Saturday, Feb. 18, 2023

This is going to be another lovely day. It’s already about 14° and it’s supposed to go up to 20. I’m sitting on the front porch. I guess you would call it that; it’s a long veranda! 
I was watching the cat eat its food. When I got up this morning, the dish was empty – I had filled it up last night, so I filled it again and then while making my tea I felt this soft little black cat rubbing against my legs. He was happy to eat most of the food in the dish that I put out this morning. And then he came in as I was pouring milk into my tea and I gave him a little bit.  I know he’s probably too old to have milk, but it was just something that I used to do when I was a kid. Now he’s wandering around the house miaoing. I don’t know but maybe there was somebody here before that he liked as well.  

It would be easy to get used to this life so relaxing.

 I had another visitor this morning in the kitchen sink, a rather large spider. I swiftly got him/her? into a cup and took it out the door put it in the driveway. I told him to go find somebody else to visit. I did post a picture on Facebook and it’s a natural size picture-he was big. I didn’t want to kill him because I don’t know what his purpose was and really he wasn’t harming me.

The cat ran up the stairs to the side of the house and I thought, oh, what’s up there? I haven’t been up there. I don’t know why – I mean I come out the front door and look to the right- the stairs are right there as I walk out the front door, so I went up. There’s a lovely tiled deck with a wall around it and you can see over the top of the roof and actually, quite a nice view of the property around it. The owner told me that’s where his storage is so I wasn’t expecting that.  The other side of the house that he rents out has a cathedral ceiling and then an upper loft with a bedroom so there’s one bedroom down below. That’s the house I was supposed to have and apparently,  I’m to move in there sometime at the end of this month and then if I like, I can come back to this one. I rented the other house originally. I didn’t know that but Luis just felt , because it was cool at night, I would be better with the fireplace . 

I was going to tell you about the storks that I saw yesterday, although I wasn’t able to get any photos because there was nowhere to pull off the side of the road safely. One flew directly in front of my car. It of shocked me. It was huge – I can’t believe the wingspan. In fact, in the distance I had first thought it was a small plane – that’s how big it looked. 
I watched another pair flying. They were ahead of me, and then I saw them land in a nest already full with what I thought were two parents. It is kind of like kids coming home to mom and dad’s to stay. Maybe storks have problems too and they’ve got kids staying with their parents longer!  Anyway all four in a huge nest.!  Kind of overwhelming. I will get some pictures at some point. Maybe I’ll park in the farmers driveway and take a chance that he’s not coming out until I’m gone. 

I drove into Odemira today, stopping by a little store on the way, which was interesting, but I forgot to look for my tea so, I have to do that another day. Odemira is a little inland. It’s time I started exploring inland Portugal instead of just the coastal areas. It’s a town on a hill and that’s putting it mildly. I was driving. Of course I turn into the town and then I’m going on a grade that would make me want to think about driving in San Francisco. The roads are really narrow here and it reminded me of the time I was in  Spain with Audra driving; she was so close to the walls of the house. She actually smashed the car on the passenger side that I was sitting in. We laughed about after but I was so worried that it was going to cost a fortune to have the car repaired because it was a rental. Thankfully her credit card covered the insurance. 


My lesson today was that I must be a more aggressive driver. This Mitsubishi car doesn’t have a lot of guts. First of all I don’t slam the doors & they don’t close properly unless you slam them, so when you think you locked your door,it’s not! Twice now I’ve gone back and it’s been open because I only closed doors gently. I’m lucky this doesn’t appear to be an unsafe area!

I really wanted to get a picture of Odemira for the blog and I couldn’t find a safe spot to do that to give you the idea of the height coming back out of town. I saw a pull off, a driveway and I veered in off the road because it’s a well travelled road. I put the four-way flashers on. Just using my iPhone, I went over to the gate to the property and took a couple of shots then came back into the car. I wanted to get a good turnaround so I backed up a bit and in my usual non-aggressive way, I tried to go forward. No luck. I thought what am I caught on so,  I started again no matter what happened in first gear I couldn’t get the car to move forward and I was slowly rolling back-I had to keep pulling on the handbrake. Getting into a bit of a panic, I went around to have a look and yes, the wheel, the rear hind wheel , (a horse it is not), the rear back wheel was caught at the edge of the ditch just low enough that I couldn’t get it out. Now what? I got out waved at the first car that went by. They just went sailing on – second car same thing . After a few cars went by a van stopped; I asked if he could speak English and he did. I asked him for a push. As he was going to the back of the car ,a walker came by and I asked him to help. Oh my God, I’m so thankful that I did ask for help. I got out quite embarrassed , the van driver, waited until I followed him out under the road and up ahead and then I waved, saying I’m OK. As I realized when he was pushing, I wasn’t accelerating enough in first gear. I was being a wimp. My drive home was much more aggressive , I don’t think the car likes me and I’m not too happy with myself either!