11-10-09 – Tuesday

FOAM 4: Food: New jam flavors.
Outside: Leaves are turning – and falling!
Abstract(ish): Okra pods, drying over the fireplace.
Myself: Sitting in the recliner in my room, being ignored by the kittens. Brats.

 

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I understand and appreciate y’all wanting to buy chicken from us (both frozen and canned), but the word on high from Fred is: no. We’d have to charge too much to make it worth our while (and you might be willing to pay a lot, but we’re not willing to charge a lot, thus the conundrum), and in the end, the chickens are really worth more to us as food rather than an income source, since each chicken provides us with two or more meals.

I’ll let you know if that changes.

 

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Our next door neighbor has a son in his (I think) 20s. Maybe early 30s. He doesn’t always live with her, he seems to show up around the beginning of summer and stay until late fall, from what I can tell. He seems to be the bored sort, and when he’s bored, he comes up with things to do. For a while, he was building small fires (even asked Fred if it was okay to take stuff off our burn pile to get his fires going). Occasionally, he goes into their shed and there’s the sound of hammer hitting something for a while (I have no idea what he’s building, if anything. Maybe he’s just working off his frustrations). Lately, he’s been taking up fishing.

In the back yard.

I guess, strictly speaking, he’s practicing fishing in the back yard. He stands out there with his fishing pole and he casts. Then he reels his line back in, and casts again.

(“He might be casting a weight,” Fred tells me. I’m not sure that really means anything; Fred might be throwing words together to mock my lack of knowledge of fishing. He doesn’t know that I’m a fishing aficionado from way back. Why, when I was a kid, I spent many an afternoon catching and releasing the same damn catfish from Malabeam Lake with my Dad.)

Last year’s attempt to stave off the boredom was hitting golf balls into our garden (which had been put to bed for the winter before this began) and tromping through the garden to retrieve his ball. If you’ve ever had a dog who wasn’t allowed in the living room (RIP Taffy!), you know that they’ll occasionally do something like “accidentally” drop a ball so that it rolls into forbidden territory, and then they prance after it, all “What? It’s my ball. I know I’m not allowed in here, but my ball! I can’t allow it to remain in here!” Same idea.

Recently, Fred happened to see the neighbor’s son inching closer and closer to our property line, casting further and further onto our property. We talked about going over and saying something, but it seems childish to be all “Could you not cast your FISHING LINE into our garden, please?” when Maxi and Newt tromp across their back yard all the damn time and they haven’t complained.

The other night, Fred said “I should go out there at night and put a “NO FISHING” sign in the middle of the garden.”

We laughed ourselves stupid at the idea.

Yesterday afternoon I emailed Fred to tell him that the guy had started mowing the lawn and wondered whether he’d get the front and back lawn done in the same day (he rarely does; and yes, we might need to get a life). Fred emailed me back and said:

It probably depends on whether or not the grassfish are biting.

And I laughed myself stupid again.

 

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This is what big-time partiers Fred and I are: Saturday we left the house after dark for the first time in forever, as I believe I mentioned in yesterday’s entry. We went to get pig feed, and then headed for the movie store. Traffic in Closeville was heavier than we’d expected, and it made Fred crazy because he’s pretty sure that no one else should ever be on the road when he wants to go somewhere – they should all just pull over and let him through.

“You just don’t expect Closeville to have this much traffic on a Saturday night,” he said.

“No kidding,” I said. “There are no bars around here, where the hell are they all going?”

“Probably Huntsville,” he said. “But there are a few bars here. There’s that one in Applebee’s, and the other one in that restaurant we always think about going to, but never have.”

I had to ponder for several long moments before I came out with it “I thought we’re in a dry county?”

“No,” he said. “This is a wet county; [other nearby county] is dry, I think, but Nearville (which is in that county) is wet.”

“Are you sure we’re not in a dry county?”

“We had this discussion like a year ago,” he said. “Doesn’t Publix sell wine and beer?”

“I have no idea at all. I never noticed.”

“Yeah, I looked in the other grocery store before Publix opened. They were selling wine and beer.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said. Obviously, alcohol isn’t a big part of our lives, if we (I) don’t even know whether we live in a county where you can buy it.

