riding on a golf course!

While we were waiting for her sled to cool down, we made a snowman. Delia went to the barn to retrieve her shovel to help with the process. Once we got him built, we had to find eyes, a nose, and a mouth. Delia found a piece of grass for the mouth, and I went to the garage to see what I could find. I looked through a bucket of random parts and found a spark plug for the nose, and a romex connector and a little round piece of plastic for the eyes.

We went back to get her sled, and when we got to the house, I had Emily videotape us. Luckily she caught my heroic actions! Over near the pond, Delia caught her ski on the guy wire on the power pole, and it sent her in the direction of the pond. Either she didn’t think to stop or she figured she could ride on the pond since there was snow on it. At any rate, I ran after her and actually dove to grab on to the back of her sled. Luckily I got her stopped but not before her ski cracked the ice just a bit. She would have been fine of course, because the pond is only a few inches deep around the edge, but she still would have gotten a bit wet and it would have ruined our fun.

We rode around even more after that, but my Phazer started running hot (sleds don’t like to go slow) so I put it away. Delia wanted to keep going. I think she likes snowmobiling even more than I do! She rode and rode and I got tired running after her. She rode way out along our Southern tree line and started to go on the trail we ride on the 4 wheeler all the time. I didn’t think the Kitty would make it, but she tore through the bumps and tall grass like it was nothing! She rode back around to the front and wanted to go down the road again. I motioned for her to come back because I was panting pretty good, but she was having none of it. I finally had to walk over and tell her to wait while I pulled out my Indy. That took longer than expected because it’s not easy to pull a 500 lb snowmobile backward on dirt, and while I was yanking it, I could hear her riding around the barn. Luckily it started on about the 5th pull. If it had been any more I wouldn’t have been able to do it, because pulling it out of the barn pretty much zapped my strength. I got on and we rode around for a while longer, doing circles around the barn and going back and forth in the pasture. After riding the Phazer, even for that short time, the Indy felt absolutely awful! I felt like I was sitting on the ground, and it seemed like the rear shock was dead. When we were done I actually pulled it into the garage to diagnose why the suspension was so rough, but I found that it was working properly and the problem was just that the Phazer’s suspension is so so SOOOO much better.

I was extremely tired, but I managed to go shovel out the wood boiler to try to find the air leak. I got it cleaned out and didn’t find anything wrong. I lowered the high temp limit, so maybe that’ll fix the problem. We’ll find out tomorrow.I also spent some time cleaning the kitten room. I put them all in a dog crate so they wouldn’t be attacking me while I was crawling around. It’s definitely cleaner now that it was, but it’s still not real pretty down there. Once the kittens are out of there, maybe I’ll hire a hazmat crew to come in and take care of it.

Delia and I went to Virginia today to get her a pair of used figure skates for her first skating lesson on Friday!  Pics and a report will follow for sure.  She’s been wearing them around the living room all evening.  We polished them up and she’s going to glue jewels to them.

Winter sure appeared in a hurry.  The day we walked in the woods was very nice and somewhat warm,  and then the next day it was gray and extremely windy and cold and it even snowed a bit.  One day it was Fall, and the next it was Winter.  Unfortunately there’s still not enough snow to try out the Phazer.  Delia’s Kitty Cat is in the garage for a little clean-up and repair before the snow gets here.  I can’t get it started for some reason.  My next step is to clean the carb.

These kittens.

I just heard a disturbance coming from the kitten room, so I went down to investigate. As soon as I opened the door, it was like popcorn in there. Half of them dash to the door and try to escape, so I’m sort of playing a cross between dodgeball and whack-a-mole trying to keep them in. The other half are darting around, tackling each other, jumping onto and off of the bed, etc. I could only find 8 of the 9, and it was the same calico missing that was missing the last time I only counted 8 and freaked out thinking one had drowned in the sump hole or had escaped. Last time I looked all around outside the room and when I went back in, there he was. I couldn’t figure out where he had hidden himself. Emily had the same experience the next day, but found the missing cat up on top of the cinder blocks at the top of the wall. Apparently it had climbed up the insulation on a pipe and found a little hiding spot there, which is where I found it again this time. The love to climb up my legs, and tonight one actually jumped off the bed, flew through the air, and grabbed onto my hip.

