Since we last visited, my husband sold his business on April 1 and is officially retired. After that we went to Hawaii for a week, then we were home for a week, then we left again on a road trip to San Francisco for hub's 55th high school class reunion.
Hawaii was okay, but I really enjoyed the car trip to California. We took our convertible, which is always fun and the weather was gorgeous most of the time. We got to see some of hub's siblings as well as his best friend of many years, plus the reunion was good for his soul. He is still close with many of his classmates. Unfortunately, every reunion, there are fewer and fewer folks attending for obvious reasons. There is always a moment of silence after reading the list of classmates who have passed away in the last 5 years. This year the list was quite long.
We passed through Reno on the way home. Our intent had to been to stay overnight, but I really didn't get a good feeling about the town so we kept driving and stayed in another small town further north. As a result of that change in plans, we ended up driving a totally different way home, and so we were able to spend a few days at a hot springs lodge in Oregon. It was lovely and quiet and not very expensive. Our room looked directly out on the hot pool and the McKenzie River.
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| View from our Room |
The lodge was in the middle of nowhere and there was no TV or cell service! But they
did have internet "in the lobby" and since our room was directly above
said lobby, we had internet in our room. I made my first cell phone call ever using
internet. I called my office and my co-worker said he could kind of
hear me, but not great. At least I know it can be done.
There was lots of wine and beer drinking and dessert eating throughout the trip, which is always enjoyable. However, it's not so great for the scale, which I have been avoiding since we got home about 10 days ago. Getting back on track eating wise is hard! It was good to get back to my office and my routine and my normal healthy lunches. And I can also say I've been working out regularly again, 4 times this week so far! Plus gardening, planting tomatoes, and spring cleaning of my landscaping and yard.
Speaking of cleaning up, I've had to start cleaning up after a raccoon who apparently spends quite a bit of time in the tree in front of our house. I've not actually seen him, but our dog sitter has. She said he growled at her and that he's quite large. So are his poops, which he leaves in the crook of the tree every day. YUCK.
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| Yuck Pooey! 😒 |
This is what it looked like before he had a temper tantrum.
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| See the little nest behind the glass mushrooms? It was so cute😍 |
Because our yard is not fenced, I do keep my dogs on a leash whenever they are outdoors. This is mostly because there are lots of wild animals around our house. My little 6 lb yorkiepoo is a fearless hunter and will take on any animal she sees, which could be a disaster. It's the terrier in her and she turns mindless aggressor when she sees a wild animal. Along with the raccoon, there are eagles, Canadian geese, deer, coyotes, beavers, nutria, and otters. But even if it's just a bunny or a squirrel, she would chase it wherever it goes, which includes the busy road up our driveway. So...Miss Jennie is always always always on a leash when outdoors.
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| Jennie the killer YorkiePoo |
What fun travels!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI don’t have any advice on the ‘Wild beast’ taking over your yard! Keep us posted!!!
Hi Grace! It's been a long time since I've been on your blog. You've been posting! It's so cool to catch up with your life.
ReplyDeleteI know how to get rid of the racoon! We had a similar problem, except ours was even worse. They were living in the neighbor's abandoned treehouse, and had dug a hole in our back yard to use as their latrine. It was so gross! It was literally a pile of raccoon poop, over a foot wide and about a foot above the ground. We would see them jump from the top of the fence to our giant maple tree, then crawl down the tree and poop. I Google how to get rid of raccoons and I found several articles that said male urine would mark the territory and they would leave. It worked! I had Charles (my boyfriend at the time, now my fiance) pee in a jar, then pour the urine around the base of the tree they were climbing down. He had to do it a couple times, but after about a week they left and never came back. It has to be male urine, female urine doesn't work. I know it sounds totally disgusting, but it doesn't hurt the raccoon and they don't like it.
So there's your tip of the day on how to get rid of racoons. LOL!