Hannah's Scribblings

One of the things that can make me just so irritated is the amount of strays that roam the country and how they came to be strays. Most of them come from the city folk (pardon the expression) who just dump their unwanted animals on the most convienent country road and drive off; either not knowing or not caring about the poor animal’s chance of survival. The vast majority of these stories do not have happy endings. The strays either get run over, or become feral; roaming the woods and fields in search of food–which they usually take from farm animals. Because they were once tame, these animals do not have the fear of humans or the sense of how to  survive on their own that the always wild ones do; and therefore are more dangerous, both to themselves, humans and their property.

This story that I am telling now, however, does have a happy ending. Or will, one of these days.

Mom took Opal for their customary walk down the road this morning. Along the way they found a roadkill that used to fit the description of a cat. In the ditch on the side of the road was a paper bag. The paper bag began making the most unhappy sounds and eventually out crawled a bedraggled, bur-covered miserable slip of a kitten. In lieu of its real mother, the poor little thing adopted Miss Opal and Mom. What it lacked in size and respectable appearance it more than made up for in persistance. For a whole mile it followed them, sometimes weaving in and out of Opal’s legs, sometimes snuggled in Mom’s arms.

The kitten had a mixed reception here at the house. I was startled by the return of three, when I had clearly seen two leave, but took it to the bathroom to clean up. Jake alternated between viewing it as a threat and viewing it as a play-thing…neither was exactly what you would call “helpful”. Ellie (our resident feline Queen) hissed at the intruder from a safe distance. Opal was slightly overwhelmed but surprisingly not opposed to this interesting creature. She even allowed it to lay next to her, as long it didn’t come too close. The kitten just desperately to be cuddled and to have food in her belly.

This afternoon, Mom and I took the kitten to the vet’s. We returned home with kitten food, replacer milk, a bed, a toy and a confirmed 3 week-to-4 week old female kitten who will answer to the name of “Cricket”.

So, we now have an unexpected new addition to our household menagerie: Cricket the long-haired kitten.

Pictures will follow soon.

Today, as per my usual Thursday routine, I hopped on my bike to go down and clean church. This hardly qualified as my most pleasant ride: the rain that had so deceptively let up for 20 minutes before I left did not stay absent. 

The neighbor who lives four houses down from us (in other words 1/10 of a mile) owns a couple dogs who do not particularly like my weekly trek through “their” territory. Mr. G is usually home and is very good about  keeping them in check. Today, however, he was not home. I was already a wee bit cranky about the drenching, and apparently Ebony (one of Mr. G’s dogs) was too. She came running alongside my bike, nothing unusual about that. What was unusual was when she reached over and sunk her teeth into my leg. My response was of course a yelp; I believe I yelled “Ouch!! Ebony, you bit me!” She slunk off back home; I made my way home as well, though a little slower than before.

As soon as Mom saw the injury, she rushed me back out to the drive way (but into the Mountaineer this time) and down to the doctors. We don’t know if Ebony has had her rabies shot, you see. At the doctor’s I had to fill out a report to the Health Department about the dog–well, I guess you could call it “dog attack”. Now when the HD comes out, Ebony will have to be put in quarantine, and if Mr. G can’t prove that she is rabies-free…they will have to put her down.

Mr. G took all this really well when we stopped on our way home to tell him. He was very sorry, very upset at Ebony and not the slightest bit upset at us (I’m really praying that he can find her rabies tag–I’d rather keep it that way).

Here’s a picture of my leg:

You know, when I said I was interested in the Medical field, I sort of meant the the other side: the side doing the fixing up.

The photographer is yours truly, who, by the way, did no ambushing.

I’m not used to being busy. Well, I guess that isn’t quite true: I am quite used to being busy in an around-the-house kind of way; but the kind of busy that involves a full calendar, that’s rather unusual for me. At least, it was until these past few weeks.

A great deal of this newfound business has come from finding, registering in and preparing for an EMT course.

As great as the local volunteer fire department is in an emergency, they do have just one problem: they are practically impossible for me to get a hold of on the non-emergency line. This was presenting just a wee little bit of a hurdle for me, as I wanted to talk to someone in the Emergency Medical Service before committing to any one particular EMT course. Who knew there were so many in my area! As it turned out, direction came to me from a rather surprising source: an ambulance parked close to us at a gas station. They were very nice and very helpful, and in addition to a lotof other information, suggested I go through Ivy Tech or a National Registry place.  I might also mention that a girl and her mother coming literally out of the blue (each with a complete–and sometimes overlapping–list of questions) didn’t seem to faze them at all. Hm, I wonder if that has happened to them before…

After spending all (if it wasn’t really all, it sure felt like it!) last Monday online and on the phone (I don’t even want to know what that phone bill looked like), I decided on a local Ivy Tech. And since Ivy Tech prefers to have applications turned in via internet, I got to know their help desk rather well. It really was a helpful help desk…not to mention friendly and patient.

