Sunday Accomplishments **EDITED

1.  Father's Day Breakfast (Check)
2.  Church (Check)
3.  Laundry (Check)
4.  Dishes (Check)
5.  Otter clean out dog yard
6.  Find out if Otter is allergic to yellow jacket stings (CHECK!!)
7.  Find three other active yellow jacket nests (Check)
8.  Move rest of Otter's craft stuff from garage to shelves in her room.

Well, I guess 6 out of 8 isn't too bad.

Except for # 6.  It wasn't a good thing to accomplish.  I don't think Otter much appreciated it, either.  I feel her pain!  Otter was starting on # 4, I knocked down the two dead nests from the lean-to and she was carrying them in the shovel to toss over the fence.  However, wasps are very protective of nests - even if it's not their own, and we think that one from the two active nests that we discovered in the lean to after # 5 was accomplished probably thought it needed to defend the one of the two nests that had lots of (dead) eggs in it**.  I was out in the front yard, I was going to go knock down the two dead nests Bill got last week and trim the remaining tree limblets off the tree I was working on when I was stung, and I heard her yelling repeatedly OWOWOWOWOW all the way from the back - I figured at that point that she'd been stung because she's pretty stoic about pain.  By the time I got inside, she and Bill were in the bathroom and he was checking the sting.  It's on her belly.  No asthma issues!  Just the usual intense, burning pain that makes you want to scream.  She iced it, washed it, took tylenol and used alchohol on it.  She also put a bandaid over it, she was afraid her clothing would rub the spot.  Bill and I checked the area where she was when she got stung, by the back fence, and found two old nests but nothing active.  But then I looked in the lean-to when I was putting the shovel and tree tool up, and that's when I found the two active nests.  They are going to get sprayed this evening.

The third nest?  It's on the front porch.  They are building inside the metal tubes of my windchime!  It's going to get taken care of this evening as well.  But it's going to get a watery grave, it should just fit inside a bucket full of water.  After it's dead, I'll move the dead nests from the front of the house - I don't want to get stung again!

Bees and yellow jackets/wasps are not the same thing, so there is still the possibility that Otter could be allergic to bees.  But, and this is just a guess, I'm thinking that the fact that she didn't react to the wasp sting might be a good sign about that.

# 5 & # 8 on our list will be taken care of later, probably tomorrow.  Otter's had enough of being outside today.

After all the drama, Otter and I went to the dollar store and Wallyworld.  Among other things, we bought cookies at the dollar store.  And a tube of hydrocortisone cream since it's used on bug bites/stings and the ones I have in the first aid kit were out of date many years ago.

Movie review:  John Carter.  It was not as bad as we expected.  It felt very rushed and badly edited, I think that a great deal was left out of the books that might have been needed to explain a few things.  But it was better than we expected.  It was set-up for a sequel at the end, but Disney's already announced that they actually lost money on it and that there won't be any more.

Bill was checking on our eBay stuff while ago.  He might have gotten a "listing confirmation" email from eBay, but somehow he discovered that our eBay account had been hacked.  Someone posted a vehicle, a one day listing that started at 10:50 this morning and would end at midnight tonight.  It was a cash-only or send a money order transaction.  Only thing is, we don't have the vehicle in question and aren't selling anything at the moment!  He canceled it, then he changed the passwork and notified eBay.  Since they stated cash/money order only, he didn't think that PayPal had been hacked (it was before) but he checked it anyway and it looks ok.

I did a little crochet yesterday.  Not much, but I got a couple of rows on my scarf.  I went through my patterns, I'm looking for new projects to destash and also because it's just fun.  I have a few ideas, but nothing is certain yet as far as my next project.

