Monday, Aug. 23, 2004 - 1:34 p.m.

Eeuuww!!!

The odor was not very nice down here for a day, but smells all nice and clean now. Stuff is stacked all over the place, some from moving out of the utility room to do the replumbing, and some from moving whatever was on the carpet in the way of the flood when replumbing came undone. It was a joke for a few days. Hooking up the plumbing, calling the city to turn the water on, checking the replumbing to find it was failing again, calling up the city to turn the water off, over and over. It is finally fixed, I think, but a watch is being kept.

In the meantime, life went on as usual. The new kittens are starting to move about and the deep trench near their home would cave off a bit each time I went out, so I took a shovel and morning and nite, I shovel 50-100 loads of dirt into the hole. It is up to the top for about a 2 foot stretch and I walked across the ditch there this morning. Down in the bottom of the ditch, the wall is carved out. That is where gravel was deposited when the river rose that high over the years. Then there is four foot of sand on top of the gravel. 800 thought about panning some of the gravel to see it there is much gold there since much of this river has gold in it. There have even been large dredging attempts about 50 miles upstream that were quite lucrative at one time, and may be again.

There is still lots of the trench to pull some gravel out of if 800 gets inspired, so I will just keep doing my 50-100 shovelfulls twice a day for a while. I hope to give the kitties away in a couple of weeks, and then capture the mom and take her to the vet.

My Children's Lit class is now on Blackboard and I can start turning in assignments. I should have been tending to copying my mom's pictures these past few weeks instead of brooding over the empty nest. The other nite as I was sitting in the lawn swing after feeding the animals, I saw one of the skunks come right past me three feet away to get some of the porch cats' food. I will have to take the digicam out some nite. Often there are three skunks coming to dine. They are so cute as they compete for the food. I lay about one third of a cup in various little piles on a board, under a rabbit hutch and in various other places. Invariably, 2 of the skunks will want the same little pile. They will get side by side and then lean HARD on each other and push. They look like one body with 2 fluffy tails and lots of scrambling feet as they sidle around the pile of catfood. They also make loud crunching noises as they eat so I always know when they appear.

2d and I went to a viola recital at a church we went to for 6 or 8 years. Very few folks there but it was enjoyable. Recitals are not very well attended but I enjoy them and I suppose any extra in the audience is an encouragement to the recitalist. Lots and lots of work goes into a senior recital and anyone who has had a child do one is probably more willing to encourage another young person. Several spoke to 2d, since they know her from work and lessons, but I am just as invisible as I was when we went there 3 times a week. The church was about 150 when we went there which is fairly large for a conservative (?) church in this area. But our kids went to private school, we had attended an even more conservative Bible school and we didn't go to the movies or dances so we were often invisible, or maybe mildly contagious. Some of our greatest family blessings and tragedies happened during the time we went to that church.

EE's devotional

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