Auction Hick One Zero Six

Hick went crazy at the auction a couple weeks ago. He bought a whole lot. And by that, I don't just mean many items. He bought the whole kit 'n' caboodle of one seller. It was on Saturday, January 6. Just in case anybody is trying to figure out the title. Which is probably unfair to blog buddy River, since I'm pretty sure they don't put the month first in the date.

I think I know where my Christmas hat came from! He'd bought a bunch of hats before this auction, singularly, and showed me some for the grandkids. I suppose these are ones that didn't sell alone. He also says some of those packages contain FISHING GLOVES! Never heard of such a thing. Maybe they're for cold climates. Or for catfish "noodlers" to wear!

On top are two chairs, I think he said. That fold up in a case, like for hiking. I've zoomed in, but don't remember everything Hick was babbling about. There are three pairs of new shoes here, on the bottom shelf. Tennies and two pair of  "flippers," as he calls them, which are what we used to call "thongs," the weird kind back then that didn't go between your toes, but are called "slides" these days, and not considered weird. Plenty of Gain laundry detergent there, and Snuggle fabric softener sheets, and Lysol toilet cleaner. Hick's going to be clean, and well-shod, I guess, with no static cling.

He's got shoes for kicking butt, and notebooks for taking names! And a couple of canes to balance himself in case he hurts his butt-leg area again, like he did that one time at the auction.

With plenty of appliances to make give him more time for doing both. I sure he wants to keep that hot dog spiraler thing for himself! That stuff on the right is just some of his nails and screws. he took these pictures after he unloaded his treasures in the BARn.

Hick also saw these frames last week at a local church store, but Mabel is not interested. These are wood. They are marked $30, so Hick said to send Mabel a picture first, because he thought that was a little high. Sometimes he'll go ahead and buy stuff anyway, if he thinks he can make a profit re-selling them at his Storage Unit Store. This time, he did not think they would sell for that.

Hick said these frames have been sitting there for months, and he never sees anybody looking at them. Then he want back there the next day, when I heard from Mabel, and said there was a lady picking them up and asking about them. She put them down, though, and said to the person running the place, "Don't you think $30 is a little high?"

Anyhoo...Hick bought all that stuff in the first four pictures for $75. He thinks he can get double that when he starts selling out of his Storage Unit Store again, when the weather warms up. Or he might take them to a different auction and sell them.

It keeps him off the street. But more importantly, it keeps him out of the house.

The Mad Pooper

You may recall that Val has been having POOP trouble. A mad pooper, loose in her garage. Giant poops! A mystery pooper who comes and goes. I've been under the assumption that it must be a raccoon,  or a possum, getting into the garage through the pet flap. Hick has gone so far as to accuse Jack! Not surprising, since he's also accused him, a low-to-the-ground, half dachshund/half red heeler little fellow, of jumping up on the back of his 1980 Olds Toronado to take a poop. Not barkin' likely, is what I had to say!

Hick has cleaned out the garage with bleach, which stopped the Mad Pooper for a while. Then, the Mad Pooper most likely being mad, switched from pooping under A-Cad to pooping under T-Hoe. Hick scoops out the poop with a curved blue snow shovel if he's in the house when I go to town. Otherwise, I do it myself.

Over Christmas, I was tired of the Mad Pooper pooping with alacrity, it seemed, almost every day. I usually found it when I came out to the garage to go after my 44 oz Diet Coke. So I told Hick that he needed to get his game camera and do some spying. Since Hick knows what's good for him, he did. He and The Pony set it up, to look down the wall alongside A-Cad, focused on the swinging pet door. They left it for a full day, and then The Pony brought it in and hooked it up to his laptop. He and Hick fast-forwarded through 1000 pictures.

The game camera takes a picture when there's movement. Yet in those 1000 photos, they only saw our cats going in and out. Hick thought maybe an animal has come in and climbed up in the rafters, like the cats do. So Hick set the camera in front of T-Hoe. I'm pretty sure he captured me walking in and out every day. But I'm certain that he did not catch me pooping on camera!