I think Bill's enjoyed his Father's Day.  He got to play with power tools!  Later, we're going to have Digorno's pizzas and Otter is going to bake him a cake.  We will probably also have some of the strawberry cheesecake ice cream pie from his early birthday (yesterday) which is surprisingly not all gone yet.  It won't last long, that's for sure.  And Otter made sure that Pastor Dave knows that Bill's birthday is tomorrow - she announced it to Dave when he was asking what everyone was doing for their dad's for Father's Day.  I think she probably figured that it was a fair thing to do, since he embarassed her one time when she was very young with a birthday announcement in church and she's never forgiven him.  I think that they are even now.  At least for that one. :)

**While it's highly possible that the firedevil thought it was defending a nest, it's also highly possible that the active nest she was standing close to was where it came from.  I was walking the back fence, to see if I could find any nests and I found one that is hidden behind the trellis we have on the back fence for the morning glories.  It's just a few feet from where Otter was standing.  It's going to be gone tonight as well.

Suicidal Squirrels on Friday the 13th!

When your day starts out with a kamikaze squirrel, it really can't get any worse.

I ran over one this morning.  I saw it dash off the curb & into the street just as I got to where it was.  It was not a pleasant experience! I'm glad that I was the driver and not Otter, but it was still not fun.

I'm not superstitious, but it was not a good way to start the day.

At least it is Friday.  Even if it is in the high 50's/low 60's.  Instead of the mid-80's that was forecast.

Blogger was acting up last night and this morning, Froggy made a comment on my last entry and Blogger would not accept it for any reason.  I think the entire site was down, because of what it was saying when I was attempting to sign in.  It seems to be working tonight, but Froggy's comment would not post so I posted it for her.  It had to do with Paypal phishing attempts.  Since then, Froggy's also discovered that her email was hacked into.  That sort of thing seems to be happening more and more often.  It's really frustrating to have to deal with things like that and it can also be costly.

I have a craft idea I'm going to try.  I have to give a shout-out to my blog friend Heidi, because I got the idea from her blog.  It involves a canning jar and I'll post pictures of it on my craft blog if it works.  I don't think that Bill's going to mind helping me with this one, since he's already volunteered the use of his drill.  But in the interest of safety, I think I'll be the one to operate the drill!

Well, maybe anyway.  I'll make sure that I have plenty of band-aids on hand!

Wednesday Ketchup

Nothing spectacular happening around here, but in order to keep Froggy off my back about blogging I thought that I should at least post something.  (Ducking and running now!). (Grin).

We are probably about to get hammered, thunder & lightning on the way with assorted other things such as rain and maybe windy stuff.  It's very cloudy and getting darker.  It's 4:30 in the afternoon, but it looks much later.

We did have one unpleasant thing to deal with this week.  Our Paypal account got hacked.  We got an email from Paypal, confirming a $443 purchase of a laptop computer.  Except that we didn't buy one.  Bill was unable to get into our account because the password had been changed.  Not by one of us!  So, we called Paypal and they said that they thought it was a fraudulent transaction - but they let it go through anyway.  They cancelled it, but they had already sent the withdawel order to the bank so I had to go to the bank and have a stop payment issued.  Paypal also showed that they sent the money back to us, but told us that it could take days and we should probably go to the bank.  Which I did, last Friday actually.  Last night, the withdraw order came through AND THE BANK HONORED IT!  Even though I had it it writing that they wouldn't.  So, back to the bank today for me.  They got a "small" taste of RedHeadTexasWoman and are reimbursing us, since they screwed up.  That could take up to 24 hours, I haven't checked in the last couple of hours but will soon.  It had better be fixed - and stay fixed, this time.

It's been frustrating dealing with this, to say the least.

But all the Paypal passwords have been changed again (by us) and hopefully, this won't happen again.  It seems to be happening more and more often, I've heard of several people who have gone through this.  If we didn't keep such a close watch on things, there is no telling how much we would have had stolen.

Bill's finished two of the wooden chairs we bought for the deck.  He's working on the third one now.  They are really nice and very comfortable.

I'm going to get this posted now, before I have to suddenly turn off the computer.  Then, I think I'll go crochet.  I started a new project for Otter and it's calling my name.

Third Time is a Charm!

It took me three tries to get into my blog. I kept goofing up my password. Like Toadles says, FFD. (Fat Finger Disease).

