Wild Wind

The wind blew all day yesterday, although not as ferociously as it had the night before. Things seem to have calmed down now that the cold air has moved in to replace the warm. It's still sunny and bright here in Pahrump though, and so in the sunshine it isn't half bad. I'm looking forward to seeing what the day will bring. The wind was forecast to end yesterday around 7:00 p.m. We still felt it a few times into the night, but all is calm this morning.

We had some errands to run yesterday morning. Mike had an idea about how we could sleep better in the wind, which I will reveal to you in just a moment. First, I stitched up yesterday's inchy. This one was easy...all backstitch.

This year's inchies are structured around the letters of the alphabet. Not each inchy has a letter, but each corresponds to a letter. They're going to get harder as we go along. A milliner's needle was listed as one of the necessary supplies, and that can mean only one thing: the dreaded bullion stitch...or else the cast-on stitch. Who knows what evil lurks?

The kitties appreciate that our windows and their window perches once again have a southern exposure, and so they can have their morning sunbaths.

You can see their wheat grass on the table below Sadie. We're trying to grow it back while they work on the other batch we purchased for them. It might need the help of some fertilizer.

Smitty got too hot during his sunbath, and moved to the comfort of a shaded quilt for his morning nap.

Eventually we headed out to run our errands. First stop was Home Depot. Mainly, I took this picture so you could see the flag...the wind is blowing it straight out. We had to hang onto our doors each time we got out of the truck. We actually had a door spring ruined in a high wind once.

This truck was parked in the parking lot. There's nothing to see here, but we take pictures of anything related to cats or containing the word, "cat." We have our rules here at Cat Patches.

Inside, we saw these little "grafted" cacti. I knew you'd want to see them too.

After that, we made a quick grocery trip, and then back to the RV where Mike worked some magic. It requires an explanation. In the image below is our bedroom slide. All of the slides have what we call "slide toppers." Not all RVs have them, but we had them installed as an after-market item on this new RV.

They're a sort of awning, and they keep rain from collecting on the top of the slide when we're parked. Our first RV did not have them, and when we brought in the slide and went down the road, water ended up all over the inside of the RV...on the floor...on the furniture. Not a good feature, as you might imagine. The old RV had them, but most of the newer ones don't, and so ours were installed later.

Now...here's the problem: In high winds, they luff against the top of the slide and make quite a racket. It kept us awake our first night here. But we'd seen this homemade contraption in a long-ago trip to Port Aransas, on the Texas gulf coast, where it seems the wind blows constantly. So Mike picked up some supplies and built this...I-don't-know-what-to-call-it...thing, with some PVC pipe, two PVC elbows and some rope. He attached elbows to either side of the pipe, and then ran some rope through it. Now, it holds down the canvas slide topper so that it won't beat against the top of the slide in the wind. Nifty, huh? And now that he's gone to all this trouble, I figure it pretty much guarantees there will be no more wind for the remainder of our trip.

Okay, and so that wasn't the end of yesterday's excitement. We struck out with the hummingbird feeder back in Hemet, but we put it up again before leaving the RV yesterday morning. Our first clue the hummers had found it was when Sadie nearly jumped through the window to get at this guy.

Smitty had the good sense to watch the goings on from the comfort of the couch and through his kitty window.

Oh my...they put on quite a show. I'm going to guess there were about half a dozen buzzing around at various times. Of course, I took a zillion pictures of them.

We saw four at a time waiting at the feeder...and plenty of fighting...there are only two holes, and anyone who's ever watched hummingbirds knows that they are not good about sharing. There was plenty of fighting too, although these two seemed willing to share at least a little bit.

These are Annas Hummingbirds, like the ones we have back home.

So that was fun. Temperatures went below freezing last night, and so we brought in the feeder. It's a small feeder, and so it needed to be refilled anyway. Mainly, we didn't want it to freeze. As I'm sitting here, there are hummers buzzing around outside looking for it. I can hear them chipping and chirping, "WTF, Man?" We'll put it up again once the temperatures get a little warmer.

Finally toward the end of the day, Himself put on a coating of Awesome Sauce and got out for a walk. Usually his first walk in a new venue lasts as long as it takes him to go from the bottom step to the top one and back in the RV. The time at Hemet seemed to give him time to understand that most Mans and woofies are not at all interested in him. He had a good walk, although an icy wind was blowing. At one point, a Man walked by. Smitty hunched down a little, but didn't panic. The Man walked by, and we continued on our way.

Even our shadow selves were amazed at his courage.

Afterward, we went back inside to dispense Treats of Valor. As for me, I had a Bloody Mary. We bought a six-pack of V-8 to use in a recipe a while back. I make a pork chop marinade that uses one of the small cans of V-8. I don't like purchasing a whole big can because (a) it doesn't fit well in the refrigerator, and (b) we don't drink that much V-8. Nevertheless, we had five cans left from the six-pack, and so what are you going to do? Bloody Marys, of course. We were simply doing our part to reduce waste.

We ended up cutting the top off that stalk of celery. You could poke your eye out! We used the Classic V8 Bloody Mary recipe. The recipe I've linked to there is from the United Kingdom, and so they use weird measurements...sorry my Metric system friends. For my friends who use the system we use here in the USA (in defiance of the rest of the world, I might add), I'll tell you that it takes 1 cup of V-8 and 1-1/2 oz. of vodka. The rest of the measurements should make complete sense. Oh yes, and "hot chili sauce" equals "Tabasco"...a couple of dashes, depending on how much spice you like. And now that we've had these, we might have to buy some more V8!

So that was our day yesterday. As far as I know, there's nothing on today's agenda aside from refilling and replacing the hummingbird feeder. Hummingbirds await, and they are growing impatient. I wouldn't put it past them to overturn the RV looking for the feeder. As I've been proof-reading this post, Mike put the feeder back outside. They didn't even wait for him to finish hanging it. He says they practically knocked him off the ladder. Does anyone doubt the truth of that?

It might be a sewing day. Just sayin'.