Maggie's New Toy -- A Dreidel!

Petsmart had holiday toys on the clearance rack, and we picked up this stuffed dreidel.

Instead of squeaking, it plays the dreidel song!

The video is dark, but you can hear the tune. (And yes, that's my voice.) It lasted maybe five minutes before she ripped out the stuffing; one of her favorite games is to find and pull out the squeaker of any stuffed toy, so she doesn't get these often.

Maggie and Seamus, BFF

People let me tell you 'bout my best friend,

He's a warm-hearted person who'll love me till the end.

People let me tell you 'bout my best friend,

He's a one boy cuddly toy, my up, my down, my pride and joy.

People let me tell you 'bout him, he's so much fun

Whether we're talkin' man to man or whether we're talking son to son.

Cause he's my best friend.

Yes he's my best friend...

La la, la la la la, la la...

Annual Humiliate the Animals Photo

Mom dragged out some old holiday pictures this week, and among them was one of her dog, Harley. "Fuzzy ol' man," I smiled when I saw the photo, marveling at how gray he looked here. It's not how I remember our Harley at all. I remember him as a frisky young pup, a mostly-black-lab-with-a-bit-of-springer-spaniel puppy that my dad found at Pet Rescue in Bloomingdale, near their house. The photo is from 2006, Harley's last Christmas with us. He had reached the respectable age of 12, not bad for a big dog.

Like many families, we keep up certain traditions during the holidays. One is to eat herring at Midnight on New Year's Eve, an old Polish custom said to bring luck for the rest of the year. (New Year's Eve was also my grandmother's birthday, and she taught us the tradition.) Another tradition is the annual "Humiliate the Dog" picture, where we dress up our critters in bows and other holiday finery and make them sit still for a photo.

Here is another photo of Harley when he was seven or eight. You'll notice his martyred expression didn't change much over time. He was never particularly happy with getting dressed in his holiday best, but the rest of us thought it was hilarious.

Harley always got a treat afterward for putting up with us; a big rawhide bone or a delicious pig ear.

We had planned on dressing up Maggie this year, but our groomer beat us to it. She comes to our house in her mobile dog-grooming van. We decided earlier this year to have her come to us, because Maggie--who was abused terribly by her first owner--is very much afraid of cars, and panics if we leave her anywhere. Maggie knows the groomer's van, and tries to drag us back inside when she spots it, but settles down well enough once she's inside.

This time, when the groomer brought Maggie back to the door, she handed us a holiday card as well. And look! The picture on the front is of Maggie! What a nice surprise!

She looks about as un-merry as can be! When she came back into the house smelling like dog shampoo and wearing a tartan scarf, the kittens didn't recognize her, and went scurrying away, hissing and growling. Poor Maggie! The jaunty little scarf didn't last.

And now with the kittens, the tradition is morphing into a more general Humiliate the Animals one. Mom brought home these adorable kitten costumes, and I waited until they were napping to put them on so they wouldn't struggle. No way I wanted to combat those claws.

Seamus.

Bella.

They do not look happy. I don't blame them. There's no dignity in jingle bell collars or Santa hats. Hee hee.

Do you ever dress up your pets in silly costumes? If you have a photo you'd like to share, you can either mail it to me at blog(a)compassrose.com or post a link to it in the comments section. I'll include them all here.

Happy Holidays, y'all!

What's Up? Chicken Butt.

Silly kittens often sit in their food dish while drinking their water. They are oh-so-tolerant of having their butts cleaned of chicken gravy, but they must've still had a faint odor of Fancy Feast about them, as Maggie suddenly lost all uneasiness around them and came in for a good ol' sniff. I think it's what finally broke the ice, as dog and kittens are fast becoming friends now--although they won't sit still long enough for me to photograph all three of them!

Are y'all getting tired of kitten pictures yet?

Bella and Seamus, aka Silent Bob--when he meows, no sound comes out!

Maine Coon Kittens!!!

