Bon chance, Brioche. I miss you and hope you have a happy new life.
Olympic gymnastics is my lifelong obsession. I’ll be back in a few days.
Monthly Archives: July 2012
A Rainstorm And You Howl Like
Atticus among Dad’s bonsais.
In the spring of 2007, – forgive that I’m repeating myself – Dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer and I slept on Dad’s office floor for a month. My back has never forgiven me, but this happened, too:
For a couple of weeks, I awakened with a twelve-pound cat tangled in my shining tresses. I’d spend half an hour talking to said cat, whose name is Atticus. He’d purr, he’d preen. He’d tell me where he wanted to be scratched and nip if I scratched out of bounds. Then, I’d go downstairs and start household chores for the day. One morning, Darla and I were discussing something serious when Atticus padded softly into the kitchen, took one look at me and sauntered off.
Tata: Darla, am I imagining it or is that cat pretending we’re not sleeping together?
Darla: He’s acting like he doesn’t know you in public!Apparently, Atticus saw Samantha sitting on my lap and now he’s all like “Girlfriend, please!” And I’m all like “But honey, you’re the only cat for me!” And Atticus is like “Sugar, I’m not sure you even like cats.” I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’!
This morning, he was sleeping near my head but not on it, but he did tangle my hair a little. While I wonder if Atticus will take me back, the world keeps turning.
A sweet guy with a keen fashion sense.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about Island of the Blue Dolphins, which I like every other girl my age read as a teenager. Sometimes we have no control over whether or not we are alone or who our companions might be. Atticus certainly had no say in such matters, but for the past few years after Darla moved back to Canada, Atticus liked sleeping on a corner of Darla’s bed, with his paws resting on her hand. Sometimes, love is a situation.
It’s odd, I guess, that I was mulling over a book from my childhood and the loss of a cat-friend on the twenty-first anniversary of my grandmother Edith’s death when Wintle sent along this.
Everything goes somewhere, but no one’s going anywhere in those shoes.
Be Anything But Be In Love
I hear you.
And If So I’d Like To Know
Blackberry Syrup from the Ball Recipe Book. Minor pain in the ass to make, a cinch to jar, easy on the eye. I think this is the first time I’ve made a fruit syrup, which begs the question: what’s in that jar in the basement fridge labeled SYRUP?
She’s Singing Hey La My Boyfriend’s Back
Last week, I started feeling itchy. Berry season was passing me by. I had only one batch of blueberry jam in jars and not much else, either. Berries also seem to be very expensive this year for no reason I can figure out. I decided to take a couple of days off work and go berry picking. Today, we drove down to Terhune Orchards in Lawrenceville, intent on picking raspberries until our baskets broke. We were ready: sunglasses, straw hats, bad attitudes. But we discovered blueberries are almost finished, blackberries ripen now and raspberries come in the fall. Considering that last year we heard people who grow blackberries keep them for themselves, meaning we’d never get those and here we could pick as many as we could pay for and carry off, I had a hard time seeing this as a bad thing.
This is Cream, who lay on the porch last week. After I took this picture, I misplaced the camera for a couple of days. Meow meow crap meow!
I can barely lift my arms now, but we picked more than sixteen quarts of blackberries. What do I mean by that? We dumped the berries into my sixteen quart stock pot and the berries came level with the top. They’re resting peacefully in the downstairs fridge. Tomorrow, I’ll simmer them with good sugar and lemon juice. Tuesday, it’s blackberry goo into jars. I’m pretty psyched about our improbable good fortune, but for the moment, I’m overjoyed to have my feet up and an adult beverage.
Seasons Change And So Did
This pussycat I’ve been calling Brioche has been waiting for me on the porch at 7:30 every morning since last winter.
Brioche’s people started putting their stuff out on the curb early last week and it became clear they were moving. On Tuesday morning, she was waiting. Early Wednesday, I saw her walking across a lawn. She’s gone now, I guess. I miss her chatty voice and her lovely blue-green eyes.
When I looked out the back window Wednesday morning, a cat I hadn’t seen in a long time lay on the top step. Cats knew before I did that life was changing. In related news, I’ve cleaned cat yak off of nearly every flat surface inside my house. It was fun while it lasted, but Mr. Clean and I have grown apart.
Fly And Find the New Green Bough
In comments at Firedoglake, DW Bartoo asks:
Hmmm.
Let me see if I understand what you are saying, DDay.
All these people, and no one knows how many, suffered the catastrophe of losing their homes to massive criminal bank fraud, which Barack Obama has defended as not illegal, even as he has surrounded himself with some of the principle “players”, executives of those very banks, as his advisers, friends, and money-laden allies.
Would that be correct?
And while this was going on … and afterwards, these people, who might have voted for Barack Obama were simply abandoned BY Barack Obama. He did not, in the political vernacular, “Have their backs”.
Would that be correct?
Now, today, Barack Obama decides that HE has need of these people, not to help THEM, but so that they might help HIM … win an election.
Would that be correct?
So, doing what would have been the right thing to do, the just, the humane, AND the proper thing to do … Barack Obama did not or would not do … instead, HE is desirous that those whom HE has treated very poorly, by any rational or reasonable measure, should have HIS back?
Would that be correct?
Once again, it would seem that everything is about Obama, his needs, his priorities, his election.
Would that be correct?
If all of these things are correct, then what is the “problem” here?
And whose problem is it?
Who “owns” this “problem” … the dispossessed or the man who has nothing but praise for the criminals responsible for the destruction, even as he protects those criminals, as does his party, from criminal AND civil sanction?
What is the very worst thing that can happen to Barack Obama?
What is the very worst thing that can happen to those who are in pain and suffering great loss, now, as they have been for years, and will continue to be in pain and suffering, for years to come, even by the most optimistic of estimates?
Is there a massive disconnect here, both in understanding and consequence?
Correct me if I am wrong, but it certainly appears to me that such is the case.
Why, in the warmest place of human imagination, would or should these people, who have been grievously harmed, come to the aid of a man who has had a central role in their pain and loss?
How would aiding and supporting Barack Obama be, by the wildest stretch of that imagination I just mentioned, of ANY worth or value to those who have been harmed?
Would it not be utter madness, complete insanity, for those many to support either Democrat Barack Obama OR his Republican opponent?
Kansas ain’t the only place, Dorothy, where people are asked and expected to vote against their own best interests.
DW
I have been asking myself the very same questions.
Cold the Ground Is Still Warm To Touch
Siobhan predicted a rainstorm at 5 and at 5 came the cloudburst. Pete and I sat on the porch while garbage floated downstream – I mean, down the street.
Drusy and Sweetpea considered why we would want to be so close to all that wet, wet – possibly delicious – peril.
Out There There’s Nothing To Do
This wailing good song by the Handsome Furs from 2009 has been repeating on the mental jukebox.
Good doggie!
I don’t remember hearing this until relatively recently, but if I were still listening to mainstream radio I would never have heard it at all. Thank you, Altrok! The Official Video! for this song is zombietastic and so gross. I don’t know how people wipe the butts of tiny children can watch zombie-related film or video without pondering how much of other folks’ goo might be coating them. Then again, who doesn’t love a good moisturizer?
Smiling From Her Head To Her
Drusy watches us from her mantletop fortress.
Poor Impulse Control 