The 'rooms' of summer:

mow, mow, mulch, mulch

The advent of spring into summer gives me four new rooms to decorate for warmer weather living – the front yard, the back yard and two side yards. Moving the indoors outdoors brings a “rug” of grass, a picnic table and all-weather chairs and accessories ranging from a variety of florals to lots of green plants.

Since this is only the second summer in my cottage, there’s still lots to do in decorating the outdoor space.  And the overarching theme is “you never can have enough mulch.” There’s something about finishing garden beds and those odd spots around the yard with the rich brown mixture that says, “I have conquered the weeds.” Especially since I place the mulch plastic bags under the mulch to really keep the pesty weeds at bay.

This season, I really focused on furnishing the room on the south side of the cottage, since it had basically been ignored. A kind neighbor gave me some ferns and my mom is always generous with plenty of her hostas for transplanting. I also added some lilies-of-the-valley to the existing lily population and finished the room off with a small floral banner, two hanging impatiens pots, some small stepping stones, rock borders and the requisite mulch.

Voila – the side room is done!

The other side of the house is my dining room, dominated by a large picnic table I bought last year. This year, I added a new umbrella over and an indoor/outdoor carpet under. It is my go-to spot for breakfast with a good book and hopefully many meals to come.

The front and back rooms continue to evolve as well. I’m mulching out some new perennial beds and adding rock borders. Then there is the mole tunnel erupting helter skelter in the backyard. Since I started feeling bad about exterminating these creatures, I’m trying to convince them to relocate elsewhere with a castor oil spray. Supposedly, it will repell them as they search for worms and grubs. We’ll see, but hopefully not more tunnels.

Other spring/summer wildlife is emerging now, so I’ve added a birdbath and bird feeder in the back. In addition to a wide variety of small birds, there are rabbits, ducks, geese, squirrels, chipmunks, skunks and even the occasional deer and a family of foxes in the neighborhood.

So as I mow, mow, mow and mulch, mulch, mulch, I need to remember to sit back and enjoy my additional rooms for the warmer months. Because, yikes, the Christmas decorations have already at Hobby Lobby.
         

Recently Read:

About memoirs, royalty, France and home making

 

- My Brief History, by Stephen Hawking

- Someday My Prince Will Come: True Adventures of a Wannabe Princess
- The Making of a Royal Romance
- The French House
- A Perfectly Kept House is the Sign of a Misspent Life
- Happier at Home
- The French Don’t Diet Plan
- The Tulip & The Pope
- Not That Kind of Girl, by Lena Dunham
- Then Again, by Diane Keaton
- The Tao of Martha: My Year of Living, or Why I’m Never Getting All That Glitter Off Of The Dog

Pass the thyroid and break out the cat food, or how retiring will just have to wait

I used to believe the old adage about retirement being the “golden years.” I envisioned sprawling out in one of those cottagey Adirondack chairs with an iced tea, a good book and a nap in between. Well, I have two of those chairs, albeit the plastic version, but have yet to really sit down in them. And napping isn't really happening.

Today for example, the morning began at the crack of dawn with a wake-up call by my dog yipping to go outside. This generally means she needs to eat grass and vomit and today was no exception. I always tread carefully first thing in the morning, looking for hairballs or other surprise deposits by my three elderly cats.

The old girl still likes a milk challenge.

Then it was on to pet feeding and medications, all with a specified order. First, the largest cat with pancreatitis gets the less costly of two prescription cat foods and awaits his meal in his designated spot – my bedroom. If he meows after his first meal, he gets a second helping of the more costly food. The youngest of the cats, a notoriously poor eater, gets fed in the bathroom. Some days, she will eat on the first try, but generally I have to offer two or three different foods before she will eat. Then, it’s time for the dog to eat in her kennel so that I can feed the third cat without the dog grabbing her food. Today, doggie is not hungry due to the aforementioned vomiting, but she still needs to be locked up.

 

Then my oldest (18) and most frail cat gets her food, with quite a lot of coaxing. She likes a powdery substance I sprinkle on her food for joint pain, so the mornings are usually easier. Other times, I have to offer other food choices and, just lately, roast chicken and sometimes pet her while she eats. Since it’s a Monday, she needs a chemotherapy tablet to try to keep her bladder cancer at bay. I have to wear a surgical glove to avoid getting any of the chemo on my hand, but at least she usually swallows it without too much trouble. Lots of treats afterward help. She also gets a potassium substance rubbed on her gums three times daily. And, I typically have to help her with post-litter box hygiene every now and then, because she sleeps on my bed most nights.

The two female cats also need a thyroid supplement twice daily. One will take it in a handy pill pocket, but the other one has to be pinned down while I attempt to throw it down her throat. I take a thyroid supplement too, with far less effort.

