Kimberly A. Cook

Military Romance Author

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Rolling Rocks In The Garden?

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by Kimberly A. Cook                  (Twitter@  WarriorTales)

Back to the rocks! This past weekend I finally got to put rocks in the Fairy Rock Garden. This might seem pretty straightforward, but in the end I needed three different types of rocks. So far.

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Bags all lined up like soldiers. That was as far as I was going to haul them. 

 

First choice was to use white rocks. Researched them at Home Depot and did not like the look. Shopped online and found a landscape company close by with rocks to be used in fish aquariums. Got a five-gallon bucket of those. They are so pretty I want to use them for jewelry.

Decided the aquarium rocks would be used to simulate a pond and then I would go with decorative river pebbles. When I bought the six bags of river pebbles, the pond pebbles looked nice too. Bought two of those bags.

There was not one place on those rock bags that said how much they weighed, but I knew it was more than thirty pounds of kitty litter. Used my Air Force Reserve flight gloves, since the nomex with leather grips really help grab plastic bags. Full of rocks. Wet rocks.

Thursday loaded the rock bags from Home Depot into Subie. Friday unloaded the rocks from Subie to the garden. Saturday I decided it was not rock moving day.

Sunday it was time. The rocks spread pretty well but I almost forgot about the aquarium rocks, but I remembered in time to make the rock pond.

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Get your freshly washed rocks! See the agate aquarium rocks for the rock pond?

 

They were drying out and looking dirty, so then I had to wash my rocks. About this time I figured I was doing play therapy and I could not have been happier. Whatever floats our boats!

Even found the piece of black obsidian Mom brought over from her yard and gave it a good scrubbing and added it to the landscape. Then I started moving things around. HGTV in the rock garden!

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Pretty rocks in my own rock garden. Fabulous.

 

Then I began finding fun rocks in the Fairy Rock Garden. Started pilfering my own pebbles. Once a rock hound, always a rock hound. Still have a bucket of aquarium rocks left too. Priceless!

Then my new Fairy Houses 2017 Calendar by Sally J. Smith arrived. The pictures are what dreams are made of and where fairies truly live. There is a Fairy Garden industry!

But now I have to order the doors for the Fairy Houses, get ready to put a roof on the stump with pine cone pieces and unleash the hot glue gun. Plus move the elves in to guard the perimeter.

It’s not easy being a Fairy Rock Garden developer, but I’m having a blast.

Whatever play therapy works for you, have fun!

 

 

 

 

Oregon Love For Louisiana Kitties!

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by Kimberly A. Cook                     (Twitter@  WarriorTales)

The long weekend messed me up on my Tuesday blog post, but I did get lots of things done that involved furnace guys, cleaning out things and moving rocks. The glamour of it all!

But on this eve of 9/11, it’s nice to know that no matter what the disaster in our nation, we lend a helping hand to our fellow citizens, including the furry ones. A total of 31 cats and kittens arrived from Louisiana yesterday to help make room for felines affected by the flooding there and to bring some furry Southern charm to Oregon.

Remember those we lost on 9/11 and the first responders and construction workers we are still losing to illness fifteen years later.

Honor them by adopting a Southern feline friend in need as an act of kindness.

Have a great weekend and Happy Quirky Friday.

P.S. No Sound on the video. Just cute kitties.

How About These SEALs?

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by Kimberly A. Cook                  (Twitter@  WarriorTales)

Heading into the long Labor Day weekend, wanted to send a shout out to all the troops around the world who will be working hard while we play. Then thought it might be super cool to watch these Navy SEALs play at a football game. Jumping into a football game that is.

Have a great, safe weekend and Happy Quirky Friday!

https://youtu.be/x_7tsRrgA2Q

 

Cranky Or Kind Seagull?

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by Kimberly A. Cook                      (Twitter@  WarriorTales)

Back to the beach! Looking at my pics from our early August beach trip, I’m always surprised with what I see afterwards. Take this normal seagull. I took five pictures of him doing his feather cleaning and then a couple of him/her looking out to sea.

Five. Looking closer at the pictures when I got them on my computer, I noticed one photo of a nice, normal kind of happy looking seagull. Fluffy, pretty, bright colors.