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. I called my credit card company just to be sure that they weren't the ones that called me, because I have had to talk to them lately - they have managed to misplace a payment I sent them. It was an extra payment, so there won't be any problems such as late fees or anything. But it's still an aggravation. I sent them two extra payments, I put them in the same envelope. And they only got one. They think that when the envelope was opened, whomever or whichever machine in question took the check out and then didn't look in the envelope so they didn't see the second check. So I'm probably going to have to get a stop payment issued on it and then send them another one. But they told me to wait a few days to give them time to possibly find it. So I thought it was worth checking with them, although I was pretty sure that it was a scam attempt. Which is exactly what it was, apparently there have been quite a few customers besides me who have had scam calls. I don't think it's just for my specific company, I think it's a pretty wide spread attempt at stealing identities. And I didn't give them any information, so they didn't get anything from us. And they won't, should they attempt it again with us.

The other thing I've noticed is that since the economy has started to tighten, we get a lot of automated calls at work where someone wants to loan us money. I just hang up on them, but when they come in after hours the answering machine generally records as long as there is something to record. It gets kind of frustrating, dealing with that.

My favorite Fenton dealer has closed her shop. She has a (very small) booth in an antique/upscale craft/decor mall and I went to check out her booth today on my lunch hour. It was a very depressing trip. She is such a nice person and that shop was her lifelong dream. I didn't see her, which was a shame. Her shop was doing pretty good, until a few months ago. When Fenton announced that they were closing, she had a rush of business. And then nothing. For quite a while. So she added a Watkins Spices line, but it's not a big seller. I did my best to keep her in business! Her lease was up in the spring and she was considering adding another collectible glass company, but I think she just got tired of the uncertainty and the economy didn't help. I really hope that her booth does well, but I don't think she'll be in business too much longer. It was pretty sad, seeing her tiny booth today.

We thought that Otter might be coming down with something, she has had a sore throat off and on the last day or so and has had asthma symptoms. She had a sore throat this morning but was able to go to school. All day long, I expected a call to come get her. But she made the day and when I picked her up she said that she was feeling pretty good and her throat was fine. I hope that continues, but asthma and cold-type stuff can be very sneaky where Otter is concerned. It can act like it's flaring up, then get better. Then WHAM! It will be back and with a vengeance. But she seems pretty clear this afternoon.

And now Frasier wants my undivided attention. It's puppy play time!

Why Do People Think I'm Stupid?

Specifically, the people who call me on the phone and pretend to be my credit card company. The ones who get mad at me when I won't give them my personal information. That is today's gripe. We were eating dinner when the phone rang, Bill answered it and then handed it to me since the person said that they were with our credit card company and I handle all our finances. I take the phone and the woman immediately starts telling me that I have to tell her my name and phone number to "verify." Which is when I said to her that she should already have that info and if she wants to tell me what she has, then I'll confirm or deny. She didn't like that answer. She kept asking me for my info and I finally told her that I didn't call her, she called me and that she could tell me what she had or I would NOT give her any information. Then she said that she just didn't see why I wouldn't tell her what she asked, since they had it all already. And I said that if they really did have it all already, then why did I have to tell her what she already knew? At which time she got really snippy & rude and told me to have a nice day - except that somehow I just don't really think she meant it. Then she was still talking when I hung up, I think she was complaining to someone else that was there since she wasn't talking to me. I'll call my credit card company tomorrow to confirm that it wasn't them, just in case but I don't think it was them. For one thing, they wouldn't be rude since all their calls are monitored. When I've had to talk to them, they have always been very professional.

I guess that's the latest scam. We used to get calls from people claiming that they were with eBay and needed us to confirm our information. But we never satisfied their inquiring minds, either!

I decided not to postpone the inevetable. I brought some of my plant stands inside and relocated the cactus plants to the dining room. I'm going to have to do some rearranging now. But that's fine, it's fun.

Magginator is suddenly shedding. All over the place! Otter tackled her with the brush tonight, which the dog absolutely loved. It helped, but there is still fur flying and it's beagle colored.

Since we're discussing dogs, Frasier needs to be mentioned so he doesn't feel left out. I was awakened very early this morning by what I at first thought was Bill snoring. I was about to poke him in the side and tell him to roll over, when I realized that the noise was coming from the foot of the bed and that it was Frasier! He was talking to me. I think he was hoping for an early breakfast. Which he did NOT get, by the way. But it was funny.