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THAT MUSKY SMELL. At Costco yesterday, we saw a Cybertruck. It's the only one on the island, as far as I know. I pointed and laughed. It's not just that it's a comically ugly car, but that comically ugly people buy it. The driver smiled and waved like he was Mayor McCheese.
GATED COMMUNITY. Late last week, the pet gate for Megara's room (Kimberly's office) arrived. It's intended to better integrate her into the house, through Mango being able to see and smell her more constantly, and through being able to feed them all around the gate without the only barrier being me (as was the case previously, and it was awkward). So I took Saturday off from my normal hiking and biking so that we could actually get it installed. Not a big deal once I figured out the instructions. If it's set just perfectly we can even close the gate and office door at the same time.
The question is whether the 51" height (about 52" since it's not set directly on the floor) will be enough to keep cats from going over the gate. We're pretty sure our large orangies can't get that height with basically nothing to give them footholds, but we're less sure of teeny little Megara.
There is a small cat door down at the bottom of the gate, and so we've been using that to let cats in and out of the room, with the hope that we'll teach them that the cat door is the only way they could possibly get in and out. (Pay no attention to the upper area behind the curtain.)
We'll see if we're smarter than a 1-to-3-year-old (cat).
CREAKINGS IN THE NIGHT. Mind you, we're not fully trusting of the cats yet, so every time we've left the house for an extended amount of time or gone to bed we've closed the door as well as the gate. Until last night. That was the experiment.
I was woken up at 4am by a loud thump. Ugh, I thought, was that a cat clearing the gate? (Or failing to?) Mango was at the foot of the bed, not him. I trekked downstairs and it looked to me like Megara was on the cat tree, though it was hard to figure out for sure because all of her lights were out. But after I stopped by the bathroom I returned and she was right in front of the gate (on the correct side).
I never saw Elmer, and didn't feel like hunting for him at 4am, but I was pretty sure (a) that he was the least likely to clear that gate; and (b) Megara wouldn't have been so casual if he was in the room. So, it was back to bed.
All the cats were on the correct sides of the gate when I woke up in the morning.
LIKE SOME PICASSO OR A GARFUNKEL. I was determined that if I wasn't going to go out for my normal activities on Saturday, we'd at least get some things done. So after the gate installation (and some R&R), Kimberly and I did some work to get art up in our house.
Yes, it's been almost five years since we moved here. No, that isn't quite as bad as it sounds. Griselda has been up in my office since we moved in. We have a Starry Night print that was newly purchased when we moved in in our bedroom. A couple of Hawaiian pieces are also up and some of Kimberly's work. We also had a wedding present from a friend up in the kitchen until it got replaced with a cat shelf. But we had a lot of others to still put up.
So on Saturday we decided where everything was going and put up as much as we could. It feels like there's art _all over_ the house now, everywhere I look. We have a few pieces we want to get framed and a few pieces that need some repair and so we're going to go out to a local framing place some time to close out the work, but they're only open 10-2 three days a week, and that'll take mucking with my work schedule, so we'll take care of it sometime soon, but at the moment we've got enough to take care of (primarily working to get Megara integrated into the house!).
ALL'S WELL. One of the reasons that I had the energy to do all this stuff on Saturday (with the pictures obviously being long-delayed) is that Kimberly has been doing better. Yay! Her abdominal pain from early this year has been resolved through PT. Now she's working on her knee, also with PT. Which means she's walking again and able to help with Megara and the other cats and with dishes and such. So everything is easier right now, allowing us to get back to doing more long-term household work.
BUILD UP THE WALL. In fact, for a while now I've been working on our fourth big work planned for the house. There were actually three of them planned when we moved. We've been doing them slowly not due to lack of energy, but so we could afford it. The first was solar panels. That went in in 2020, first because we knew it'd save us $150+ a month (electricity is EXPENSIVE in Hawaii) and second because the tax refunds for solar energy were dropping every year. (They've since been restored courtesy of Biden, so it turns out we could have saved more if we'd waited two years, but had to pay two years worth of electricity.)
Second was our built-in bookshelves for our family room and offices downstairs, which must have happened at the end of 2022 as we got the cabinets that formed their bases delivered while I was in Europe for an RWOT. I guess that must have been The Hague.
Then we got distracted for a year when Mango (twice!) escaped the house and we had to buy some pretty expensive custom made jalousie windows for the front of the house.
But now we're finally back to our third and final planned project, which is a retaining wall, or rather a set of retaining walls for the back yard. The problem is that we had a nasty slope in what would be a pretty nice sized back yard. 14 foot top to bottom and pretty steep. So we want to flatten it out with walls in between so that we can have more backyard and I can actually mow it all rather than tottering on a steep hill with a weed wgacker where I'll eventually break a leg if I'm not careful.
We got a contractor out here a few months ago and then a surveyor to mark where our property lines actually were, but we ran into problems when we learned there's a drainage way & building set back line in the back of our property where can't build. It was actually kind of frustrating because it's obvious that parts of it have been blocked by our neighbors (it goes down the whole block) but since we're the house on the corner, if there's ever a complaint, it'll be about our very visible back yard.
So I talked with public works who had signed off on the original drainage way and after maybe a month they decided that it was OK to build a wall because it won't obstruct the flow of water in the direction. (An ADU would *not* have been OK, but they said a wall was a house of a different color.) We got a somewhat official letter in email right away but a month later and we're still waiting for the official paperwork on letterhead that we want before we start.
And my contractor hasn't seemed willing to draw up plans and give us an estimate before we do that.
So that's on hold right now, though I'd really like to pull money out of the market while it's up, and especially before the election, but not when I don't even have an estimate. (I might have to make a decision about pulling it out anyway really soon, I just don't want to pay taxes if it doesn't happen this year!)