If things have seemed quiet 'round The Box House these last few weeks, it's because Ted and I have been on the road. We went to visit family and friends in Kansas and Missouri, getting back just in time for election day.

On our way home we stopped at a cattery outside of Peoria that specializes in Maine Coons and Norwegian Forest Cats. After playing on the floor with the kittens for over an hour, we chose two that we plan to take home at the end of the month. Or, I suppose, they chose us.

Here's the little boy, a blue tabby:

And this is his sister, a blue patched tabby:

Just look at those sweet faces! They were born 7/27, and will be ready to come live with us in a few more weeks. They are part of a litter of eight (originally there were nine, but the mama cat rolled over on one--something the breeder says can happen when there are more kittens than nipples to feed them). We were a bit overwhelmed when all eight kittens came to meet us at once. They are extremely well socialized, even the most shy among them only waited a minute or so before approaching. The boy kitten we're getting jumped into Ted's lap immediately, and pretty much stayed right there, unwilling to budge to make room for the others, no matter how much they tried to push him aside.

Cats always seem to have a strong affinity for Ted, often ignoring me to get to him. But the little female we selected settled right next to me, and started to doze off. I was completely charmed.

Originally, we only planned on getting one. But the breeder likes to adopt them out in pairs, and offered us a good deal for two. So what could we do?

Eventually, they'll grow up to look something like this:

According to Wikipedia, The Maine Coon is one of the largest breeds of domestic cat, known for its high intelligence and playfulness as well as its distinctive physical appearance. The breed is one of the oldest natural breeds in North America, specifically native to the state of Maine (where it is the official State Cat). This cat is known as "Maine Coon", "coon-cat", "Maine Cat" or (colloquially) "the gentle giant".

Some authorities say that the Maine Coon is descended from Norwegian Forest Cats brought over by the Vikings, who used them as mousers on their ships, and from other seafaring felines. "Natural selection (and climate) has had a significant effect on (longhair/Maine Coon) gene frequency in the 200-300 generations since domestic cats were introduced to America. The Maine Coon developed outdoors into a large, rugged cat with a water-resistant, thick, longhair coat and a hardy constitution."

This is our first time going to a breeder for a cat. Usually, we have adopted rescue animals. But this time we were looking for specific traits in a cat. Because we have a large and rambunctious two-year-old rescue dog, we wanted a cat that was going to be big (Maine Coons can be over 20 pounds, and the largest on record is 48 inches long), laid back, friendly, and with a dog-like constitution. Here are a few pics I found on the 'net that show how big these cats can potentially be:

I don't think ours will reach quite this size--but you never know.

Also, we wanted a kitten this time around. Our reasoning for this is pretty straightforward. Our dog, Maggie, came with a lot of emotional baggage. She's doing very well, but there are obvious signs of past abuse, from the the scars all over her body to her timidness with strangers. We feel that a well-socialized and well-adjusted kitten would only benefit Maggie.

Finally, we wanted a purebred Maine Coon from a reputable breeder because the breed has a few known genetic health problems, including hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which causes sudden cardiac death, and hip dysplasia. HCM can now be tested for, and most breeders have been able to avoid passing the trait on. This is not always the case with mixed breed and Maine Coons of unknown origin. We didn't want to get a cat only to have it drop unexpectedly on us.

So now we just have to wait a few more weeks until they can leave their mama. And we need to think of names. The names that are on their official papers are Helio Courier and Sqwauk. Yeah, I know. Not the best choices. We're trying to think up names from mythology, gods or heroes or spirits, and preferably for mythological siblings or spouses. Here are a few choices so far, girl's name first:

• Artemis and Apollo (actually, Ted hates the name Apollo, and has already vetoed this choice)
  
• Bridget and Lugh (Celtic)
  
• Luna/Selene and Helios (moon goddess and sun god, and if want to keep a variation of Helio, this would work)
• Ishtar and Shamash (Babylonian)
• Isis and Horus (Egyptian)
• Titania and Oberon (fairy queen and king)
• Mielikki and Tapio (Finnish goddess of the forest and mistress of the hunt, lord of the forest. I'm leaning towards these, as I'm half Finnish)

We're definitely open to suggestions, so if you have a favorite mythological pairing, let me know!

