Farmer H Reclines To His Own Drummer

We had storms again on Friday. Hillmomba was under a flash flood warning. Supposedly we will get between six and eight inches of rain by Sunday afternoon. That's okay. The Mansion sits high upon a hill. We know to take alternate routes when the creek is up. The worst part is for The Pony, out in the deluge, delivering the mail. You're welcome, all you people expecting your check at the first of the month.

Wednesday, we also had storms. Severe storms. Lucky for Hillmomba and Sis-Town, we were in the middle of two violent thunderstorms that spawned tornadoes. One hit a town 30 miles to our east. A town that's only 10-15 miles from Newmentia, where I used to teach. It must have been quite scary for students and staff, coming about the time school lets out. I can remember a day when we had such a scenario, and how we lined up in the hall on all fours, with heads to the wall. Some students crying. One freshman boy putting his arm around a cafeteria worker, telling her it would be okay. And another day, when we all crammed into the locker rooms on the lower level off the gym, to the point of some students being the toilet stalls because of the crowding.

Tornadoes are unpredictable. The terror is warranted. Pictures on the news Thursday showed houses that looked like they exploded. Yet the residents were safe, though they had to be rescued from the basement. They were lucky. Sometimes a tornado scours the ground, and rips up pavement from the road.

Anyhoo... on Friday, the excess rain was the main worry, though regions south of Hillmomba were on alert for pop-up tornadoes in the afternoon. Farmer H got home at 5:00. The rain had just started up again, after a 3-hour lull. The skies were dark. I figured Farmer H would sit in his recliner, and check the news stations for updates.

Instead, I heard singing. Like opera kind of singing. What in the Not-Heaven? Farmer H is no fan of opera. Then the lights flickered. The TV and internet went off, as they reset, but the lights came back. I asked Farmer H what he was watching with the opera singing.

"That wasn't opera. That was Gomer, on The Andy Griffith Show."

Oh. Well. Does that make sense? That in such a weather situation, instead of checking with the news for the current radar, and any warnings to take cover, Farmer H instead was watching 60-year-old reruns?

Farmer H reclines to his own drummer.

Pupsie Is Canine Non-Grata

Farmer H is quite displeased with Pupsie this week. He discovered that she'd chewed up the seat on his lawnmower. Which came a few weeks after discovering that she'd taken his key out of the ignition, so he has to use the Gator key in it. Good thing it works for both.

"You can duct tape it! Doesn't that work for everything?"

"It's chewed down to the metal! It has a big hole in the middle!"

"Stuff something in there, and THEN duct tape it! Maybe that'll keep her from chewing."

When Farmer H was carrying in groceries, Pupsie followed him.

"Yeah. There you are! Stop chewing up my seat, you stupid dog."

"Oh, that's going to make her easier to catch, isn't it."

"Well, she needs to know that she's a bad dog. Bad dog!"

Farmer H later said he sprayed some ether on the seat. In hopes of discouraging Pupsie from chewing on it.

"Doesn't that evaporate really fast?"

"Yeah. But I sprayed it down in the stuffing in the hole in the seat. So maybe the smell with hang around, and she won't want to eat it."

"If it doesn't kill her!"

Wednesday evening, we heard Pupsie on the front porch, thumping something around.

"She's out there chewing on my dog statue. She's got it about eat up." Farmer H went to the front door. "Stop that. Leave that dog alone. Quit eating my dog. Bad. Bad dog."

"There you go again. Like she's going to understand all that. Just tell her NO! I did that with the grocery box today, and she moved away from it."

"Huh. You want to get petted? Come on. There you go. Now leave that dog alone." Farmer H came back to his recliner. "She come up and sniffed my hand! And she let me pet the side of her mouth."

"That's what she does to me."

"She ain't never got that close to me before. Oh, and when I went out a while ago, to get my Senior Center cherry crisp out of the truck... I found the lawnmower key on the sidewalk! The keychain thing was gone, and part of the rubber coating on the key. I guess she ate them."

Maybe there's some hope to catch Pupsie. Maybe she's slowed down, being full of seat cushion and keychain and fake dog.

Sometimes I Think Farmer H Does This On Purpose

Farmer H does not communicate in a manner that I find logical. He will make a statement that leaves out pertinent details, and expect me to know what he's talking about. This week he had to fix a leaking sink for one of the elderlies at the Senior Center. He was telling me about it that morning.

"Yeah, we'll go by and fix the sink for the 88-year-old gal. Then I have to put in a garage door for Agnes [not real name]."

"Who in the Not-Heaven is Agnes?"

"The old lady. The one who bought the QuickFlip house. But she's paying me for that."

"You can put in a GARAGE DOOR?"

"Yes. It's just like any other door. A door in her garage."

"You mean like a people door?"

"Yeah. A door to go in and out of her garage."

Well of course. Because any time I hear "garage door" I automatically think of a regular door going in and out of a garage. NOT. That's why in my boring tales of my travels to town, and my adoring fleabags, I always specify "people door" when I talk about the entrance/exit to the garage, rather than the big segmented door that raises and lowers to allow T-Hoe egress and ingress.