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Normal seagull guy on the rocks. So to speak.

 

Then I looked at the other four and saw the feather cleaning shot, couldn’t see his/her face. Then when I looked closer at the final three, I spotted this. Cranky seagull. Or is that just my imagination?

Checked the rest of the photos and three of the five are cranky gull. It almost seems like he knows what I’m doing and he’s not happy being a victim of the paparazzi. Maybe he is a celebrity seagull?

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Cranky seagull! It’s the mouth right?

 

The best advice when taking photos is take as many as you want; you never know what will show up. When I went on a Europe camping trip for three months in 1983, I took 70 rolls of film; one for each day of the trip. Ended up selling a few rolls to my Autotours EX57 buddies, but I used most of them. When in doubt, take the photo.

Then be prepared for something to happen you couldn’t have arranged in a million years. Like this crazy person walking out onto the sea cliff across the bay from me at the same time a small boat was headed toward the harbor. Imagine!

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You cannot plan this stuff, so you have to be ready to take the photo.

 

If it had been earlier or later in the day, the lack of glaring sun would’ve made the colors deeper. But short of hiring people to stand out on rocks, we have to take what pops up in front of us. Literally.

So always be prepared with extra memory cards and backup batteries. There may be a cranky seagull in your future.

Photo on!

 

 

Do You Have A Babysitting Wonder Pooch?

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by Kimberly A. Cook                       (Twitter@   WarriorTales)

The last days of summer are on us and parents might be looking forward to kids going back to school. Seems Blakely, the Cincinnati Zoo nanny dog, might also be in the same boat trying to keep up with four wild cheetah kittens.

We love our cats and kittens but give this fabulous working dog applause too. Babysitting is hard work!

Have a great weekend and Happy Quirky Friday!

Is It Still August?

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by Kimberly A. Cook          (Twitter@  WarriorTales)

Have you ever diapered a heat pump? My aging heat pump/air conditioning unit decided to die on Friday. At about 101 degrees outside. I knew this because the house got warm and there was water/fluid leaking from the furnace. The unit had been limping the last two hot weekends, but in the full August heat wave it decided to officially croak.

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Spec Ops Cat was not amused about the demise of the cranky AC unit. It truly was the dog days of August for him. He coped by not moving. Period.

 

This was not my first rodeo with this piece of equipment. Over the years my “unit” has done such fun things as ice up and sound like a Huey helicopter landing in my bedroom and pee through my kitchen ceiling into the silverware holder in the sink.

I’ve hooked up a gravity drain using aquarium tubing and a bucket to catch water from the heat pump that would have impressed NASA.

One winter weekend the drain pipe froze so I had to switch to emergency heat for two days, which caused my electric bill to surpass the national debt.

Since the unit had been limping along, luckily I’d made an appointment with heat pump fix-it guy for Friday morning. He showed up and gave me one last possibility to cure the aging unit’s peeing problems. Most folks had a 75 percent success rate with the fix.

“You’ll know right away,” he assured me. Yup. Saturday morning the diaper (towel) was wet. My unit was a 25 percenter. Heat pump guy told me to “shut it down” if that happened, because I didn’t need to be breathing chemical laden air. Sigh.

This all happened because the “unit” overhead me talking about replacing it. I’m positive. Its lasted longer than most of the ones in my complex, but its been a challenging relationship.

After the first two leaking through the kitchen ceiling episodes, the HVAC wizards were sure they’d fixed it. I had the ceiling repaired and repainted.

The “unit” then decided to freeze the drain line again and once again water poured from my kitchen ceiling. So I left the three foot long opening the width of drywall seam tape, complete with the fancy sagging of the textured ceiling plaster.

Entertained the idea of using white duct tape to cover the gap, but most visitors don’t notice it since no one looks up. It’s my own personal art installation.

So now I have appointments with the ductless guys and the electric furnace guys. We shall see who wins my favor. I long for the days of working air conditioning, cozy heat and a fixed kitchen ceiling and no heat pump diapers.

A girl can dream can’t she?

P.S. In the grand scheme of things it’s no big deal. My heart goes out to the people in Louisiana who would love to have just a leak in their ceiling. Let’s hope for a much better September for all those deserving folks.