For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
Hi everyone and Happy Friday! Well, it’s a bit cooler again this morning and we got several inches of new snow overnight too. Plus, we are supposed to get more snow today, though at the moment the snow seems to have stopped. I was up at 3:03am. That’s a bit early, even for me, but that’s when I woke up today, and when I wake up, that’s it, I’m awake for the day.
Anyway, it’s a good time to go down and do my laundry. There was already a lady ahead of me doing her laundry. Apparently she likes to get up early and get her laundry done too, but normally it isn’t on a Friday. It was unusually quiet down there this morning. Normally there are a lot of people up and around by 4am, but not today. One guy did show up at about 4:30 dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts.

Female Downy Woodpecker.
That looked a bit out of place somehow. He just didn’t want to give in to the fact that it was snowing again. I will likely have a nap sometime today though. To be quite honest, I’m tired enough to sleep right now. Except for one thing. It is much too noisy at the moment. They are upgrading my bathroom this morning. Well, actually, it started a while back, and should be finished this morning.
Hmm, I thought it was noisy before, but now it is much worse. Something tells me I will need to do a lot of dusting after this. Again. Oh well, the work needs to be done and they are two weeks early getting it done, so I’m sure not going to complain. Plus, I got to be first on the list because no one else wanted them to show up at 8am. I’m always up early, so that’s not a problem for me.

Male Hairy Woodpecker.
Hmm, it has started to snow again. The guys are going faster than expected in the bathroom so they should be done by lunch. Nice. I’m enjoying a nice hot cup of raspberry leaf tea. It is just so good! It’s great if you have an upset stomach, or if you have a cold, sore throat, cough. It really does work to bring relief for these symptoms. Plus, it is just a nice, enjoyable tea.
Which is why I’m drinking it right now. I really do enjoy this tea. Muffin is not enjoying all the noise this morning, nor all the activity with 2 guys running in and out of here all the time. She likes things quiet and normal. It has gotten quite windy out there, so it is really blowing that snow around now. Strangely enough, it looks like winter has returned.

Male Pileated Woodpecker.
But, that’s normal, this would be a bit early for spring. Though it does happen occasionally. Like maybe once every 10 to 15 years. Or more. Well, they are finished in my bathroom now, didn’t take quite 3 hours. But there was 2 of them today, usually it is just the one guy doing this work, then it can take him 6 or 7 hours.
Muffin is happy again, no more noise, no strangers walking around and talking. Everything back to normal again. Well, just a bit of mixed up chatter this morning. Have a wonderful weekend everyone and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2025 Steve McLeod.
It was time to check out that door by the pool, but since all exterior doors are locked at night, that makes things rather difficult. But, there is Plan A, which we began to put into operation that evening. That was when we pretended to look for something in one of our cars. While we did that, Sky and Angel came along and hid in the car, along with their cats Storm and Tracker.
They will wait until everyone is asleep before opening that door. However, that door likely is hooked up to an alarm system too, hopefully the same alarm system, that way it won’t be noticed. Kat and Carine, while on their searching tour, will deliberately set off the alarm at the offices. They will be invisible while doing this so they don’t get caught. Once setting off the alarm, they will rush back to our room.
Sky and Angel will open the outside hidden door while the alarm is ringing, or doing whatever it does, and hopefully they will find the prison. Getting back out again won’t be quite so easy. But we do have a Plan B, if necessary. At precisely 1am the alarm sounded all through the hotel. It was a high pitched whistle sound, along with regular clanging of alarm bells and even a siren in the office area.
That tells me that the alarm is different in certain areas of the hotel, making it easy to pinpoint the problem area. But that idea was quickly shot down since all were sounding off at the same time. Oh well, my thoughts about things are not always correct. Well, maybe “seldom correct” would be a better way to say it. Sigh. Anyway, Kat and Carine were quickly back in our room, along with their cats.
The alarms were soon stopped and there was a loud knocking on our door. Kat opened the door and 3 hefty men tried to push their way in past Kat. That didn’t work so good for them. I told Kat to allow them to come in, but they were to stay by the door. She told them what I said, then let them come in. They started walking away from the door, however, so I told them to stop.
“We are the resort security,” growled the one man, “we have the right to come in and check your room.” “Check our room for what?” yelled Sienna, “You get out of here now!” “Shut up lady and stay in bed while we look around,” he growled again. “Kat, teach them some manners,” I said. “Gladly Steve,” she said.
A few kicks later and they were all on the floor, groaning, and Kat took their guns away from them, plus their phones. She then tossed the phones to Jennifer and she wiped the phones clean, of everything. Meanwhile, Sienna had called the manager and the police. However, the police refused to do anything since it involved the resort security.
So, I called Rossana and she called back in a few minutes saying the police would be arriving shortly. The manager came knocking on our door first and we let him in. Sienna complained about these men bursting into our room for no cause, disrupting our sleep and began looking around when the women were not dressed properly.
“Bad publicity from me can sink your resort faster than if it was sitting on quicksand!” she yelled, “Just what are these men supposed to be looking for in our room anyway? Are you searching all the other rooms too?” The manager was apologizing constantly saying his men should never have come into our room and no they were not searching all of the rooms.
“Then why are you searching our room?” Sienna demanded, “What is that you think we stole from you? Why are you blaming us for anything? The police will soon be here to pick up these men and I will be formally laying charges against them in the morning.”
The manager went silent for a bit when he heard that, then apologized some more and saying there was no need for the police and he would refund Sienna’s money for our stay, due to this terrible inconvenience. Sienna agreed to that, providing there were no more such incidents. She also told the manager that perhaps he needs to get his alarm system updated, it may be malfunctioning. He agreed with her, then he and his men left our room quickly.
Meanwhile, Sky, Angel and the two cats opened the outside door we found yesterday by the pool, at the time all the alarms were sounding. Behind that door was a tunnel, which they quickly followed, the cats going first. They soon came to a split in the tunnel. Storm went a short way past the split and stopped, then he came back and went into the other tunnel and stopped.
Meowr.= We go this way. So, off they all went and soon they were at a steel door which was locked. “The alarms are still sounding,” said Angel, so Sky opened the lock on this door and in the went to a large room with jail cells along the walls and in the center of the room. It was almost completely dark in there, but that didn’t matter to Sky and Angel, they could see just fine, and so could the cats.
They looked around and sure enough, there was Kristina. Sky had the cell door open quickly and she checked Kristina who was very weak. She had been beaten and that meant she lost a lot of her energy. They needed to get her out quickly so Kat could begin working on her. Angel got down on her hands and knees and Courage the lion was ready for action.
Sky helped get Kristina onto the back of Courage and then held her so she would not fall off. They went out the steel door, down the tunnel and to the exterior door. Storm and Tracker pressed buttons on their collars and they went invisible. Sky and Courage also went invisible, which automatically made Kristina invisible too. Sky hoped that the alarm would not go off again when she opened the door from the inside, however, it did…
To Be Continued.
©2025 Steve McLeod.