I swear Farmer H does this on purpose, so he can tell me I'm wrong, and I don't know nothin'. Then again, maybe he just thinks everybody's brain works like his. What a scary thought!

If This Tune Sounds Familiar...

It's because Mrs. HM wails this song every other month. Feel free to tune up your world's smallest violin and accompany me. A rousing jam session. Just one more service Mrs. HM provides. Unlike THE ELECTRIC COMANY, which lately seems to provide very little in the service arena.

Once again, the electric bills for our flip houses have gone awry. You may recall that in January, all three bills arrived in a timely manner. Two of the payments were received in a timely manner. But one went missing. Missing for several weeks. It was paid online on the due date. Then the check arrived a week or two after that. So we double-paid, but got a credit on the next bill.

Yes, the February bills came on time. All three of the flip house electric bills in one giant 8 x 12 white envelope. Different from the two electric bills for Farmer H's storage unit stores, and the two bills (Mansion and BARn) for our home, which come in regular business size envelopes, always on time. I don't know how there can be such an issue so often. 

On Friday, Farmer H sent me a text. He'd received an email that the Bargain House electric bill was due on April 3. I did not get such a notice, though I get them on all other of these seven accounts. I went online to pay, since we didn't have a bill. I checked through my checkbook register, and saw that I had also not paid the other two flip houses, because we never got a bill! Bills for these flips usually come between the 20th-22nd of the month, all due on the 3rd. I paid those two online as well.

Monday the 31st, we got the three bills for the flip houses, all in one giant white envelope. Our mail comes in the afternoon. The earliest we could have mailed back a check would be April 1st. Hoping for it to arrive and be credited by April 3rd. I'm pretty sure that would not happen.

These statements are dated March 13. So it took 18 days for the electric company to get these bills to us. I seriously doubt that was a problem of the USPS. The February payments were mailed on the 20th, and received by the electric company on the 26th, with a weekend in between those dates. Something is fishy about the way the electric company is sending out these bills. It's like they are hoping to charge people for a late fee.

Yes. I know my song is a broken record. No. I will NOT allow the electric company access to my bank account to draw out money for automatic payments. I'm not about to try dealing with that when we sell these flip houses, and want to stop automatic payments. It's a giant hassle of trying to get a real person on the phone at both the bank and the electric company, and then HOPING they do their job right.

I'll just keep singing this song, next verse, same as the first, and making a "guest" payment online when the bills don't arrive. I really prefer a check, for record-keeping purposes, especially on these flip houses. If the electric company can mess up paper statements, a billing method which has been used for decades, who's to say they won't mess up their electronic data as well?

One Way Or Another, I'm Still Pretty Sure

For a short time, I thought maybe the efforts had stopped. That perhaps Farmer H was NOT trying to kill me. Nah! I'm pretty sure he's just developed more subtle tactics.

Thursday I bought the lunch treats that Farmer H likes to take to his SUS2.5 (Storage Unit Store 2.5) on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. They are little slider-size sandwiches that come in boxes, as part of the 5-for-$25 deal at Country Mart. Farmer H likes all three kinds: chicken, spicy chicken, and cheeseburger. You never know which kind will be available. Sometimes all three, so he gets a selection. For the past two weeks, I could only find the plain chicken. But this time, the cheeseburgers were available.

These little sandwiches are wrapped two to a pack, inside the box, in clear cellophane. The cheeseburgers come three packs to a box, the chicken contains four packs. Anyhoo... boxes take up a lot of room in the freezer. So I take out the packs and wedge them into space between other foods.

I opened up a box of cheeseburgers at the cutting block, to put them in FRIG II's freezer in the kitchen, rather than the mini chest freezer in the laundry room. As I reached down into the end of the box, to get the last pack, the flap caught my arm. That was a mess!

I felt the stab, so I noticed right away, and found a bandaid so I didn't get the leaking blood all over my town shirt. It's not like I needed a tourniquet. I was in no danger of exsanguinating. It's just annoying and messy.

Also, I have been dealing with healing this bruise on my other arm. I whacked it on a doorknob about a week ago. I really hate to go to town in short sleeves lately, heh, heh!

When he built our Mansion, Farmer H put French door handles on all the interior doors. You know, the long kind, with a little curlicue on the end. Not something practical for a household with a 2-year-old and a soon-to-be born baby Pony. With a regular round doorknob, you can at least put those plastic covers over them for child-proofing. But not with a lever there to be yanked. Anyhoo... Farmer H sometimes does not open the bedroom door completely against the wall when he comes out in the morning. So in the afternoon, when I come out after showering for town, I misjudge that partially open door, and whack my arm on the handle.

Good thing I'm not still taking that devil-drug Xarelto, the blood-thinner they gave me after my blood clots incident. Aspirin is bad enough, but I might actually exsanguinate from these Farmer H-caused injuries if still taking Xarelto.

So crafty, that Farmer H, seeing into the future and setting his traps 27 years in advance.