Anyhoo...The Pony and I returned from town on Friday, December 22. The stench hit us immediately. I stepped out of T-Hoe's driver's door, and right into Lake Pee! The Pony got out on the passenger side (How our Little Pony is growing up! He rides in the front seat now!) and leaned over to look underneath. "THAT'S a big pile of poop! WHAT is doing that?" It hadn't been there when we left. I rushed inside and told Hick that they needed to review the evidence. As before, Hick went down to the basement and sat beside The Pony on the couch.

It wasn't a couple minutes before I heard them shouting. "YEEESSSS! We've got it, Mom! We've got the pooper in the act!"

The Pony sent me the four most incrimination pictures. They had captured a couple of phots of Jack, when he ran in under the garage door as I raised it. I KNEW he couldn't fit through the pet door. I also knew that he runs in to look for the cat that hates him, just because. Besides, Jack comes right out with me as I leave, because he wants cat kibble. He doesn't have time to poop in there. Here are the photos, in order. Some of them are not very clear, because they are, after all, surveillance photos!

The Mad Pooper inspects some dead leaves that have blown in when the door is opened.

The Mad Pooper gives a look over his shoulder to A-Cad, his previously-favored toilet.

No claiming mis-identity here! I guess the sun came out, or the game camera has a flash.

Look away! It's hideous! The Mad Pooper, caught in the act of madly pooping !

Yeah. I stand corrected. Those gigantic poops came out of this gigantic cat! Stockings. He's the most anti-social of our felines. Never wants to be petted. Scurries away if you come near him. He only uses us for mass quantities of food. And a place to "deposit" it, apparently.

Stockings is a really big cat. He's as big as Jack. In fact, he and Jack are...how you say...HUMP BUDDIES! Though I think it's pretty one-sided.

Now we know who's pooping up the garage! I gave Hick strict instructions to lock that pet door, after a particularly gruesome repeat our our poop woes.

He did, yet I found ANOTHER pile of poop inside two days later!

Hick said that he indeed locked the pet door. But that the next day, he heard Stockings meowing, and tried to get him out of the garage, but couldn't. So he UNLOCKED the pet door again.

NOOOOO!

Here's my reasoning. The cat poops in there whether he can get out or not. So it's not going to hurt to have him locked in. When he gets hungry enough, he'll come out, and then he will be truly locked out of the garage. No more pooping inside! Stockings has enough fat to live off his blubber for a month. Hick is worried about water. I told him that cats were originally desert animals. And that he can lick up the melted ice and rain that drips from T-Hoe's bumpers and running boards. AND he can run out when he's thirsty enough. I open up that garage every day. Twice.

Sooo...here's what had happened for me to find the new poop that I had to shovel out. Hick let the cat out of the garage by unlocking the pet door. Stockings apparently went to gorge himself at the roaster pan full of cat kibble. Then went BACK INSIDE THE GARAGE TO TAKE A GIANT POOP UNDER T-HOE!

Our cats have always been outside cats, ever since we rescued them as kittens dumped down by the mailboxes, got them their very special operations, and medicines, and all the field mice they want to catch and leave the livers of on our porch. It's only the last year or so that we've found occasional poop in the garage. Not sure it was always Stockings, or if some other animal got him started on the habit. But it's him now, and it's becoming regular. He's NOT going to be an inside-garage cat. No litter box for him. He can move outside since he can't stop pooping inside. We have two cat houses (heh, heh) with small entrances, made by Hick over the years, and one given to us by my best ol' ex-teaching buddy Mabel. Stockings won't be without shelter or safety from marauding dogs. He will, however, be without an indoor toilet.

I'm not sure who is going to be harder to break of bad habits, Stockings the Mad Pooper, or Hick the not-listener.

