an ounce of prevention...........

I was securing the yard for the approaching Hurricane (Irene)  Putting away lawn furniture, and grill and plants and bird feeders and wind chimes (lots of stuff outside)  Hmmmm I have one more thing to deal with- the Gazebo- thing, whatever you want to call it.  I'm all by myself and it was insanely humid and I had been going for about an hour and if I take the thing down, I'm going to have to clear out a spot in the to put it garage. I'm also going to have to get the ladder out of the shed.

I look across the street, My neighbor , Rich, has one of those Gazebo things in his yard. His is still up. He's a very responsible homeowner. He must know what he's doing.  Hmmmm I'll take the canvas cover off my thingy and just leave the frame up. This way the tropical storm winds will just blow harmlessly through the frame and not use the canvas as a sail. I take off the canvas.

post hurricane- I check the yard some branches and a tree limb are down, but overall not too bad. In the back yard there is the Gazebo thingy, all in one piece. I look across the street at my neighbors house- his gazebo thingy is destroyed! It's in shreds! All over his yard, in fact it was picked up and catapulted over his fence and half in his next door neighbors yard. Ooops. I will admit that a part of me wonders if he looked over into my yard and figured that if I left it up he could too.........Nah.

My favorite thing about the Hurricane is that for the whole day before and day of  the cat never left my side. If I walked into another room he was right next to me,  when I sat down, he sat curled up beside me. I'm sure he knew something was up and he wanted to make sure that he was at the center of the action.

Here are two observations about the cat- he has a corner of the den where he puts all his stuff. All his toys go in the corner. He takes something out, bats it around for a bit and then puts it back when he's finished. If I take something out and try to get him to play, he'll shoot me a look and then pick it up and put it back with the others.

Upstairs I have a room with all my books and the computer- I'll be fancy and call it the library. When I sit in there and work the cat joins me and sits in the middle of the floor, with a pencil between his paws. Only in that room. He keeps the pencil on the floor by a shelf and when we settle in he goes and gets the pencil and sits. Sometimes he'll try to  pick it up between his front paws, but mostly he just sits there, with the pencil in front of him.

I have a feeling he would enjoy jotting down a few ideas, but the lack of  thumbs and a blank sheet of paper prevent him