I haven’t had any kind of alcohol since before I had weight loss surgery, which is almost four years ago. Before that, I don’t know when I had any alcohol – maybe a strawberry daiquiri when I was in Maine the year or two previous. I actually bought strawberry daiquiri mix and whatever the hell alcohol goes into daiquiris (vodka? rum? It’s not gin, I know that much. Is it?) a year or so ago, thinking it would be fun to mix up a batch and drink them one Saturday night. Still haven’t done it.

I’m curious to know what the effect alcohol would have on me, since the weight loss surgery (oftentimes it hits post-op patients harder); I was a lightweight to begin with, I’m wondering if all it’d take is a couple of sips before the room was spinning.

I guess I’m not curious enough to actually give it a try, at least not yet.

Ah, well – one of these days!

 

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Gus is famous! He was on The Daily Kitten yesterday!

 

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The Wonkas are really and truly enjoying their extra space. They’re very good in the mornings – they hear me get up, but it’s not until it’s light out and they hear me coming up the stairs with their snack that they start howling at the door. I open the door, put down their plates, and scoop litter boxes. They eat, then they come over for a snuggle, and then they start racing around.

It was seriously cute, the first day I opened the door so they could have the run of the bathroom and my bedroom. I opened the door, and then sat on the floor of my room. They came out slowly, slinking along the way cats do when they’re not sure what’s going on, and then it’s like Gus realized he had room to really RUN, and he reared up on his back legs and ran forward five or six steps.

It was like he was popping a wheelie!

(Too bad I didn’t have the camera with me.)

Most days, I go up and give them their snack, visit once or twice during the morning, then go up after lunch to lay down on the bed with them and perhaps (usually!) take a short nap. They love to pile on and around me (Mike always claims the spot closest to my face so he can demand kisses), and we all snooze together.

There’s just nothing that makes a nap better than having a pile of purring kittens around you. I highly recommend it!

 

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The Cookie weaning is continuing. Most of the Cookies are doing well – they understand that the plate of food IS their food, and they generally don’t demand bottles. I’ve seen most of them lapping water out of the water bowl, which makes me happy.

Milano/ Pink is proving to be a tough nut to crack, though. She’d really rather have her bottle, thank you. I’ll let HER tell you about that.

“Oh, really. REALLY. You’re under the impression that a couple of plates of canned cat food and a bowl of formula makes a meal, no bottle is required? Boy, I have news for YOU. I am uninterested in the canned cat food, and I know you’ve seen me eat crunchy food in the past, but now? Nah. Not interested. Pardon me while I put myself to bed on the heating pad. I’m going to curl up in a miserable ball of misery, and when you come back in a little while to check on us and hang out and give out pettings, I’m going to just stay here. Sad. Miserable. Starving to death. I’ll ignore you SO thoroughly that, by 4 pm, you’ll be demanding Fred hold me while you make me a bottle. And I will drink that bottle down. SUCKER. I’ll take my next bottle WHENEVER I PLEASE, thank you. Oh, and the best part? You’ll discover, next time you weigh me, that I’ve packed on another 2 1/2 ounces. Clearly I’m starving. Did I mention you’re a SUCKER?”

All five! Left to right: TimTam (Blue), Milano (Pink), Lorna Doone (Orange), Keebler, and of course Hydrox.

I don’t even have to look at the paws of that kitten on the right to know it’s TimTam. She has such a sweet, open face I know her immediately! (She’s the only one of the five who doesn’t have white paws.)

 

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Joe Bob has such a high-pitched, creepy meow. He’s a sweet boy, but that meow can raise the hairs on the back of your neck.

 

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Previously
2008: The pigs gave it two (four?) hooves up.
2007: Write about your day!
2006: I guess you can teach an old Fred new tricks.
2005: Can’t a girl be a dumbass without the whole world going into an uproar about it?
2004: For once, he had no good comeback.
2003: “Oh yeah. I hate this feeling. I should have just had a Diet Coke.”
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.
1999: Can you tell this irks me?