During this routine, I text my daughter about her nearly-two-year-old daughter, who had come down with a fever while we were returning from Mother’s Day festivities the day before. We negotiate back and forth about childcare, as my daughter needs to go to work but apparently feels I will catch the bug if I come over. I remind her that I’m not old and frail and was already exposed the day before, but she ultimately decides the child’s father is a better option.

I then hear it’s supposed to rain by 11. Since my backyard looks like a hayfield, I decide to quickly walk the dog around the block and then do the mowing. I also catch up with my neighbor who had arrived home at 4 a.m. after being temporarily stranded on a flight in Texas and another neighbor who is going through some health challenges and who I want to remind that I am there for her.

Lawn mowed, I do two errands for my mom – mail out a book donation to two libraries and buy a razor. I find one that I think she can operate, with a big on/off button she can see even with her macular degeneration. And I pick up some photos my daughter ordered for a wonderful photo album she made me for Mother’s Day. During the day, my phone stays at the ready. My daughter and I constantly “talk” this way and share photos through texting and I stay in touch with other friends and my daughter in Italy through email. How did we ever exist before the constant “binging” of this contraption.

I try to eat my meals while either reading or watching the news, and my book of choice currently is “Not That Kind of Girl” by “Girls” star Lena Dunham. I don’t have the level of cable coverage I need to actually watch her show, but in my opinion she kinda is that kind of girl I would expect for a 20-something.

After lunch, I get a medical update from the neighbor with health challenges and it’s quite positive following a doctor visit. I am happy for her and suggest my usual celebration of any good news – a visit to our nearby ice cream/coffee shop. We’re hoping for tomorrow, when it might not be raining. The ice cream is severely interfering with my ability to get into my size 6 and 8 summer shorts, but who can resist a little celebrating now and then.

Cleaning the three litter boxes each afternoon is not exactly my favorite job of the day, but it helps keep my dog away from her disgusting poop eating habit. Plus, if I’m lucky, I’ll get enough clean urine from pancreatitis cat to check for any diabetes issues on a human test strip.

That’s about it for now. It will soon be time for the evening pet feeding, checking in with everyone electronically and “Dancing with the Stars.” Oh, and I have to try to finalize plans for pet care when I hope to go on vacation for about two whole days later in the month. I had to cut it short by one day because my vet tech caregiver wasn't available. 

 

As I sit here on the edge of my chair, my elderly cat is taking up most of the seat cushion but purring contentedly.  So retiring to the Adirondack will have to wait. I think I’ll spoil my dinner with some ice cream.

At least KD didn't require any Easter dinner. 

April Fool's Day from the sofa

I hosted an unexpected visitor to my family Easter eve dinner this year, a big, boxy arrival by the name of KD Graphite.

It all began a couple of weeks ago, when I optimistically decided that a new sofa would be just the right finale for my spring cleaning. My existing sofa, a queen sleeper, would be much more at home at my daughter’s house, where a sectional couch was way too much dominating her living room. Plus, the fold-out bed would help with her occasional overnight guests.

I naively assumed it would not be too difficult to find a basic brown sofa in a city once known as the furniture capital of the nation. I was wrong. Driving around to the few furniture stores left after economic downturns and big-box competition, I discovered two disconcerting facts:

 1. Inexpensive sofas are not intended for comfortable sitting and the colors and fabrics offered are less than ideal if you’ve got three cats and a dog who shed.

 2. Expensive sofas are, well, too expensive and often too big and fancy for a casual cottage.

So, I began online shopping for my sofa. I figured I could assess comfort by reading customer reviews and would just have to take a leap of faith that the color depicted onscreen would be accurate.

I wound up at Walmart. They had a lot of sofas in my price (cheap) range and also offered free shipping. My eventual choice was a button tufted sofa in a color called coffee. As I love to drink coffee, this seemed like a natural fit. The sofa was also offered for nearly $300 more on Amazon, so I figured I would be getting a good deal.

Well, maybe.

Order placed, I received an email letting me know that the sofa would arrive before April 1. That’s April Fool’s Day, which should have been a tipoff.

I then received a call from the delivery company that transports Walmart products locally telling me that the sofa would arrive on April 1. Still in time for my Easter festivities but, again, April Fool’s Day.

Bright and early on the appointed day, the sofa arrived. I should have listened more carefully when the driver told me the most common issue with such deliveries is that the wrong color gets dropped off.

The sofa arrived in one big box and as I dragged it from the garage into my sunroom, I noticed that the box was labeled “KD Sofa Graphite.” Uh oh. Opening the box, I discovered that not only was the sofa gray and not coffee but that it was also the wrong sofa. Completely incorrect.

