Holly Doyne

This post is not pretty. I do not recommend reading while eating. You have been warned.

I try to brush the cat everyday. He sheds. Animals shed, people shed. Fact of life. In reality, the only time you don’t shed is if you don’t have any hair. That leaves you down to the occasional newborn, the very very old and those under chemo.

The cat falls into none of those. He is just a furry beast who I try to brush everyday. He likes being brushed, that isn’t the question. It is more like he is under foot while I am in the kitchen and really don’t want floating hair while doing food prep.

This morning? I picked up “the glove”  and he came running. Noah had purchased a pair and gave me one. Onyx adores getting groomed with this glove and rubs up against it.  I spent a whole five minutes –

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and wound up with this gross mat of hair. It is more an 0.5oz if that gives you any idea. Obviously, all that grooming is thirsty work –

Or is it a table?
Actually it probably doesn’t make any difference. What was important is that it has been pretty much buried since I returned home from a cruise several months ago. You notice I am not specifying so that I don’t have to admit how long it has actually been?

The important bit? I spent several hours – actually most of the day filing left over flosses away, sorting out three bins of potential projects and finding things. I found my checkbook (yes, I actually have ONE check that I write every month – the recipient passes along credit card fees. Since they won’t give me bank and routing numbers, there is no way that I am providing my banking details. Hence the check. I also find five various assorted containers of bulk needles. rather than move needles from project to project – I can stop panicking!

Which meant by late afternoon I had rescued several needles from the floor, filled two small wastebaskets, one bowl of orts (thrums for you weavers) which I use to stuff cat toys and dumped the cat off my working surface at least a dozen times. 

Now it is off to the game. The Valkyries are taking on the Dallas Wings. and I have a souvenir book to collect.  

Completely mundane and no purple wigs involved. Instead I am turning to kitchen gadgets:

It looks so innocent sitting there on the counter. Perhaps my most favorite it performs consistently and flawlessly every time. Doing what – you ask…

Why, guillotining a bagel. Not off with its head (or other obscenities), but splitting it in half. Into the toaster, then onto the plate…..

And no fingers are hurt by sharp knives either…

First, I am relieved to know that I am not the only one playing “hunt the keys.”  Won’t even discuss the “where the H is the phone now” since, having more than one Apple product, it is just fast to use the “Find My” app. It will force sound from the phone even if on silent. But the truth? I miss the days when I simply didn’t worry about the phone, I knew exactly where in the house it was attached.

But anyway, I made the run to the hardware store. Stud finders are easy. Not the cheapest and not the one with all the bells and whistles. But hanging hardware? That is another story. The mirror clips were the wrong kind and neither George nor Noah liked my hooks. So, since this is a good store and I have the receipts – it will be back on Thursday to swap out hanging hardware.

My stop at Berkeley Bowl was moderately successful. Found good prices on berries, and a small basket of figs. But cherries? Nada. So there was a stop at Safeway on the way back. There were only four bags of cherries left. Cherry season is officially over. One bag came home with me.

All that, and the cat is telling me that I need a nap. Well, actually he would like to take one in my lap.

Have you ever put anything in a safe place, then couldn’t find it?

If you haven’t, my bet is that you are well under the age of, oh let us say 50. Or just really good about habit patterns. I normally am, except for when it comes to setting down my handi (cellphone for the English speakers). But while we were in Lost Altos last month, I had taken along the second set of car keys for whatever reason. While George went to his meetings, I wandered around visiting various shops and just taking in the town.

It was a couple of hours after I was back in the hotel that I thought about putting a couple of things in the car. And couldn’t find the keys. I literally went through the room, checked with the front desk, and revisited most of the places I had been.

Nada.

Fast forward to today. I decided that an hour a day of clean up/organizing would not be a bad thing. In fact, it means that I need to make some decisions on what stays and what doesn’t, if I replace a couple of small cabinets that are literally on their last rollers… you get the idea. As part of the clean up (otherwise it is laundry day. four loads done, more to go), I picked up the smaller of my computer backpacks and went through the pockets. Other than my good seam ripper, nothing that needed to be put away. But it still felt too heavy. Went through the pockets, shook it. No noise, nothing rattled, but it was still too heavy. Finally checked the front facing zipper pocket that I only use when traveling. That is where I tuck extra facemasks + my passport until I am through security.

And yes, you guessed it – no clue why I put the key right there. It is heavy with a number of “extras” just because.

Large sigh of relief. The car may be 10 years old, but it has one of those electronic locks on the door that can only be opened by the fob. The ignition still uses a key, thank you very much. But I had priced it. Losing that key would wind up being about $250 get it re-keyed and replace both fobs. Not an expenditure I had been looking forward to,

Now, what else can I find while excavating?

I am sure that I mentioned the lovely wall mirror that we brought from Germany.