The Inadvertent Detainment of (Formerly Known as Puppy) Jack Thevictorian

Last Friday night, as I was kicked back in my OPC (Old People Chair) watching a DVR of Live PD around 1:00 a.m., I heard howling. It was kind of eerie. My dogs are not howlers. They are yappers. They yap all the livelong night, in various locations, my least favorite being on the back porch right outside the french doors of the master bedroom.

I wasn't too concerned with the howling. It was only one dog, and I recognized that voice as Jack. It WAS around the time of the Wolf Moon. So I figured maybe Jack was getting in touch with his "wolf spirit," even though we don't feed him Blue Buffalo brand dog food, nor allow him to get such an idea by watching the commercial.

Because you never know exactly what's going on when you hear a mournful howl like that, I hoped that nothing was wrong with my Sweet, Sweet Juno. She usually is Jack's barker-in-crime. She's getting up in years now, but still has not reached double digits. Besides, I'd seen her earlier in the day, and she was fine.

The next morning I was kicked back in the La-Z-Boy ("Do you detect a pattern here?" my Christmas present the Garmin Shaming Bracelet asks) checking my blogs on laptop Shiba, when Hick tromped in and plopped onto the long couch to keep me company.

"Jack spent the night in the garage. I opened up the door and he run out. I guess he went through the cat door. Or else I accidentally closed him in there last night when I came home from the auction."

"You have to let him out! He runs in there looking for the cat. The one that growls at him. Dusty. The gray one." Hick doesn't know the names of the cats, even though we've had them for longer than we've had Juno. He also messes up their pronouns.

"Huh. I guess I could of closed him in."

"He gets distracted looking up in the rafters over at the corner of the Acadia. Where they climb up the ladders you have hanging on the wall. Sometimes you have to yell, 'JACK!' and get his attention, and he'll run out the people door with you. He can't fit through the pet door. He would have been going in there all along to torment the cat."

"He's out now."

Now don't go feeling sorry for Jack. He's a DOG'S dog! Rough-and-tumble. Nothing namby-pamby about our Jack. He's an outside dog, and he's fine. Even though I try to persuade Hick to let the dogs in during frigid weather, he says no. And reasons that they wouldn't come in anyway.

Hick recently installed a wood stove in his new Storage Container Garage. He could get a fire going, and put them in there (the garage, not the fire!) for safekeeping overnight. Hick would have no objections to that scenario, but he says the dogs won't go in unless he leaves the big garage door open. That he calls them and tries to get them inside with him, but they lay around outside and wait for him. Unless that big door is open. Then they run in and out as they please. They won't enter through the people door.

He CAN get them in the BARn, which has a furnace, kept around 50 degrees, I think, during the winter. Juno would be fine. Hick has accidentally locked Juno in the BARn about a dozen times. But Jack can't stay overnight in the BARn. The BARn is not Jack-proofed. He would eat something that could be deadly to him, I'm sure. He's a mouthy little thing, always chewing and nipping and sampling stuff. Just ask Genius's gift wallet, made of Bison leather, monogrammed, with RFID blocker, from Sharper Image, last Christmas. Or the big package that had the corner of the box chewed off when it fell from the Gator to the driveway.

No, Jack doesn't need to be shut up in the garage overnight. It's not heated, not attached to the house, has a concrete floor, and would make ME howl if I had to sleep in there. Jack is better off having the run of the place, to sleep in the yucca plant out front, or in a nest he's made in the square hay bales stacked for the goat and mini pony, or in the shed where Billy and Barry spend their nights, or in the chicken house. Those are his choices, since Hick moved the Toronado, under which Jack had dug a hole in the gravel, and he refuses to sleep in one of the two dog houses at the end of the porch, out of the wind, filled with cedar shavings. Like I said. Jack is a DOG'S dog! No house for him!

Anyhoo...our Jack was released from the garage. Not necessarily for good behavior, but on Hick's recognizance that he had indeed most likely slammed that people door in Jack's face as he was trying to exit the garage with him at 10:30 last Friday night, after the auction.

I don't think Jack bears him any ill will. Though he CAN look a little accusatory at times.

