Mountain Property

My nutty husband and I have lately been fantasizing about the idea of owning mountain property. We've looked at several pieces of property, most recently the location pictured here. These lots are just off of the Blue Ridge Parkway at milepost 16 in Nelson County. We had fun tramping around the lots and trying to make sense of the map that the sellers had made available to prospective buyers. It took us a while but we finally figured out which lot was which. This process would have been much faster had we noticed the sticks in front of each lot with the lot number clearly written on them. I can't help but wonder if people who can't see big sticks with numbers are qualified to live a rugged life on the side of a mountain. I will leave you to mull that over while you enjoy these photos.

Pepper Enjoys the Fall Colors

More pet silliness

Tippy ponders the meaning of life from inside the box

You may know that Paul and I are quite silly over our pets. Gaga some might say. One of my daughter's-in-law calls me the crazy cat lady. Oh snap.

The crazy cat man and I had to take the wild young cats to the vet, as they had not had their shots. They got rabies shots when they were neutered, but not leukemia and distemper and so forth. As you may recall, if you've been paying attention, these are formerly feral cats who are strongly opposed to getting into a box and taking a car ride to hell. Tux has drawn blood a few times, and we had a horrible experience with him in the laundry room where he resisted our efforts to touch him by climbing right up the wall. I still shudder when I think of it.

We were very worried about how we were going to get not one but two crazy cats into the carrier. We plotted strategy. We discussed different clothing options: oven mitts, oilskin coat, double sweatshirts with hoods. The vet advised leaving the cat carrier out in advance where they could see it, which I did, and I also put some cat food in there. Tippy would rush into a burning building if she thought there was a snack; Tux was the real problem.

On the day of the planned capture, I got up early and put the carrier in the middle of the den. I fed them only a tiny amount at about 5:30. At 7:30 I sat down on the sofa near the carrier to read the paper. They were hungry by now and came to see why I wasn't feeding them. I thought why not put a dish of food in there. I did and Tippy hopped right in. Tux looked over the edge. I observed this from the sofa anxiously. Tux then put his front feet up, then hopped up as I rose slowly from the sofa. When his whole body was in the carrier, I slammed the top down and closed the latch. My heart was racing. They scuffled and growled a bit. I ran upstairs to tell Paul. "They're in, they're in!". He was asleep. I didn't care, I was so excited. Only 2 hours till their appointment. No sweat.

I called the vet at 8 and told the nice person what had happened and asked if I could bring them early. She said sure. Long story short (too late, I know), they behaved well and don't seem traumatized. Paul and I are still exhausted.

Guns Galore

Right now I am listening to the proceedings of the House of Representatives as they debate health care. Did you know that health care is a problem? I wasn't aware until I was flipping through the channels and found this thing called C-SPAN. So far there haven't been any commercials. Everyone calls each other gentleman and gentlelady. Maybe it's some sort of Renaissance faire.

Anyway, it's been a rough week for a sensitive person like me. I had fun being an election official on Tuesday (almost as good as being called gentlelady). My candidates all got shellacked. I am sure things in our Commonwealth will be fine though, as God probably is happy with the outcome. Maybe God will send us some jobs and highways. And affordable college. A clean bay. Low, low taxes. Don't laugh, it could happen.

I was horrified at the signs at the latest Obama-haters rally in DC on Thursday. A great big poster of dead bodies at a WWII concentration camp. Something about health care written on it. WTF? Don't these people have any decency? I was so upset that I fired off another one of my irate e-mails to my representative Eric Cantor. I didn't call him any names or mention that he is Jewish, since he likely knows that. I implored him to speak out against the use of Holocaust imagery, and the constant invocation of Hitlerisms. I take no credit, but I did read today that Mr. Cantor did speak out against this disrespectful behavior. Good for him. I hope it sounded genuine.

This was the same day that the army psychiatrist killed a bunch of people at Ft. Hood. I don't handle this sort of thing well. I suppose no one does. Is it my imagination or is this country growing more violent? Got a problem, get a gun. We do a horrible job on mental illness in this country. We look away and say it's none of our business, or everyone has a right to privacy. True. So is there nothing to be done? Gun supporters say that there needs to be more guns, so the Virginia Tech shooter would have been taken out as soon as he started shooting. Gee whiz, wouldn't you think there were lots of guns around on a military base? I suppose the solution is for all of us to have guns, and that we keep them drawn all the time. Yeah, that sounds about right. We can all put the blue tooth phone things in our ears to keep our hands free. Get those hats with drinks in them and tube going to your mouth. Gotta have coffee. Gotta be prepared.

I heard that the Ft. Hood shooter bought his automatic weapons at Guns Galore. All legal. When you are going to kill a lot of people quickly, automatic is the way to go.

Guns Galore. You gotta love that.