Catching Up

The reason I joined DreamWidth was to follow a favorite blogger, Susan Dennis, who moved here from LiveJournal. I keep forgetting about this account. A lot of time has passed, so I'll keep this update to the point.

• I'm still on my weightless journey. I've lost 45 pounds with about that much left to go.
• Max, the deck cat, went MIA 3 weeks ago. We spent a couple of days looking for him, but he's either found a new home, went back to his former home, met with an accident, or succumbed to illness. I find it odd that he disappeared right after construction started across the street (see below). He had gained a bit of weight, spent a lot of money on vet visits and got his infected ears cleared up, his coat got glossy, but that stubborn respiratory infection never completely went away after several courses of antibiotics.
• The rest of the deck cats are doing well, and I've set up one of the heated cat beds on my studio covered porch for old Greyson to sleep in as the weather has turned chilly.
• Ed's still feeding raccoons every night, and often live streams them (Ed Drutjons on Facebook), and I created a Facebook page for them (Coon Hollow Critter Cam).
• Ed is semi-retired now and is home a lot more often. It's an adjustment. I'll leave it at that. 
• I decided to give myself a break from making coin rings this Christmas season to relax and concentrate on other things.
• Bucky's portrait is still undone, but I take it out to work on every now and then.
• I'm going to be adding some more artwork to Ed's Giant Ed-Head wall on the outside of his warehouse. It will be a spider web and a couple of raccoons in silhouette.
• FOUR houses are being built directly across the street from us. I've been live-streaming the progress on my Facebook page on most days (Beth King) using the hashtag #nosyneighbors. They subdivided the two vacant lots to make four buildable lots and are cramming these houses onto them. It looks awful. Two days ago we discovered the two large houses in the front are being set up as multi-family, which is a HUGE NO-NO on those lots, which are zoned for single-family residential only. We had our city councilwoman here yesterday and she's on it. Ed also had me fill out an online Freedom of Information Act request for the blueprints and we need to find out who approved this. We want a stop-work order put on the houses until they come up with NEW blueprints saying how they will fix this issue. We're prepared to fight.
• I've been trying for a month to get the mortgage of the house I inherited from my aunt Eleanor in 2012 into MY name, so I can pay it off. I sent the mortgage company all the info they asked for 2 weeks ago. Crickets ever since. 
• There is a wreck of a house two houses down from us that we want to buy and fix up. The owner died 2 years ago, owing money on it, and his family wants nothing to do with it. It's been sitting vacant since his death. The bank keeps trying to auction it off, and keeps canceling the auctions at the last moment, probably because THEY DON'T OWN IT. It's still in the deceased's name. The bank has (illegally) been sending a worker over to fix it up...they're only allowed to do enough work to protect their investment, but he's been inside the house doing work, which is not legal. Last summer they put a new roof on it, and 3 weeks later we had a tropical storm come through and a large tree came down on it, puncturing a hole in that new roof. They fixed it. The inside is a mess. The property needs leveling. It's a LOT of work. The next proposed auction date is in January. We're going to try to contact the family and see if we can work something out.  
• I got a pet tortoise! He was one of my sister's and his name is Herman. He's a studio pet and the only critter allowed in here. Two days ago he passed a long worm in his stool, and I have some dewormer arriving today. Gross.