Rain rain go away... really GO AWAY!

Yes, I know it's been over a month despite my good intentions. Let it go..

So, now we have the rain. First the drought, which though bad, doesn't usually cause me any extra work. The rain however.. yes, front door needs fixing so water leaks under it. Another reason besides cost that I don't have carpet in the living room. Right now it has a beautiful array of towels festooning the edges. Some are wet, some not. The basement however.. oh shall we speak of the basement? I did not want to go down to the soggy bottom of my house and make squisshy noises walking across the carpet. Yet I did. When you're the only adult in the house you have to put on the big girl pants and do what you don't like. I am and I did.

Understand our basment has flooded ever since we decided to put furniture down there and an access from the inside. Used to be worse as the carpet was directly on the concrete. Good thing I vetoed the padding idea. After about the 5th flood we bit the bullet and invested in these wood tiles that have plastic feet under them. The plastic feet keep the carpet up off the concrete about a half inch so you can be flooded without wet. Normally. Todays consistantly heavy rain has caused the edges of the carpet to get wet and the water to rise over the lip to the unfinished side of the basement. Now comes the shop vac. Yes, sucking water into the shop vac and out to the running path behind my house is gads of fun. Every hour or so I go down and try to get the water sucked out from under the wood tiles at my only access point, the doorway. I can only hope my house has some slope to that edge.

Oddly this is a better week even with this, than the last 2 weeks. A few weeks ago my daughter in law Sara's outside feral colony started dwindling. Some dissapeared, some were hit by cars and one lone little guy, Lambert, was left. We'd been doing the trap nueter release program to lower the numbers and it was working well. Well, poor Lambert hasn't looked well for the past few months, but the beginning of Sept. it was worse. He was skin and bones and had such a snotty stuffed nose that even grass got caught in it. Finally I couldn't take it anymore and took him to the TNR vet to see what they could do. He needed force feeding and antibiotics but we thought we could make him better. Not so much. After about a week he went further downhill and I took him to the regular vet. Ka ching!

Almost dead, with a temp of 91, they whisked him away and did bloodwork. WBC of 56K, but they thought with force feeding, IV antibiotics, heating tent and all he'd be better. So he spent the weekend at the vets. Their estimate was 360.00. Pricey but okay. By Monday afternoon the bill was over 1,200.00 and my balance was 962.00. Cat was no better except a lower WBC of 24K. among much tears I made the awful decision to have him put to sleep. It's like gambling. How many more $$ can I throw at this to make it better? Sometimes you have to cut your losses but still it feels awful.

That was a Monday. By Wed. I was at my DIL's house with her 11 yr old cat Max gasping for breath. He had asthma for several years, and beat kidney blockages a few times. This time wasn't to be. I ended up at another vet having him put down for her. More tears. The Friday was the highlight with a root canal done on one of my front uppers. So, you see the flood isn't the worst of my life right now though it surely stinks.

Oh yes, add to that last weekend in the ER with my son who had a kidney stone. Thank God I haven't had one of those yet. Good news, while waiting with him I finished the sleeve of a sweater I was working on. Here's a picture to cheer us all up.

Miss innocent Tilly, just posing? No, she had just finished a light snack on those flowers. She is one of the feral colony at it's height last Nov. Paul and Sara snatched her up as my Christmas present and boy was she not happy!

She's still very skittish and you have to be fast to get her for nail clipping, but she's a gorgeous cat. Someday she'll settle. Her friend Sam loves her and she loves him so it's all worthwhile. Speaking of Sam, here he's relaxing as usual.

Time to go back to the basement! See ya on the other side!