Some days it feels like I’m out collecting pollen and just when I’m overloaded, I can’t figure out where the hell I’m supposed to take it to…I think that means I’ve lost my focus. Or maybe I never had any.
The Cat Under the House isn’t working out well at all. Scout is making me crazy. She ripped another one of the vent covers off of the foundation trying to stick her nose into the hole and bark at the cat. I have visions of the cat kicking back with a bowl of wine, eating a centipede danish, laughing it’s ass off out how stupid the dog is.
We have a small grass circle in the back that we set up for Scout to roll around on and relax on, she even eats at times because she’s a true grazer. Dan drove a spike at the edge and now when I’m doing something in the back, I leash her to the spike. She’s quite sneaky. She will go lay in the back and watch me work on bushes and weeding, etc., and when she knows I’m not looking, she sneaks off to try to get to a vent cover in the front.
The floor vents in the house still drive her crazy too — in certain parts of the house. When I first moved into this place, you needed a hazmat suit to even navigate through the filth and mess and it took me a week of coming in, scouring with bleach products on the walls, the floors, five or six trips to the dump with the Silver Steed stuffed to the max to get it livable.
One of the creepy parts was the floor vents. I ordered new covers and had to reach down into them with rubber gloved arms/hands to clean out the crud that had fallen in. Rather than have the general debris of life slip down into them again, I cut window screen and set it into the top of the vent and put the cover over it. Now I can undo the cover and easily vacuum/clean out anything that fell in. So…I took fabric softener sheets — Bounce, and put them in between the screen and the vent cover to try to disturb Scout’s scentse (yeah, I know) of smell and keep her disinterested. It has helped but she still tries to sniff out a cat.
I don’t know what I will eventually do, leave the access for the cat, or block it. As Dan said, “She’s high strung and no matter what it is, something is always going to bother her.” It’s true. She has her crazy fits over anything going by on the street and the Hoodlum’s dog in the back — and them if they are out on property — and any number of issues.
Speaking of the Hoodlums, they are on top of my ‘wish you’d win the lottery and move to the Bahamas list.’ What an ugly eyesore that property is and it never improves. They managed to hook up their 2-fence-post-2-panel-chain-link-fence to my corner post again. Long argument over this, they’ve been told by me, they’ve been told by Monte, I sent them snail mail and threatened to go the police, they took it down and then suddenly put it back up last week. I went out and unhooked it.
It’s now a matter of “You are never hooking to my fence, dip-tards!” and if I have to argue this one more time with them, I will be at the Sheriff’s Office filing a complaint. I heard Virgle, the head chief over there, just got out of jail again. Perhaps he can find another reason for a much needed vacation where they serve free food.
I’ve often wondered why Murphy’s law has to come skulking around to ruin a perfect situation. I love my property. No one on the right, my sis on the left, no one across the road from me, Jim and Mary are kitty-corner across the road and great neighbors except for the fence jumping pit/English bulldog Molly. They do do their best with Molly though. And then the Hoodlums are right behind me to ruin the whole landscape and peace and serenity of the desert.
Monte nicknamed them the Hoodlums. Now everyone in our area calls them that. There are reasons.
*****
On the next issue of Murphy’s Law overstepping its boundaries. I recently had an external Seagate hard drive bite the dust. Out of a clear blue sky, no warning, just puke. I can’t begin to express how unhappy I am with that catastrophe. It had backup files and pictures from years back on it. The super downside is that I was subscribed to Carbonite last year up until October and it backed up my pc, that drive, and did a mirror image drive of the operating system on another external drive. I started having issues with Carbonite and they kept telling me to call support. Ask me how much I hate support phone calls sometimes. “Please listen carefully because our options have changed. You will be rerouted to hell where no one speaks English and you will like it. If you don’t like that option, piss off.”
OK, maybe that’s reaching but my yearly subscription was coming due so I cancelled it. Now I wish I hadn’t. I’ve checked and they keep nothing past 30 days. I’m back…subscribed one more time due to that fright night with the Seagate drive.
Seagate has a recovery procedure but they charge $700 for it. Gee…thanks. I’ve had several Seagate drives and after doing some research, the word is they are only good for about 18 months to two years before they take a dive. I can’t find a support number for them…maybe they get too much grief from unhappy people like me. I went to their Facebook page and posted my unhappiness and that went somewhere else besides their main page. That’s another thing I hate, support that isn’t support, it’s just a circle of unaccomplishment that leaves you frustrated.
I took the drive out of its case and put it in my pc. Nothing. I sent the drive over to Amy’s house where she has several pcs and different operating systems. Nothing. I took it in to MasterTech out here in Pahrump, long — headache — tedious — accomplish nothing, more irritation. They told me there is a guy in Vegas that can recover the contents for $7,000. Seriously? I’ll get right on it boys.
The real downside is that I had just started backing up another external drive to Amazon.com storage and that one was next but it died the day before I was ready to start. Fuck you, Murphy!
*****
Dan saw this guy on the property a few days ago. Then Scout and I returned from a desert walk the following day and both just about jumped out of our fur/skin when it started moving right in front of us on my keyhole tile walk directly in front of the house. It must have some hunting/slithering pattern — like a certain area. It’s not the same one I saw last year out here but it’s about the same size. This one is over four feet long. I raced in for the camera and followed it to the car shed where it disappeared off into the desert outside my fence.
It is funny, Scout stayed away from it — which pleases me — but we both were startled. Now I keep expecting to see one when I’m out on the property. Scout has been vaccinated against rattlesnake venom (no, this isn’t a rattlesnake) but I often wondered if she would run up to a snake and check it out. At least I feel better knowing that she won’t. The only time I feel she would get nailed is in the desert because she’s always sniffing under brush and dead mesquite limbs where the chipmunks and rabbits hide…perfect for a snake to wait for small prey too.
So…next post will be on the visit to the Pahrump Winery when Carmen, Danielle, and Sylvia came out to celebrate my birthday with great food and enjoy the day. It was awesome.
Laters, Kids.