Last Wednesday, my church had a Vespers service, in which we discussed the future of the adult Bible Study. It starts again October 6th, and like last year the women of the church will be feeding and tutoring some neighborhood children for an hour before it. Looks like my future Wednesday evenings will be full!

Last Saturday I had an all day class at the Red Cross County Chapter, renewing my Adult CPR/AED, Infant CPR and First Aid certification. In addition to the actual classes, I had a very nice long conversation with an elementary teacher whose focus is on kids with Autism. And while I was at the Red Cross, my Ivy Tech acceptance letter came in the mail. I’m in! The course doesn’t start until January, though. That does give me time to take my CPR for the Professional Rescuer class at the Red Cross…sometime in December.

To conclude this long post and the tale of my full schedule, the Good News Club at the local Elementary school starts back up next week. I will be helping again this year, however I will not be getting pink eye again! No thank you!

Any rate, now my Tuesday afternoons shall be full as well.

Yeesh. I’m not used to this.

Click here for a humorous and, if I’m honest, retelling a certain event in recent family history.

The story of a dress

Last Sunday I taught an impromptu children’s Sunday School: impromptu meaning absolutely no warning that there were going to be children at church at all until they showed up. It was rather interesting, actually. It was a brother and a sister, both of whom I had seen before but neither of whom I had actually had a chance to talk to.

After much searching by all three of us, we managed to locate a lesson from the current Sunday School book (Jesus’ parable about the wise man building his house on a rock and the foolish man building his on the sand). We took turns reading the Bible verses and then I told them we were going to do something different. We were going to see what the difference was between a house built on a rock and a house built on sand. What I didn’t tell them was that I was making this up as I went along!

So, here is my own lesson plan for Matthew 7:24-29.

For each person there:

1. A Bible
2. A paper plate (from the kitchen)
3. A styrofoam cup (kitchen)
4. A large flat rock (gathered from the church driveway)
5. Large handful of sand or dirt (also from the driveway)
6. Pitcher of water
7. Youthful lungs and excitement over being encouraged to make a mess

The rock and sand went on the plate. We cut out houses (brightly and wildly colored) and stands from the cups. I suppose it would have been easier to have made the house from another plate, but such a thing only occured to me in hindsight.

Next we went outside to simulate a storm, much to the rising enthusiasm of the kids. The sand quickly turned to mud and sunk the house, but I’m afraid that the House on the Rock did not quite line up with the lesson: when the winds came, the rock stood firm but the house went flying. 

All involved had a good time and those people on their way into church got some free entertainment.

Warning: I am “current” on the TV show Smallville and there are probably a few spoilers below that reflect that.

Of my own free will I do solemnly admit that I am a Smallville fanatic. There are many shows that I enjoy: The Pretender, all Star Treks, Alias, Lois and Clark, Cold Case, Numb3rs; but only Smallvillecan get me so excited that I need to write such a lengthy post.

It started back in 2001. As a family we had watched the show about young Superman for a season and a half when it first aired before the run of especially freaky freak of the week’s began to dull our interest. So, we stopped watching after the season 2 episode “Visage”. A few years passed, without anything to bring Smallville back to our attention. And then, in 2006, we were flipping through channels and caught the first two episodes of season 6 (“Zod” and “Sneeze”) on reruns. I immediately fell in love with the new Kryptonian elements and the character of Lois Lane (who, by the way, I mistakenly thought was Clark’s girlfriend even before I heard her name mentioned). I wanted to start watching again right away, but Dad said we should wait until we could re-watch the entire series on Netflix; after we finished our Star Trek marathon. Summer of  ‘08, Smallville started coming in the mail. We got the shock of our lives when the very next episode right after we stopped watching proved to be the start of a spectacular story arc, one that had the whole family engrossed. Talk about irony.

We continued to watch Smallville via Netflix until the season 4 finale; at which point we looked at each other, looked at the “To Be Continued” and of one accord went off to town to buy seasons 1-6 on DVD. Much to my extreme annoyance, season 7 wasn’t released on DVD until the week before season 8 premiered. I did my best, truly I did, but even so by the time we had finished 7, 8 was already about 1/3 of the way through. I had to wait. I even managed to wait somewhat patiently.

On August 25, 2009, season 8 of Smallville was released to DVD and this year, I wasn’t taking any chances whatsoever. We finished watching all 22 episodes on Monday, with 2 and 1/2 weeks to spare before season 9 airs on TV; and what’s more, we are watching it–poor reception and uncertain audio not withstanding. If the ratings aren’t high enough to do season 10, it will not be my fault!

So, what is it about Smallville that I love so much?

