The Owl Underground

Of Books and Mien

2009-11-30T00:14:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading three rather extraordinary books, back to back, all of which were about love in one form or another.

The first was called "The Time Traveler's Wife" about a man named Henry who has a strange medical condition: He cannot stay put in time. Without warning, he will suddenly wink out and find himself somewhere else, somewhen else. Since only his body can time travel, he can never take anything with him. He never knows where -or when- he will end up, or how long he will be there, only that he will arrive there totally naked. The "Wife" of the title is a woman named Clare, who first met Henry when she was 6 and he was in his late 30's. He befriends this lonely little girl, and has her write down a series of dates which are the days and times he knows he will return, so that she can be there waiting for him with clothes and food, and they can resume their friendship for however long he can manage to stay put in that place and time. Through their friendship over the years, he helps the girl mature into the woman he will love and marry. When she turned 18, Henry tells her that they will not see each other for 2 years, but that when they do meet again, it will be in Chicago. At that pivotal meeting, Henry is 28 and Clare is 20, and Henry is meeting for the very first time the extraordinary woman he will love for the rest of his life. The book is written in such a way that Henry and Clare take turns telling parts of the story, which allows us to see certain key events from each character's perspective, and to see into both characters' inner lives. Clare's narration unfolds in a fairly chronological manner, while Henry's narration jumps, as he does, back and forth through time. Henry and Clare's life might be perfectly ordinary for weeks or months at a time, and then one day without warning, she might walk into a room, and find a pile of Henry's clothes and know that he had time traveled. Like Henry, she never knows where he has gone, how long he will be gone, when (and where) he will turn up again, what age he will be, or what condition he might be in, for he is constantly being dropped into the world seemingly at random, without warning or clothes, where he is forced to live by his wits until he can somehow find his way back to Clare. It was an amazing and beautifully written book, gemlike, intense and bittersweet, like Henry and Clare's love. I was reminded of the chorus of the Joni Mitchel song Both Sides Now, "I've looked at love from both sides now . . ."

Then I read "The Elegance of the Hedgehog," (English translation from French) which is the story of a widow who has been the concierge of a certain apartment building in Paris for 27 years, a peasant woman from the country by her own admission, with minimal formal education, but one whose secret passion is to continually expand her knowledge and understanding all the while hiding it from everyone like a secret identity -- rather like Superman in his guise of Clark Kent. To the rich and important people who lived in her building, she is a nonentity, some nobody of a woman from the lower classes, when in actuality, she is a delightfully witty, erudite and discerning woman of stunning intelligence with a passion for the paintings of Vermeer, the films of Yasujiro Ozu, and the books of Leo Tolstoy. Unbeknown to her, the 12-year old daughter of one of the families living in her building is also very intelligent, intellectually precocious and a keen observer. However, the girl has come to the conclusion that life in the banal and superficial world she finds herself in is insupportable, littered as it is with her neurotic petite bourgeoise, ditz of a mother, her equally pretentious and neurotic older sister, and her father, the officious, high ranking civil servant, and she has determined that she will kill herself on her 13th birthday. In the meantime, she will draw what comfort she can from observing the world around her, writing about it in her journal and reading the Japanese manga whose worlds she finds so much more appealing than the one she now inhabits. The narration switches back and forth between these two characters, showing us their inner lives, their thoughts and feelings about the world they live in and the people who inhabit it, how they deal with the constraints their places in society place upon them. In fact, the title of the book comes from the way the girl describes the older woman: "(She) has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside, she's covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog; a deceptively indolent little creature, fierce, solitary, and terribly elegant." We are allowed to eavesdrop on the inner travelogue of both woman and girl as they navigate through their daily lives, and we explore through their eyes, the things people love, the things that touch them and move them. Then their hermetically sealed little worlds changes abruptly when one of the long-time tenants dies, and a retired Japanese gentleman, Mr. Ozu (only distantly related), purchases the now unoccupied apartment, has it extensively remodeled and moves in. Mr. Ozu quickly becomes aware that neither the lowly concierge nor the girl are what they seem and charms them both into opening their inner worlds to him. We are privileged to watch as kindred spirits meet cross the arbitrary boundaries of age, class, culture and nationality, and become better acquainted.

