60 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 8-18-16”

  7. I thought it was a weird picture of a strange bird.

    We have in our kitchen a picture. It contains a house, a barn, a church and a covered bridge.
    Lots of things in one picture. It hang somewhere else in Hendersonville. But looking at it this morning made me think.

    Why did they cover bridges? It must have been awfully expensive. This one has windows, open windows.
    Elvera said there was a covered bridge near her house when she was a child. A family owned the bridge and kept it up. She didn’t think it was a toll bridge. Just a bridge on their property.

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  9. Chas- I read (at a covered bridge near here) that they covered them so the horses pulling carriages would think they were going into a barn, since horses were spooked on open bridges. I think another reason was to protect the bridge deck from rain, but that was not as important as keeping the horses calm.

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  12. Good Morning ya’ll…that is the sweetest photo up there…tiny kitten and well worn boots! Another crisp morning in the forest….husband is heading to Leadville for his 11th hundred mile trail run this weekend….he is enjoying his retirement 🙂

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  13. So, yesterday, I accompanied eldest sibling, her spouse, my father, Eldest Niece, Eldest Nephew (11), Second Nephew (9), and Third Nephew (5) to Canada’s Wonderland, a large theme park. I had charge of Eldest Niece and Second Nephew, whom I had promised to accompany on all the water rides. I had thought my days of enjoying the rides in theme parks, and while I barely survived the antique wooden rollercoaster (EN and SN loved it so much that they went on the other wooden coaster), I enjoyed myself otherwise. I know what you’re thinking, what about my bad back? Well, when I got up in the morning, I was so sore I wondering if I would survive, but at the end of the day, I had no pain at all. Clearly, theme park rides are therapeutic. I didn’t go on anything too wild, but my father and Eldest Nephew proceeded to try out all the wildest rides, including this:

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  14. My father was feeling a bit queasy after that, so Eldest Nephew went on this by himself:

    Little Third Nephew enjoyed himself thoroughly and proved as fearless of the roller coaster that he was able to go on as his eldest brother. They will all be talking about it for a long time to come.

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  15. Roller coasters & other wild amusement park rides are not for me! I got a little nervous last time I went on a Scrambler, for crying out loud.

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  16. Yesterday Chas mentioned that the last owner of his house doesn’t seem to have made repairs when necessary.

    The guy who owned our house last did a lot of DIY work over the years. He did things the cheapest & easiest way possible, which is why so many things are falling apart. Years ago, our plumber had to do something in the basement. He looked at the plumbing pipes going every which way, & actually laughed at the haphazard set-up.

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  17. I thought y’all would appreciate cat photos from Cheryl of all people. 🙂 That there is Bob, a kitten from a litter at my sister’s house. The boots would belong to one of my nephews, probably the young man who’s a head taller than me and will be 18 in a few months. My sister believes that a bobcat fathered at least part of the litter, including this bob-tailed one and a kitten with ear tufts. She saw the bobcat and it killed some of her animals, including her favorite cat (a half-grown kitten from the same mother). I don’t know if she saw them mating, but I think she at least saw enough to know that he had a chance to kill the mother, too, but did not, likely because she was receptive. Looking online, I see there’s dispute over whether it’s even possible for a housecat to mate with a bobcat (a much larger animal), and this female is a small cat. So who knows. But it is at least possible this is part bobcat, and he is a male and his name is Bob.

    Many mammals can mate before they are full adult size, but adult animals are unlikely to allow them to mate. Yearling white-tailed bucks, for example, can breed but are highly unlikely to be allowed access to does; occasionally even a buck a few months old is capable of siring young. So I would suspect that “it’s impossible because bobcats are so much bigger” can be answered by this: a young male that wouldn’t have access to an adult female bobcat is going to be smaller than a mature bobcat, and just might be close enough to housecat size to make breeding possible if he is sexually mature, but enough bigger than the housecat to be dominant. Whether or not that happened here, I don’t know.

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  18. Roller coaster wake-ups — they’re not for me in real life, I’m the jacket-and-bag holder waiting patiently below. Was that a covered bridge in the last one?

    My dogs don’t like walking onto the wooden docks at the port. Or on snow in the mountains.

    Cute kitten, I also thought, CHERYL? 🙂

    Houses, I’m fretting over the bathroom work now (honestly, I just want to go back to dealing with the windows and paint colors). I need to find a decent free-standing (small) vanity by Monday; I see some I really like online, but there’s no time to get anything shipped unless I postpone the job which I’m not really inclined to do right now. I just want it done.

    And I probably should have gotten bids, but I’ve used this plumber for a few years because he was always cheaper — he has his own biz now, he used to work for one of the big plumbing chains but did work on the side (which is when he first was recommended to me).

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  19. Friend suggests going with a pedestal & separate storage cabinet, but my bathroom is so, so tiny … Plus the wall is tile but once he pulls out the attached vanity (necessary because it’s also attached weirdly to the tub), the wall space there probably won’t look all that great and a pedestal will leave all that exposed more than even a small a vanity would. Either way, I may have to deal with cosmetic clean-up work later with a handyman.

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  20. Our wildfire to the northeast is still raging, only 4% contained in its 3rd day.

    It seems to be almost epic in nature. From news reports:

    ________________________________

    Many seasoned firefighters had never seen a fire behave like the Blue Cut fire, U.S. Forest Service supervisor Jody Noiron told them at a briefing Thursday morning.

    “Some of you have been doing this 30 years,” she said.
    ——————————-

    A wildfire with a ferocity never seen before by veteran California firefighters raced up and down canyon hillsides, instantly engulfing homes and forcing thousands of people to flee, some running for their lives just ahead of the flames. …

    In 40 years of fighting fires, Incident Commander Mike Wakoski said, he had never seen conditions as extreme as those in Cajon Pass, where the fire broke out Tuesday.

