It’s been a while since I wrote. A whole bunch of stuff has happened!
First, I put more furniture together:
There was a slightly higher than normal amount of cursing involved, largely because the instructions weren’t at all clear on some things and I may have put part of it together upside down. We did finally get it all together though, and it looks really nice. Especially when the lil LED strip is on.
Hayden and Amber flew in for a few days. We went out to eat a few times, stayed in a few times, and generally hung out and talked and had fun.
Dave enlisted Hayden’s help with the second wall cap and it looks great. Dave has been filling the dirt back in behind the wall, and we will soon be sowing grass seeds for the birds the slope to grow back in and hopefully keep the soil in place.
One night while the kids were here, I was awoken from my slumber. I glanced around the room. I didn’t hear any noise, but I saw the lights of official vehicles flashing through the window and figured that this is what awoke me.
Huh. Wonder if it was a traffic stop. After a minute: I guess I could look. There’s a Facebook page dedicated to police activity in Saint Joe. People listen to the police scanner and report on what they hear. It’s pretty useful. I fumbled on my glasses, picked up my phone, and opened my Facebook app.
A fire on the 1300 block of Francis?
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That sounds kind of close to us, actually.
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Oh. I bet that’s what’s going on.
I got up from my nice warm comfortable bed and peered through the window blinds to behold the scene. A towering inferno across the street, police cars and fire trucks around the area. I blinked at it for a moment, then started to make sense of it: the building on fire was the one that Dave had described the day before as “skeevy.” This apartment building has been growing steadily worse over the past couple of years since we’ve been here. I had started referring to it as The Den Of Iniquity 2.0.
The next morning we had our quarterly Adopt-A-Block cleanup, which took us in front of the burned-out husk of the apartment building. I met a couple more of my neighbors, Joanne and Terry, both of which had front row seats for the fire. I heard from Joanne that there had been a big fight outside (which I slept through) and the cops were called (which I slept through) and some kind of explosion (which I slept through) and a huge bang when the roof fell in (which I slept through). We still don’t know what caused the fire, but they did get it under control before it spread elsewhere.
Botanical news: the raspberries are killing it. The strawberries are also killing it. The blueberry stick I planted is not killing it and I’m going to have to have words with my blueberry stick supplier. I have a few non-berry plants sprouted inside and I’m planning to plant them outside in the next couple of days. Also, our irises are starting to bloom:
I had no idea what color they would be, because our friend Lucy gave me the iris bulbs last year and didn’t mention anything about the iris colors. I think most irises are purple. Jim and Gary next door have some that are dark red, but most of theirs are purple. Darker purple than this one, though.
My sister Jess, in a generous effort to spoil her cat-nephew, sent over several boxes of stuff for Theodore, which he graciously accepted as an adequate tribute to his greatness. Among these gifts was a cat hammock, which he glanced at a few times, then deigned to hop into:
It looks so comfy that I’m actually a little jealous. I wonder if they make giant fuzzy soft hammocks for people. Oh, what am I thinking, I’d fall out of it while trying to climb into it. I’ll just look at Theodore, comfortably asleep, and be happy for him. My non-hammock people bed is already pretty comfortable, after all.
The Bear and the Cat 