I went flower shopping with Lovely Daughter on Friday afternoon. We've known the people who own the nursery we do business with since Lovely Daughter was a little girl. In fact, their daughter used to babysit Lovely Daughter, so we go back a ways.
Anyway, one of the big attractions there is not only the beautiful plants and flowers they have, but they always have a whole mess of baby kittens every spring. They have a number of mamas that are always prolific, and the fun thing is that none of the mamas care which kittens they feed - so all the little baby's tummies are always round and firm and fully packed. The two batches of babies that we found this time were about four weeks old - had their eyes open and were very active. One even managed to crawl over the top of his cardboard box and fall down onto the floor. One of the batches had a little long-haired gray baby that looked just like my Petunia did. In fact, this is the place that Petunia came from, so the baby is probably a distant relative of hers.
Many years ago we had a cat named Cindy that we got from a different neighbor. She was just a wee little mite when we brought her home because her mother had been run over by a car. Cindy wasn't even old enough to eat by herself at that point so we gave it a good go at bottle feeding her. Unfortunately by the time we got her she had been several days without food so was so hungry that we just couldn't get it down her fast enough. We called the family that owns the nursery to see if we could bring Cindy over to find a surrogate mother. Their answer was "of course" so we put Cindy down by one of the mothers, she snuggled right in and started nursing and grew fat and happy over the next few days. We brought her home when she was able to eat solid cat food on her own at the age of 6 weeks, and she lived to be a fat old bag of 14 before she died. So every spring Lovely Daughter and I always go visit the nursery - not only to buy flowers but to see all the happy babies and the wonderful mama kitties.
On Saturday Ole and I were up early to help friends move into their new house. It wasn't a long move - just down the street two blocks from their old house, but it's still time consuming and hard work. Now Dick and Kathy have been married about 6 or 7 years and they each have a son from a previous marriage, both of whom are still living at home and are both 19 years old. Young men with strong backs, legs and arms. Otherwise the moving team consisted of Dick & Kathy, Norm & Vera, Ole and I, and Kathy's parents who are older folks, in their late 60s or early 70s. Kathy's father shouldn't have been helping us as he was having trouble with his knee - it was all swollen and I could tell when he walked that it hurt him.
Now these two 19 year old boys stood around and WATCHED the men move all the heavy stuff - washer, dryer, freezer, furniture, etc. And then it came time to move the boys' stuff into the basement and they STILL thought they were going to stand around and watch. The guys were trying to get a handle on a very large reclining sofa that was to go downstairs when Vera piped up to one of the boys and suggested - no told him to get his a - - over there and help. It was a very large, heavy and difficult piece of furniture to handle. The young man gave her a dirty look and said flat out, "NO. I can't lift that!" At that point I reached my limited. The Grandpa has a bad knee, Dick has a bad shoulder, Ole has broken his back and had 3 ruptured discs over the years, and Normie has shoulder trouble. And here stands this big strapping 19 year old that refuses to lift a finger while the guys are hauling HIS furniture downstairs. I reached over, got him by the jacket lapels and said, "Now you listen to me you young punk. You're 19 years old, don't have any physical problems, and that's your grandpa over there - he's over 70 years old with a bad knee and you're going to stand here and watch while he works to get YOUR furniture downstairs. YOU are a lazy sack of shit and are totally worthless!" He turned on his heel, made some disparaging remark about how insulting I was and walked away. AND THERE STOOD HIS MOTHER AND DIDN'T SAY A WORD!! Then his grandmother walked up to me and said, "You know, he lived with us while he was growing up and I guess we spoiled him a little bit." I told her I didn't think she had done him any favors, that's for sure.
Well, we made it through that hump and by 5 o'clock it was Miller Time and we were all still in one piece and had just about everything moved out of their old house with the exception of what remained of the boys' stuff. Everyone refused to move anymore of anything that belonged to the boys. After that episode we all figured they could move it themselves. Wonder how they liked them apples!
Sunday morning brought another early rise - I sure could have stayed in bed and slept a lot more, but I had promised I would help out at church. Sunday was our annual spring picnic, and the church secretary had called me earlier in the week to see if I would help set up and serve. Because the word "no" doesn't seem to be in my vocabulary I ended up in the kitchen from 9:30 a.m. until everything was cleaned up at 1:30 p.m. We served 150 people - pork roast, grilled hot dogs and hamburgers with beans, potato salad, all kinds of other salads, and lots of brownies and other kinds of bars. It was good, but I was tired when that was all over.
I definitely was planning to check my eyelids for leaks when I got home, but as usual THAT didn't happen. Every time I would just doze off the phone would ring or someone came to the door. Even Simon, my senior citizen, was getting frustrated. He would just get all snuggled down on the afghan by my legs and I would have to jump up to do something. The last time that happened he got up, turned to give me a disgusted look and a cranky meow and went somewhere else to sleep.
So today I am suffering from arm issues - definite overuse this weekend. But I'll just keep plugging along. Housecleaning is on the agenda today as I can't work outside because it's too muddy. We have more rain and severe storms forecast for this afternoon so I guess my gardening will have to take a backseat again. We had a horrible storm on Friday night. We haven't had a good old thunderstorm with lots of lightening for several years, and Friday night's made up for that. The sky was constantly lit up, and at our house we received just over 2 inches of rain in about a half hour. North of here several miles they got over 5 inches so the field are all under water. The crops have drowned and will have to be reseeded if it ever dries out enough. Fortunately south of us they got just a fraction of an inch, so that means the river won't be rising much - at least for now. I guess we'll have to see what the rest of the week brings as we're supposed to have storms all week long.
Well, I had best get started shoveling the cat and dog hair. Rosie the Rhoomba's got her work cut out for her today, believe me!!