Back-of-the-Book-Blurb Friday #93 "Denise's Peaces"

Blog buddy Sioux is hosting Back-of-the-Book-Blurb Friday. I have 150 words to convince you to fake-buy my fake book. Valentine's Day is coming down the pike, and an old Val's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of CANDY. Plus fake-writing a new fake book to take advantage of holiday fake sales. Whether you have a paramour to treat, or are still trying to capture one, Val's latest fake book will make a fantastic gift! They'll be in TEARS when they receive it! Reserve your fake copy today!

Denise's Peaces

Denise "Honey" Reese is the sweetest student at Willy Wonka Elementary School. She never met a stranger, never had an enemy. Denise is also a savvy young entrepreneur. Her candy product, Denise's Peaces, are making her a future fortune. Denise, though, gives 49 percent of her earnings to charity, namely an anti-bullying campaign.

Denise noticed how people LOVE buttercream frosting, and always ask for a corner piece of cake, or one with a big buttercream rose. Now she has her own candy line to feed that desire. Wrist Roses like Ring Pops, Buds on a Stick, Bloomin' Pendants...all in assorted colors, with true buttercream flavor.

Will Denise continue to enjoy the sweet smell of success, or will Principal Slugworth put an end to her marketing campaign? (126 words)


__________________________________________________________________

Fake Reviews for Val’s Fake Book

Kit Kat..."Gimme a break! This fake author has no idea how to write about anything SWEET! I'd break off a piece of myself to help this little candy girl, but Thevictorian needs her fake-book streak broken NOW." 

Three Musketeers..."All for one, that cute little candy entrepreneur, and NONE for Val. Support the buttercream anti-bullying fund, but don't give one PENNY to Val Thevictorian!"

Tootsie Pop..."How many licks does it take to beat the fake-book-writing urge out of this fake author? I'm pretty sure her center is rotten to the core."

Sour Patch Kids..."First we're sour, then we're sweet. We might give you Thevictorian's latest fake book as a gift, but then we'll break into your house, steal it back, burn it, and give the cash."

Life Savers..."This fake author has written too many fake books. She may think she's on a roll, but there's a hole in her logic. Let us save your reading life. Take our advice. DON'T buy this fake book!"

Swedish Fish..."Something stinks around here, and it ain't us! This fake author's face should be red with embarrassment for daring to foist her fake books on the unwitting public."

Skittles..."Even tasting the rainbow can't cleanse the aftertaste of THIS fake book from your palate."

Those Little Candy Buttons on a Ribbon of Waxy Paper..."This fake book isn't worth of the paper it's printed on. Thevictorian may be good at pushing people's buttons, but she definitely has poor taste when it comes to fake writing."

Twizzlers..."This fake author's work will make your insides feel so twisted that you'll wish you were hollow inside!"

Ribbon Candy in a Cut-Glass Dish on Your Grandma's Coffee Table..."This fake author's fake book is about as popular as US. But even we have better taste than Val Thevictorian."

Bon-Bons..."Nobody wants to lay on a couch with Thevictorian. In fact, they'd rather work a demanding job requiring hard physical labor than relax with one of her fake books."

Plunging Temps, Warnings from MoDOT, Time for Val's Broccocaulipeppot!

We have a weather system rolling in, folks. Temperatures dropping from 62 this afternoon to teens overnight. Rain, freezing rain, and scattered snow on the way. Genius in Kansas City already got it, and it's headed our way. Which can only mean one thing: Val is serving Broccocaulipeppot for supper!

Surely you remember Val's Broccocaulipeppot. That delicious bowl of broccoli, cauliflower, sweet banana peppers, and potatoes! Now with baby carrots! I'm not changing the name, though! Broccocaulicarropeppot seems unwieldy.

Here's a picture of the process.

Mmm...steamed broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots...pre-steaming!

