But What Is He DOING Way Up There On the Roof?

It has been breezy lately, but somehow, it never manages to blow all of the leaves off the roof. So on this day, my husband planned to get up on the roof and sweep off the leaves and clean the gutters. When he does that, I get to play step-and-fetch girl and chief ladder holder, so I was on the deck for the whole thing.

My husband was sweeping and leaves were raining down, when I suddenly heard a crunching through the leaves, followed by galloping noises. I looked down to discover LGK, the neighbor kitty, had joined us on the deck.

LGK (also known as Stryker) seemed quite concerned to discover my husband up on the roof, and he watched carefully for a while. This was a photo documenting the worried look. Shortly after, he commenced galloping again, and attacked some leaves. It was funny to watch. Then he settled into a chair for a long nap in the sun.

I'd say the whole roof sweeping episode lasted maybe 90 minutes or a bit more. Then I held the ladder while my husband came safely down. I swept off the leaves that HAD been on the roof that were NOW all over the deck.

At one point, I heard some creature charging through the leaves in the woods by our house. Given the size it sounded like, I figured it was a deer. Maybe not a huge deer, maybe a yearling fawn. "Sounds like a rhinoceros!" I said. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a RABBIT, bounding several feet off the ground. Wow! And this is how Rhino Rabbit got its name!

A soundtrack song for roof work: the Drifters, with Up On the Roof.


P.S. Here are some recent bits of other news from me. Yes, it's been a bang-up week.

1. I got my flu shot on my left upper arm on Monday. As soon as we got home, my upper arm swelled up and turned hot and bright pink and itchy. Cold packs and soothing gels worked to get it back to normal, but it was a worrisome experience.

2. On Tuesday, while getting into or out of the creek at Cherry Run, I got a big scratch on my left calf. By the next day, it had turned into a big purple bruise. I looked like Frankenstein, with a zipper. Or is that Frahnk-en-SCHTEEN??? "It sorta looks . . . like Greenland," my husband said.

3. I broke my chair on Tuesday. This is the second chair I've broken in two weeks. Clearly, I am in some sort of chair nexus. I am sitting down very, very carefully on chair number three!

4. While watching our butterfly eclose, I got a tick in our yard. It was attached to my upper thigh on the outside of my left leg. This was Tick #5 for the year for me. I removed it quickly and sent it in to the TickLab for analysis. I had only been in our yard that day, so it HAD to be from here. Two things happened this week: the tick bite got very, very itchy. And I got the results back from the TickLab: negative for Lyme, positive for Powassan. Since the tick was "unengorged" (did not have ANY of my blood in it), and I removed it quickly, it may not have been attached long enough to do any harm. Now, I don't know how much you know about Powassan, but it is a bad, bad thing, with no known vaccines or medicines to help. It is scary, scary business to know that we have this deadly thing in ticks living IN OUR YARD. My husband and I discussed the fact that, knowing this, we need to implement new measures of carefulness. Here are two: For any significant amount of time we spend in our yard, I will wear different clothes outside, and change and check myself for ticks when I come back in, using a hand mirror and the main bathroom mirror. And for any day that either or both of us spend in the yard, before bedtime, we will check each other for ticks. Oh, and BTW, I've had Helpful People recommend I slather myself in DEET or permethrin. How would YOU like to wear poison all day long around your own house? Also, permethrin is deadly toxic to CATS. You see the cute fellow in this photo? He's a CAT! If you use permethrin, keep it far, far away from your or anybody else's kitties.

5. I received an email from Shutterfly on October 24, stating that I haven't ordered from them in 18 months. If I do NOT order within the 28 days they've given me as a deadline, they have threatened to move all of my stuff to "reserve servers," where it's still there, but far less accessible to me. Photo book number 39, coming right up! So far, I'm not feeling it, but hey, a gal's gotta do what a gal's gotta do. Right?

6. On Thursday morning, when I got up and checked my email, I found a note with some disturbing language. It included my full first and last name, my address, and my land-line phone number. I read the email out loud to my husband. YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN HIS FACE. The note indicated that someone had been "keeping a tab on my pathetic existence for a while now," by monitoring my online activities, and was now blackmailing me and demanding payment to keep them from sending videos they have made of me - (using my computer camera, which they switched on remotely) doing obscene things while watching online porn - to everyone on my email list and all social media contacts. Weird and scary language. Pretty upsetting, actually, and cringey. But I instantly assumed it was a scam. (BTW, I do keep a piece of black tape over my computer's camera, a practice my husband has insisted on since he learned that hackers CAN gain access remotely and turn your computer's camera ON.) I searched online and discovered the EXACT language of the email sent to me. So it is a scam. But a scary one. Yes, even if you KNOW it is a scam, it really sucks to receive an email like that. Anyway, I forwarded it to Penn State IT security. They responded that I should send any "phishing attempts" to a specific email address for that sort of thing, and marked my issue as "resolved." Now, you notice that a thing that I did NOT say is "I never visit porn sites." This is largely true. But within the past month, I've clicked on a few seemingly innocent Facebook things that took me - NOT to view some silly pictures, which the preview promised - but to a porn site, full of videos of Completely Nakey People Doing the Nasty! TOTALLY AGAINST MY WILL! Instant click-away, get offline, power down the computer, hope they didn't install something horrible in that second or two I was there! The hackers are getting worse and worse.

7. The fire at Canoe Creek, a central PA state park that we just visited Thursday afternoon (it's located about an hour's drive from us), continues to burn.


Added later: So far, I've had insults to my upper left arm, my upper left thigh, and my left calf. Apparently, the left part of me is going up in flames! But I guess I'm still all right, all right, all right! Ha ha ha!