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  24. Either way, they’re stinkin’ cute! I can’t wait any longer, I’m putting the other one up.

    I want you to go back to your sisters and ship the whole lot of them to me. 🙂

    The rest of you, prepare for cuteness overload. 🙂

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  27. Aw, yes, they are cute at this stage. But slowly and surely their true nature comes out. Killing machines. All those pretty birds? Well, we know what will happen to them when these little ones are done with their training exercises…..

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  28. The trouble with kittens is that, if they live long enough, they become cats.
    It doesn’t fail.

    An outhouse is only convenient if there is no alternative. But then, it is welcome.
    I doubt if any of you have used outhouses. I have, 1942-43. We used a trash heater for warmth and cooking for a couple of years.

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  29. Chas, you asked why covered bridges were covered. Well, each year for our anniversary my husband and I go to an area that is the “covered bridge capital of the ——” (world? I don’t remember). Not only were there a lot of covered bridges there already, but as other places get rid of covered bridges, they buy them up, so they have dozens of them in the county and they do a covered bridge festival every year. We’ve never gone during the festival, but we have driven around to find some of the covered bridges, which I photograph and my husband paints.

    So we asked the covered bridge question, and they told us the horses part of it but said that isn’t the real reason. The real reason is it’s cheaper to replace a wooden cover than to replace a bridge that is exposed to the elements. I think they also said it meant that they’d be protected from ice and snow in inclement weather, and thus safer to cross, but I’m not sure about that part.

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  30. AJ, the Manx don’t look like they have the ear tufts. My sister lives out in the country, and I believe her that they saw a bobcat. What is far less certain is that he fathered the kittens–personally I’m inclined to believe he didn’t. But I think my theory that a young, small male could more easily breed with a similar, smaller species is plausible nonetheless.

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  31. My grandfather’s old house in Iowa had an outhouse when I was little. I still remember the smell, very distinctive. And it was cold going out there.

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  32. Of course I’ve used an outhouse. I’ve gone camping.

    24 inch wide sink above a cabinet– I’m pretty sure I saw one at Home Depot. We have a small bathroom with a pedestal sink and it drives me crazy because there’s no place to store anything. I’ve been thinking of changing that since the day I moved into this house . . .

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  33. Yeah, pedestal sinks do nothing for me, and I suspect they’re a passing fad that will soon “date” a house.

    Chas, I’ve used outhouses a few times. In fact, one summer I went with a bunch of teenagers with a church group–we were just in the process of moving and didn’t end up attending that church, but the pastor had been in the youth group with my older brothers, and so we went to that church first before settling on one closer to our house. The teens were about to go on a camping trip, and my parents thought it might give us a chance to get to know some young people while they began to get settled into our new home. Anyway, the very first thing the guys did was dig and build an outhouse for all of us for the week. (Or possibly they brought the structure and just dug the hole, I don’t remember.) We also all went without showers for maybe three days, with no one complaining, though about the fourth day the pastor and his wife found a YMCA that allowed us all to shower.

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  36. A 1920s apartment I had featured the claw foot tub and a pedestal sink (original I think) with a separate huge wood dresser — of course the bathroom was the biggest part of that alert meant and my bathroom now is small-small-small

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  38. DJ I have recently seen some sinks like that at Lowe’s. Tile can be re surfaced and restored. Don’t go for a quick, cheap fix just so you can have it Monday. You will regret it for a lot longer than it will take for what you really want to arrive.

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  39. So, yesterday, ten year old told us what God has planned for him. “You know how God has a plan for each of us?” “Yep.” “I know His plan for me.” “What?” “Eating, I like food.” “That is a good plan.”

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  40. My husband went for lunch with our pastor, and he isn’t back yet. (I knew that would happen. Both men are talkers.)

    When my husband went off for lunch, the only sign of homemade chocolate chip cookies was butter left out to soften. Now, the only sign of homemade cookies is dirty dishes. What do you suppose he will think?

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  42. Called the plumber, he’ll do the demo and tub replacement Monday-Tuesday as planned, said the Vanity/sink can wait for when I get one I really like in another week or two. Said that’ll be an easy install, will only take a few hours – but this way the leak gets fixed and the new tub installed

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  48. going to try and talk to the physical therapist on her lunch break today. Not sure if she can help, but it is worth a conversation. Now to get someone to cover my recess duty.

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  50. I’m getting a basic steel tub (w/white enamel finish) that fits into the space 🙂

    Don’t even suggest I can have more choices I’ll have to make

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  55. I just made it easier for someone to get 57 . But I’m not going to stick around for that.
    Goon evening everyone.
    Not to bed yet, but I have reading and other things.

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  58. My mom recently had the deep tub at her home replaced with a shallower one. Those are nice for when you are young and flexible. Not so much as you age.

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  59. And I tend to be a quick shower person — baths are OK, but I’ve never been one to spend a lot of time doing that. So I think I’ll stick with the plain traditional style — if the people who wind up with my house after me want to add it, let them pick what they want. 🙂

    I think I need to keep some of these things a little less complicated for now — choosing a vanity is a big enough deal. (and still to come: foundation, windows, painting, plaster repair — and I have no idea what my bathroom will look like, if there will be damage to clean up with tiles, etc., when this particular plumbing job is done). 😦

    Overwhelming.

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  60. Keeping things less complicated is the most sensible thing I’ve heard here for some time.
    It is important as you get older.
    And you will all get older, I hope.

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