Gracie

It's a challenge to keep Gracie stimulated, she's our little ADHD cat. George is pretty simple...feed him and rub his belly while he falls back asleep. He's such an easy guy, not much different from Left Brain actually.

George digging through the toy box for just the right toy...probably the one with the most catnip in it.

Remember the threats that your mother used to curse you with, you know...the one that goes "someday I hope you have a child just like you!"  Yeah, that one...the ultimate curse.

Well, I got really lucky and had the most even tempered laid back son anyone could ever want. Maybe it's a male thing...I see a pattern here now.

Anyway, I digress. Who would have imagined that the curse that finally came to fruition would be in the form of a multi-colored cat?

She is a challenge!  She's way too smart for her own good and seems to be almost fearless as she becomes more and more familiar with her new life.

When she runs through her tunnel and dives in and out of the cube and then chases George through the RV there are often some fairly loud thuds and thumps.  The thing that goes bump in the night at our house has a name...Gracie.


I picked up a new toy for them, a round dome that uses battery power to glide this little toy around inside on air.  Really sweet...George watched it go round and round for some time before trying to stick his paws into the holes to catch the thing and ended up looking like he was playing Twister.

Gracie repeatedly managed to not only catch the toy but pull it outside and has removed most of the fur, basically mangling the new toy in the first hour.  As you can see in this photo she has it once again in her possession and George is still trying to figure out where it went.  Poor George.

If she could, she would spend all day long outside in her little tent.  She'd love to just be lose and chase around I'm sure, but for her own safety we need to confine her.  I added a foldable footstool so she can get up higher and she loves to nap there with the breeze ruffling her fur.

Recently I've started to introduce her to walking on the leash.  It's amazing the way she'll just prance along with her tail held high...until she stops to roll on the concrete. 
 

Out for our walk.

We're working on the heel command....yeah right.

No, I'm not going any further! Where is my stroller?

The lessons are going well and each time we go a little bit further.  George appears to be getting jealous of this extra attention, so I will work with him on the leash inside the RV soon to prepare him for his debut.

I would love to get a cat stroller for her, or them if he would seem to enjoy it as well.  I saw one of these at the last park, or maybe it was in the park before. It was definitely while we were still in Georgia, I'm pretty sure....maybe South Carolina. Oh well, it really doesn't matter.

We'll see how that endeavor goes.  It would be nice to be able to walk with her on the leash and then tuck her into the stroller if there was any threat of her being frightened by a dog or something.

Long Live the Queen of Wild Cats

Setting up a sweat shop in the RV

I have always loved sewing and it is one of the few creative outlets I still indulge in on our new nomadic life.

Instead of having a basement full of fabrics, including a roll of quilt batting that used to hang from the ceiling, I now have a small space in which to create and to store my supplies.

I made this pumpkin runner to celebrate Autumn

One solution to this was using a jewelry holding bag I found at Hancock Fabrics. I have something similar for the jewelry that I don't seem to wear but that one has zippers.  This hanging organizer has all open pockets and as you can see it's perfect for storing all those little items such as rotary blades, thread, buttons, etc.  I just hang it on one of the overhead cabinets and everything is in clear view and at my fingertips.  It is hung in the closet with my few hanging clothes since it's basically flat.

This has made me much more focused in my approach.  I no longer hoard fabric.  Well, not as much anyway.  There's always that one bolt that just begs to have one yard to pet and adore.  But for the most part now I plan a project, get the materials if I don't already have them, and set to it in earnest.

The sewing is done at the table where we eat and use the computers.

Because it is a small space and shared with Left Brain and two cats, everything needs to be cleared out and set up for sewing.  And when the sewing is over it all needs to be put away.  Bummer.

The cutting board and pressing area pretty much take up the counter top.  This requires the dishes to be done so the sink has its covers on it.  The stove top is unusable during the process as well, only a problem if you want to cook something...I could live without that.

The projects tend to be smaller in scale as well and something that is usable. 

Not a lot of space for pretty things to put on the wall here.

But the cats always need little quilts, and there are covers for the tablet, place mats, casserole carriers, toaster covers, pillowcases...that kind of thing.

One of my favorite things are these little foldable bags. I had sent some out as gifts and I loved the photo Miss Edna took of it, so will use her image here to demonstrate this bag.

It just goes to prove that where there's a will there's a way.
And it's a good thing I have this hobby to fall back on since today I will drop off my beloved laptop at the PC Doc and I'm not sure how long I might be without it.  So, if I disappear again for a while...that's what happened.

Long Live the Queen of Sweat Shops

And She's Back!

I'm not sure what happened there, but I was not able to access my Blog to post for two days.  But ....it's up again and I'm back.

We are in Bushnell Fl right now, staying at Blueberry Hill RV Resort because they offered pickleball.  They have exactly one court and I've yet to see anyone on it, but they tell me the people start to show up early November.  Huh?  I'm people...I'm here.  But I will be patient.

These are photos from St Simons Island in Georgia, because I don't have any from here yet to show you.

We're waiting for our trolley ride of the Island.

St Simon lighthouse

A brave lady entering the cold water - that's the Atlantic....shiver.
 

