Show Time

My brother took an extra day getting home from his trip. Actually, he stopped by his girlfriend's house and spent the day with her before coming home.

As a result, he is now (yesterday and today) scrambling around the front yard staking and inflating his scary Hallowe'en decorations. Despite not being able to find all of the extension cords, they seem to be coming together much better than Neighbor Dan's balloons a good half of which he replaced with all new items because they would not inflate properly. That was a big hit to his budget this year.

Ours still have a few problems. The headless horseman is slumped over by the mailbox although the hearse behind him is doing fine. And there's a ghost out by the main road that keeps falling over. Either a guy line or a spike keeps coming loose in the wind. And the giant black cat looks a little wobbly in the knees. Nevertheless, my brother seems confident all will be up and running come sunset.

On the non-inflatable side, over by where the trick-or-treaters will be coming up the drive, the zombies have established a wedding party by the recently established graveyard and are merely waiting for the groom to finish extricating himself from the ground. The bride looks positively ethereal.

And on the more mundane, but no less important, sugar front: We have twenty (20!) bags of assorted candy bars sitting on the dining room table being inspected by the cats. Our contribution to the continuing childhood diabetes epidemic is well established.

Let the pint-sized hordes descend. Let the pillaging and plundering commence.

The Cuddly Un-Dead

Well, my brother left for the bus to the boat to the Bahamas this morning and none of the Hallowe'en decorations are up, yet, although that's not entirely his fault.

(Paribanour and "Larry")

The cats, it seems, have adopted the newly arrived zombies and are much more comfortable cuddling with them than with the living humans who, y'know, feed them and clean their litter boxes and play with them and give them treats. Case in point: Paribanour snuggling up with both "Larry" and "Henry." 

                            

                                     (And with "Henry")

   (Paribanour relaxing in Henry's embrace . . .)   

I do like the way their eyes light up and match the zombies'.

We'll have to hurry to put up our decorations when my brother returns. Most of them are in storage and I don't even know where the storage company is so I can't do it myself. Neighbor Dan has his all laid out and was inflating them yesterday evening but he complained that the motors on several of them seemed to be wearing out and were just not pushing air like they should.

(. . . and sharing the love with Larry)

I wish we could trust the cats outside. They'd make a great addition to the cemetery section with their dark gray fur and glowing eyes. Maybe they'd be happy to curl up with their undead buddies out on the lawn. More likely, they'll freak out completely when a hundred or so costumed little kids and their parents wander up our drive.

That's the sort of thing that would bother them.

Baby Steps Abroad

My brother is leaving this weekend and I couldn't be happier.

And it's not because I will have the house . . . and the cats . . . to myself.

Seriously. I can not recall any time when he has ever taken a vacation. He had brochures for Alaska a couple of years back, before Mom died, and seemed serious about it once I was there to look after her while he was gone, but he broke up with his then girlfriend and the whole plan, what there was of it, just sort of disappeared.

This weekend is no where near as ambitious. His bowling league is taking a short cruise to the Bahamas. Tomorrow morning, early, they take a chartered bus to Miami. He'll be back Sunday night. I had assumed he would be taking his current girlfriend with him but he didn't start seeing her until after the arrangements had already been made and her schedule won't allow it anyway, this time, so he's sharing a cabin with a fellow team member instead.

He's got his birth certificate and other paperwork together. He's never left the country before, not even when he was in the Air Force, and has never had a passport so, even though the Bahamas aren't exactly exotic*, this is still kind of a big deal for him.

I hope he has a great time. If he does, he might be willing to try another vacation sometime. Who knows? He could develop the habit. And I promise not to get into the liquor cabinet or throw any wild parties while he's gone.

*Apologies to any Bahamians.

Critterman Redux

My brother claimed something was scuttling around in his wall again over the weekend, the same spot the 'possum was pulled out of recently.

I didn't hear it and the cats were not acting any more weirdly than usual (it was Jasmine's turn to sneak outside when no one was looking and when we did the headcount and realized she was AWOL my brother let her back in but she'd picked up some strange smell or something only the kids could notice and she hissed and snarled at them whenever they got close to the point where they were ready to forgo dinner rather than share the plate with her) although as just noted they were not acting any less weirdly than usual either. My brother scheduled the Critterman to come back today.

He was up in the attic for a half hour or so banging around and pulled at least one juvenile opossum from the same wall space the first one had occupied. He and my brother are now touring around the outside of the house identifying all the possible entry points after which Critterman will block them up as cheaply as possible.

I suspect this is merely a skirmish. The war may last all winter.

Another Monster For the Menagerie

Behold the "Pink Meanie."

(Attaching a radio transponder. To a jelly fish!)

It's a jelly fish. A jelly fish large enough to be tagged. They grow over 3 feet in diameter with tentacles over 100 feet long. And they're suddenly all throughout our coastal water. Again.

(Pink Meanie way too close to shore)

(Supposedly yummy Blue Moons)

Hundreds of them have been spotted in the Gulf. Apparently, they "blossom" in response to the presence in the water of their favorite food, the much smaller but even more stingier "Blue Moon" jelly which they eat literally by the dozens at a time.

There's been a bloom of Blue Moons this summer and so the Pink Meanies, which otherwise exist as inconspicuous bottom feeding polyps, have responded for the first time in about five years.

Between these guys and the lion fish, I'm surprised we get any tourists at all.

The Frightful Day Approacheth

The local newspaper has officially announced that Rainy Season ended last Wednesday. They may be right. We haven't had a drop of rain since then and hardly a cloud in the sky.

Let the games begin.

Neighbor Dan took an early lead by laying out several of his inflatable Hallowe'en displays over the weekend but he has yet to inflate them. I suppose he's just positioning to get a feel for balance and composition but he has also not mowed his lawn in over a week and his grass is already shoe-top high and raggedy. If he leaves the displays staked as is he won't be able to cut and will be close to knee deep by the time the big evening rolls around.

My brother, on the other hand, mowed yesterday afternoon. At least, he mowed the front lawn which, after all, is where the decorations go and the only part visitors will see. Actually, in best Redneck fashion, he mowed most of the front lawn, ignoring under the live oak and bougainvillea and around the coconut palm on the logical assumption that neither decorations nor visitors will go there and it will be dark anyway, after all, so who's going to notice.

I've only seen one other house with any decorations and they've been up since late September but the house is nowhere near us and their display consists entirely of smallish inflatable Disney characters leaning heavily on the theme of Mickey as Sorcerer's Apprentice. Not even also rans.

Paribanour's Might've-Been Excellent Adventure

The cats were "out" last evening when my brother came home. He informed me later that he'd let Jasmine and Mittens in but Paribanour was too comfortable where she was and didn't want to move. As I was getting ready to quit for the night, I opened the door to let her in.

No Paribanour.

I searched around in the house in case she had changed her mind at the last moment (they do that frequently) and slipped in behind my brother as he was closing the door. (Mittens is a master at sneaking into my bedroom or bathroom without me noticing and then dashing behind/under the bookcase, the easy chair or the commode where I can not reach her. The solution is always to leave the room and close the door behind me. Within a couple of minutes, she invariably wants to get out again and will sit by the door until I reopen it.) My search turned up only two cats.

The problem is the outer door latch no longer works. I purchased a new "universal" latch but our old latch apparently was not "universal" and so the screw holes for the new one do not match up. My brother claims to have a drill buried somewhere in the garage and has promised, in his redneck way, to find it for me but that's somewhere way down on his list of things to maybe get around to someday. And until last night it made no difference anyway since the cats were all perfectly content to just lie around in the foyer and watch the world go by.

Last night Paribanour figured out how to open the door.

I'm pretty sure it was an accident. I think she surprised herself. Nevertheless,  . . . curiosity and all that . . . out she went.

Being a house kitten, she has no concept of the big world out there and certainly no clue how to deal with the opossums, raccoons, dogs and cars we know are in the neighborhood let alone anything more exotic (coyote) that might come wandering by.

I don't know how long she was out. Fortunately, she either didn't go far or was just returning when I went out to find her because she was in the grass right at the edge of the walkway lights. Otherwise I would have been searching for an all-over dark gray cat in the night shadows. She made me chase her a little but wouldn't leave the walkway so that game didn't last long.

So all's well that ends well. And my brother promises to find the drill. Soon. He says.

And Hallowe'en Is Still Over Two Weeks Away

I went out this morning to the library and as I drove down our main neighborhood street (the one that had the  lane removed and turned into a bike way and is soon to get sidewalks) I passed a house with the most extraordinary--and scary--lawn display.

The entire frontage facing the street, from property line to property line, was piled literally five feet high (more in some spots) with furniture, clothing and large, bulging, black plastic trash bags. They made a wall, a berm, a blockade across the entire access to the house. There were a trio of pick-up trucks parked on the street and median (the driveway was blocked). From the size of the house and the sheer volume of the mountain range of trash out front, I can only surmise the occupants must be/have been classic hoarders. I can not imagine how it would be possible to stuff that volume of stuff into the available space.

I have no idea if this is the result of an intervention or merely the cleansing after an estate sale.

The funny thing is, the outside property itself has always been well cared for. Lawn mowed. Shrubberies trimmed. No litter. There was never any indication that anything might be amiss inside.

I feel the urge to recycle some old paperwork and magazines, now. And catalogs. They're coming in fast, now, too.

Hair and Back Again

Well, that debate may have been resolved.

I went for my monthly platelet donation today and both the nurse phlebotomist and her assistant not only noticed my haircut but complimented it. That's a first.

It had been my habit, on donation days, to fill the car with gasoline, get a haircut (if due), and go to the hospital since they are all in the same general direction from home and vicinity to each other. Yet, in spite of repeatedly coming in to the donation center with new hair, no one had ever said anything before.

I haven't fully made up my mind, yet (and it's going to be a while before I have to decide), but it's not looking good for semi-competent quirky weirdness right now.

Also, I found a cheaper gas station, run by a nice Pakistani family, in the complete opposite direction over toward the grocery store. So that's another factor.

A Visit From the Critterman

Last night the cats started acting weirder than usual. At first they were just tearing around the house with too much energy, racing each other (mom included) across the living room, sliding on the coffee table, over the couch, onto the recliner by way of the TV tray, into the kitchen and onto the window sill (or all the way up to the curtain rods). And then back again.

Suddenly, it became very still and quiet. When I looked around from where I was doing dishes I saw the kids trying to climb the front of the bookcase and mama all the way up on top, over six feet up where she had never gone before, and threatening one of Mom's ceramics. She backed as far away from the edge as she could and, although I could just reach her, I couldn't get the leverage to haul her down. There was a dull, rhythmic thumping behind her which I assumed was her tail against the wall.

I called my brother, who is taller, to help and when he came out of his room, which shares that wall, he took one look at Jasmine and said, "So that's what all the noise is about." He was wrong.

After we hauled the cat down, the noise continued. Jasmine, incensed at being forcibly removed from her discovery leapt from a side table to a small but slightly taller curio stand (knocking over a vaguely disturbing articulated painted wooden wizard/clown "doll" of unknown provenance) to the top of the old TV onto the bookcase, thus explaining how she got there the first time. Something was in the wall and she had dibs.

My brother, after yelling at all the cats sufficiently to keep them off the bookcase, spent the night listening to whatever it was skittering around.

First thing this morning he called an animal removal guy who came out, crawled into our attic and removed a smallish 'possum that had fallen inside the wall and couldn't climb out on its own. He also found and blocked up the hole that had allowed the 'possum to get into the attic in the first place although he warned that his fix will not prevent raccoons from gaining entry if they want because they have those nimble, tricksy fingers and can literally pull the patch apart.

The 'possum is now on its way to the local (semi-)wilderness where it will be set free to live happily away from people and near to the pythons and panthers and black bears and alligators and tegus and whatever else is hiding out there.

Good luck, little fella!

The Props Department Delivers

Fall is in the air and my brother has been into the catalogs again. Our newest semi-audioanimatronic props arrived yesterday. The UPS person apparently came while we were out.

Henry

Four large cartons appeared in our foyer. There is a life-size vintage Victorian animated dead bride and three zombies: two partial upper bodies to be placed to appear as if crawling from the grave and one animated full-body undead walker.

