Good News, Bad News

It was a busy day yesterday. Mans were coming in and out, in and out, all day long, much to the consternation of Miss Sadie. She spent most of the day in my office, hiding under Eliza's table. My next quilt to be quilted is draped over the chair there, which makes a handy fort for saving oneself from certain murder by strange Mans.

And then to add insult to injury...after the Mans left for the last time, I grabbed her up and applied flea treatment to her neck. I'm telling you the horrors never cease here at the Three Cats Ranch. As I'm writing this, she's napping (and snoring) on the bookcase above my desk. Apparently, she has lived to hide another day.

This was the first insurance guy we've seen in the flesh since filing our claim over six weeks ago. On the positive side, he has approved the replacement of the carpet in the entire basement. He recognized the problem of replacing only a small section when the entire expanse of the room was made up of the same stuff. So that's the good news. The bad news is that we'll be getting new carpet, and so virtually everything will have to be moved out of the basement, including my sewing room. Yikes.

He was very professional and likable. He had a protege with him. Apparently, the insurance company is so severely understaffed it literally can't carry on with insurance business in Oregon. The guy who came yesterday is actually based out of Tennessee and is on the company's "Catastrophe Team." It seems we're fresh out of catastrophes in the USA enough to keep people on the Catastrophe Team busy, and so they're sent out to different overworked venues to help out. He's also training a new hire. So there's that. He told us he's been doing this work for 27 years and that he responded to claims after 9/11 and Katrina. I can only imagine the difficulties involved in that kind of job. 

While we were chatting, I was stitching away, and I finished up the top portion of the pitcher.

And the other good news is this: It will motivate us to clean out some of the junk that has been accumulating in closets and elsewhere that hasn't seen the light of day in decades. We've already sold some silverware to Replacements, Ltd. Yesterday, we took time to list our pool table for sale on Craig's List before we left for the grocery store. We had the pool table at our previous home, where we also had gangs of teenage boys visiting on a regular basis. We moved into this home the week our youngest graduated from high school, and so the pool table has barely been used in all that time. We should have sold it years ago. And...shortening this story...it's now sold and gone from the premises. Suddenly, we're making progress on lightening our load. It's going to be a hassle, but it will be worth it for new carpet and for liberating ourselves from beneath our junk pile.

Okay, so then it was time to do our grocery shopping. When we arrived back home, I noticed something blocking the opening to one of the nest boxes. It was a little hard to see because it's high overhead. Zooming in with my camera, I could see a bird sitting on what seems to be a very tall nest.

Zooming in closer, paparazzi style, I got a good shot of this little violet-green swallow. She didn't seem to mind me paying so much attention. She just sat looking at me.

It's going to be fun watching her. Usually, they nest deeper in the boxes, and we can only see them as they fly in and out.

When we had the groceries put away, I went to work on my Animal Kingdom challenge quilt. I'm working on the face now, which has at least a hundred tiny pieces. Some are so small I have to hold them with tweezers just to cut them out. I can see the animal emerging, which is encouraging. Most of the face, nose, and mouth area is finished. Today, I'm hoping to work my way up to the ears. Here's a peek.

When I have the face and ears completed, I'll be finished with the tiniest of pieces. The rest of the animal will be larger. It still has a long way to go. It's helpful when my emotional support cat is by my side.

Today I need to run some errands in town. I'll need to make five stops, but each stop will be short. I have just one small housekeeping chore on my calendar, and then I can spend the rest of the day on my quilt. I'm hoping to get well along on it by day's end.