If any of our Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, or Florida readers would like a really cute, playful, and slightly deformed kitten, we can deliver them around Christmas!

Let me try to come up with a better way to spin the deformity:

“Everyone knows the best part about cats are their claws, and these cats have even more than normal!”

Nah.

“Even more efficient furniture destruction.”

Even worse.

“Now with 5 claws for a closer shave.”

Been done.

“Spare parts included.”

Eh.

“It’s a sign of royalty!”

That has possibilities.

“Great conversation starter!”

Warmer…

“Tell your cat apart from others!”

I think that works. It’s actually kind of a security feature. If the cat ever runs away, it’ll be easy to describe it on the “Lost Cat” poster.

By the way, two of them have the standard style feet, so if you’re less adventurous, we can still hook you up. It’ll just be harder to describe them if they ever run away.

The Packers are 7-1!! They pulled off an awesome win today and Brett played brilliantly.

We had a really fun day today. This morning I worked on cleaning up the basement a bit after the big flood. After that I went out to the garage and dismantled my new radial arm saw. It turns out the post that the arm is connected to is rusted so that it’s impossible to raise and lower the blade. I’ve been soaking it with WD-40 with no luck, so I took it all apart so I could turn the whole assembly upside down and let WD-40 soak down from the other end.

Delia and I watched the Packers game with 4 kittens. One jumped into our fireplace and got covered in ash before jumping out into a full potty and then running into the EC Store room. They mostly just hid behind the couch, but we tried to socialize them as much as possible.

At halftime, I couldn’t stand to be inside anymore since today may have been our last nice day for a long time, so I asked Delia if she’d like to take a walk in the woods at the North of our property. She wanted to, so I dressed Henry up and put him on in the carrier, and we all headed to the barn to get on a 4 wheeler. We rode up through the field to where the woods start. I had to carry Delia and Henry both through the first 50 feet or so because it was awfully wet. I tried to keep my feet dry, but failed. Once we got to higher ground, Delia got down and walked the whole way, which was a LONG way. Henry quickly fell asleep, and amazingly he stayed asleep while we bushwacked and talked about what we saw. We found some little “puff pods” that blow out a cloud of dust when you step on them. Delia loved that because there are similar things in her new Harry Potter video game. We found some deer bones, which Delia wanted to keep and “carve into a little face”. She must have seen that at a store in Ely. I told her to leave them and we’d get them on the way back, which we did. I showed her where there were some tooth marks from a wolf on the bones, and when we got home she showed it to Emily.

Delia was such a little trooper. She walked all around, and found so many neat things that I didn’t notice. If she knew about them, such as ferns or mushrooms, she’d tell me some fact about them. If she found something she wasn’t familiar with, she’d either ask me or come up with her own ideas about it. On the way back, she picked up a long stick, which became our bridge whenever we’d come to a ditch. She’d stay ahead of me and lay it across any low spot in the trail so I could walk across it, then she’d pick it up and run ahead of me again. She also sang several songs as we walked, including “The Bare Necessities.” She’s been much more able to remember and recite songs as of late.

One of the neatest things we saw were two gray jays. Delia spotted them first. I heard her whisper “SHHHHHHH! There’s an animal over there.” She motioned for me to be quiet. She very quietly sneaked toward where she thought the animal was, when the bird flew up into a nearby branch. Delia froze. Every time the bird would fly to another branch, she’d tiptoe over to it, saying “tweet….. tweet”. The bird perched no more than 6 feet from us, and let me get a good picture. Then we saw another one appear and follow the first one. We’ve seen two gray jays at our feeder over the past few days, so maybe these were the same ones. When the birds finally got far away from her, she turned to me and whispered “tweet’s not working.” She has been watching some nature shows lately, which I assume is what inspired her.

Now she’s wearing her penguin costume from last Halloween, waddling around and saying “squak! squak!”