December 19, 2022 Monday--5:30am

 Good early morning!  

For once I haven't been up all night.  Slept 1:15 to 5 am.  Not much but at more regular hours the past few days.  I'll take it!  :)

I have a TON of pictures this week.  It was cold and snowy...so beautiful...but dangerous.  Lots of extra seed out for the wild ones.  The Critter Cafe was very busy this past week.  But meanwhile, Allie and I were grateful to be snuggly warm inside.  Since we only have about 8 hours of light, I put on the actual Cat TV for Allie a lot.

We had snow storms and snowy days most of the week.

Was a wet, heavy snow...

...that weighed down the trees.

Beautiful...from indoors.

But rather relentless.

I would toss out some seed...

...and within a few minutes company would arrive.

Gotten so cold, too!  Our predicted high from now till Christmas is today at 4 degrees.  Tuesday through Saturday the highs are getting lower each time I look, it seems...-2 to -8 now.  Predicted lows -8 to -21!  I do go through more bird seed when it's this cold...and pray the patio door will still open!

I am always glad to see some deeper snow for the partridges so they can burrow down into their holes against the wind.

Flocks of sparrows and juncos...the little birds.

One day it was such wet snow the patio door was dripping wet.  Allie was fascinated watching the small chunks of snow slide down the glass--lol!

The super wet day wasn't so pretty.

Cottontails showed up while it was still light out.

Colder the next day so that clumps of snow clung to the glass.

When the weather is really bad even two coveys of partridges that normally bicker and chase each other for food...

...well, there were 14 of them traveling together for a couple of days.

I wish humans would know to stop bickering when we have common threats to our survival.

Even an arctic hare showed up!

I thought they might be here during the night still...

...but I rarely see one in the daytime anymore.

I am generous with the food when it gets bad out there and they know it.  Can you see one covey just hanging out across the way?

They clump together to keep warm.

I swear they listen for the frigid creaking of my patio door because I toss out some seed and a few minutes later it usually looks like this.  The small bird flocks come in quickly.

They finally came and plowed the walkway a couple days ago.

All the birds are jumpier when there are dog walkers on the pathway.  They seem to know when no one will be walking back there--lol!  They are all more relaxed.

The partridges hung around sometimes.  (This is why I leave those little table out there all winter.)

I love it when they do and hate to move around too much inside because it scares them off if they notice me.

After days and days of winter weather it cleared...and the giant snow banks had grown up...

...from the parking lots being plowed.

I toss out seed, as usual...

...and not four minutes later...

...it looked like this.  :)

I am especially appreciative this winter as it will be my last winter feeding the birds here.  But--never fear-- there are quite a lot of people in these endless apartment complexes who feed them.  The wild ones just know I am generous and buy good seed.  (Better than I did at first, but they'll eat whatever they can get--lol!)

So wrapped up in the Critter Cafe this past week--Allie, too--but other things did happen--lol!  

Monday 

My printer died completely after being a pain in the patoot for a couple months.  Leah came over later on with a new Epson and hooked it up for me.  Showed me how to fill it with bottles of ink!  I have had HPs for years and they never last very long for me so I am trying a different brand this time.  Have any of you had an Epson?

I cancelled Keanna for cleaning and we'll try again in two weeks.

Thursday

Cancelled the infusion.  Due to Christmas and my lingering issues we rescheduled for the 30th.  I certainly hope I am doing a lot better by then.  Things have been gradually improving...just much slower then I would like, of course.

Leah got ahold of the company that does the cement floors and they said they'd get back to her this week with a schedule.  Can hardly wait to find out when!  :)

I finished with my Christmas cards.  Was so happy to actually get done this early.  I thought I might be mailing after Christmas this year--lol!

Leah decided she doesn't want to mail the handmade cards anymore but she will help me with making them and other cards--like my birthday cards every year, etc.  She plans to have those picture kind made!  I don't blame her.  They are nice.  Especially with a short Christmas newsy note on the back.  So many people are making those these days instead of using cards of any kind.  They're especially nice with growing families so you can see photos of them every year.  

Leah thought I would be really hurt, but I totally get it.  I'd feel bad if she didn't want to ever make any cards with me anymore--yes!  But that is not the case.  I told her it is more like going back in time when she was first around with Dagan and saw me mass producing Christmas cards.  I made like 120 back then.  Being the sweet girl she is, she offered to help do simple stuff like cut or fold cardstock...and we found we loved making cards together...for over a decade.  She has learned how to do a lot more than cut and fold cardstck--LOL!  I don't mind her not sending handmade Christmas cards herself at all.  I totally get it and would actually love the photo ones to save with pictures of them all.  She still makes handmade cards for anything that comes up--graduations, weddings, and the like.  There are always changes, eh?

Oh, and with less big sets of cards to make it will take less time.  In the past few years here its been hard keeping up with making the 100+ Christmas and 50 birthday cards.  It's been difficult for Leah and I to get together regularly.  That will change when I am living there!  :) :)  

I used to make many smaller sets of 8-12 cards that I used for tucking hand-written letters inside...but haven't managed to make them for so long that I've been buying them!  So that is definitely a goal of mine--to get ahead with some Christmas and birthday sets--so I can just be making cards for sending letters like I used to do all the time.  Honestly--I am really praying that I will get back to my regular old crummy days and have at least some energy again once I (hopefully) get off Keytruda.

