For the record: -Cat chasing her tail Sunday, round and round. What the heck? -Two bluebirds showed up Saturday—male and a female. Neither one the pair from last year. -Door installation guy (Adrian) just called. Said he would be here at 1:20 instead of 1:00 pm. He sounds young, but I'm not going to hold that against him, yet.
(12/5/22) Monday Adrian is just the door/window salesman. He was very nice. Reminded me of a very young Luciano Pavarotti. He apparently had lots of garlic for lunch. The man who will install the door has worked on many old houses in town, which is known for its old houses. That man will come by to make more specific measurements when the time comes. I'm going with steel. He downplayed the fiberglass unless I wanted it to look like real wood. It will be white. Who cares. Narrowed it down to two sizes of glass and two styles of internal grids last night. Below are the doors from the website, with very narrow standard casings which he kept calling brick mold. I thought brick mold was just trim. Anyway, my door has 6" casings. He said the installer could make anything work and look good. Taking his word for it. Leaning toward #3. Eight weeks to get it from the factory. That puts it into February. I'm not in a hurry. Obviously.
I think I figured out a way this door can be installed without removing any of the existing facings. They normally tear them out and use new ones, which are much smaller than old ones. If they do that there will be a lot of touch up work around the door—painting, replacing some vinyl siding and maybe even patching some plaster. I don't think all that is covered and not sure I want them to do it even if it is. It would probably take me years to get around to it. Their prehung doors come with already attached brickmold facing on the outside. They slip the door in from the outside and apply a new facing on the inside. It will only require shaving off 5/8" along the inside edge of the existing facings to make them flush with the studs after the old door jamb is removed. This cut will be covered by the new facings, so it doesn't have to be neat. The new facings will then sit on top of the old ones. It will look fine if they use the smallest facings they offer (2 inches ?). Still working on a sketch If this would work, the installer is probably already aware of it. If not, and he brushes me off, I may fix it the night before he shows up to measure, so he will have to listen. This is only possible because this company (claims) they can build the door jamb depth to custom order in 1/16" increments up to at least 6-9/16".
My left ear has started ticking occasionally. Or is it clicking? An irregular pattern. Very quiet. Only lasts for a minute or two. Some say tinnitus can be clicking instead of hissing. I would gladly trade hissing for this clicking. But now I have both. Another source says it isn't tinnitus, but muscle spasms. I think it will go away eventually. Speaking of muscle spasms... Woke up early with a cramp in foot. The outside edge kept turning upward. It was almost funny. Like it had a mind of its own. Determined not to get up. It was too early. Finally had to put a brick on top of it. (Just kidding. I put the other foot on top of it.) Seemed to work. My mother said she never had a muscle cramp in her life. I think she thought everyone else was just imagining it. She also said she never had a headache. I believe her about the cramp. It might be easy to miss a headache, but not a muscle cramp.
The door guys are coming tomorrow to measure. I'm going with door #4 (above), with glass all the way to the floor. Partly because it looks better from outside, and partly because of the cat. She looks out the door every time she walks by it. If it's near dinner time and I'm gone she watches out the door for me to come home. When she sees me she runs away and pretends she wasn't watching. She and the neighborhood cat used to bat at each other through the door window. She/they ruined every curtain I tried to put on the door. If I fixed her a window seat, I don't think she would use it. And then I'd have a hard time putting a curtain on the window. Six of one, half dozen of the other. Might as well keep at least one of us happy. She may outlast me. One advantage of a steel door–they make curtain rods with magnets. If I can find some with strong enough magnets, they can go anywhere on the door. I know they make small magnets that are powerful. Victor, the computer geek where I worked, brought by two small ones one day that I couldn't separate from each other they were so strong. That got me sidetracked looking for curtain rods. Then curtains. Then the bedroom upstairs needs curtains. It's painted very pale lilac. Then I ran across these. I don't think so. I have enough trouble just trying to keep the hedge trimmed back.
(12/15/22) Thursday The owner of the (small) remodeling business came by to do the final measurements for the front door. It did not go well at all. Either the salesman didn't tell him about the change I suggested, or else he ignored it. But he did listen, and said it should work fine and would be easy to do with a SawZall. His only problem was they never did it that way before. That usually means it's a bad idea. But this man is young, late 30s. His experience has been only with companies that depend on a large volume of sales, not quality of work (e.g. Window World). As an alternative he said they could take off the existing casings (frames), which are just plain 1"x 6" boards, and put them back exactly the way they were. At first this sounded like a great idea. But I decided against it. These casings have been on the house for decades. They have many layers of paint and caulking around the sides. In old plaster and lath houses, they often put the plaster on the walls after the doors and windows. They smeared the plaster up against the casings. When you break that bond, a chunk of plaster falls out. I have one window like that, where I've tried to repair the plaster on the edge. It just causes a chain reaction, and more plaster falls out. On the other hand, if you just replaced the casings with new 1"x 6"s, they would be smaller and leave a gap to touch up. And you'd have to paint them several coats. I do not want to do all that work, and I know they won't want to spend the time doing it, even if I paid them extra. After we agreed on the way to do it, I was ready to sign the papers, but they needed to go back and refigure the price first. I think I dodged a bullet there. I'm having serious doubts about their installers now. Update: .After I wrote all this, I got the new estimate over email. It is 24% less than the original one. The salesman said it was because the door is smaller. It isn't smaller. The frame is larger. I wasn't very nice during this encounter. Not usually my style. Did I scare him?