The third book is called "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society." The story is set in 1946. England has just emerged from the horrors of WWII, and a woman author, Julie, is trying to get on with her life. Her apartment in London was bombed during the Blitz (fortunately she was away visiting friends), and the thing she mourns most about its destruction is not the loss of her personal items and family keepsakes, but of all her treasured books. The story is told through a series of letters and telegrams exchanged between the main characters, and reading it is rather like discovering a box of old letters in a forgotten trunk in an attic and trying to piece together the lives of the people who wrote them. It begins with correspondence between Julie and her publisher, who is also a longtime friend and the brother of her best friend from school, regarding what her next book will be about. Then we come across a letter to Julie from a man who lives on Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands off the coast of Brittany, who found the address of her now nonexistent flat on the fly leaf of a second hand book Julie had reluctantly sold to make shelf space available for the man she thought she was going to marry. Miraculously, the letter was forwarded to her new address. The Channel Islander simply wanted to write to her and tell her how he had come across the book, how much he had come to treasure it, and how it had helped him to weather the German occupation of the Channel Islands during the War. Thus begins a correspondence that opens up a whole new world to Julie, not just in terms of subject matter for her next book, but in terms of starting life anew after the terrible experiences of the war. Through this collection of letters back and forth and how one correspondent leads to another, we come to examine love from many different angles -- love of parent for child, love of friends, love of country, love of humanity, and the kind of love that can transcends time, place, and nationality. It is a beautifully written little book, like a small, nondescript wooden box that, when opened, reveals itself to be a music box with an exquisitely crafted little ballerina to dance to its delightful tune, and the tale of how the book came to have two authors is equally as moving as the book itself.

What sparked this orgy of reading? Shortly before Thanksgiving, we learned that my da has serious heart disease -- in all four of his major coronary arteries, as well as an aortic aneurysm. However, because of other major health issues, surgery is not an option. It's been hard enough for us having to watch my da being forced to give up the things he loves -- music, cooking, reading, and interacting with his family and many friends -- because of losing both his vision and hearing, and now we learn he has yet another serious health issue added to his burden. When two people's lives are so intricately entwined as parent and child, there is no way you can separate them without tearing. It's the Band Aid dilemma -- It makes no difference whether it's peeled off as slowly and as gently as possible, or yanked off all at once quickly; it's going to hurt and there's no way to lessen the pain. These last several years have been like having to stand helplessly by and watch someone you love dearly take a very bad, ultimately fatal fall in excruciatingly slow motion. I started the first book and read about half of it last weekend. This weekend, I finished it and the other two in marathon reading sessions over pots of tea, bread and jam, fruit and cheese, bundled up in bed and swathed with kitties. After having made it through the emotional mine field of what may well be our last Thanksgiving as an intact family, I just had to not think about everything for a while and get some mental distance between it and me, or it was going to swamp me.

Critical Mess

2009-08-11T22:58:00.000-07:00

Let me preface this by saying I love my mom. I wouldn't trade for her. She is one in a million. But in all honesty, she and I have some basic ideological differences. For instance, take the Great Sifting Project to remove all the oft-reviled little white rocks from my front yard, a project that took several stages and about 7 years to complete. When I had finished a sifting session, I would move the sifter back to the back yard, and put my tools away , but I never filled in the hole that marked the point between sifted and unsifted. Having a hole in my front yard that was about 18 inches deep by a couple of square yards was not a matter of concern to me. In fact, it was essential to the ongoing project, since it allowed me to pick up exactly where I left off, which might have been months or even a year ago. But every time my mom came by, she would remark on that "unsightly hole." It nearly drove her crazy. "Why don't you fill in that hole?" was a question I expected from her every time she came by. You see, my mom is a "neatnick." She is a fanatic about putting things away when you're done with them -- I mean, completely away, so there's no trace. If I was working on something and had to stop in the middle of it, I'd just leave it out, knowing that I would come back to it later. It seems to me an illogical waste of time to put everything away, only to have to get it all back out again later and set it up again so I could finish it. But not her. If you weren't actually working on something at that time, she wanted it cleaned up and put away, so that no trace remained. She is way more upset about the "piles of crud" in my office than I am, and I think she has set foot in my office maybe 4 times in the last 8 years.

