one down, one to go

Holly, the little brown puppy, was adopted this afternoon, and fingers are crossed that it all works out. This just leaves little Sammy to find a home before I move to Orlando in 17 days. The kitties, of course, need to be adopted, too, but at least they have a decent place to go when I leave. Our land is set up for kitties, not puppies, and mom's house has too many dogs to add yet another. Anyway, I put this video together last night, while Holly was still at my house. It's set to music by The Gossip. I figured the lyrics when you left me my heart done stopped were appropriate for animals, all of whom had been abandoned.

Damn, Friday the 13th, you don't disappoint.

Today sure has been a Friday the 13th.

Velvet went to the vet to get spayed today. This meant that she got to spend last night in my house, being kept away from food and water. Given that I have four other hungry and thirsty critters in my house right now, I didn’t want to put up all the food and water in the house; instead I put Velvet in her crate. And she cried ALL NIGHT. I had her at the vet bright and early, and went home and passed out.

Two hours later, I was awakened from blissful sleep (buried under a pile of canines and Charlie) by my mother calling in a fury: her truck wasn’t working.

Now let’s back up a little bit. Remember last Saturday, when my mom bought herself a pickup? Well, we’d gone to a couple of dealers looking for a used Ford Ranger 4 cylinder with a manual transmission. The used car section of the local Toyota dealer had a white Ford Ranger with a manual transmission. We took it for a test drive, and liked it. Mom asked the salesman if it was a 4 cylinder or a V6, because she was looking for a 4 cylinder. He said he didn’t know, but would check. He went out and popped the hood, and came back with the answer that it was a 4 cylinder. We asked for the CarFax. He printed it out, but we got distracted chatting with him and forgot to look at it.

Mom bought the truck. She paid with a check.

It seemed to be a good purchase, although my mom kept having a hard time shifting into third. I remember when I first switched from my 1979 Volvo to my 2003 Toyota Echo, I had a hard time getting it to go into third, simply because it was slightly different from what I used to – I figured mom was having the same problem. As she has a six month warranty, Mom stopped by the dealer yesterday complain that the transmission was sticking – and to pick up the CarFax. She was told that nothing was wrong with the transmission because, “Nothing can go wrong with a manual transmission.” They didn’t even look at it. (As someone who had her manual transmission go out on her in the middle of an intersection once – granted this was the ’79 Volvo and it was 19 years old at the time – I can tell you that things most definitely DO go wrong with manual transmissions on occasion. What bullshit.) Then mom got home and took a look at the CarFax… which said that her truck was a V6. We looked under the hood – yep, six spark plugs = V6. She had specifically wanted a 4 cylinder because she wasn’t going to be hauling anything and she wanted the better gas mileage from the smaller engine.

So mom called the dealer. When she told the salesman the truck was a V6, first he insisted that oh no, it was *definitely* a 4 cylinder; he had looked and there were only four spark plugs. Eventually he decided that OK, maybe it was a V6 – but my mom really needed the V6 anyway for all the hauling she was going to be doing. Yeah. He tried to give her a V6 sales pitch. Of course my mom was upset, because while we *might* have bought the truck anyway had we known it was a V6, we would have also gone to Jacksonville to look at some other options first. She argued with the sales guy, and he spoke with his manager… the best they could promise her was that if in the next few weeks they found a comparable-value 4 cylinder, they would trade her. Hah. We figured we were stuck with it. Still, we liked it, except for the sticky transmission and the gas mileage of the V6.

Last night, while doing her electronic banking, mom noticed that the dealer hadn’t cashed her check. We joked about stopping the check.

And then this morning as my mom was driving, she went to downshift and found that it would not go into ANY gear. (Newsflash: this is what happens when a manual transmission goes bad.) She was only a couple blocks from her mechanic, so he came and looked at it; his judgment was that the transmission was shot, and that she’d have to get it re-built. Mom called the dealer, and they sent a wrecker to pick her and the truck up.

The wrecker was driven by one of mom’s former students. She convinced him to swing by the bank first, so she could stop payment on the check. Hah!

Once arriving at the dealer, mom discovered that the salesman was now saying that he had NEVER told her that it was a 4 cylinder… but, ooops… the sales paperwork had the truck written up as a 4 cylinder, not as a V6. The dealer was FURIOUS that mom had stopped payment on the check, and told her that it was illegal for her to do that, and that they could have her arrested, but that “out of the goodness of their heart” they wouldn’t call the cops. Dude, seriously?

