Mary Rehab and Rodent Wars

I’m finally getting some time at home despite the Favorite Panamanian’s continuing info war to convince me to visit Canada. I’m a veteran of these PR campaigns so we’ll probably end up in the Great White North in September. Today we finally have what I consider a true New England summer day. The past few weeks brought back unwelcome memories of my time living in the south with pervasive humidity and high temperatures. I’m hearing something in the news about global warming 😊. We now have a full presidential ticket for both parties. I’ve got to learn more about this democratic governor but anything is more acceptable than the madman leading the republican ticket. You would have to know me to know how much it hurts to say I can’t vote republican again this year. Trump is just too dangerous to put back in power. It remains the biggest mystery of my life how people I respect and truly like can support this fraud and want to entrust him with the presidency. He doesn’t have a leadership bone in his body.

Rehabbed Statue Back Above the Roses

On a much more mundane level I’ve engaged in yet another war with the back yard rodents. Somehow, I was drawn into a two-front war. A mouse ran out from under some of the covered Deckzilla chairs. Then, I took the cover of the grill recently and another really well-fed mouse ran between my feet which immodestly took up some unpracticed dance moves. Being thoroughly embarrassed at my reaction, I declared war. I put in traps next to the propane tank and under the chairs. I was rewarded the next day with a dead mouse under the grill but suffered some collateral damage with a chipmunk under the chairs. I moved the effort strictly under the grill and took out two more mice over the next two days. I haven’t found any more in the last two days so I’m about to make a George W. declaration. The other front involved my perpetual foes, the backyard squirrels. I thought I’d defeated their efforts to pillage the bird feeder with a Vaseline coated pole. I found one burrowing into the feeder and then saw they had figured out how to jump from the ground up to the feeder. While I was impressed, I went out and elevated the feeder another foot which seems to have thwarted them for the nonce. The ball is in their court though I’m confident they’ll figure something out. More of a stalemate there.

Statue After Initial Cleaning

Retaining Wall under Construction

We’ve added another chapter to the decapitated Virgin Mary statue which I’ve written about before. We all know my Favorite Panamanian is as serious a catholic that there is; although don’t make the mistake of calling her a fanatic (I only did that once and it was the stuff of nightmares). One of her proudest possessions within her vast garden complex is that statue. It’s had a hard life. Its head was first knocked off by Buddy the Wonder Pooch when we lived across the street. A couple years later, after a repair with cement, the FBR knocked it off again during an unfortunate snow saucering collision. I once again repaired it and gave it a full rehab, including painting it white. The Favorite Panamanian was pleased. Fast forward to now and she was unhappy that the surrounding rose bushes had prospered under greenest of thumbs and now obscured the statue. In addition, the decapitation scars were showing as some of the paint had flaked off. I was charged with rectifying the situation.

In Its New Home

She didn’t like my first course of action which was to cut the roses back; actually she was more horrified than anything else. If the bushes couldn’t come down then the statue had to go up. I had a bunch of retaining wall bricks from my recent garden stair repairs and she approved a plan to create a small retaining wall to lift the statue up. That was much easier said than done, especially with my back and shoulder barking at me (getting old is not for the weak of heart). I extracted the statue to clean and paint it. While that dried, I tied back the rose bushes since putting the wall in with thorns digging into my back was a non-starter. While my wife was a little nervous about that, she agreed not to come out and “supervise” until I was done. I had to get a little creative with the bottom row since the granite had migrated below ground, so leveling the bricks was a challenge.

The most fun though was carrying the eight large buckets of dirt down the hill to fill in the new enclosure. This was from the dirt pile I made a couple years ago when I created the backyard patio. Carrying it down the hill was so much easier than up. I tamped that dirt down as hard as I could get it and then put in the base blocks the statue stands on. Getting the statue back in place was fairly easy although I rubbed some of the paint off again. There was enough spray paint left to fix that before inspection by the Favorite Panamanian. That went well as, in a surprising development, she had no suggestions about how I could have done it better. Now, all that is left to do is somehow retard the growth of the rose bushes.

We managed a date night at the movies yesterday to see The Instigators. This was so funny and so Boston. Damon and Affleck play two complete idiots charged with making a high level robbery that goes wrong every way possible. It reminded me a little bit of the Sellers classic, Being There, on a different level entirely. There’s an amazing supporting cast, including one of my true favorites, Hong Chau. She can do no wrong and she shines as a hostage/therapist to the idiots. There were so many inside Boston jokes that I found myself laughing almost continuously. Although this isn’t getting a lot of love from critics, I really loved this movie. Damon and Affleck are so good.

Five movies fell in the A-Z watch, all keepers: Lady in Cement, Sinatra was the definition of cool and a young Raquel Welch, Yikes!; Lake House, love this movie, don’t know why, feels almost lyrical, Keanu and Sandra, such chemistry; Lake Placid, silly monster movie but features foul mouthed Betty White, too funny; La La Land, re-captures you every time you watch it, so wish the imaginary montage at the end was the real story; Larry Crowne, Hanks awesome as his everyman character.

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RECURRING CHARACTERS:                                

ABFA – Amazing Best Family Athlete - my daughter in law; BR3 – Blog Reader #3 – granddaughter #3; BRS - Blog Reader the Sequel - second granddaughter; Cantankerous Friend – friend since grade school who likes to argue about everything, poses as radical leftist to attract women; CRC - Connecticut Riverboat Captain – another close friend from high school, renowned sailor of the big river; Curbside Girls – close friends of my daughter acquired during him her single days in Brooklyn; Deckzilla – our backyard deck which grew to monstrous dimensions once my wife got involved in planning; Favorite Panamanian - the wife (of course); FBR - First Blog Reader - first granddaughter; First Friday – celebrations to mark the First Friday of the Week; Great Aunt - my elder sister; Keene Friends 1 & 2 – friends since high school from my home town of Keene, NH; Kindergarten Friend – friend since kindergarten whom I reunited with after many years; Maine and Virginia Musqueteras – two close friends of my wife – her US sisters, my wife is the 3^rd Musquetera (musketeer); Namesake Nephew – son of Great Aunt and Soxfather named after me; Neighborhood Mafioso - wife's close friend and Panamanian mafia member; PanaGals – female relatives /friends of my wife from Panama; Panamanian/Latin Mafia – inevitable group of Latino friends my wife accumulates wherever we have lived & their spouses; PCR - Pittsburgh College Roommate – high school friend, also a “Minor Celebrity” in Pittsburgh; PCR+1 - Pittsburgh College Roommate’s wife; Riggins - also known as the Grandpuppy, son's dog; Seis Amigos - two couples from our condo complex and my wife and I; Soxfather – my brother in law; Tia Loca – wife’s younger sister; Wingman – my son in law; Wingmom – Wingman’s mom, of course