(12/22/22) Thursday All normal activity suspended here for the last week. I jinxed the cat when I chose the new front door style for her. She has been in another not-eating spell that began last Friday (12/16) morning. Pretty sure it is the FHV-1 virus again. Last time was 2 years ago and she recovered on her own, but it took over a week. There is a less hysterical description of this virus in the old Merck Vet Manual (online): Flare ups usually present as a fever and head congestion. Self-limiting. Keep hydrated and watch for secondary bacterial infections. The best treatment is systematic vaccination, because it lessens the severity of flare ups. Like last time, she has been staying just beyond arm's length. I was going to let her ride it out again, but she is getting old, and there could be complicating factors. And this time she wasn't drinking enough water. She just didn't look good at all yesterday. No more excuses. But how to catch her. She began sleeping almost on top of the heat vent in the floor to keep warm when this all started. Dry heat is not good for upper resp. infections. A few days ago I shut off the vent and threw an old blanket in a pile on top of the bed. She used to like to sleep balled up inside. She took to it. Well duh... Last night it dawned on me how to get this done. I put the larger carrier sitting up on its end with the door open. Scooped my arms around that whole blanket while she was sleeping and ran down the stairs with her tangled up and squirming inside. Stuffed the blanket in the carrier and shook her out. I don't think she knew what hit her. Called the Vet School ER and off we went. No one would understand what a big accomplishment this was. (To be continued)
(continued) No fever. Blood work showed nothing unusual. Slightly high white blood cell count, but not enough to indicate infection. They gave her subQ fluids and anti-nausea medication. Sent us home with a liquid appetite stimulant to shoot in her mouth from a distance (just kidding). I might be able to do that. There was an immediate turn around in her behavior. I've been through this with the goats, and even with my mother once. Late last night the cat ate some dry cat food. This morning more than her usual amount for breakfast, and about half of the normal wet food for dinner. All without any appetite stimulant. Yes! Would it have happened anyway? I don't think so. She wasn't upset with me at all after all that. Jumped up on my lap while I was watching TV and I was even able to peel the vet wrap off her leg from the blood draw. A miracle. Maybe she thinks the blanket did it? I didn't fully understand how vaccines worked before Covid. She got the round of all the vaccines her first year, but I haven't kept up with them with this cat, like the previous one. I will do the FHV-1 vaccine from now on (jinx). Once I posted here that this was the best cat I ever had. It's not true. I've learned that being able to pick them up whenever you have to outweighs a lot of things. I've got to solve this problem. Unfortunately I don't think the blanket trick will ever work again. She is not out of the woods yet, imo. Tomorrow is another day. If there is something else going on that didn't show up on blood work it would be more serious. I won't mention this again until she's either clearly out of the woods, or clearly not. Too much chance of roller coasters. Edited to add: It is now 5:45 pm. The cat is sleeping under the blanket again already. Amazing.
10:45 am Downstairs furnace not working this morning. It is 14 degrees outside and 61 in the kitchen, so it couldn't have been off all night. Might have been triggered by my blocking some vents, combined with the cold. There is probably a reset button somewhere that I don't know about. I'll fiddle around with it a bit. Might have to wait until it warms up enough to thaw out some parts. The upstairs attic unit now has only the small emergency heat coil, and it really can't keep up, but better than nothing. The old gas wall heater has been the main source of heat so far this winter. No moving parts to go bad. No electric starter to go off in a power outage. It can keep one room toasty on the lowest setting and the whole upstairs comfortable on medium. It seems things always go bad, and animals always get sick, on major holidays when things are closed. Maybe it's because there are so many holidays that occur during cold weather. I've almost come to dread them coming. I know it's just a coincidence.
i hope the sun shines..big time...and the furnace gets going...your little cat is what you want well...hugs
Thanks Teresa. She is still doing well today. Eating normally. Update: The end of the hose that drains the water from the furnace to outside was frozen. I thawed it out with the hair dryer. It's now draining into a large trash can in the basement. Furnace came on. Yes!
Yesterday a bluebird pair claimed the bird house for 2023. It doesn't mean they won't change their minds later. I don't think it is the same pair, but can't be sure. It was very cold and windy yesterday, and all the birds were hunched up with their feathers fluffed out. They all looked shorter and fatter. I got a video of both of them to study, but the focus was disappointing... LINK The larger summer vents on the bluebird house need to be closed and the sun shields removed, temporarily. I also want to put up a chickadee house. The house is ready. It just has to be secured to the other clothesline post. I have to get moving. The weather predictions have been spot on here this weekend. It's supposed to get to 38 degrees today. Bring it on. It's been too cold to even walk outside. I have mixed feelings about all this now. Just feeding the birds is fun. Worrying about little ones is too stressful at times.
(12/26/22) Monday I put a skillet on the stove to melt some bacon grease to strain and save. A habit inherited from my mother and grandmother. Went downstairs just to check on the water level in the trash can draining from the furnace. Got distracted. My mistake was to turn it on high. The white ceiling now has a slight gray tinge. Three options: paint the ceiling white again and hope the soot doesn't bleed through the paint, paint the ceiling gray, or do nothing. I'm leaning toward the 3rd right now.
If you paint, use this first: Kilz makes a bunch of primers, so check out which would be best for your situation. I used it when my oil floor furnace blew greasy smoke all throughout my house. One thing I learned from a contractor is that the Kilz in a spray can is different than the brush-on Kilz. So if a stain bleeds through the brush-on Kilz, the spray will cover it up. I've seen work it first-hand. Either way, you need plenty of ventilation when you use it.