A muddy mother gives her supportive young son a grimy hug and big wet kiss. He was beaming afterward! More women of all ages clambered through the mud on this cool Sunday in September. Enjoyed the chance to visit the Two Rock Coast Guard Station which is usually closed to the public, on this first-time event.
We went on to Pt. Reyes for a great fried oyster sandwich for lunch at the Pine Cone cafe. How I love Point Reyes!
I was so excited to hear about a zeppelin at Sonoma County airport that I went for a ride on it before 24 hours went by. Howard saw the zeppelin at the airport on Thursday and the next morning I signed up for the 3 p.m. cruise to Guerneville and back. Buoyant flight feels more like scuba diving than flying in a plane. The lift-off feels more like rising to the surface of the water using a buoyancy compensator. Landing is so gentle that there is hardly any sensation — so different from the loud and pressured landing of an airplane. The airship never actually touches down — it just hovers as new passengers board and departing ones disembark simultaneously so that the weight load stays constant. For more, see this article in the Press Democrat.
The Rat From Hell met her demise shortly after Howard pulled her out from under the refrigerator, about a week after we returned from France. Next we pulled the refrigerator away from the wall to clean up anything else left behind, but the refrigerator never worked right afterwards. I defrosted it by hand several times but finally called a repairman in September.
She had chewed through a wire so the refrigerator no longer defrosted automatically. Repair bill: $232 and many lost hours defrosting and reading the appliance manual. I did, however, learn where the condenser coils are.
The rat got into the garage on Friday, April 27, a week before we left for France. Claude saw the rat after I entered the house and the garage door was coming down. His instincts kicked in and he went after the rat one second too late. He did not get far enough into the garage to trigger the safety beam that would have stopped the garage door. Claude’s fatal hunting accident was a cat-tastrophy.
I was so upset by the sudden loss of Claude that it took me a couple of days to realize there was a rat in the house. I made sure there was no food available the rat when we left in the hope that it would go away by itself, but the rat nicked the cashews I was planning to take with me and enjoyed them while I was in Paris.
The rat was still in residence when we returned. I got some mousetraps which were too small but klonked her hard enough to daze her. That’s when she hid under the refrigerator.
I did not enjoy cleaning up what was left of the cashews after they had gone through the rat. And I had to throw out a slipcover. It was disgusting and depressing.
Total cost: Claude the cat that we loved, $232 for appliance repair, many hours defrosting and reading the appliance manual, one chewed-through slipcover and few weeks of depression over the creepy ickyness of it. I suppose it could have been worse. I am grateful to Howard for following his hunch to check under the refrigerator. I would not have looked there.
by Martin Walker