Mirror. Also ceiling and window reelections

which arrived safe and sound as far as the wood was concerned. But the glass? Not so much. So there it sat in the garage for almost 10 years. Yes, it has been over 10 years since we moved to California.  Anyway, near the beginning of the year when we had to replace glass in cupboard doors (off-springs house. She had been living with it for the 10 years she has been in the house). Since George did the arrangements, he decided that it was reasonable to go ahead and get glass put into the mirror.

(queue several months going by. Mirror has been lying flat on the large dining table (which lives at the far end of the living room because … oh, never mind). Anyway he borrowed a stud finder and we planned on mounting it on the wall. Oh, that is the wall shared with the bathroom. The little gizmo is reported wires. And plumbing and …. Yes, I realized that no one wraps cords around support studs and we are not in anyway planning on hanging something with some heft on a shower pipe. But seriously, I looked at the room set up.

We reorganized the bedroom when we replaced the bed. Just sticking it in the middle of the back wall because that involved the least movement of other furniture. I did some measuring the other day. If I move the dresser to the outside wall – there are several options for mirror locations. That means moving the bed toward the inner wall. This also has the advantage of the headboard no longer blocking the cranks for one of the windows.

Today is the day. I emptied off the dresser. And the night stands. The laundry went down to the laundry room. And picked up everything off the dresser and clothes that needed to be sorted. It all landed on the be

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Obviously this was a golden time to clean the floor, and the furniture. With help of course.

I found I am short one extension cord. When we did the renovations we added outlets. Unfortunately the one on what is now my side of the bed isn’t grounded. I can survive a day.. I think. But, I now have all these lovely blank walls which are just begging for me to hang things on them, rightt?

Who knew? Apparently it was first celebrated in 2002.

My excuse would have been that we were living in Germany and hadn’t had a cat in years and years.

But now?

Onyx has been living with us over a year. He still insists that 0500 is a proper time for breakfast.

and that any good patch of sun is his for the sleeping….

And the saga continues.

1) remember I said that George tried to do the renewal online? Well the system accepted his payment without problem.

2) Arriving at the DMV after the smog check, he was informed that he had to turn in the INCORRECT plates. They would issue him a temp good for up to 30 days.

3) The tags that would arrive in the mail would not be valid (see comment of payment above). Apparently payment triggers an automatic shipping of tags. This makes no sense. What about if the car hadn’t passed the smog check?

4) When the new plates arrived at the DMV he would be notified and would need to trade in the temp (removed from the back window) for the new plates. If the tags had arrived, they would be traded in for valid tags. I am not sure what would happen if the tags didn’t arrive in time. That wasn’t covered.

5) So here we are, car with a placard in the back window and no license plates. Go figure. It certainly makes me glad we don’t have any distance/out of state trips planned in the next couple of weeks.

I have a cat in the lap who has decided that it is the only place in the house suitable for napping. It certainly doesn’t make stitching easier.

For those of you not in the US – DMV is our Division of Motor Vehicles. It is the agency (each state + autonomous districts have one) that deals with licensing drivers (all levels) and vehicles (again, anything wheeled with a motor entitled to use regular streets).  We will not talk about electric bikes here.

Any way. We purchased our current car back in late 2017 or so before the new models came out. It was new. It is a standard transmission VW Golf; we purchased it for a very good price. Nine years later, the license tags have been renewed annually. There have been a few parking tickets, routinely driving through the automated Toll booths on all three SF Bridges. The car has about 60k worth of miles on it.

George attempted to renew the tags on line and hit a snag. Our registration was correct. Our physical license plates were not.

What?

It seems that we were issued the WRONG NUMBER PLATES back in 2017 and have been driving on an incorrect plate number for nine years. Now I totally agree with a friend of mine: the first thing you do when you get license plates is check them against your registration.  Now looking back at the time frame, I was just starting to grow my hair back from chemo and we were shortly headed back to Germany for a cruise going to Iceland & Greenland. So, I never double checked the license plates against the registration. Obviously, George didn’t either.

( Note, for UASREUR,  USAFE-UK, Germany, Switzerland, plates didn’t  arrive in the mail, you have to physically trade in the temp at the registration office where both you and the clerk verified everything before you went out the door).

Fast forward to 2026. That is right. All those years of annual renewal which consisted of filling out the form, paying the price, getting a new sticker in the mail and slapping it on the plate. Never once did anyone compare the registration to the plate. To be fair, obviously our car insurance folks didn’t either.

I am not sure how the error got discovered. My guess is that the person with our plates had to make a transaction and their incorrect plates were discovered. When run – the computer pointed to us.

I am hopeful George can have this dealt with by COB (close of business).

In any case, I wound up searching back through old posts to see if I could pin down the actual date we purchased the car but no luck.

And, if you have gotten this far – please reassure yourself (if you have a car) that its plate and the plate number on your registration match.

Today matched my t-shirt that says – under the illustration of a very grumpy cat –
Another Day I didn’t sign up for.

And that goes especially for one punctuated by a migraine on top of missing car keys.