Needless to say, she does not understand the concept of "critical mess." For instance, in my "Liberry," almost every square inch of six bookshelves is jammed crammed with books. They are pieced in like parquetry, with books turned sideways to squeeze into the space above the books that are wedged upright onto every shelf. They've been that way for at least a year, and are slowly but surely getting "jammed-er" and "crammed-er" every time I go surfing through the books for sale on Amazon.com. Literally for years, I've been plotting how to maximize every inch of available space in the "Liberry" - both floor space and shelf space because I've just about reached the point where solid geometry and the laws of physics will simply shut me down. I have a couple extra shelves, but the bookcase they fit cannot possibly accommodate any more books. However, I have determined that if I re-order and reorganize my general fiction section, I could squeeze two more shelves into a smaller bookcase, but the extra shelves are too wide and too deep to fit the bookcase in question. Then, last week, I took the shelves into the kitchen, got my saw horses and cut them down with my jigsaw. (I did put up the saw horses and jig saw, because I was through with them and vacuumed the kitchen floor.) That's as far as I've gotten. At some point soon, however, the "Liberry" will reach critical mess (probably when I'm trying to find a particular book and can't), and my spirit will be moved to pull out all the books and put the shelves where they need to go, and re-sort and re-shelve the books accordingly. But until then, I have more important things to think about, like, what I want to do with the box that's been on my dining room table for the past two months -- keep it or throw it away . . . . And one of these days, I'll get tired of walking around the vacuum cleaner in the "Liberry" and either finish vacuuming the living room, or just put the vacuum away. . . .

It's Fall Follies Time Again. . .

2009-10-15T19:23:00.000-07:00

A friend emailed me some pix by Clark Little to brighten up my day. I needed my day brightened. It is the start of cotton ginning season, and since we have not had a killing frost yet ( it was 92 degrees F/33 degrees C yesterday -- thank you, global warming!), they've sprayed the cotton with defoliant. Now they've started stripping it, and the air is full of fine leaf particles liberally laced with the Dept of Agriculture-approved version of agent orange. From now until they get it all ginned (the end of December) about 3/4ths of the town will be participating in the annual cough up your toenails competition, which this year will include the H1N1 lottery with drawings held daily.

We don't have much "fall color" out here in the flat lands, just the post oak trees in the local landscaping which are various shades of bronze and dark red, and the sycamores, which are interesting shades of golden yellow. Many people here have planted those kind of trees (some specie of catalpa, I think) that when they decide it's fall, all the leaves drop off at once. It happens literally overnight. My neighbor next door has about six of them along the fence line, so I'll be up to my ancestors in leaves any day now.

The Canada geese will start arriving at about half past November. They winter here. I live about two blocks from a local park which has a playa lake in the middle of it, a favorite honker hangout. I'm apparently right in the final approach for it, and morning and evening my front and back windows acquire furry tails of one color or another protruding from between the drapes, waggling furiously as the squadrons of geese fly over on their way out to the local fields to feast on the grain stubble, or return to the lake in the evening. (The kitties make this funny chattering noise that means they've spotted prey -- yeah, like they have a shot!) The long V's of geese against our clear, intensely blue October skies are a beautiful sight. I may have to don my face mask and stroll down to the park with my camera one of these days. . .(Who was that masked man. . . ?).

I'm currently listening to a playlist of all Harry Connick, Jr., (who is married to the daughter of one of our local girls, Glenna Goodacre, the one who did the Vietnam nurses' memorial in DC, and the Sacagawea relief on the gold dollar coin). His early stuff is some pretty hot Dixieland jazz, which is rather finger popping. ("Hello, Central, give me Dr. Jazz!") Next in the queue is my Jelly Roll Morton playlist (as played by Clarence Williams in the famous dueling pianos scene from "The Legend of 1900,") It's the kind of stuff that was on those old movie cartoons -- Silly Symphonies, and Betty Boop, etc., from the 1920's and 30s that I used to watch on TV after grade school. That would have been in the early Triassic, BCT (Before Color Television). I subscribe to Rhapsody, and I'm like the proverbial kid in the candy store running rampant through their very extensive catalog. A monthly subscription fee that is less than the cost of one CD buys you the privilege of unlimited plays of their 8+ million song music catalog, with the option to download or stream music to three devices (any combination of computers, laptops and MP3 players) -- For me, it's a tremendous bargain, since 90% of the stuff they only let you hear a 30 second sample of unless you buy it, is not the kind of stuff I'd consider fit to listen to anyway.