For further reading:

Are We Ready for Another Cat?
Maggie as Little Edie of Grey Gardens
Bark Softly and Carry a Big Stick

Don't Forget to Vote for Your Favorite Edie of Grey Gardens

OMG, all the results are in, and they're hilarious. Drop what you're doing and go to Renovation Therapy and vote for your favorite Little or Big Edie. The competition is fierce, and Maggie is a bit anxious waiting for the results...

Please Don't Dig Up the Daisies

I spend most of my time in the garden digging--digging up weeds, digging holes for new trees, digging out new flower beds. So how can I get upset at Maggie when I catch her doing this?

She watches me while I work and no doubt sees the whole thing as some elaborate game.

If only I could teach her where to dig the holes.

The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with himand not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.
—Samuel Butler, Notebooks, 1912

Where the Wild Things Are Part II, or Maggie Finds a Friend

My mom hates it when I take the dog out for a walk late at night, because you never know what you'll encounter. I never would have done it in my old neighborhood in Chicago--heck, I was often hassled during the daytime there. But here, where I encounter junior high kids walking their dogs at 10 o'clock at night, I'm not going to worry about it too much.

So a few nights ago, I put Maggie in the back yard without even bothering to turn the porch light on. There was enough light from the moon, and the street lamp, and the neighbor's security light across the alley to more or less make my way around the yard without tripping over anything. So I let her out and followed behind her. She immediately spotted something underneath the lilacs. With tail wagging, she was dancing around whatever it was, trying to get in for a good sniff. I figured it was a mouse or a rabbit--we are overrun with rabbits in the 'hood, bunnies who are so fearless they sometimes quietly sit and watch us as we walk by within feet of them.

I sighed and went back inside to flip on the light switch, which is through the door and six steps up. When I came back out, Maggie was gone. I called her and called her, but there was no response.

Now, I was a little bit worried. I didn't smell skunk when we came outside, but that didn't mean much, since my sinuses are completely stuffed this week from allergies and I have to practically be on top of something before I can smell it.

It was now deathly quiet. No cars, no wind rustling through the trees, and I couldn't even hear Maggie's tags jingling. There was only one place she could be, behind the garage, where the light from the porch doesn't reach.

So I carefully made my way back there, calling her the whole time, and found her at the far side of the garage, at the gate to the alley, ears perked and staring straight up at this:

The opossum was only a foot or so above her head. It was as still and silent as Maggie was.

"Jeezus, Maggie, get over here," I said. I'm such a city girl. Although I would spot them fairly regularly in the wee hours of the morning in the back alleys of Chicago, my general knowledge of 'possums amounted to "they hang from their tails or something, don't they?" I had certainly never been this close to one.

Thank God, Maggie actually came when I called her, her tail wagging and a big cheesy dog grin on her face. I hustled her back inside and of course got Ted as I grabbed the camera. When we went back out, the 'possum was still there, still as stone. That's apparently what they do when they feel threatened--er--play possum, that is. Thanks to Wikipedia, I later learned this about them:

When threatened or harmed, they will "play possum," mimicking the appearance and smell of a sick or dead animal. The lips are drawn back, teeth are bared, saliva foams around the mouth, and a foul-smelling fluid is secreted from the anal glands. The physiological response is involuntary, rather than a conscious act. Their stiff, curled form can be prodded, turned over, and even carried away. The animal will regain consciousness after a period of minutes or hours and escape. Many injured opossums have been killed by well-meaning people who find a catatonic animal and assume the worst.

The article went on to say that they're nocturnal, solitary, and nomadic, and not really a problem unless cornered. And no, the adults do not hang from their tails, although the wee ones will, briefly, do so. Bummer.

(Of course, now I'm wondering what new visitors Google will bring to my page because I used "anal glands". Um, twice.)