Larry

The company which offers these characters has also, for some reason, named them. That's a fuzzy shot of Larry in the suit while Henry is the dapper one in the bow tie.

I'm assuming my brother intends to retire some of the less frightening inflatable Hallowe'en displays, like the pumpkins and giant Bart Simpson and such as, in favor of the more, shall we say, naturalistic presentations he's been acquiring over the past couple of years. Otherwise, our yard, especially the driveway approach used by the trick-or-treaters, is going to become very crowded indeed. The life-size inflatable illuminated horse-drawn hearse with re-animating corpse inside will definitely stay as will the 20 foot tall black cat but some of the others will just have to move off to the side yard where they will actually be easier for passing traffic to see.

Hair Apparent

I cheated on my barber today. I felt bad about it before going into the new place but now I'm mostly perfectly O.K. with it.

I try to support local businesses whenever possible and the barber I've been going to is a local guy (or person, at least. He's still undergoing some sort of transition as far as I can tell.) He has six chairs and when I first started with him a couple of years ago he had a few old-time actual barbers renting space from him but, recently, it's just been the owner and a woman who is only marginally competent. I don't know whether the others left because business is slow, or because of the owner's vocal Tea Partyish political views (I was present for a couple of "debates" among the staff) but the result has been the same.

The last time I was in there the owner was out and she was just standing around so I made the mistake of letting her work on me. By the time it was over, we were both frustrated, she had taken too much off the top and not enough off the sides (I ended up trimming that myself at home a couple days later when I couldn't stand it any longer) and I wondered if I should even bother to go back again.

I'd been debating that on and off for a while as my hair grew too long. My phlebotomist nurse at the blood center told me about another local shop in town but, when I went by, the outside was enough to scare me off.

Then I received a coupon for one of the chain salons.

I really didn't want to use it. I held onto it almost until it expired. Today, I gave in and went to the mall with the big box stores and found the place. They were busy and someone was out sick so my ten minute wait turned into twenty but, when I finally sat in the chair, my stylist was friendly, attentive and competent. When I told her it had been six months since my last "trim" she dug her hands in and pulled my hair out to the sides saying, "Wow! She must've really cut it short." Indeed. And then proceeded to do a great job on my head.

I know it's a great job because the pretty African-American lady at the gas station where I stopped immediately afterward and who was very perfunctory with the two gentlemen in front of me suddenly got all smiley and talkative when I got to the counter and the young woman checking out the soon-to-be-discarded sale books at the library turned and smiled at me as I walked past, things which do not normally happen to me.

So here's the dilemma: Do I give my weird, quirky, filled-with-strange-characters locally-owned shop one more try next time? Or do I just give up and go with the decent haircut?

Mammals v. Reptiles

The cats love to go "out." "Out" means the screened-in front foyer which is barely more than a meter square. The screen door doesn't always latch properly and they could easily push their way out into the real world but they're happy in the sunlight and humidity. They just sit and watch the birds and the squirrel and the occasional car traveling by. And the lizards.

Jasmine (aka "Fat Cat" due to packing it on because her metabolism slowed considerably after she was fixed but her appetite didn't) caught a lizard a few days ago. She has a habit of racing out the door into the corner of the foyer where she'd seen a lizard on her very first outing. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred there's nothing there. This was the hundredth time. She ran out, snagged the lizard and turned just as the kids raced out to join her. She actually half-growled, half-hissed at her own daughters as if to say, "My lizard. Mine. Back off." She'd never done that before and the kids were shocked. But the best part was, in trying to express her claim, she had to open her mouth slightly and the lizard took full advantage skittering off into the inaccessible crease between the foundation and the screen.

She caught another one last evening. Or possibly the same one. Could be a slow learner. My brother let them all out and almost immediately I heard him yelling, "Bad cat! Put that down!" Jasmine ran back into the house with her mouth full and it took both of us to trap her under the bar chairs. My brother took the lizard from her and put it outside in back.

Jasmine was pissed and sulked for a while. The kids had no idea what was happening. They play with bugs and spiders they find but they've never killed anything and never eaten anything that didn't come from a can or bag. Mom, on the other hand, despite being half-again as large as when she first came to us, obviously still remembers her foraging days.