New Family Member

DH called this morning and asked me to look in a certain place on Craig's List. There was a posting for a Maine Coon Cat only 20 miles away, for the unbelievable price of $45.

She was a rescue. A breeder had been running the equivalent of a puppy farm (kitty farm?) in March and was raided for having too many cats -- fifty plus. The lady I met today is a registered cat rescue. She accepts cats, nurses them to health, takes them to the vet, and finds them good homes. Back in March our little treasure was dehydrated, malnourished, and badly matted.

It has been a few months since Francie's demise and DH thought perhaps I was ready for a new cat.

LO and I went to see her at 2pm. The house was a McMansion, beautiful really, on several acres, but the lady and her husband have one cat; they find homes for the rescues.

The husband called her DC, or Dumpster Cat. They gave us all the vet records, indicating about $200 they spent on her shots, spaying her, and recovering her health.

She is such a little lady. She has meowed 3 or 4 times but mostly cuddles us. I remarked to DH we are going to have a bald cat by Monday -- we pet her so much! You can google Maine coon cat to learn more about them.

Tucker and Daniel are curious but seem to be open to a new sister.

Jody's 2nd cousin Pauline always had a cat, and it was always named Spencer. Spencer died, she got a new one. Spencer again. Always Spencer. They were all named for Spencer Tracy.

Pauline was such a delight. Lifelong student. Loved to learn. Open to so many adventures. And, a lifelong Democrat. She died last year on River Road heading to one of her college classes. She was 88.

In Pauline's honor, we are naming our new cat, Spencer.

Don't Nobody Want to Hear That

Tennis practice is over. Little One and I are walking across the parking lot to the car. Someone is yelling from the gym to someone else. "Don't nobody want to hear your mouth!"

Little One mumbles something.
"What was that, Baby?"

"I said, 'Don't nobody want to hear you say, 'Don't nobody.'" She is smiling.

"Or, 'Ain't nobody,'" I add.

"Don't nobody say, 'Ain't nobody,' Nana. You need to catch up on your ghetto talk."

I Wish I Could Draw

I wish I could draw. I wish I could draw my morning walks on the Greenway with Little White Dog.

I would draw in pen-and-ink my view of LWD as we walk: the leash extending down to her at a 55 degree angle. Her little legs, one touching the path, one mid-air as she merrily skips down the way. She is so happy! Smells abound. From my vantage she is all butt and legs, and the tail is her banner, upright and slightly blowing in the breeze.

I wish I could watercolor. I would capture the macro view of the scenery alongside the path. At a distance it appears to be all grasses and brambles, branches and volunteer brush. The colors are already golden and bronze from the drought.

The micro view would be inset in little cutaways at the bottom of the page. It would show the breathtaking beauty of the goldenrod, the purple statice, the wild coreopsis.

I wish I could draw. In pencil I would sketch the strong and beautiful covered bridge that spans the creek. The timbers are already worn from our traffic over it: feet, bicycles, strollers, skateboards. At first, only a few years ago, the beams were yellow wood. Now their patina is a deep brown. They are so broad and thick that my feet thud on them like a voice with deep timber, like the voice of a large older man. The side rails and overhanging roof provide the perfect frame for a delicate spider web, 16" in diameter, woven in the thick of night and sparkling in the morning sun.

I wish I could draw. Again in pencil, I would capture the brown rabbit who bounds across the path, certain that our little dog means certain doom to him. His heart is pounding as he pauses, just 9 feet away from the path, in his little clearing. He is still as death and thinks surely I can't see him. Little White Dog is oblivious. All the wild has been bred out of her so that she only has tiny threads of instinct remaining in her, and even that confuses her. But Rabbit does not know this. He hides, still but for his twitching ears and nose.

I wish I could capture for you the sound on the Greenway. It is a hush so loud that it is a sound in itself. It is the sound of sun, and of things growing, and of the reticent pleasure of so many who have walked this way before me, and those who will come behind. I am alone and I feel alone and being alone is its own glory, yet it is a public commonway and in just a moment someone will be in the same spot feeling the same quiet ecstasy, or missing it entirely.

I wish I could draw. I would draw for you the wet and muddy white dog seated beside me in the car. Her back is white, silky, and well-groomed. Her usually-white legs, belly, tail, her snout and the ends of her ears are brown, curling from the moisture, and separating into tendrils. She looks at me plaintively when I tell her that one of us smells like a wet dog: is it me?

We arrive home, to the ordinariness of it all. To routine and familiarity. But no matter how many times we walk the Greenway, it is new all over again. Things have grown or died away, deer or rabbit startle and thrill us, the sun slants in just a slightly different way. The creek level is down, or up, and blooms have faded or started anew.

Sigh.

I wish I could draw.

