Well, here I am at my new home in Fairchance, PA. I left mom & pop�s place in Oregon on Wednesday the 3rd. It took me just over 2 days to get here as I left in the morning from Oregon and arrived here in the afternoon. I managed to get a little bit of sleep on the road. My kitty Spooky took the trip better than I thought. There was only one stretch where she gave me some trouble. That was at the end when I stopped at a travel plaza on the PA Turnpike. She just would not go back in the cat carrier and freaked out when I tried to make her go in. Now that we are here, I have her running free in the basement. But all she will do is hide. It won�t be easy with my mom and her dog here since spooky is afraid of everything.
The weather here is nice and it looks like an early spring. None of the trees have started to bud out yet so I get to watch spring bloom all over again. :-) Which is great because it is my favorite time of year! There are bunnies that hang out in the yard and a large variety of birds visit the feeder constantly. My favorites are the Cardinals and the Blue jays.
Well, I have to get some sleep cause I am very tired!
Thursday April 18th, 2002: The Daily Grind
I have been here nearly two weeks and mom is already driving me crazy! She told me on the phone before I left CA that she would be here a week after I arrived, but it doesn�t look like she will be going any time soon. She gets upset with me when I practically ignore her, but it is the best way for me to just keep my mouth shut. Besides, that is what she told me to do. I have moved Spooky to the bedroom because she could not have been happy down in the dank, dark basement and she seems to like it a bit better. She still spends most of the time hiding and I don�t blame her. I find myself taking long drives just to get some peace and quiet and escape from the chaos that my mother creates with her sporadic manner. I don�t think she realizes how much it affects me just to be around her. I don�t want to be grouchy or nasty to her, but because of my empathic nature, I just can�t help but go a little crazy when I am around her. Her essence permeates a wide area and impacts on everything around her. And since I have never been able to fully switch off my sensitivity, I must seek solace elsewhere.
In other news, I built a cucumber trellis today with some old boards and wire fencing I found in the shed. I will plant the cucumbers tomorrow. I also planted some peppers in two of the planters in the front yard. But watch, we will get a frost and it will kill them. Some of the trees are budding and many of the other plants are beginning to sprout up too. Probably because it rained real good yesterday. In fact it was an awesome storm. There was thunder and lightning and boy did it pour! I love storms like that and we get a lot of them here. In CA, we were lucky if we got one good thunderstorm with lightning in a year. Besides the other stuff, I began burning out the old apple stump that is in the middle of the yard by the shed. I have built fires around it twice and it will take at least one more time to get it all the way down to the ground. Which is good, because there are a lot of dead branches that I have gathered from all around the property. It is amazing how much there is to do, but with over 70 big trees and grandpa being in his late 80�s it should come as no surprise. But give it time. I will get the trees trimmed and the brush burned off eventually. Tomorrow I think I will work a bit at tilling the garden and clean the shingles off the carport roof. Ron (who is working on re-shingling the roof) has not been out for quite some time and I am getting tired of this junk laying around. So at least I can move it all onto one pile.