With VELVEETA cheese! I know it's not really cheese. It's BETTER! Add a baked potato on top for mixing in, still with the (scrubbed) healthy peel. Chop it up, and stir in the sweet banana pepper rings...

VOILA! Broccocauli(carro)peppot! That's a big ol' bowl of vegetables right there! And a truckload of pasteurized processed cheese food.

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful, with an old baby blue sweatshirt to snuggle in, feasting on this ambrosia.

Hate me because I just got a blog post out of steamed vegetables.

Val Swaggers Around In Her Christmas Swag

Val made out like a bandit on Christmas! Not a sinister bandit, up to no good, causing problems and pain all willy-nilly to good people who don't deserve it. No, more like a cartoon bandit, with a five-o'clock shadow and a black eye mask carrying a bag of loot that fell into his hands by accident because he's so incompetent and lovable. That's me. Val, the lovable bandit. Am I right?

Anyhoo...my guys know what I like. They gave me scratch-off tickets, which proved to be profitable. Genius gave me that Garmin fitbit thingy.

It's not as big as it looks from that angle. No, it was not faulty, and did not injure my paper-thin old-lady skin. I think that was from the FREE BRACELET for the PRIVATE PARTY at High Winds Casino during CasinoPalooza 3.

The Pony gave me a hat and mittens for my evening driveway walk.

My sister the ex-mayor's wife gave me a soft fleece pullover for driveway walking. Hick gave me a zip-up hooded sweatshirt for driveway walking. You might sense a theme here: my family wants me OUT OF THE HOUSE! Maybe. But I DID ask for those things, so they're off the hook for persecuting Val.

I WILL draw particular attention to two of Hick's other gifts.

I'm pretty sure that hat came from the auction. In fact, Hick admitted to it. My first clue was that before Christmas, he showed me two such hats he got for The Veteran's single-digit daughters. Though theirs had an animal theme, and attached mittens, Hick bragged that he got them at the auction, and they were BRAND NEW. So he confessed under interrogation that my hat came from there, too, and cost, by itself, somewhere between $3 and $5.

Anyhoo...it's not really the hat we're here to discuss, but the sweatshirt. Which is a replacement for my favorite, you know. The one Hick wanted wants to destroy! He even took it, in fact, right before I came down with a severe debilitating illness virus on New Year's Day. The weather here has been frigid. High of 11 on New year's Day, with wind chills -14 that night. I had not been appeasing the Shaming Bracelet that Genius gave me for Christmas. Nor able to wear The Pony's hat and mittens on my walk. Not that I walk overnight at -14, mind you . But I was SICK! Sick as a dog.

Okay. Maybe sick as a pampered show dog that wears a tartan plaid vest, or a cable-knit fisherman's sweater, and is fed braised calves' liver. But still sick. So sick that Hick relented and gave me back my old baby blue sweatshirt. I had worn the new one on New Year's Eve day, but woke up raspy and sore-throated and with a general malaise the next morning. Hick said I should put on some Vicks, and I said that I couldn't do that in my new sweatshirt, that the neck is too tight for than, and the Vicks would ruin it, and tearfully explained that about the only thing that might make me feel better would be MY OLD BABY BLUE SWEATSHIRT. 

So...Hick dug it out of a tall kitchen trash bag, where he had spirited it away from the side of the triangle bathtub in the master bathroom, and deposited it on a pile of his old socks with holes worn in them by his stubby big toes, and gave it back to me before he went outside for the day. 

That brings tears to my eyes. Not necessarily because Hick was so sweet to return my beloved old baby blue sweatshirt that he had no right to steal in the first place, but kind of because I was wearing it when I originally wrote this, all comfy and warm, like being wrapped in a hug from my old fleeced friend, and I just now realized that IT WAS ON TOP OF HIS SOCKS! My old fleeced friend was laying on top of Hick's SOCKS! Cast-off socks! With HOLES in the toes! That had been on Hick's FEET!

Funny thing, though. My new Hick hat matches my old baby blue sweatshirt just as well as it matches my new sweatshirt.