But, PRO-GRESS.
GATED COMMUNITY. Late last week, the pet gate for Megara's room (Kimberly's office) arrived. It's intended to better integrate her into the house, through Mango being able to see and smell her more constantly, and through being able to feed them all around the gate without the only barrier being me (as was the case previously, and it was awkward). So I took Saturday off from my normal hiking and biking so that we could actually get it installed. Not a big deal once I figured out the instructions. If it's set just perfectly we can even close the gate and office door at the same time.
The question is whether the 51" height (about 52" since it's not set directly on the floor) will be enough to keep cats from going over the gate. We're pretty sure our large orangies can't get that height with basically nothing to give them footholds, but we're less sure of teeny little Megara.
There is a small cat door down at the bottom of the gate, and so we've been using that to let cats in and out of the room, with the hope that we'll teach them that the cat door is the only way they could possibly get in and out. (Pay no attention to the upper area behind the curtain.)
We'll see if we're smarter than a 1-to-3-year-old (cat).
CREAKINGS IN THE NIGHT. Mind you, we're not fully trusting of the cats yet, so every time we've left the house for an extended amount of time or gone to bed we've closed the door as well as the gate. Until last night. That was the experiment.
I was woken up at 4am by a loud thump. Ugh, I thought, was that a cat clearing the gate? (Or failing to?) Mango was at the foot of the bed, not him. I trekked downstairs and it looked to me like Megara was on the cat tree, though it was hard to figure out for sure because all of her lights were out. But after I stopped by the bathroom I returned and she was right in front of the gate (on the correct side).
I never saw Elmer, and didn't feel like hunting for him at 4am, but I was pretty sure (a) that he was the least likely to clear that gate; and (b) Megara wouldn't have been so casual if he was in the room. So, it was back to bed.
All the cats were on the correct sides of the gate when I woke up in the morning.
LIKE SOME PICASSO OR A GARFUNKEL. I was determined that if I wasn't going to go out for my normal activities on Saturday, we'd at least get some things done. So after the gate installation (and some R&R), Kimberly and I did some work to get art up in our house.
Yes, it's been almost five years since we moved here. No, that isn't quite as bad as it sounds. Griselda has been up in my office since we moved in. We have a Starry Night print that was newly purchased when we moved in in our bedroom. A couple of Hawaiian pieces are also up and some of Kimberly's work. We also had a wedding present from a friend up in the kitchen until it got replaced with a cat shelf. But we had a lot of others to still put up.
So on Saturday we decided where everything was going and put up as much as we could. It feels like there's art _all over_ the house now, everywhere I look. We have a few pieces we want to get framed and a few pieces that need some repair and so we're going to go out to a local framing place some time to close out the work, but they're only open 10-2 three days a week, and that'll take mucking with my work schedule, so we'll take care of it sometime soon, but at the moment we've got enough to take care of (primarily working to get Megara integrated into the house!).
ALL'S WELL. One of the reasons that I had the energy to do all this stuff on Saturday (with the pictures obviously being long-delayed) is that Kimberly has been doing better. Yay! Her abdominal pain from early this year has been resolved through PT. Now she's working on her knee, also with PT. Which means she's walking again and able to help with Megara and the other cats and with dishes and such. So everything is easier right now, allowing us to get back to doing more long-term household work.
BUILD UP THE WALL. In fact, for a while now I've been working on our fourth big work planned for the house. There were actually three of them planned when we moved. We've been doing them slowly not due to lack of energy, but so we could afford it. The first was solar panels. That went in in 2020, first because we knew it'd save us $150+ a month (electricity is EXPENSIVE in Hawaii) and second because the tax refunds for solar energy were dropping every year. (They've since been restored courtesy of Biden, so it turns out we could have saved more if we'd waited two years, but had to pay two years worth of electricity.)
Second was our built-in bookshelves for our family room and offices downstairs, which must have happened at the end of 2022 as we got the cabinets that formed their bases delivered while I was in Europe for an RWOT. I guess that must have been The Hague.
Then we got distracted for a year when Mango (twice!) escaped the house and we had to buy some pretty expensive custom made jalousie windows for the front of the house.
But now we're finally back to our third and final planned project, which is a retaining wall, or rather a set of retaining walls for the back yard. The problem is that we had a nasty slope in what would be a pretty nice sized back yard. 14 foot top to bottom and pretty steep. So we want to flatten it out with walls in between so that we can have more backyard and I can actually mow it all rather than tottering on a steep hill with a weed wgacker where I'll eventually break a leg if I'm not careful.
We got a contractor out here a few months ago and then a surveyor to mark where our property lines actually were, but we ran into problems when we learned there's a drainage way & building set back line in the back of our property where can't build. It was actually kind of frustrating because it's obvious that parts of it have been blocked by our neighbors (it goes down the whole block) but since we're the house on the corner, if there's ever a complaint, it'll be about our very visible back yard.
So I talked with public works who had signed off on the original drainage way and after maybe a month they decided that it was OK to build a wall because it won't obstruct the flow of water in the direction. (An ADU would *not* have been OK, but they said a wall was a house of a different color.) We got a somewhat official letter in email right away but a month later and we're still waiting for the official paperwork on letterhead that we want before we start.
And my contractor hasn't seemed willing to draw up plans and give us an estimate before we do that.
So that's on hold right now, though I'd really like to pull money out of the market while it's up, and especially before the election, but not when I don't even have an estimate. (I might have to make a decision about pulling it out anyway really soon, I just don't want to pay taxes if it doesn't happen this year!)
But, PRO-GRESS.