Spotted this cool wood carving in a tree on our journey

I found a guy who repairs computers and will take the laptop and it's missing keys in to see what he can do for me, so there may be a lapse of posts again for a bit, but I think I can do this from my tablet.

I've been busy with some sewing projects and we did a little geocaching in the area today before going out to eat.

That's it for now - just wanted to get something out there and more photos of the current location will be coming.

Long Live the Queen of Sticky Keys

Geocaching in the prairie

The best part of geocaching to me is getting out there and finding places you never would have gone otherwise.

we found this pretty prairie quite by accident while out searching for a cache

 

For those who don't understand what this fun sport is all about I'll try to explain it briefly.  It's a high tech hunt using GPS units to find junk hidden in plastic containers.  Yup.  That's pretty much it.

 You can limit your search to either very easy or very hard.  We like the easier ones where you don't have to crawl up hills or use an ATV or boat or swim to get to the hidden treasure.

You load the caches found on the geocaching website to your handheld unit and then head out in the car.  This always inspires a lot of fights...I mean discussions.

this was tucked under a dead tree so the bark glued on hid it very nicely

Left Brain tends to be the driver and I'm the navigator although it might work better the other way around as I'm pretty lousy at reading maps and finding my way.  I think he does it this way to torment me.

When you find the cache you open it up and sign the logbook hidden inside.  Some of the tiny ones are itty bitty and you need a tweezers to extract them.  Good luck rolling them back up and reinserting them again.

My favorite caches have travel bugs.  These are metal tags encrypted with a code for the finder to log in online so you can track the progress.

When we were in Arizona I placed my first (and only) travel bug into one of the caches we located at a little museum.

The story attached to the Arizona Buzzard states that he wants to travel to cities,
 states and  countries with the letter "A" in them.

To my utter surprise this was picked up and taken to Guam and from there has found its way to Japan.  Who knows where it might go next?  I need to get some of the other ones I've purchased ready to roll and leave them along our way as we travel through Canada to Florida.  Yeah, it's kind of a round about way to get there, but this is what happens when I read the maps!

Long Live the Queen of Geocachers

Okefenokee Swamp

We had one more Photoshop challenge submission from Andrea that I just have to share....how cool is this.

Before we left Georgia we just had to visit Okefenokee Swamp.

There's something that appeals to me about these...must be the sense of darkness and danger.

We took a short walk before our boat tour began.

We met him on our walk along the boardwalk. There are signs everywhere explaining that they are real and potentially dangerous. Apparently many people think they are remote controlled somehow and part of a show.

I like Old Roy's sense of humor taking those fish away.

Our first thing was to do the boat ride, and to me this was definitely the high point of the visit.

This is Sally- we'll meet some of youngsters later on during the boat trip

Our guide explained that generally gators like to just lay in the sun and digest last night's dinner and that Sally wouldn't bother us unless we threatened her babies.

 

Oh and such pretty babies they were!

As you can see, they have their mother's eyes.

As we passed the area with the babies we heard a splash as Mama entered the water, but our guide assured us she wouldn't charge the boat unless somebody tried to actually handle the little ones.  Believe me, nobody on this boat was going to try to snatch a baby away from her.  They were maybe a foot long and adorable but she was a good 11 feet of killing power.

Because this is a black water swamp, everything reflects nicely

Don't take these stairs...they go straight into the swamp

We climbed the observation tower to get these views

Famous? Perhaps although I'd never seen any of them.

After the boat trip we went to the nature show where a lady who lives in one of the RV's in their parking lot gives a very lively presentation of the turtles, snakes and alligators.  We noticed she also has a sheathed knife and carries a small pistol.   I'm not sure which I'd be more afraid of crossing in the dark.

This is a tortoise - a land turtle and she was lovely.

One of the baby snakes. We learned that if the head is narrow like your thumb it's not poisonous.  If it appears more like the fist at the end of your arm it's because it has venom sacs.

This was my favorite, her markings were absolutely gorgeous.  We were able to touch and hold all the snakes.

She has the mother snake around her neck and is holding two of the babies in her hands.

His name is Killer and he's just a baby but with enough biting pressure to remove a small finger.

She showed us how the inside of the mouth closes up to protect it when they are hunting or fighting underwater.

Then it was time to board the train for another trip through the swamp with a different guide.

At this point it was kind of the same old same old...same jokes, same info but we did get to see some pretty flowers...it's not just all about the gators.

Long Live the Creature...I mean The Queen of the Swamp

Photoshop Friday - surfer wannabe

There was a young boy in Myrtle Beach who had a smallish type of surfboard, not sure what it was actually called.

Anyway, he would run and glide in the shallow area like one might slide on ice.  It looked like fun and I snapped a couple of shots of him doing this.

This is the first original shot.

This is after adding some motion blur to make it more powerful.

This is the other shot of him sliding on his board and I cropped it as a vertical shot.

Then I added some radial blur to highlight the action and posterized it because I just can't stop myself.

Then we have images from those playing along.

Here's a funny one from Miss Edna-I love what she's done with it.

Note the little pig in the chair.

And Judi kept it much more subdued than last week with her effort to work for the Georgia Department of Tourism.

Long Live the Surfer Queen

Next week's image will be: