Halloween-ish Quote

Tiny House Living---'70's Style

Our trailer looked just like this one.  Same size, same year.  The only difference between this one and the one we had is that ours didn't have the aftermarket awnings on it that this one does.  I found a sales video for this trailer from Bullyan RV in Duluth, MN.  All the photos in this post are taken from that video, made and originally posted by Andy Johnson.

According to HGTV, the latest craze in homebuying is that of tiny house living.  I find this quite interesting because my family and I lived in a "tiny house" way back in the late '70's.  We just called it a travel trailer.  It was 7'9" wide and 30 feet long--just under 240 square feet--and all five of us lived in it with all the comforts of home.  We had full-sized appliances, a real bathroom, actual closets, a queen-sized pull-out bed for my parents, two twin beds for my brothers and an almost full-sized loft bed for me.  These are things that seem to be missing from most of the tiny houses shown on TV and on the market today.

Back door of the trailer

Rear windows of trailer, showing the rear factory awning that ours had, too. 
The little window at the top is where my "room" was--in the loft at the rear of the trailer.

Where my parents bed was, in the front of the trailer, when it was pulled out made a queen-sized bed.  When it was put away, the area became our dining room at mealtime and our living room the rest of the time.

Front room of the trailer. 
The couch that became my parents' bed
had its back up against the horizontal paneling in this picture. 
The couch was green and yellow plaid.
I think we had some chairs in here, too, but no blue and red futon. 

 



Closet, Bed and Nightstand. 
Between the bed and the closet was access to the back door. 
The bed was pulled out at night to be long enough to sleep on.

My brothers' beds were in the back.  They pulled out to become real twin-sized beds, but then all folded away to double as a playroom during the day.  My bed was above theirs.  It was a fold-down storage area for all our sheets and bedding during the day, and I could always fold my loft down for privacy to read or relax while my brothers played below.

The other bed in the back.

 Then at night, it became my own private room.

A place to play, with underbed storage. 
Plenty of room for two little boys and sometimes their big sister, too

 

My "room".  This was the loft over my brothers' beds. 
You can see a small crack of light showing in the top left of this photo. 
There were windows at the top on each side for ventilation
when you were sleeping there.

TV Stand.  There is a cabinet with a drawer
and door below and a cabinet above, too

In the living/dining/parents' bedroom was our full-sized TV, in its own special nook.  This had
storage both above and below it.  The bottom part was for toys and games, while in the top cabinet was kept phone books and mail and other miscellaneous items.

Cabinet above the TV stand and Refrigerator (and thermostat)



Kitchen sink, pull out cutting board, along with the original cover
that was over the sink, and stove. 
I believe it was a gas stove, but I'm not sure.

The kitchen had a real stove and refrigerator, not just the "tiny" ones found in many of the tiny houses today.   We didn't yet own a microwave, so all the cooking had to be done for the family in those appliances.  It had a full-sized kitchen sink and lots of cabinets and drawers for all the kitchen implements a family of five would need.  

Range hood and kitchen cabinets



The tub with a seat at the back of it.  This was quite a luxury!

The bathroom had a full-sized shower in a real tub that I thought was really cool because there was a seat at the back of it.  I had never had such a wonderful luxury item!  Many tiny houses today have just a hose from the bathroom sink with a shower head on it.  But this was like a castle compared to the modern tiny houses.  The tub was an absolute

Matching bathroom sink and countertop

necessity as my brothers were still quite young.  The older one would have been about six or seven, and the younger one was three or four.  So they were not quite old enough to take showers on their own yet.  It had an actual toilet and bathroom sink, too, where we would all get ready for the day in relative peace and harmony.

La toilette and bathroom heater.

Top of Dresser between two closets.   There is a window here above the dresser.



Windows around the front of the trailer,
along with the storage above where the couch was,
as well as the clock and 8-track tape player.
The windows around the back were the same.

Across from the bathroom were two large closets and a dresser with a large window above it.  There was storage under my brothers' beds and above my parents' bed.  We were certainly not hurting for storage in our tiny house!

There was also a back door to the place because of its length.  This was located just before my
brother's bed at the rear of the trailer.  It also had awnings for shade attached to the front and rear. The front and back each had windows around all three sides.