In the meantime--I'm slowly getting better in the poo department--lol!  But I still have not felt confident enough to actually get dressed, to be perfectly honest.  If the next couple days continue to go better...then maybe.  It would be so nice to just be able to have on socks, pants, and a t-shirt!  Funny the things one takes for granted.

Saturday

I started copying the big brown address binder into this smaller artsy binder.

I actually finished that night!

It has other lists and things in it besides just the addresses--like birthdays and my Christmas card records, etc.

Sunday

Worked on setting up my new tweaked planner/bullet journal for 2023.

Using an actual planner saved me from having to date all the months and weeks--wow!  I got out my little planner stickers and went to town!  Added in reminders for the year to check my plants twice a month, bring my check down to the office for rent, balance my checkbook, blog on Mondays, Wanderlust classes on Fridays, Keanna cleaning every two weeks, all the birthdays for the year filled in, and the doctor appointments I know I have already.

The added insert page Leah made for me (on the left) has my monthly tracker...which I filled out for January.

The other side has monthly goals and a correspondence tracker.  I don't fill those out until the end of the month.  Man!  Did this ever go faster!  BUT--I do have to put the insert page in-between the first week of the month's pages because there's nowhere else to slip it in.  If that drives me nuts and/or the lack of other additional space I had...I'll have to go back to the format Leah made for me where I fill everything in for the entire year.  I'm hoping I'll adapt to it but I won't know until it's actually in use.  Fingers crossed.  Would save me and Leah a lot of time every year. 

AND I addressed the envelopes for all the birthday cards for the year, too!!  Whoohoo!  I was not feeling up to cleaning and purging stuff but I got these sedentary projects done.  That made me very happy...and sore---lol!  

Miss Allie thinks she is helping.  She's not.

Allie is my first cat that has been allowed on the table top and desk and TV cabinet.  She's older and set in her ways.  In other words, she came with those bad habits and I don't want her to hate it here--LOL!  And I think I am just older and don't care as much as I used to.  ;)  She does get shooed away if there's food, though!

 

I watched the new A Christmas Story Christmas and enjoyed it.  I didn't care for the other sequel that was made a while back and never re-watched it.  This one I would watch again.  Loved that it had the original Ralphie, Randy, Flick, Schwartz, and even Farkus!  It's not as good as the original, of course, but it is a good runner up, IMO.  ;)

Besides A Touch of Frost and Doc Martin I've been watching S5 of Yellowstone.  I have to work up to watching Yellowstone.  Such nasty folk with so much anger...but it is gripping, I have to admit...story-wise and acting.  I also watch a few daily Vlogmas vloggers on YouTube...and all the regular vlogs I follow.  Keeps me busy and my spirits up while I am not feeling great.  :)

Some photos from Leah!

Look at the depth of ice on their driveway!

Miss Blink.    

Sure hope she accepts Allie.  If not--Allie will be fine with me, of course.  But if they can get along...I might not see much of very social Allie--LOL!  Blink is very social, too.  Would be so great if they became friends--or at least tolerated each other--LOL!

The two trees out front with the lights on--covered in that heavy snow.

Some shots of the snow over their way.

Ian with a snowman by the front steps.

Ian and Liam checking out the snowfall.

Another snowman...with a cute smile.

A snowman who is quite depressed over the wet snow--lol!

Leah and I were talking about where I'd keep all my laundry supplies.  I was wondering if I would need a rolly cart for in the maintenance room.  Leah said that they plan to build shelves on that back wall by the furnace...where all those wires are hanging down.

She showed me a close up of where the second cat door will go under the stairs...

...way off to the right there.  Straight ahead is the hallway that runs under the entryway upstairs and Allie can go up the stairs.  The door to my apartment will be in that hallway to the far left of the stairs there.  Once the floor is done Leah will do a naked basement video, I believe. 

Obviously Blink has been coming down in the basement to use her blue cat box you can see there.  I wonder where they will put that while that company is doing the basement?  

Allie will have a cat box in the maintenance room.  There will be a first cat door behind my toilet for her to sneak back and forth into the maintenance room.  Of course, if Blink and Allie get along they will both be using the cat boxes and the doors--lol!  If they choose to share litter boxes we might end up with one.  With cats you never know, right?  This is Blink's territory--her home.  So we'll find out.  We can keep the cat door under the stairs closed until we know if they get along or not--or want to try and see, I guess.  Can close it off if they fight.  

Allie is a lover not a fighter from what I've seen and how she was at the pound and Cat's Cradle.  She stayed away from the other cats and in one spot.  Would barely eat or move.  That's why she was a fluffy bag of bones when I got her and within a month of being happy here and feeling safe she plumped right up into one chubby cat--LOL!  Back up to a chunky lady, I believe.  She had walked with such stiff back legs I had mentioned to Leah that I thought she could be older than the vet thought.  Turns out it was just a fat cat walk on a boney cat.  Looks perfectly normal now--ROFL!

Anyways, it's 8:00 and the sun is coming up.  This coming weekend is Christmas already!  I hope you are all safe and well and have a wonderful Christmas!!!  Virtual hugs, my friends!!!  The season of Love is upon us!!  Till next time...