So I called Walmart.com customer service. The representative was very apologetic and refunded a handling cost of about $40. My main question was, can I get this thing out of my house before my guests arrive for Easter eve dinner? He said he would start the process for getting the correct sofa delivered and that the delivery company would receive directions to pick up the incorrect one.

The only thing he neglected to tell me was that it can take several days for the delivery company to receive the directions.

Meanwhile, I received an email where I needed to confirm that I was returning the incorrect sofa. Only problem was that the incorrect sofa listed was actually the correct sofa that I had ordered. So I had to call customer service again, explaining that I was very confused, because it appeared I was now returning my coffee sofa. The representative assured me that their paperwork showed that the wrong sofa was delivered, but admitted “if I didn’t work for Walmart I wouldn’t understand this either.”

I decided to give it one more try to get KD Graphite out of my house before Easter so I called Walmart.com customer service again and was again told that it would take several days for the shipping company to receive the paperwork. They refunded another $40 or so for my inconvenience. Which didn’t exactly get the big box out of the house.

So now I’ve decided to just wait until the correct sofa arrives before KD departs. Might take a week, but who knows. Maybe I could ask Walmart to just let me  donate KD to my daughter.

April Fool, that’s me.

Postscript (and kind of a long one), but at least it's not lost in transit
Well, as it turned out, KD really wore out its welcome. Optimistic that the boxy intrusion would be gone before a second weekend, I received an email from Walmart confirming that my coffee sofa would be delivered on a Friday.

But this was a very suspect assertion, as I hadn’t heard from the delivery company. When I called them, they said the sofa had just arrived at their dock and wouldn’t be leaving for my house until after the weekend. Oh, and they had received no request from Walmart.com asking them to pick up KD.

So, thus ensued a more than hour-long call with a number of employees at Walmart.com., all who told me that my original idea – to send KD packing to my daughter’s house – wouldn’t work because they needed it returned. No exceptions. The final person I spoke with gave me a 30 percent discount on the sofa I had ordered and shortly thereafter the order to pick up KD mysteriously arrived at the delivery company.

Along the way, I really wanted to email the CEO of Walmart.com to let him know that his organization could use a healthier dose of employee empowerment. But not only was his email address not available on Walmart’s website, his own employees didn’t seem to have it. One employee suggested I Google him to try to locate it. Huh? Isn’t this guy your boss but you’re asking a customer to Google him?

Anyway, everything seemed set for a Monday delivery. It was the 13th of the month, yet another unlucky number. But I was pretty confident that it was time for "coffee" and that KD would finally be evicted. 

It didn’t take long for Walmart.com reality to rear its ugly head. During the weekend, I received an email ordering me to return KD by May 1 or I would be charged for it. Well, that wasn't very nice, considering I'd been trying so hard to get it out of my house.

But the grand finale in this comedy of errors came from some hapless employee informing me that "coffee" had been lost in transit, with a refund for the entire amount being processed. My response to the email was brief but to the point: “Lost in transit? It’s being delivered tomorrow.”

And sure enough, the sofa arrived bright and early. I was relieved to see “coffee” written on the box because it meant that it was likely the correct sofa. And I was delighted to bid a not so fond farewell to boxy KD.

But I needed to call Walmart.com yet again to let them know that there was no lost sofa, just a few lost minds. I knew to ask for “Tier 2” customer service, which is apparently where the snafus go. Just as I suspected, when the sofa wasn’t delivered on Friday, coupled with KD being picked up at the same time, it had short circuited Walmart.com’s inefficiency process. Or, as Mr. Tier 2 explained it, when an employee saw that the sofa hadn’t been delivered on Friday he or she assumed it was lost in transit. Who could have imagined that a delivery AND a pickup could actually happen on the same day! 

But aren’t there notes on all the screw-ups, I asked Mr. Tier 2. He muttered something about reminding employees to read the notes before issuing refunds. Then he huddled with his supervisor to figure out what they should do. That turned out to be another partial refund for me, plus I haggled for a $65 gift card.

Which brought the amount I paid for the sofa to around $50. Which would have resulted in far fewer missteps if Walmart.com had just agreed in the first place with my proposal to send KD to my daughter’s house. But hey, they made $50, which will probably be just about enough to tape up KD’s box again.



Sofa, so good

At least the new sofa arrived with no damage and I put it together in about 15 minutes. So far it is holding up well, but I’m keeping all the paperwork in case it ever decides to become lost in transit. And as for me, I'm pretty sure Walmart.com and I are never ever getting back together. 