We lived this way, in our portable tiny house, for two summers when I was in 5th and 6th grades, back in 1978 and '79.  I look back on those two summers with fond memories as they were the first two summers of our lives that our dad was able to actually be home everyday.  Before that, he was usually gone most of the week for his job.  In fact, most of the time he would leave Sunday night and not get home until the following Friday or Saturday and then just had to turn around and leave again.  But the trailer allowed us to go with him to the area of the state where he worked and allowed him to be home--what a treat!  It was an adventure, but it was also home and felt like home to have our whole family together.

We ultimately purchased a mobile home and later a house in that region so we could be closer to him year-round.   

We were quite comfortable and never felt like we were sacrificing anything to "live small".  We also never realized we were setting a trend for 40 years later!

The heart of the home--kitchen and dining room.

 

Help! There's a TARANTULA in My Toilet!

This is the first in a series on West Texas "Wildlife" that I will be presenting in upcoming posts.  It is a revision of an older article.



The Criminal

This doesn’t really happen to everyone!

About 1AM one night, my mother burst into my room.   I was, of course, fast asleep. I heard her say, in a hushed and hurried whisper—that probably would have been a shriek if the kids were not asleep—“Wake up! Wake up! I think there is a tarantula in my toilet!”

The Scene of the Crime

Like anyone would, I shot out of bed, half conscious, and rushed into her bathroom.

As I am running, my mother is saying, “It is hanging right under the rim of the bowl!  I got up to go to the bathroom and it was just hanging there! I could see its fuzzy legs! I turned away because I didn’t believe it, but when I turned back, it was swimming around in there and heading for the bottom.  I stared at it for a few seconds in disbelief and it swam down the hole!  I could see the little ripples it was making when it was swishing its legs around! But I’m afraid it might have climbed back up when I went to get you!”

I had no idea if she was dreaming--or if I was, for that matter--or if she had really seen something. By this point, however, I had pretty much no choice but to take her word for it and go hunting.

Now, as I am the catcher and killer of all things creepy, crawly and gross at my house, I vigilantly examined the inside of the toilet bowl.  Seeing nothing, I warily felt around the inside.  Then I checked completely around the outside of the bowl and the base of the toilet.  No sign of him. Then I thoroughly investigated behind the commode, between it and the wall.  I even probed the tiny space behind the tank.  Nothing. (Thank you.)

Then I gingerly lifted the top of the tank off, fearing that it had somehow made its way up in there.  I checked under and around all the moving parts inside the tank and once again, thankfully, found nothing. 

In the meantime, my mother is peering over my shoulder, but in a cowering tense manner as if she would shoot backwards and explode in terror if there was even a hint of black furriness anywhere.

I was not putting up a brave front, either.  I know all too well how frightening, although harmless, these creatures can be.  I was armed with a flyswatter I had grabbed on the way to my mom's bathroom.  I was poised through this entire search to swat first and ask questions later!

You may be thinking that Mom was just half-awake and dreaming, and, as I admitted earlier, I did, too--at first.  But my mother is a very logical, no-nonsense kind of woman.  And there was so much detail in her description, I couldn’t help but believe she was telling the truth.  Further, we had had a very late night and she actually WASN’T asleep, so there is no way she was dreaming. She is not someone who would make this all up just for fun.

Having found nothing, I flushed the toilet a few times for good measure.  I gave my mother the “all clear” and she reluctantly allowed me to head back to my bed.  As I lay there thinking about the incident while trying to fall back to sleep, some plausible explanations for there being a tarantula in the house came to mind.  As I considered these possibilities, I became a firm believer in there actually having been a tarantula in the toilet.

These are the arguments I presented to myself:

1.  We lived in West Texas in the middle of the Upper Chihuahuan Desert.  Tarantulas, rattlesnakes, Black Widows, lizards, scorpions, and various other "beasties" are very common here.  They are just a fact of life and occasionally get into homes and buildings.

2.  It was spring.  As soon as the weather starts to warm up a bit, all the above-mentioned creatures start coming out of hibernation.  It is still somewhat cold at night, however, and these critters seek warm places to maintain their body temperatures.  Tarantulas are basically nocturnal, but occasionally, you can see them sunning themselves in the daytime.  They love warm sand and concrete, as these hold their heat well, even into the evening.  Since they are primarily night-lovers, my mother probably just startled the spider when she turned on the light.