Quiet Sunday Morning

It's a quiet Sunday morning and as I write, all the house is asleep. Little One and her BFF are still sleeping in her room. DH, who just got home a little over an hour ago, is sleeping upstairs with earplugs firmly in. Little Dog went outside with me earlier but opted for DH's room upstairs and is snuggled in on the rug beside his bed. Orange cat is curled up on the girls' bed.
Outside it's cool if a little humid and I have the doors open just for a little fresh air. The birds are beginning to stir but the bird feeder is still vacant for today. There are no cars on our street and I feel a little like I'm the only one up.
Have not even checked the news yet; it's sort of nice to just enjoy my peace and quiet for a while.

Number 200

You might think for a 200th anniversary of blogdom, I'd have some auspicious posting, but no, just the same-old, same-old.
DH and I put in our fall garden yesterday. It was sort of a lovely day, with just 2 to 5 hours of horrendous heat, as opposed to a full 24. The birds were singing and the pets were alternately chasing other, and then lying in the shade, enjoying watching us, watching them.
We pulled up the spent plants from summer, keeping the prolific pepper plants and a couple of tomato plants. I had gotten the yellow pear tomato plant on a whim: I have always called the tiny tomatoes "light bulb tomatoes" and thought it would be fun to grow them. Well, it has produced hundreds of light bulbs over the past couple of months and is coming on strong again.
We have carefully maintained a wholly organic garden this year, with amazing results. I am so pleased that we haven't poisoned our own food!
We also cleared a place for composting. We have had several false starts on composting in the past and are attempting to "really" do it this time. Between all the recycling we do (I recently went to the water department and picked up recycling bin #3) and composting, we should really have a low amount of garbage every week, yea for the landfill.
While our little garden used to measure 4'x8', we have cleared this spot and that spot so that now it runs almonst the length of our long driveway.
After adding compost and other organic niceties to the soil, and "double-digging" it, we planted the following:

• broccoli
• spinach
• sugar snap peas
• mesclun
• kale
• cabbage
• Swiss chard (do they grow it in Switzerland?)
• Bibb lettuce
• turnips

...I believe that is all.
Altogether it was a lovely day. DH lost his favorite book on organic gardening so we found it on Amazon and ordered it. It is out of print now, so we ordered a used book at about $6, can't really remember. To our surprise, the vendor sent us an email saying he had refunded the entire price, including shipping, because he had promoted it as "excellent" condition, and when he got ready to ship it, the covers were taped on; he had not realized it earlier. What a nice surprise for us. When we received it, the tape was hardly noticeable, and really I believe someone put tape on the binding just to keep the book sturdy for outdoor reading.
Anyway, the book has inspired DH once again to garden organically (thank goodness) and we are all set. He has already been out fine-tuning the garden this morning and has just come in to report the peas are already throwing their little "bat-ropes" up to the trellis. (We planted them last week, the others yesterday.)

New Project

Those of you who know us, and who else would be reading this boring blog, know that we take a sort of perverse pride in our making silk purses from sow's ears. Like the kitchen sink we found in the woods 10 years prior to going and asking if we could have it for our kitchen. Like the vintage stove we found on Craig's List and got for a fraction of market value. The island DH made by recycling our old cabinets from 1933. And on, and on.

Well today we have a new treasure. It was a grate used to filter out the chunks of coal where only dust is supposed to go, at DH's place of employment. I guess they got new ones and were going to throw it out. DH asked for it and paid $4.78 for it. It's solid cast steel, 38 inches across. Here is a before picture.
















We did not want the support structure to be below the rack, so DH built it above. Also, due to the placement of the studs, he had to put the biggest bolts in the horizontal beam behind the top edge of the wall.
















Here is an "after" picture. I am pondering placement for the hanging pots & pans. Want some for convenience, but not too cluttered. It's a fine line.











ps. Among our found treasures I failed to mention the cutting board table you see here on the right. The cutting board was a workbench top, black from use, discarded at his work. He sanded it and built a table underneath it. Recently he added a little extension on the back edge to hold my spices.

Sweet Dad

A friend sent me a link to this video. Very sweet -- please notice the change in his face in the last 5 seconds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uISuvTiTYJA

Sites of note

"While I was web-surfing at 4:30 this morning," she casually started, "I ran into something pretty cool: a goldfish bowl with an office in it." Don't believe her? Here is the pic:

It's only $25 at www.fredflare.com. How did I find it? Well, I was on a writers' site looking at different magazines participating in a writers' conference, when I saw the editor of O magazine was going to be there. O is "o"wned by the Hearst Corporation, who doesn't usually use free lancers, although there are a few of their smaller magazines who do. I had had the notion that O did not. So I clicked over to O magazine's website to look for writers' guidelines. Did not see them, but did see the cutest little stapler for only $6 that does not use staples. One of Oprah's Favorites. So of course I clicked on the hyperlink, which took me to fredflare.com, where I found this little gem. Cute, huh.