So, because it was playing possum, I actually got to step up within a few feet of it to take its picture. (In the photo above I was crouched down so I could get a picture from Maggie's perspective.)

"Hey beautiful," I said softly. "Let me just snap this and you can go on your merry way."

Ted laughed from behind me. "I doubt they get called beautiful very often."

Probably not. This little guy was drooling and he had snot hanging from his nose. But heck, that's just his nature. And he did have such luxurious-looking fur. I ran around to the alley side to get this picture:

Of course, now more than ever, Mom does not want me taking Maggie out after dark.

Clap On! Clap Off! Clap On, Clap Off -- The Clapper

Jeez, I didn't even know The Clapper still existed. I wanted one desperately when I was a kid, but my parents wouldn't get any for the house. But this afternoon, while rummaging in the ice box in the downstairs unit, I found a box of assorted light bulbs and not one, but two Clappers! They look new. No one else seemed to share my glee, however, because we also have to deal with this:
We've been at The Box House for almost three weeks now, and we've spent the majority of our free time when we'd like to be working on the house doing clean-up chores instead. The Previous Owners left so much stuff behind, despite assurances from their agent that it would be gone. The tub shows a small selection of what was inside just one icebox--not all of it would fit. That's the icebox below. Each unit has one in the pantry.

A few of the things we're finding are, admittedly, kinda neat and I'll feature them in upcoming blog posts. But most of it is just junk, but not junk I feel comfortable throwing away. (I know I'm driving both Ted and my mom crazy with my constant, "Wait! Don't throw that away! Someone will take it!") In this most recent haul there's a perfectly good but rather fugly phone, a bottle of white shoe polish, a coffee can of miscellaneous screws, and at least half a dozen bottles of some rather unpleasant-smelling upholstery cleaner. I think we'll have to have a garage sale to try to rehome it all. For now, all of this junk is making its way to the garage to be dealt with later, and a little of it makes its way out of here each week via Craigslist.

Now, with some more shelves and cabinets cleared out, we can fill them with important things:


Venison dog food? Really? I know, I know. Maggie is completely spoiled. She'd tell you so herself, but her face is stuffed at the moment.

A Shift in Perspective, A Change in Priorities

I've been taking Maggie out for walks in the evenings. Each time, we pick a different direction and explore all the new and exciting sights and smells of the neighborhood. A few nights ago, I was absolutely stunned to come across The Two Yellow Houses less than three blocks from home.

We were crazy enough to begin the house hunt during the dog days of last summer. Most days were 90-95 degrees. It was sweaty, brutal work made more difficult by the fact that we weren't all-that-familiar with the layout of the area yet. Our first buyer broker, Jeff, was not very helpful, either, and knew no more about the area than we did. (We ended up parting ways a few weeks later.)

One of the places we looked at and loved were The Two Yellow Houses. They were on the same lot, and the city would not divide them into two parcels on some technicality--the lot was an inch or two too short, or something like that. So the owner was selling both the main house and a two flat. Both were built in the 1880s, if I recall.

The main house.

The two-flat. It was nearly 100 degrees that day.
Sounds heavenly now as I sit freezing in my new basement office.

We liked them well enough that we actually went back a few times to check things out, hoping to make it work because buying two houses at once would be so cool. The main house was somewhat updated, with central air and everything. The two-flat was extremely dated, and would take a lot of work. Everything was coated in thick, white paint and both Ted and I thought it looked like student housing.

We had all fallen in love with this front porch, which was why we were trying to make this property work. Supposedly, it once belonged to the first Black doctor in town.

In the end, there were a number of reasons we rejected the property, some structural, some because of the odd layouts and difficult-to-access basements, some because of the amount of work we would have to take on overall. But mostly, it was the price and the fact that we all thought it was too far from downtown. Well, Mom was okay with the distance and liked the family-friendly neighborhood. But Ted and I were used to living in Uptown Chicago, where everything was walkable and where our condo was half a block away from the Red Line train. So we continued our search.