3.  It had rained a lot in the few days preceding all this.  Tarantulas love water and come out of their burrows to seek it once they start waking up from hibernation.  In fact, there are places in the area where there are huge "tarantula migrations".  When these occur, huge "hordes" of hundreds or possibly thousands of tarantulas cross the road to a new food, water or shelter source on the other side.  This is especially common when a field has just been plowed, or if there are standing water puddles in it.  Searching for water is another possible reason there may have been a tarantula swimming around in the toilet bowl.

Flower Bed Under
Bathroom Window
Little white square is the
cap for the sewer clean out

4.  We have many flower beds around our yard.  The dirt in them is very soft, mellow and well-aerated, which is perfect for animals to dig into.  We have lots of strange holes in the beds which we always thought were places that squirrels had been burying their bounty and hadn’t fully covered them up.  But these “holes” are more like tiny caves, usually near the bases of plants where it would be shady and cool during the heat of the day, or warm and cozy during the chill of winter.  They are about the size of a two-year-old’s fist, which, interestingly, is about the same size as a tarantula’s body.  So, it slowly dawned on me that the holes could possibly be tarantula burrows where they had spent the winter and recently dug themselves out.

5.  We had just had a plumber at our house a couple of days earlier as our kitchen drains had backed up.  The plumber had left the cap off the sewer clean-out in our yard, which happens to be in a flower bed directly under my mother’s bathroom window.  It is also very near to a couple of the strange “holes” I mentioned earlier.  It is entirely possible that the tarantula crawled out of its burrow and was drawn to the sewer clean-out as it searched for water.  It probably swam right down the clean out and up into my mother’s toilet—a distance of about 15 feet.

So, yes, I do believe there was a real-live tarantula in the toilet.

Gray Tarantula Indoors

It also dawned on me that the next day my two teenage daughters would be home alone and the youngest would be there part of the time by herself.  Not being 100% sure that the thing had been flushed away, I knew I needed to give them instructions on how to catch the giant spider if it emerged when I wasn’t home.  We had had tarantulas before at our house, but never inside--just outside.  So I had to make sure they knew not only how to CATCH it, but also how to get rid of it and not KILL it.

I mean, can you imagine trying to clean up THAT mess?  The things are the size of a small Chihuahua!  Its guts would be splattered all over the place and we would be cleaning up the mess for DAYS!!!  Not something I want to deal with!

Eye-to-eye with the monster

So, to start with, you must catch them.  How?  Well, the first thing you need to understand is that while they may be big, tarantulas do NOT move slowly.  They can walk, but mostly they jump and hop around.  And they can jump a long way if they want to, so you have to be really quick to catch them.  Imagine Speedy Gonzales the mouse after two pots of coffee and five energy drinks, and you start to get an idea of how these guys move.  They’re FAST!

I explained to use a dustpan and the brush that goes with it.  You just catch it in this and then carry it outside.  Simple right?  Ri-i-i-i-i-ight (she says sarcastically).  Once you manage to scoop the tarantula into the dustpan—which is much easier said than done—you put the brush down on top of the spider to hold it in place.  To catch it, you can also put the brush down on top of the spider and gently guide it into the dustpan.  Once you get it into the dustpan, you will have to press down fairly firmly with the brush to keep it there, or it will just jump out of the pan.  Press down firmly on it, but not so firmly as to squish the spider--Major Royal EEEWWWW! 

That’s the easy part.

Spider Catcher Kit

The hard part comes in trying to get the spider outside without it escaping.  You have to keep holding it down and then get the outside door open.  Once you manage that, the screen door is easy to open with your elbow.  The hard part is to do all this while maintaining pressure on the spider (but not enough to squish it) and not ever taking your eyes off it, or it will be gone!

Once the critter is outside, you can just give it a toss out into the yard, but it may just wander back in to your house.  Your best bet is to get it out into the street where you can finally let it jump off your dustpan and scamper away. 

At this point, the biggest problem is to get the spider to go the right direction--away.  I did this once and all went smoothly until I got to this point.  When I removed the brush, the spider jumped as planned.  I, however, suddenly found myself eye-to-eyes-to EYES with the thing, which had landed on my chest!  I screamed and jumped backwards, which threw the terrified creature off.  Again, it jumped, and this time caught itself on my thigh!  Oh, the HORROR!  I was finally able to push it off with the dustpan and I escaped -- scarred for life!

