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Nuf canoe

Platosgroove asks for a picture of the Nuf canoe I am repainting. Here it is sanded. It is a flat bottom plywood canoe that was designed by Carl Chamberlin of Basic Boats originally for a child to paddle around it. My two kids and I built it over ten years ago at the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend, Washington. The family boatbuilding allowed us to pay for materials, plans, space and volunteer help. My father came and provided tools. My daughter was four or five, I think, and son around ten. At one point my daughter said, “Mom, let go of the drill.” I did and she drilled the holes herself.

I have two coats of paint on the inside and one on the outside. I am painting it red to match “Sun Tui”, the 23 foot sailboat. One more coat on the outside and it can go back in the water.

This canoe weighs only 30 pounds, so I can move it from car to water easily. However, if we use it in the sound, we stay very close to shore: too tippy in the cold sound water.

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ZZZzzzzz

Z for ZZZzzzzz…. shhhh, everyone is asleep after the Blogging from A to Z Challenge and I am tiptoeing my last contribution in during May…..very quietly.

Yesterday morning Boa cat brought a mouse in the house. I heard it squeaking and protesting being played with before being eaten. Then Boa called me insistently, with her mouth full of squeaking mouse. I started down the stairs and she dropped it and it ran into a closet. She lost it.

I tried to find it, gingerly. I had to get the recycling out of that closet anyhow, because Tuesday is recycling day. I picked things up rather carefully. I found the mouse once but it skittered away in the closet again before Boa grabbed it and I was not about to grab it. Sharp teeth.

Last night Boa brought the mouse into my bedroom and tore around, chasing it. I think. I am not entirely sure whether Boa really did bring the mouse in or whether it was a dream. If it was a dream, it was very convincing and had five parts or more. And then I dreamed or heard crunching.

There is a pile of paper knocked over on the stairs. I have not checked my room for mouse feet or a tail. In the night I hoped Boa would keep the mouse on the floor and not bring it up on the bed. She didn’t.

The cat in the picture is not Boa. It’s Princess Mittens. She was about a year old and stood at the open back door growling at the terrible things in the back yard: a doe and two fauns, there to steal the apples. Princess Mittens was hit by a car last summer, at age ten. Boa misses her but would never ever admit it.

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And there: I am done with the A to Z Challenge! Sleep well, everyone!

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Why

Y is for why in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge as in WHY did I FAIL!!!? I was supposed to post the whole alphabet by April 30th! It is May!

Well, actually, because life intervened, which is fine.

Friends were moving out of a rental and have a gap to the next one, so moved in with us. We went from two people, a fish and a cat, to six people, a fish and a cat. One of the people is two and another is seven, and they brought their parents along. They moved in last Wednesday, two days before May 1. So things got really exciting! The house is a mess! Well, really, my teen daughter would say it’s always a mess and she would be correct by some people’s standards. I am able to ignore clutter pretty successfully and my main rule is food at the table only, for kids. Boa cat keeps bringing mice in to show me and play with and I don’t want a big mouse population.

I got to X in the challenge during April and now I will finish it in May. And I am happy with that!

The picture is Port Townsend Bay. I think it looks like a giant wave in the background, but it’s Marrowstone Island, with mist rolling off it.