Possums, Pitchers, and ‘puters

[ I Wanna go OUT! ]

April 3 – Here are a couple of short items that aren’t suitable for an entire blog, but I’ll bind them together for today’s post. Well, not quite yet. Just happened to notice cat lying here on the floor beside me, and I knew what she wanted. With that plaintive tone in her mew, and the “please help me! I can’t open the door, but YOU can,” I had to get up, announce to her my intentions, and then move quickly as she was trying to beat me to the door! Maybe she is looking for her old friend, the Possum.

[ Possum tree ]

We haven’t mentioned this silvery animal much lately because we haven’t seen him around anywhere. Dale checked the big hole in the tree and the box of crumpled papers, his home in the garage, but not a sight of our friend. So, guess what! Last week as he walked down towards the creek crossing, he took time to check at the big tree just once more, and of all things, there was the possum, just waiting for a soft hand to pet his fur! What a difference between that one he saw and the other much larger and scrungy one that makes his home in the barn or in the shed.

[ Our mess-making squirrels ]

Speaking of the barn, Dale found that a squirrel or two, or maybe even one of six that we have seen at the bird feeder, making a mess there as he/they were doing their best to get into the pile of old walnuts in a wire box. Again, the wrong animal got the blame as Dale thought the possum was making the mess, knocking tins and baskets and tools, and anything else that could fall off onto the floor. Instead, it was one of those squirrels causing all the disruption in the shed!

[ At-risk picture taking! ]

Our son David is back with the baseball team he works with, writing and taking pictures of the action that always takes place in a teenager’s game. Last night, when he phoned he told of a very strange occurrence. In order to get some different photos of the ball as it is thrown from the catcher to the pitcher, he lies flat on the ground behind the mound, camera all ready, to get some unusual pictures as the ball comes sailing back. That bothers his mother, as I can just imagine all sorts of injuries that he might suffer! This picture is one he took and that ball is pretty close!

I know he’s always concerned about us, checking several times during the week to make sure we are staying out of trouble. Awhile back our son-in-law Harvey sent us an E-mail wondering if we were OK. He mentioned that David had tried to contact us by phone many times one evening, and he wondered what was happening, as the line was busy for well over an hour. I think I must have been blamed for the length of the conversation, well over an hour, since I am THE talker!

However, we finally figured out what had happened. After talking with our friends, we settled down just a bit before the phone rang again! Judging by the conversation or lack thereof, I knew the caller was trying to sell something or send us on the proverbial cruise to the Caribbean. Since we are called for so many offers to give us something or other, as soon as Dale knows he’s listening to a taped offer, he just leaves the phone on the stand so the conversation can go on and on until the caller finally hangs up. The only trouble this time was that he forgot to go back to the phone in the other room and hang it up! No wonder David was concerned. He had tried for several hours to find us at home before he emailed Harvey.

Speaking of E-mail, since David arranged for us to have a new computer, we are still having a hard time trying to remember all of the changes compared to the way we used the previous one. Lots of things are different, but we are both learning how to work with gmail and other programs.

[ Empty the Trash? ]

I’m not sure if I had heard before that emails over thirty days old can be “dumped” any time. Since I knew that we had lots of them much older than that, I made a quick check and found that we had 3800 of them just waiting to be tossed! I started going down the row one-by-one and checking off the ones I didn’t need any longer, but when I saw how much time would be used up doing it that way, (25 per page), I was so tired of that system that I just took a very quick glance at the hundreds of ancient E-mails, so many of them forwards, and decided to send them all to the trash! So far, I haven’t found a need for even one that I got rid of. Case closed! – CHRIS