I really didn't want this to happen to my kids!

Actually, you must tip the dustpan down a little and forward and then as you lift the brush, give it a little push forward and away from yourself like you are serving the ball in a ping-pong game.  This way, the spider can only jump forward and away from you.  If it still lands too close for comfort, you can use the pan to give the critter a little push to fling it farther away from yourself.  If it tries to head back towards your house, put the dust pan down to redirect it, or give it another little push in the opposite direction.  Then get out of the street!

My kids were completely freaked out--TERRIFIED is a more accurate term--but assured me they could handle it if the situation arose.

Fortunately, the tarantula hasn’t made another appearance (that we are aware of, anyway), but there could always be some lurking around somewhere.  Although knowing how to catch tarantulas is important for the kids to know, they haven't needed to use the information yet.  I hope it never is needed, but this knowledge may come in handy for my girls one day.  Maybe it will even be something you are glad you know how to do someday, too. 

You just never know what might be lurking in your toilet at one o'clock in the morning!

Happy Hunting!

Angela

Top Tarantula Photo via Visualhunt.com, Tarantula in the Grass Photo credit: Drriss & Marrionn via Visual hunt / CC BY-NC-SA,  Tarantula in the Sand Photo via VisualHunt,  Gray Tarantula Indoors Photo credit: Little Boffin (PeterEdin) via VisualHunt.com / CC BY-NC,  White Tarantula with big eyes Photo via Visualhunt,  Mexican Red Knee Tarantula Photo credit: James St. John via Visual Hunt / CC BY,  Big Tarantula at Bottom  Photo credit: Jason A. Samfield via VisualHunt / CC BY-NC-SA,  all other photos by Angela Fox-Thompson



Penelope The Quirky Old Cat

This is an old post, but I thought that "in the spirit of the season" (Halloween), you may want to read something just for fun!

Penelope

Today’s adventure isn’t really an adventure.  It is more a story of a silly old cat that I have.  She is a rescue cat, but she was quite old when we got her in 2014.  We guesstimate that she is probably about 15 or 16 years old. Of course, that is not the amazing stuff about her.

We really don’t know where she came from or what type of life she led before she came to us, but she came with a lot of goofy habits.

The first thing that we noticed was that she was absolutely terrified by plastic bags!  If you crinkle one within a 20-foot radius of her, she bolts upright and runs for cover under one of the beds and stays hidden for about 30 minutes until she is sure that bag is gone.  We don’t know if she was somehow terrorized with a plastic bag—like someone stuck her in one to try to get rid of her or something like that.  The good news is that over the last two years that she has lived with us, she is starting to realize that we aren’t going to hurt her with a bag.  She doesn’t startle quite as easily anymore when you bring one out.

Another odd-ball thing that Penelope does is that every time she uses her litter box, she trots over to where her water dish is (about 3 feet from her litter box), and washes off her paws.  We change her water about 3 or 4 times a day because there are always little clumps of clay in the bottom of the dish.  Once she has done this, she won’t drink out of the “finger bowl”, so she has located other sources of drinking water in other areas of the house.



Where did all that water go?

Now where might those be, you ask?  Well, her favorite place to drink is out of the little trough in the shower door in my mother’s bathroom. She waits outside the bathroom door until you are finished with your shower.  Then as soon as the water goes off, she bee-lines it straight to the shower door to drink all the water out of the door trough.  Or, she just climbs in and tries to catch the water going down the drain!

Generally, I wash my hair in my mom’s shower because there is better water pressure, so my hair rinses out a lot faster.  However, it really freaks her out when I go and shower in the other bathroom.  She will sit in my mom’s doorway, looking absolutely befuddled because she can’t figure out why there is no water in the door.  I just say to her “Penelope, Mommy took her shower in the other bathroom today.  You’ll have to go find water somewhere else today.”  She just almost shrugs (as if a cat could), but that is exactly what the look on her face says!   Once she “shrugs”, she just pads off into the other bathroom, seeking water there.



Cool and fresh--just
the way I like it

Now, there are a couple of other ways she finds water in the bathroom.  The first, I’m sure you can imagine would be the toilets.  Every once in awhile, I will head into the bathroom, only to find nothing but a tail sticking out of the potty.  She is very considerate, though.  As you as you come in, she seems to know exactly why you are there and comes out so that you can do your business.  I think she realizes that once you use the toilet and flush, she will get brand new fresh cool water. 