Anyway, mom got them to agree to refund her $400 for her van (which has apparently already been sent to the crusher) plus the $35 for stopping payment on the check. Not sure how she managed this, as I wasn’t there. (They were worried that the title change might have already gone through, and that they’d be hella out of luck if we got the title in the mail and didn’t want to give it back, so this might be why they became cooperative.) Of course, we don’t yet *have* this money yet, so god knows if we’ll get it. Allegedly they were supposed to call us if they got it fixed and we wanted to re-purchase it. They insisted that surely it was something minor like the clutch (mom’s mechanic says the clutch is fine) or “just a lock on the transmission that needs to be removed” (can we say ‘bullshit’??) – but not surprisingly, they never called.

THEN… mom’s car (her 1997 Ford Escort) wouldn’t start. It had sat un-driven over the past week since the arrival of the truck, so we thought perhaps it had a dead battery. Until we were unable to jump it from my car. Mom called her mechanic again, and he came over to take a look. The starter was dead. As in the starter that he replaced last month. Yeah. So he’s going to take the starter back to the auto-parts store and get it swapped for a new one. He says he’ll be able to get a free new starter, but mom will still have to pay him for labor to install it. Joy.

We picked Velvet up at the vet and took her to my house, and then sat through a torrential downpour. Our next destination was the land, but I was NOT driving my car through the water obstacle (er, “road”) after all the rain. We parked and walked out there, wading down the road on foot. While out there, we discovered that Honey (my horse) has developed some major swelling in the lymph node area under her jaw, so we’re going to have to get the vet out there to look at her. (It doesn’t seem to be bothering her, but it can’t be good for her, either.) Then when we walked back out, Mama Cat followed us the half mile back to the car, including picking her way through the woods alongside the water obstacle. So there we were at the car with a cat that needed to be half a mile on the other side of the water. As our options were leaving Mama there, driving my Toyota Echo through the flood waters, or taking Mama home, Mama Cat is now part of the animal madhouse at my house. Yeah.

I feel ya, Charlie.

We’ll be going to Jacksonville tomorrow to check out a 2008 Ford Ranger. Wish us luck!

animal madhouse

Holly and Sammy
My tiny little house has gone a tad topsey-turvey with the arrival of the puppies, Holly and Sammy (both female; named after similar looking dogs I had as a child). I took the puppies to the vet this morning for their first round of shots and a fecal test - of course they have worms, and Sammy has some hella filthy ear junk, but in general they're healthy. They are also eating and drinking like little fiends, resulting in mad amounts of puppy pee and poop. Why couldn't they have come house broken?? Sigh. I've got them (and Mochi) baby-gated into my bedroom and the kitchen (sounds odd, but if you know the layout of my house it makes sense), and they seem to be following Mochi's lead and peeing on the pee pads in the kitchen. Most of the time. I want to give their shots some time to kick in before I start taking them out onto the parvolicious south Georgia ground. In the interim... scented candles, baby, scented candles.
Velvet, Mama Cat's only daughter, is getting spayed tomorrow! I can't believe she is already old enough. And no worries - she won't have the potential of doing like her mama and slicing my face open; she refuses to go anywhere near the dogs, and is happily hanging in the living room. The funny thing is, Charlie - who barely reacted at all to the arrival of two puppies in her home - is completely freaked out by Velvet. She had been hopping back and forth over the baby gates at will, although since Velvet's arrival, she's been hiding in my bedroom with the puppies.
And since I love Florence + the Machine, here's a compilation video of some of the dogs and cats in my life this summer, set to Dog Days Are Over. Enjoy!

dogdammit.

I leave for Orlando in three weeks. I'll be renting my friend M's house, where I can have one dog and one cat total - as in Mochi and Charlie. My mom already has eight dogs, two horses, and roughly thirty cats (see here), and she's 68, lives alone, and works full time during the school year. The last thing we needed right now was two more puppies of indeterminate breed. But of course that was what I found sitting in the middle of the road a block and a half from mom's house last night. Ideally I'd be able to find homes for them before leaving for Orlando... but given that these days we have tons of people begging us to take their unwanted pets and no one asking to adopt, well, chances are slim. The current plan is to keep them at my house until they've had all their shots, then to move them out to our land, where we'll start them off in a 4x6 dog pen. Mom will need to start moving dogs and cats out to the land fairly soon anyway, given that her house is creeping ever closer to habitable. Now, if anyone in GA or FL is interested in a cute and super-friendly female puppy, approximately two months old, let me know! Also, spay and neuter your pets!!!

