Summer ended with some normal end of summer things (like back to school) along with a few surprises. The unfortunate surprise was that just as my dahlias got going, a mid-summer spider mite infestation nearly killed them all dead. The flower season was pretty much a bust. You win some you lose some and this year, between the late snow and the bug infestations, it felt like a losing year. At least I learned a lot. As my gardening notebook says “Maybe Swearing Will Help”. At the end of August we also had some cool weather with rain and for the first time ever our swimming pool turned green. Not just a little green…REALLY green. The pool boy (Jason) may have gotten a little lax with adding bleach tabs and we learned our lesson. It made it a little easier to pack up the pool and garden and call it a season.
Have I ever told you how spoiled our cats are? What about how great my husband is? Labor Day weekend, partially on a whim, I suggested to Jason we use a spot on our back porch to build a catio. Would you believe the crazy fool not only went along with the idea, but spent the entire weekend building the world’s greatest catio with me and the boys? Now the spot on the back porch, which formerly mostly collected junk, has a catio the cats can access any time they want through a cat door mounted in the back window. It’s pretty posh. There’s nothing more fun than seeing the cats out there supervising the birds and squirrels or sleeping in the sun. If you ask me (or the cats) it’s a great use of an otherwise awkward space that formerly housed my ongoing pile of Amazon boxes before they made it to the recycling bins.
The cat distribution system had a surprise in store for me this summer. Shortly after Kiki’s passing, a white scrawny male cat started showing up in our yard. After posting online and not having anyone claim him, I started slowly taming him and putting out food. When he was still around come September I got him an outside cat house (which he seemed to choose not to use over preferring to sleep under the neighbor’s shed) and scheduled him for a neuter at the Humane Society. By October he was looking rather well fed and was given the name Mooch. Why the name Mooch? Let me just tell you that at one point I realized 3 different neighbors were feeding him. He’s gone from a skinny dirty boy to a round white polar bear. He is VERY food motivated and sits on my porch begging for breakfast morning and evening (while hunting birds and squirrels in the yard in between). Ultimately I’d love to find Mooch a forever home but I got him fixed and vaccinated and he can be my outside yard cat as long as he’d like. He’d honestly make a good companion for someone who is deaf and doesn’t have other cats…as he’s such a vocal beggar I don’t know how anyone else would tolerate him and he’ll definitely need his own food dispenser. Maybe if he was inside and warm he’d settle down the crying but I wouldn’t guarantee it. For now I give him food and loves and a safe place to exist. Let me know if you know anyone who wants a cat.
William and Chris both had a successful fall rec soccer season. William had started working out with me over the summer and somewhat surprisingly kept it up in fall when school started. He’s such a morning person he gets up (without an alarm) and works out before school most days. Why am I not more like William? This fall he could tell during soccer he’d gotten stronger. If you ask him he’s still not growing nearly as fast as he’d like, but based on how hungry he is, a growth spurt is certainly in the works. Chris’s fall soccer season was also a success. After last season’s terrible coaching experience we got him back on a team with a former coach we liked. One of the coaches who knows it’s rec soccer and the kids get to try all the positions regardless of talent (or being the coach’s kid). Let’s just say this coach is wonderful and we’re looking forward to spring season instead of dreading it like last year. Youth sports can really show you the best of the best and worst of the worst. After my time at TOSH I definitely know how to spot the worst of the worst when I see it.
Andrew’s start to 3rd grade went a lot better than his end of 2nd grade did. He absolutely adores his teachers this year. It has certainly been a process but through a combination of work with the interventionists, speaking with his teachers, and the addition of an anxiety med (jury’s still out on this one), he seems to be surviving, if not thriving in 3rd grade. He has his moments but has matured a bit and is better at expressing his feelings and needs and the school teachers and staff have been great at meeting him where he’s at. Hopefully a good year this year sets him up for a strong showing in 4th grade next year.
In looking through pictures for this blog I found myself wondering “why does our October photo album have 800 photos?”–a normal month is about 200. Then I remembered in October Jason took a trip to New York City to visit his sister Autumn for an extended weekend. He actually had a work trip scheduled in the Boston area and if you’re already 95% of the way there it made sense to just tack on a few more days to see NYC. I had visited New York in high school but this was Jason’s first trip and they made the most of it. He and Autumn certainly covered more ground and burned more daylight than they could have with me and the kids in tow. The good news is he really enjoyed his time there and we’re looking forward to sending the boys to see Aunt Autumn sometime in the future for the full New York City experience. Out of 600 photos, here are 5 I arbitrarily chose…. (View towards Central Park from Autumn’s, Broadway show, Chinatown, Times Square, View from One World Trade Center)
Here are the obligatory Halloween pictures…
Late October/November I started another sewing project, this time for friends and co-workers for Christmas. I hauled the sewing machine and ironing board upstairs once again and made a disaster of half of the dining room table. All told I made around 32 sets of oven door dish towels for gifts and a couple dozen zipper pouches (just for fun). Mid-project disaster nearly struck as I *think* sewing over a zipper caused something in the machine timing to go out. I took my machine to the sewing machine shop mid-November they quoted me an 8 week wait to get the machine tuned up and back. Eight weeks in the middle of Christmas crafting season is an eternity. Thankfully my neighbor Elisha came to the rescue with her machine she wasn’t using. She even hand delivered it to my house before I got home from running errands. Elisha saved Christmas and certainly earned a set of dish towels in return.
Thanksgiving was a small gathering this year, but sort of fun as the kids decided the menu and did the planning. The Baxter grandparents joined us for a small get together with the price of food being some leaf raking. I swear every year the leaves on our front Linden trees fall a little later. One of these years we’re going to be picking up leaves before we open gifts on Christmas morning. The shade during the hot summer months is critical, but these trees are always a mess and a half!
Late in the fall we were suddenly having trouble with one of our birdfeeders getting knocked down and some of Mooch’s cat food scattered. For the first time in 13 years living here in Midvale we had racoon infestation! I say infestation because we borrowed a live trap and immediately caught 4 racoons in the same evening. Haven’t seen a racoon since. I’m pretty sure they were pushed out of some local area that started to develop apartments. Our yard is lovely but I really don’t want to run a raccoon sanctuary, so they were not allowed to stay.
Christmas was low key. The boys skied a bit over break and I had a bit of peace and quiet. Looking forward to 2025!