 

 

 

    

Good reads while waiting for the thaw

It has been a chill winter, but the library has been mainly do-able in the deep freeze. Here are some recent good reads as I wait for the river to thaw:

 - A memoir by Senator Elizabeth Warren. Didn’t know much about her, but infinitely impressed by her lifelong zeal to achieve and make a difference as a mom, grandmother, lawyer and politician.
 

- A memoir by Sonia Sotomayor. This Supreme Court justice definitely had quite the life in her extended Puerto Rican family and obviously made the best use of her brilliant mind along the way.
 

- A memoir by Oksana Marafioti. This is a story about growing up in a Russian gypsy family and the related challenges in adapting to American life as an immigrant. While adopting my daughters in Russia, I would often see gypsy adults and children begging on the streets, and this narrative explains their cultural heritage.
 

- The “chocolate mystery” series by JoAnna Carl. Set in west Michigan, these fun books revolve around a chocolate shop and crimes that engage the owners, ready or not. Chocolate recipes and chocolate trivia make these books a definite escape from the winter doldrums.   

 

Color me checkered and musically chaired

Being virtually homebound as I took care of my 88-year-old ill mom this month gave me plenty of time to also focus on a major decorating goal for my cottage. I want everything to go with everything, to have a unified color theme from room to room.

So I decided to begin with a new bluesy bed covering that would finally allow me to use a chair that had been kind of drifting aimlessly from room to room. I liked this arrangement so much that I bought identical bed linens for the guest bedroom so that a second chair could also find a new home.

Now, with two chairs removed from my study, I could put a chair I had been using in the living room back in its original spot. It made my mom cozier and warmer, with better access to television sound and picture as well.     

Next, came the living room. I’ve been going for a river cottage theme, since I live across from a river, so first I found an outdoor furniture coffee table online that would complement the color of the other furniture and look appropriately casual. With a little adjustment of the couch and a side table, I made room for two chairs.

The chairs I found at a nearby furniture store. I loved the cottagey check of the fabric, but the only problem was that I couldn’t figure out what color the check actually was. It looked blue/gray in the store and was described as brown online. One salesperson said it was black and another one said it was charcoal gray.

So I checked out one of the chair’s checked pillows overnight. Taking it home, I was happy to see that it would fit in beautifully. Only problem was, I still couldn’t figure out what color it was. But I ordered a chair pair anyway. They arrived today and all I had to do was screw in the legs and push the chair back into slots provided on the chair seat. And I even used two of the four pillows on the couch.

Sheers at the windows completed this exercise in musical chairs. And everything pretty much goes with everything now. Whatever color it is.  

Looking great at 88, despite
a bout with the
flu and pneumonia

'Well' -- it's a new year's resolution
Before, during and after the holidays, the operative word in my family was “sick.” First, my granddaughter came down with the flu and, later, croup. Then I got the flu on Christmas Eve. Meanwhile, my daughter in Italy, along with my brother and sister-in-law in northern Michigan, all came down with bronchial infections. Then my 88-year-old mother caught the flu, followed by pneumonia. She’s been recovering with me ever since.

It’s especially challenging living an hour away from my mother’s home and her doctors. At first, she thought a Sunday visit to urgent care near her home and an antibiotic prescription would be enough. But when she continued to get more congested, I continued to get more worried and brought her to my home.

Another visit to urgent care resulted in another antibiotic. Then, when she started shaking with chills, followed by a fever, we made a 3 a.m. dash to a hospital emergency room, where they formally diagnosed the flu and changed her antibiotic again.

As her cough worsened, I decided we needed to revisit the emergency room, where, with a third chest x-ray, a spot of pneumonia was detected. This time, she was admitted to the hospital, which was so full that she wound up in a joint rehabilitation unit. The main bed and chair in the room had alarms on them to prevent a fall from a joint replacement.

After two days of excellent nursing, cuisine fit for a hotel and some reviving IVs, she was discharged with a strong antibiotic, inhaler and steroid to knock the pneumonia out. Only problem was that the inhaler made her head sweat. And then she got pressure in her chest which resulted in a call for paramedics. Once they determined her vital signs were not concerning I called her hospital doctor and we mutually agreed to remove the steroid. Voila – no more pressure.

I have made so many trips to my neighborhood pharmacy that the pharmacists recognize me and are always willing to discuss drug interactions and the best cough medicines – suppressant or expectorant?

Now, after a visit to her primary care physician back home (and a quick take down of her outdoor holiday decorations by me), she is on the mend. She is taking yet another antibiotic to address the cough, catching up on much needed sleep and eating better. She goes with me to babysit my granddaughter in the afternoon and has helped me shove furniture around as I do some housebound-fueled room rearranging. And, she was most happy to get a permanent.

So now we are all using hand sanitizer and trying to avoid coughers and sneezers. It has got to be a happier new year, come February.