Fast forward four months, and we find ourselves closing on The Box House. By this point, we had seen so many properties all across the city--stucco homes, stone homes, brick homes, frame homes. It was hard to remember back to when we first started the quest for our home. But we were delighted with what we ended up with. It wasn't too far out from downtown and we felt we got a fair price.

"Bloody hell," I said to Maggie when we stumbled across the Two Yellow Houses this week. She cocked her head at me, unsure of what I was laughing at, but soon lost interest and continued to sniff along the sidewalk. After all, how could she possibly know that the neighborhood we picked was the neighborhood where we first began looking at houses? How could she know that the Two Yellow Houses had a list price close to what The Box House bidding began at, and that it was really no further out from downtown than where we ended up? Or that The Box House will require a lot of sweat equity and TLC in the next few years, just as these two charming Victorian farmhouses would?

Are there any regrets? Of course not. I love our new house. As we went through the process of shopping for a vintage home, we were able to form a better picture of what we were all looking for in an older house. While we had all lived in old buildings in the past, none of us had ever owned anything quite as old as our Jazz Age era two-flat. By the end of the house-hunting process, we knew we wanted a brick building with a solid cement foundation. And when we finally came across The Box House, the quirkly little shoebox-shaped building spoke to us, and somehow won us over, despite the distance and the price and the amount of work it would take to fix it up.

I just have to laugh because most of the reasons we rejected The Two Yellow Houses didn't seem to matter at all when we finally found the one that was to be ours.

Weekend Warriors

Well, it's our first real weekend at The Box House. Last weekend doesn't really count because we spent it moving in. To celebrate, we went to Lowe's to spend a 10% off coupon we had. We bought cabinets for Mom's sewing room, a radon detection kit, a CO/propane/natural gas detector for the basement (where Ted and I are setting up our offices), cable for stringing Internet across the building, a small rake for scraping up the cat poo we found under the stairs to the basement (more on that in the future), and a few other miscellaneous items. Then we each tackled a task or two:

Mom worked on building her cabinets and filling them with quilt fabric. It wasn't until we began bringing over her fabric collection from the other house and putting it in one pile that she realized just how much quilt fabric she had. She had been storing it in every nook and cranny, and now she'll try to cram the bulk of it into one room. She can quilt every day for the next hundred years and not make it through all that fabric.

Ted fixed a clog in the kitchen sink, which was pretty far down beyond the trap. The water had been draining slowly from day one, and yesterday began backing up into the sink. He's also working on hardwiring Mom's computer to the Internet; she had been using a wireless connection, but the signal is not as strong as we'd like. And he spent some spare moments playing house detective and examining how our 2-flat was put together. By removing a ceiling panel in the basement, he was able to reveal our sub floors, which look like tongue and groove construction. This photo shows the underside of Mom's dining room:

I had decided to give up on the Soy Gel made by Franmar, which hasn't really managed to strip paint off of anything but metal. I found a quart of Peel Away at Lowe's, and with high hopes for its effectiveness, coated the back of the door to my mom's medicine cabinet. I'll check on it in a few days, although some house bloggers have indicated they've left it on for up to a week. It is very, very low odor and easy to work with. I just used a paint brush to apply it. This variety of the product, Peel Away 6, did not come with the peel away paper and Lowe's didn't stock it. The instructions on the can didn't mention using the paper, but the online instructions did. So I improvised with press and seal saran wrap. That should keep it from drying out too fast.

As for Maggie? She spent some time debating how best to clean this mirror, another treasure left behind by the previous owners.

Forearm Forklift Lifting Straps

I had a few e-mails from people who asked what the orange straps were that we used to lift the mattress. It is a Forearm Forklift, which is sold in packs of two. We first spotted them on the U-Haul site, with a rental fee of $25.00. Instead, we bought our own set for less than twenty bucks. They were a godsend, and really do work. In essence, each person holds one end of a strap, looping it around the forearm. The straps crisscross beneath the item, so that each person holds a strap with the same forearm, i.e., if I'm holding one with my right arm, Ted has that same strap looped on his right arm.