The other odd thing she uses to get water in the bathrooms are the shower and tub.  She generally spends at least a portion of the night in Mom’s shower.  I know this because when she finally comes into my bed, she is usually all wet because the shower head drips.  The other thing that she has recently started doing (I guess because she finally figured out she could get in there), is spending time in the tub in the main bathroom.  Every few days, we find the tub full of kitty prints.  I wonder how those got there?

Another thing about the bathroom is that she knows when you are using it that you are temporarily captive so you have nothing to do but pet her if she stays around your legs.  She also knows the whole "process" for humans using the restroom.  When you stop petting her to clean yourself up, she will sit patiently and wait until you get up.  Once you flush, she gets up and walks over to the sink and once again sits and waits while you wash your hands. 

Seriously?

She must have a thing for hygiene, too, because if you don't stop to wash your hands, she meows at you to let you know you forgot something!  Once you wash your hands, she leads you out of the bathroom and into your room to make sure she doesn't get shut out.

A bizarre place she likes to hang out, especially in the dark, is in our front entryway.  First, you must understand that Penelope is a tortoise shell-colored cat.  That means she is basically calico colored with no white.  Her colors are much more mottled and marbled and mixed up than a calico's would be.  This, incidentally, is the exact same color as the flagstones in the entryway.  Needless to say, if she is lying there and doesn’t move, you can’t see her. That means she gets stepped on a lot.  She doesn’t seem to mind, though, because she is always right back there a few minutes later.

I think I'll just have a seat!

Another quirky personality trait that Penelope harbors is that for some reason she thinks she is an ostrich.  She doesn’t exactly bury her head in the sand, but if she was an outdoor cat, I bet she would.  What I mean here is that whenever she gets scared or somehow intimidated, she dives under a bed—whichever one might be handy.  Now, normally, I would say that is perfectly normal behavior for a cat.  However, the odd part is that whenever she dives under the bed, only her head and the front part of her body actually goes under the bed.  Her bottom and tail are still sticking completely out!  I guess since she can no longer see whatever spooked her, she is good to go.  The funniest part about it is that she can stay that way for 30 minutes or more sometimes.

In my experience, most cats love to be picked up and snuggled.  Not Penelope!  She absolutely HATES to be picked up and carried around. She likes to be petted, but only when she expects it.  Being picked up is not something she ever expects.  She does like to come lie on my chest so I can scratch her cheeks, though.  I often think that is the highlight of her day.

If she should happen to be lying quietly, and you come up behind her to pet her, she startles and makes a kind of “squawking” noise.  Then she will vacate the area as quickly as possible.  Now if you pick her up, her “squawking” becomes quite serious.  She will continue to squawk and struggle until you have no choice but to put her down.  She is declawed on her front feet, but the claws on the back work very efficiently and effectively.  This she never lets you forget, especially if you pick her up.

Looking just like a kitten with her favorite toy

She also really has no interest in toys like a typical housecat.  She loves strings and especially telephone/tablet/laptop charger cords.  But her favorite "toy" is a plastic red die with black dots on it.  She goes crazy over it!  It is full of teeth marks and claw scratches, but that is the thing she loves.

She has a basket that she sleeps in when she can't get into anyone's bedroom at night so she can cuddle up to them. Sometimes I will walk by her sleeping in there, and you can't even see her head.  Beware the headless kitty!!!

Hugging Mommy's laundry

Yet another oddball thing she does is actually very cute.  She shows her love for my family and I by always finding some of our clothes to sleep on, which I’m guessing is fairly common for cats.  However, whenever she sleeps, she really likes to have a pillow nearby.  She puts one front leg around the pillow, like she is hugging it and the other front leg on the clothes that she has chosen.  She looks like a baby clinging with one paw to her favorite pillow and the other paw clinging to the clothes.

I guess that is how we can tell, despite her quirkiness, how much she loves us.  The other way Penelope shows us this is that if one of us is gone for school or work overnight, she won’t eat.

No one can tell me that animals don’t feel, or think, or love.  My cat Penelope also shows us that cats have their own unique personalities and that some of their individual behaviors can be downright BIZARRE!  (Just like those of their humans!!!)

Peace and Love Always,

Angela

Wicca-kitty

All Penelope photos Courtesy of Taylor Thompson