Well, a lot of it has to do with the way Tom Welling plays Clark (the perpetual Lana-angst aside) and how the writers and producers have set up the character’s Kryptonian heritage. Stories about orphans discovering their heritage and lineage have always struck a chord with me. (I don’t know why, seeing as how I’m not an orphan and have a very clear idea of where I have come from.) It just made more sense to me that Clark would visibly struggle, first with the mystery and then with the truth, about his alien lineage than for it just to be part of the background, like it was in Lois and Clark. His “superhero” status is of course a main part of “Superman” but really it’s that lineage story that fascinates me—and that is what a large focus of Smallville is about. 

I know a lot of the fans are upset that even after 8 seasons, Clark hasn’t become “Superman”. But I have always thought that the “Superman” that Smallville is leading up to is more than blue spandex, red undies on the outside and a cape–it is more representative of a balance between his destiny and daily life; a balance that Smallville Clark has yet to achieve. Truth is: he’s already a “super hero” through his “Red/Blue Blur” role. What he has yet to learn is how to balance out both sides of his life. Clark has made great progress towards that balance from his “human side” in season 8 and the reason I’m so excited about season 9 is because it sounds like he is going to come closer to that balance from the other side of the coin this year.

And then, of course, there is Lois Lane who is so…Lois. The interaction between Smallville Lois and Clark reminds me very much of my favorite literary romances: Elizabeth and Darcy of Pride and Prejudice, Sir Gareth and Lady Linnet of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table, and Shasta/Cor and Aravis of The Horse And His Boy. Needless to say, whenever Lois an Clark are in a scene together, I’m hooked.

So, now after saying all that good stuff about Smallville, for the sake of objectivity I shall now admit the bad: there are parts of the show that I don’t like. For one thing, the morals have gone down a bit now that the Smallville High days are over.

Another is the character of Lana Lang for the simple reason that she was very reactionary. She hardly ever made decisions for herself; she waited until she was backed into a corner, and even then she usually took the easy way out. Also the Lana-Clark rollercoaster/train wreck of a relationship got old pretty quickly, but it just kept coming back.

 So, what’s a Smallville-obsessed girl to do for 2 weeks while waiting for season 9? Re-watch seasons 1 through 8 “The Best Of” style? Haunt the Smallville wikiadespite a stated intention to go spoiler free? I believe I am driving my family slightly loony with my impatience, and the Smallville message boards aren’t exactly of the highest quality: people there can get really vicious on there really quickly. Then, Friday, a wonderful thing happened. NarniaWeb opened a Smallville Special Feature. If it follows the normal pattern of special features, it should run for two weeks–ending right as season 9 starts. I am in bliss.

I know I haven’t posted much on here lately; so I’ll try to update more regularly this month.

Meantime, here’s an update to make up for the lack of posts:

As I mentioned in one of those posts about MA’s thumb, I’ve decided to take an EMT course just to have those skills just in case I ever needed them. Now, after having spent a lot of time looking into EMT and Paramedic courses, I have changed my mind. I’ll be (hopefully) starting an EMT course this fall with the view to becoming a full or part-time Paramedic. I’m really looking forward to it.

I’m still writing and still loving it. Writing has still felt right; and I’ve expanded out of my comfort zone. I’ve even started writing some poetry; which, while being no where near Shakespeare, has been enjoyable and fulfilling. I’m thinking of doing something like NaNo this year, only  instead of writing the first draft of completely a new story, I’m going to try to finish one of my stories. Now there’s a novel idea…I do freely admit that I have focus issues.

Well, there’s a load of laundry with my name on it, so I better get off here and take care of it. Hopefully I can get another post up today.

Saturday, MA helped me–or I guess I should say I helped him–stain my floor. I know I originally wanted a white-wash stain, but they didn’t have it at the little local hardware store. It was either buy a natural stain or wait until I could go to all the way down to Lowe’s. I got the natural and, in hindsight, I am so glad I did! It’s not what I wanted, but it is absolutely perfect.

After the stain and finish dried, I moved back into my room. I have to say, having all my stuff back in the same four walls is really nice. Everyone else sharing this house thinks so too.

My room isn’t quite finished. I still have to build a semi-loft bed, get a door, put up trim, build a corner desk, buy an armoire (or something that could fulfil the same function), buy a big comfy chair and get curtains; hopefully somewhat in that order.

Here’s a whole gaggle of pictures:

By the way, those boxes are going to be stored under the semi-loft bed. The corner which they now occupy is going to be to Writer’s Nook corner. But that’s another day, another post and another paycheck.

The wall is not that headboard’s final resting place. I was just afraid I’d go to my own final resting place if I tried to prop it in place before the bed is built.

That is the mirror from Friday’s Shopping. I paired it up with my 1909 Singer Sewing machine to be vanity…until the sewing bug bites.

P.S.

To Whom It May Concern:

Pine one-by-fours, stained with a natural stain and given only one coat of satin polyurethane is still tremendously slick. This I know from seeing Mom’s arms and legs considerably higher than the rest of her, and her lowest point being about a foot above the floor. The flight was memorable. So was the landing, albeit for different reasons.