On a similar safari, I ran into the website for a gal who is co-writing Chicken Soup for the Twenty-Something Soul. They are looking for writers for short stories of the Chicken Soup genre. Upon entering her website, the traveler is met with her self-description: Life Coach. Author. Speaker. Then the traveler notices her picture on the right: She is twentysomething! How the, ahem, heck, can she be a life coach? She has barely tasted life! She's a baby! Here is the link: http://www.christinehassler.com/books.php

What would I want a life coach to look like, if I were pitiful enough to hire one? Maybe like Jane on the Beverly Hillbillies? Sort of taciturn and dry? Naw, wrong image. Too skinny, not enough fun in her demeanor. How about, um... Cameron Diaz? mmm, no, too perfect. Hey! Got it! Ina Garten! "Who the heck is Ina Garten?" you ask. She's The Barefoot Contessa on the Food Channel. She's breezy, fun, slightly overweight, attractive without being uber, good humor, confident but not too, and just generally fun. She's always fixing some sort of food for all her friends. Yep, if I were in a situation to hire a life coach, that's what she'd need to be like, certainly NOT some young blonde thing. But hey, to each his own.

Confessions of a Food Page Writer

OK, sigh, so I write the food page for our local paper, and ~true confession~ I am not that good a cook. I've done 2 food pages so far, and one of them was an interview, which I must say I am better at than actually cooking.





So I am conducting research -- lots of it! -- to try to do the best job I can, especially considering, I am not that good a cook.





Add to that, I am a vegetarian, have been for about 14 years, with the occasional fish and a few chicken meals 2 years ago, and I am a bit limited on what I can actually make for the photos. Well, I can make things, but as far as being able to taste them and see if they are tasty, that's another story. And, I would like to put in recipes that I know myself are pretty good, and easy to prepare, as everyone but me seems to be in such a doggone rush these days.





Today, I was studying online and found a website different from those I usually check. My usual ones are the common ones like allrecipes.com and foodnetwork.com, you know. Today I found http://www.fabulousfoods.com/, which had holiday recipes in it.





I have already written and had photo shoot for September so now I am in the process of trying to develop October. So of course, I clicked on the Holidays link, then Halloween. No kidding, I found this cake:
It's kitty litter cake, a regular cake iced with icing, then sprinkled with cookie crumbs with a little green food coloring mixed in. The, er, solid items, are mini Tootsie Rolls. Note the one artfully draped over the edge of the pan. The recipe did specify to use a NEW litter pan and NEW scooper.

I will not be including this on the food page.

Last One

I have written several odes to this cat since beginning the blog two years ago. Tonight will be the last one.

I have been warning DH about her imminent demise since we began dating 13 years ago. The warnings reached a point of ridiculosity when finally a year or two ago, he turned to me and said, "That cat's going to outlive you. She will outlive us all."

The last year or so has been the first we've seen of her showing signs of age. However, she has continued to eat a little and drink a little every day to the end.

She did not become ill or have any external injuries. To the contrary, we realized she had not shown up for her water, nor screeched at us from the bed to come join her, and I got up in the night to go look for her. I had to really look, searching her traditional hiding places, until I found her. When I did, I thought perhaps she was asleep, and called loudly to her, as her hearing has left her in recent months. Finally, I reached for her, and realized she was gone.

We think DS2 was about 9 the year he brought her home to save her from the cold and certain death. DS2 turned 30 last year which would make this dear old cat 21 at that time. We named her Frances, after the little girl in the Frances books by Russell and Lillian Hoban. Only in the past 10 years or so have we altered the name to Francie.

The picture you see at the top of this page looks like a kitten, but it was taken last fall; she was somewhere around 20 years old.

She survived life with other cats: Jennifer, the sleek black cat we had in Virginia. Jennifer died the day after DS2 left for Boot Camp. (It was a tough week for me!) Molly, the giant white powder puff DH had when we married. Ever see the move Lady and the Tramp? There's a pair of cats in that movie that remind me of Molly. Molly passed away shortly after we moved into this house 10 years ago. Unfortunately we attended a large Christmas Extravaganza in Nearby Large Town the same day, and I'll be darned if there weren't Pet Portrait booths at every turn. I felt so so guilty and sorry for DH who kept his game face on to the end. She has co-existed with Daniel now for about 3 years. Daniel is a giant but gentle as a ....well, as a kitten. He has deferred to her so nicely.

She has survived about a zillion moves. We almost lost her when we moved from VA to NC. The movers freaked her out and she ran for it. Fortunately, ex-H, who had zero affinity for cats, continued to search for her for 4 days and drove her to NC when he finally found her. Yes, he's a pretty nice guy.

I remember the night she turned on a lamp and we asked her to turn it off. She did. I clearly remember DS2 on that Sunday morning, standing there in his Glen plaid suit, framed in the large doorway of our Virginia house, holding her in his suit jacket. Her eyes were matted and closed and her chest rattled and wheezed as she struggled to breathe.

She slept with me when my mother died, when my earlier marriage failed, when a child ran away from home, when DS2 joined the Marines. She sensed when I did not feel well, and knew whether to cuddle close or to gve me space. Like me, she adored to be petted, and purred louder than any cat I've ever known when we did take the time to pet her.

We worked hard to save her life, that first week in Virginia, and in many ways over the years, she has returned the favor for me. Good night, Francie.