May 26, 2009

My flower beds are all spruced up and it's Happy Ground Hog Day! (with a twist) – Picture this…Carlo checking that all the birdfeeders are hanging, empty but hanging – he opens the front door and looks at the stash of feed and seeds left in covered containers the night before – add your favorite expletive – and witness the seed and feed strewn everywhere and containers open and laying all over and of course the special $hitty treat left behind!

Now we have figured out our visitors have not been squirrels but rather the masked bandits of the night…RACCOONS! We actually watched them several times during the night – when the lights went on - munching away at the feed by the tree, three of them, eating and romping and making squealing noise! Yep, RACCOONS, our new destructive nemesis!

Carlo built a wood crib along side the shed since we have so much wo0d to store. It fits great there.

Paul stopped by for a couple hours and had coffee. When he left there was a man-made (or woman-made) tornado to hit the front porch – I have about one week to win this battle and if you’re placing any Vegas bets – the odds are certainly AGAINST me!
We gathered our dirty clothes and hit the Laundromat. Laundromats are quite the experience – people are certainly different – I watched people scoping out the three washers I was using and noticed baskets of clothes on the tops of washers – obviously an over anxious dirty clothes owner too impatient for the owner to retrieve their wet clothes. I watched dryers sit full of clothes and no one there to empty them and another character go in to the garbage to retrieve a dryer sheet (used). There was even a woman that had two huge totes of clothes – couldn’t help by notice bedding, underwear and jeans. She went by two large front loading machines...one tote in one machine and one tote in the other. She didn’t separate anything! If you do this too – sorry, but I am a fanatic about my laundry. Anyway, it was an experience. Carlo ran some errands while I was there and when he got back, we went to Tamarack for the Tuesday Burger Special – always yummy! After a quick stop at Wal-Mart, we made it back for GH – yay! While I caught up on my show, Carlo helped me out on my never ending bird battle – he sprayed a product that is suppose to distract them – they were still hovering around, so we will give it a chance to soak in the keep my fingers crossed that this works. He also sprayed the deck hoping to keep the raccoons away. Then he spent a chunk of the afternoon trying to tune in an antenna so he could get more than four channels!

My fully stocked hummingbird feeders!

I pulled out the laptop and we both got absorbed in the first game we tried. We took turns, played together and then I took over while Carlo cooked pasta and meat sauce for dinner! He even cleaned up. That made me enjoy it even more! I kept playing until about 10:30 when my eyes would no longer focus! On our way to bed, the flood lights were on and the tree bandits of the night were up to their same MO! One attempted to come onto the porch but our spray protective shield of horrible stench had him attend the buffet by the tree instead of coming onto the porch! But as we watched these bandits by the tree it all made sense, they are the ones that have broken the birdfeeders!