Charlie watches them play.



Watch the puppies playing in all their cuteness, observed by Charlie and Mochi

Civilization has come!

Roughly a year ago, my mom began looking at a 1906 bungalow in town, and she began to consider moving it out to her land - land which lacked the modern amenities of electricity or running water. Since then, the house has been moved out there, the land has been electrified, a new well with an electric pump has been installed, the house has been rewired and had new plumbing installed... and as of today, it has a septic tank! Civilization has arrived - all mom needs are some appliances and she can move right on in :-) Granted, it still looks pretty rough inside, but we've got the essentials! We totally recommend Bob's Septic Tank Company - they showed up promptly, exactly when they said they would, and had the septic tank installed in just a few hours.

fireworks, pickups, and other fun times in rednecklandia

The Fourth of July is my mom's boyfriend F's favorite holiday, and every year he goes all out to put on a big fireworks display. So we went down to Live Oak, FL to celebrate the Fourth with him. This also gave me the opportunity to check out some of the flooding in the area, which was one of the hardest hit by Tropical Storm Debby.
Mom, F, and I decided to walk down to the boat ramp near his house...
We weren't able to make it anywhere near the boat ramp. This is the road. Can you see that green sign way down at the end of this photo? That's the sign at the parking lot for the boat ramp. Yeah.
F's fireworks were stunning as always.
F's friend B launches the ground-based show (fountains, mostly)
When we left F's to head back home, we decided to swing by Suwannee Springs... but we didn't make it there, either, as the road was still flooded.
On the way home, as I was driving my mom's car, the treads blew off the left front tire. That was fun. Luckily the tire itself didn't blow, so we were able to limp the rest of the way home and get a new tire.
If the tire hadn't blown out, and we hadn't had to stop to get a new one, we wouldn't have driven past the Advanced Auto Parts on the north side of town when we did... I guess it was meant to be. See, we pulled up at the stoplight in front of the Advanced Auto Parts just in time to see two very delinquent looking folks getting either chewed out or arrested by some cops, as a skinny kitten ran past them towards the busy road. We pulled in, picked up the kitten before it could run into the road, and asked if it belonged to any of them. The delinquent folks (the woman had track marks) said yeah, it was theirs, but they couldn't feed it (obviously; it was incredibly skinny) so if we wanted it, we could have it. The police officers encouraged us to take it. So yeah, we now have yet another kitten.
We've been calling her SugarPie
Look how skinny!
She has a good appetite, and eats and drinks plenty
I took her to the vet, as she has a head cold. This was while we were waiting to see the vet. The scratches on me are from her climbing up me as if I were a tree. Luckily, the vet said that with 7-10 days of amoxicilin, she should be all better.
The road to our land is flooded more often than not, and our options for driving down said flooded road have been a 1997 Ford Escort stationwagon (mom's car) and a 1984 ChevyVan (the most terrifying thing I have ever driven). As such, I have been encouraging my mom to buy a truck for quite some time.... and this weekend she finally did it!
Here's my mom saying a sad goodbye to her old van (the dealer gave her $400 for it).
And here she is with her "new" 2003 Ford Ranger
Mom, happily driving her new truck
The truck made it out to the land (through the water obstacles) with no problems at all.

Leading horses to water, and other exercises in futility

My latest suicidal turtle - an adorable little softshell with an incredibly expressive face.
Seconds after taking this picture, he was off, swimming merrily away.
Elvis, Donnie, Velvet, and Solly - at the vet for their last round of shots. They were definitely NOT afraid. Want to adopt them? They're incredibly sweet and friendly!
Solly and Elvis
Donnie
Velvet
Now that Mama and her babies have had all their shots, they're all free-range out at the land with everybody else.
Donnie and Solly, lounging in the grass
Egret - this fellow was just hanging out near our land
FINALLY!!! We have a well!! The man who installed it (the asshole who threatens to shoot kittens) is a total dick and not at all someone I would recommend. He is a professional well-driller, who has been in business for years; I've no idea how he has stayed in business if he treats most of his customers like he treated us. But at least it's finally installed and running.
Look! Running water! Time to get the wall around the tub tiled.

We moved the horses' water trough away from the hand-pump well over to the fence by the electric well so that we could fill it with the hose... Mom's attempt to lead the horses to their new source of water was not entirely successful...