POs

My PO was an elderly lady who filled this house (11 rooms) up with stuff, was not well enough to clean (I'm being nice) and basically could not manage to live here anymore. She should have rented an apartment at a Senior Living facility, instead she paid $5,000 more than what I bought my house for to buy a tiny little prefab house near the hospital.

She is one of those types of people who expect other people to do everything for her. However, my backyard neighbor has told me that all of her 'helpers' basically robbed her of things in return for their help--coming in to help clean and leaving with carloads of stuff. Yeah. She even had a nice Hoosier cabinet in the house that she sold to one of said helpers for less than $200.

So anyway, my backyard neighbor is an 80-something lady who loves my dog and is enjoyable to talk with, etc., etc. Evidently, my PO calls her--at the least weekly--and asks her about us, whether we're still living in 'her' house, whether her picnic table is still in the backyard (I never ever saw a picnic table in the backyard, so my guess is that one of her 'helpers' took it), and she mentions just about every week that she is still mad at me for tearing up the carpet in the living room, green room, hallway, and all the way up the stairs.

(Incidently, I don't think she's gotten anyone to drive her past the house, because she has never mentioned the garden I put out front. And that is something she would have noticed, definitely.)

So anyway, she mentions this carpet constantly. It's really getting on my nerves, because except for a very small piece, it's gone. She has even said that if she knew I was going to tear up the carpet, she would have taken it with her.

I said that I wish she had, because it was a pain in the butt to take up. Ha!

That carpet was in the house when they moved in--in 1978. Odds are, it was older than me. It stank, it was dryrotted, and it was covered with years worth of dust and dirt. Talk about a health hazard!

I am considering sneaking the last piece of carpet onto her front porch one night, but I think her neighbors might call the police.

Here is a picture of the carpet:

Okay, it's not that good of a picture. It's much brighter in real life, floral, with bright blues and greens. With a pale lime green walls (at least in this room--that's why we call it the Green Room) it wasn't what you could call nice.

We uncovered lovely oak floors that didn't even need to be refinished.

(My PO doesn't call me anymore. She started to--she kept asking about stuff that she thought she'd left behind that wasn't here--but when I started to paint the kitchen, I unplugged the only phone in the house and 'forgot' to plug it back in.)

My backyard neighbor calls her my landlord. hahaha. I'm not sure I really like that, but I know she is joking.

Just call me the crazy cat lady...

I am a cat person. (Hopefully Miss Mabel won't read this and take it the wrong way.) My family has always had outside cats, and I grew up imagining the day when I could have my own house and my very own indoor cat would sleep with me, curled up at the foot of my bed, or beside me, or on me, or whatever.

Right before I moved out of my parents' house, they did allow two of the cats to be indoor/outdoor cats, and my cat Punkin did sleep with me at night. It was just as nice as I had imagined.

Fast forward to now, and I have my own house. At the moment, I have four indoor only cats and one outdoor only cat (due to some indoor issues she is now outside permanently.) After Cleo moved outside, I ended up feeding two or three of the feral cats that roam the neighborhood as well as my own. I don't really mind; they aren't doing any damage and Cleo actually gets along better with them than she does with anyone inside, for some reason.

Two weeks ago, someone either dropped a kitten off at my house or it wandered in from somewhere. It seems to be partly feral--we're working on the trust issue at the moment, and making progress--but it is the cutest kitten and it is sticking around my house, so I guess I'm claiming him or her as well.

Its eyes are blue, although you can't see that in the picture. I think it looks like a Siamese cat, too. It has lovely cream colored fur. I am hopeful that I can get it tamed and to the vet so I can help stop the spread of ferals in the neighborhood. I am not sure how my other cats would take to an addition.