Yeah. I wore my old baby blue sweatshirt WITH THE HAT for five days. I'd like to think that's what put me on the mend towards the fair-to-middling health I am enjoying today.

The Woeful Catastrophopolypse of 2018

The new year was barely underway when Val was beset by a catastrophe of epic proportions!

One might have thought that she had nicked (okay, severed) an artery while whipping up a culinary delight for Hick. Hey! Stop snickering! It could happen! The culinary delight, I mean. I'm pretty sure that if I nicked (or especially, severed) an artery, I wouldn't be here typing this account of The Woeful Catastrophopolypse of '18.

It was Sunday, January 7. I remember it like it was two days ago. OH! It WAS two days ago. I had just returned from town. Freezing rain was forecast for the afternoon and evening, and I'd barely made it home before the unofficial 2:00 start time. It was 1:35 when I set my 44 oz Diet Coke on the counter and went to slip into my lounging-around uniform of striped sweatpants, white crew socks, red Crocs, striped short-sleeved oxford shirt, and (let's not go there at this time) sweatshirt.

Before gathering my lunch to take down to my dark basement lair, I always prepare my drinks. Two bubba cups full of ice (the yellow one to add water to once I get downstairs, and the purple one for spare ice as needed for my magical elixir or the water). Then I add Great Value Sugar Free Cherry Limeade powder to my 44 oz Diet Coke. It was at the conclusion of this step that the CATASTROPHE occurred!

I'd just put the canister of drink mix back on the kitchen counter, and was pulling my hand forward to put the lid back on my 44 oz cup. Somehow, as I reached for that lid,

MY 44 OZ DIET COKE TIPPED OVER!!!

In this instance, I am glad that I'm not more like my mother. She would have given a sharp, audible, intake of breath, and done nothing. Stood frozen, watching. But not Val! I jumped into action, just like that time I saved Baby Genius from choking to death on a candy orange slice on Mom's knee, and DID SOMETHING! I caught that 44 oz Styrofoam cup before it even toppled completely. Like I used to tell my students when they marveled at my ability to simultaneously fling open the heavy wooden classroom door, and kick the wooden doorstop out so that it pegged the door at maximum openage up against the concrete block wall..."I'M A NINJA!"

Even though I righted the cup, some of my magical elixir still escaped! All over the counter! Combined with the now-dissolved Cherry Limeade powder. It was like that elevator opening at the Overlook Hotel in The Shining.

Seeing that I still had MOST of my precious beverage remaining,

I started to work cleaning up the mess. Because who ELSE was going to do it? And yes, I always double-cup my 44 oz Diet Coke to keep it cold throughout the afternoon and evening, with aolder cup that I've washed and saved. If only I'd been cognizant enough to take a picture while the counter was flooded! But alas, I DO have a bit of my mom in me, and inside I WAS in a panic, grabbing paper towels and putting things off the counter out of flood's way. A pic or it didn't happen thought did not cross my mind.

I got the cleanup aftermath, though.

You'd think that Hick might have stumped down to my lair when he came back in the house that evening. To see if perhaps I needed a tourniquet. Or if I'd been performing surgery, and needed an approved method to dispose of the wound-packing gauze that I'd tossed all willy-nilly into the tall kitchen trash bag. But he did not. Hick's pretty oblivious to anything that might require effort from himself.

While the counter cleaned up nicely, my skin did not.

And I might be in need of a literal money-launderer.

I didn't notice until the next day that my yellow bubba cup was also a casualty.

No, slovenly Val does not wash her water cup every day. It's only WATER, by cracky! And there's no dishwasher, save the hands of Val herself. Which might have cleaned up the red hand, though, with enough soaking.

Today, as I adjusted my seatbelt on the way to town, I saw that my sage green snap-front fleeced baseball-style jacket was also a casualty. Too late to turn around and go back. I'll be washing it tomorrow.

Don't want any busybodies thinking they need to call CSI, or check on the well-being of Hick.