Here's a photo from the box. Note, we did not look this cool carrying heavy stuff. What's with the shades? But you really can lift heavy, awkward items and save a lot of strain on your back. We moved mattresses, box springs, and large wood cabinets with a lot less effort than it would normally take.
According to the package--I didn't verify this myself--the forearm forklift is the first and only OSHA accepted moving tool ever to reduce potential injuries due to heavy and repetitive lifting. Here are the rest of the benefits and claims:

Benefits:

• Reduces weight of item being carried by 66%
• Creates handles on any hard-to-handle pieces
• Great for going up and down most stairs or truck ramps
• Tight turning radius (excellent for 90 degree turns in hallways and switchbacks in staircases)
• Will never scratch wood floors, break tile, stain carpets or rip vinyl (linoleum)

The Forearm Forklift was awarded "Best New Product of the Year 1999" by the Industrial Equipment News whose constituents are solely top professionals in the business.

Specification:

• Adjustability: up to 48 inches
• Weight Capacity: 600 pounds per pair (tested at 2,720 pounds)
• Material: super strength webbing, bonded thread at each joint and padding in each insert
• Padding: felt for comfort in any adjusted length
• Color: improved/changed to safety orange
• Dimensions: 9 feet 4 inches long
• Weight: 1 pound per pair
• Package Dimensions: 8 inches wide by 9 inches tall by 2.5 inches deep
• Package Contents: 2 straps

All in all, the Forearm Forklift is definitely a product I'd recommend. I only wish we discovered them when we began this moving process six months ago, when we rented a storage unit.

They even make awesome dog toys, for pups who like to steal things and play keep away!

Bark Softly and Carry a Big Stick

Shhh... don't tell Maggie, but we're moving soon.

Although we closed on The Box House in December, we've been doing a lot of work on the place, including sanding and refinishing the floors, and it made more sense to stay at my Mom's other house while this was being done and only sleep at The Box House a few nights a week. The dust from the sanding and the fumes from the floor products were terrible. But now we're finally moving in.

This is Mom with her beagle/shepherd mix, Maggie, whom she adopted last summer from Almost Home Foundation. Maggie was rescued from a high-kill shelter in Southern Illinois.

This is Maggie with her favorite toy, The Stick. She can run across the yard with it at top speed, and hardly ever trips herself up.

I'm sure Maggie must wonder where Ted and I disappear to, why we will be gone for days on end and come back smelling like wood dust or other home-improvement type smells. But she never questions us, and always seems deliriously happy to have us back.

We're moving over the last of our things to The Box House, and soon it will be time to bring Maggie over permanently. But we worry about her. She had such a difficult first few months of life. Although we'll probably never know for sure what was done to her, she does have a few permanent scars on her head and legs, so we're pretty sure she was beaten. She's very, very, nervous getting into the car, to the point of panic, sometimes. She'll often brace all four legs, or drop to the ground in a sort of sixties passive resistance sort of way. And once we get her into the car, she cries and shakes the entire time. It breaks my heart. She doesn't do well with unfamiliar places, either.

So we decided to break her into the move slowly, and start to bring her back and forth with us. To ease the transition, we got a tranquilizer from the vet. An hour before we left, we gave it to her with a piece of buttered bread. It made her pretty dopey, and very malleable. It was easy to get her into the van. We brought her dog bed along so she's have something familiar, and she managed to curl up in it and relax somewhat.

Until we got there.

Oh boy, she did not want to go into the house. She braced her legs and looked at us, wide-eyed. I wish I knew what was going through her head, what memory it triggered or what she thought was happening. I took Maggie for a walk around the block, hoping to relax her, and then had to pick her up--all forty-two pounds of her--and carry her in. Once she saw that we were all there with her, that there was nothing to be afraid of, she relaxed a bit and began to explore. But like a toddler, she had to run back to us to make sure we weren't going to go anywhere.

We stayed for most of the day, and eventually she was able to relax enough to sleep in her dog bed. I think she'll be okay when we make the final move later this week.