Hillmomba Takes A Pounding

We expected rain on Sunday. Farmer H would have gladly grilled some of our leftover frozen sausage patties. But I told him I saw rain was forecast. So we put the grilling off for a few days, in favor of meat loaf. We don't regularly watch the local news and weather. If Farmer H has some work planned on the outside of a flip house, he checks his phone in the morning for the forecast. So we had no idea that actual STORMS were headed our way.

I was sitting at the kitchen table with HIPPIE around noon. The sun was shining. I even took a picture of Farmer H's newest addition to the back porch. Scarcely had I sat down from doing so than the skies darkened. The wind picked up. And HAIL STARTED POUNDING ON THE MANSION!

This was a bit scary. The trees were whipping around, and the sky got dark as dusk. I did NOT want to open the kitchen door when I saw that the hail was coming down at a 45-degree angle. That hail was the size of hazelnuts. 

There it is, on the back porch outside the kitchen door. Sorry for the view through the window shades, but I was not opening that door.

When I looked out the other window at POOLIO, the water was churning like a bubbling hot tub! So much hail.

That's an even worse view, but you can see hail on the porch rail, and lining the edge of POOLIO. It apparently did not hurt the frogs who currently reside in that location, peeping and peeping all the live-long night.

When I left for town around 4:45, later than usual, having waited for the storms to pass, I saw remnants of the hail, even though the temperature was 75 degrees.

The road to town was covered with twigs and bits of pine needles. The trees took a beating from that hail. It smelled wonderful, though, the scent of pine. 

The skies were darkening again. I only made two stops for my scratchers. No grocery shopping. It was starting to sprinkle before I returned to the Mansion. Our power went off FIVE TIMES between 5:30 and 6:00. Thankfully, it kept coming back on, though making us reset the microwave clock, and wait for the DISH satellite to reload its info so the TV could play. The electricity had only gone off once during the noontime storm, and came right back.

Farmer H said that probably a tree limb got blown onto a wire in the first round, and then when the wind started up again, it kept shutting off the power, but whatever system the electric company has as backup (I don't always listen to Farmer H's details) allowed the power to come right back on.

We will have to check our metal roof for damages. Not a good thing, since Farmer H just switched our homeowner's insurance to a new company a month or two ago. If we have a claim, they might raise our rates to the same as our insurance company of 35 years. I was against this change to begin with. I hope it doesn't bite us on the rumpus.

A Tentative Plan For Pupsie's Very Special Operation

Pupsie is barely any tamer than when Scarlett first stole her. Pupsie WILL come close to me, and will sniff the back of my hand, and allow my finger to tickle her jowl. That's it. Well. She will snatch a half-slice of bread from my hand. Not a dainty eater, that Pupsie. She shies away from Farmer H, but will also snatch bread from his hand as well.

Pupsie is probably five or six months old now. She needs her very special operation. The problem is CATCHING Pupsie to get her to the vet. Of course you need an appointment for that. Farmer H stopped by the newest vet this week. The office is only five miles from here, just past Mick the Mechanic's shop, on the road going to the bowling alley.

"I went in and told her the problem we have catching Pupsie. I asked if she had some kind of medicine I could buy, to give Pupsie so she wouldn't be nervous. Like a tranquilizer. The vet said she had some, but didn't think it would work well enough. Said it might just make her a little drowsy. I said I could probably catch Pupsie with a fishing net and get her there in a pet carrier."

"Well, that's not good! She'll be scared to death. She'll probably bite, trying to get away."

"Yeah. And tear up my fishing net! Anyway, I made an appointment for May 8th. I have to get Pupsie there by 7:45. Maybe by then she'll let me pet her. I thought about getting some good meaty treats."

"Between now and then, you need to spend 15-30 minutes a day sitting out on the porch with Pupsie and Jack. Have the carrier there. You can't just bring it out on the day you want to catch her. She'll be suspicious. So you sit out there on that chair on the side porch, petting Jack. Pupsie will hang around. I'll get some hot dogs and cut them up. Every now and then, you feed a piece to Jack. Pupsie will come over snooping around. Don't try to feed her out of your hand! Drop it real close to you. Have that carrier with the door open, where you can slam it shut on the day you need to catch her. Toss a piece of hot dog in there. Even if Jack goes to get it, Pupsie will be greedy, and try it herself when she sees nothing happens to Jack. Does she have to not eat before her operation? Maybe you can toss a hot dog in there on that morning, and slam the door when she's inside. That's all I know to suggest."

"It might work. We'll see how it goes. I might go back to the vet and ask for that medicine to try."

"It's not like you can catch Pupsie the night before and keep her in the carrier. She'll be too scared, and she'll have to pee and poop in the carrier. Too bad you can't take Jack along to the appointment. That might calm her down. She gets frantic if he's out in the back yard when I come home and it's time for treats. She wants Jack up on the porch with her. She runs out to get him."

"I could try that."

"You'd probably need Old Buddy to help you. Jack is not good at walking on a leash. I don't think you could handle both of them, with Pupsie in a carrier. And Jack might pick a fight with other dogs there. Make sure you tell the vet people that Pupsie will probably be scared and bite. So they can put a muzzle on her."

"We'll make something work. Maybe not the first time..."

How do you solve a problem like our Pupsie?