The other day I downloaded a cut of the instrumental music from the big love scene in Richard Wagner's opera "Tristan und Isolde" with Nadia Salerno-Sonnenberg on solo violin. (pronounced "REE-kard VOGner", please). It's like the soundtrack they play in the clenches of those 1940's romantic movies or films noires that would have starred Bogie, Claude Rains, Bette Davis, Ingrid Bergman, Leslie Howard or Stars of the Silver Screen of similar ilk. It has a solo piano part as well, and is backed by a full orchestra with a 40 megaton percussion section -- and since it's Wagner (pronounced "VOGner," please), the Sturm und Drang is laid on with a trowel. The sound track from the famous helicopter scene in "Apocalypse Now" was by Wagner -- "The Ride of the Valkyries" from his opera "Die Valkyrie" -- Think "Brunhilde" played by about 100 kg of soprano sporting a spear, the requisite stainless steel yarmulke with horns, blond braids, and a sheet metal bustier made to order by the costume dept from the trunk lid of a 1956 Cadillac, charging about the stage bellowing like a bull moose. (Most of the major European opera houses do at least one Wagner opera a year since it's cheaper than hiring a cleaning crew to dust the chandeliers. . .).

Though my pen is mighty, my pencil leaves a lot to be desired -- I need to find a talented cartoonist/caricaturist who can draw the Wagner opera cartoons and cat cartoons I have in my head. I have pages of snappy dialog for them but insufficient graphic talents to draw them the way I see them in my mind's eye. Any of you Chuck Jones wannabes out there in internetland, feel free to apply.

Exit blogger, stage left, singing, "Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!"

Eye See versus I See

2009-08-31T13:04:00.000-07:00

One of the Webcomics I follow is currently featuring a character evolved from bees who has compound eyes. That got me to thinking about insects with their compound eyes and how they might see the world. . . People always show views through compound eye as a bunch of miniature full images. That's always bothered me, -- like it has to be wrong. Seems like they would see like one pixel of color/light/dark information from each lens which their brain would merge into a single picture -- like Georges Seurat's Pointillist paintings. It makes much more sense to see a single, large, albeit very grainy image, rather than 8 zillion tiny views of the same thing. If that's all they had to go by -- multiple very tiny but identical images, all of which had terrible resolution and very little useful info, -- how could an organism like that survive? How could they quickly spot and recognize danger or find food? I mean, Duh! Makes much more sense if their multiple lenses are trying to do what we do with our retinas -- create a complex full-scale image from a large number of single data points -- Doing it with lenses will work, but only up to a point (the point of diminishing returns) and that point is reached very quickly. Notice how all the animals with compound eyes are all small, short lived, reproduce quickly, and are successful pretty much because they breed in such statistical-overkill-enormous numbers that their survival is due more to the law of averages than anything else?-- Obviously,"evolution" realized pretty quickly it was on the wrong track and went with a single lens/image to refract and spread the light across ever increasing numbers of cones and rods of a retina, each of which sends its one pixel of info to our brains, and the brain resolves them into a single image. The more pixels, the higher the resolution and the more detailed the image is. -- like Duh! If you want to know which system works best, all you have to do is look around at which animals have compound lens eyes and which animals (like the one writing this blog, for instance) have single-lens eyes.

Which reminds me of one of the (many) things that "blew me out of" that old 1950's movie version of "War of the Worlds" starring Gene Barry. When they looked through the Martian "eye" thingie that Gene Barry chopped off with the ax. They got three separate, different colored images, red, blue and green that kind of overlapped a little and were really anemic looking. And those idiot scientists blathered on about That's how the Martians see us. (and, of course, the woman took one look at the image and screamed -- that's all women ever do in those stupid 1940's and 1950's movies is scream and have the vapors. Give me a break!) Some scientists! -- They of all people should know that it's not what the eye sees that counts-- that's all just raw data. It's what the brain sees that's important. If the Martians were smart enough to build those stupid flying saucer thingies with the death ray emitting street lamps on their noses, those "eye" thingies would have had some kind of processing software to integrate the data from those three different images into a single composite full color image -- -- which is exactly what the old cathode ray tube color TV process did. It had three "guns" (red, blue and green) firing pixel streams at the front of the tube. The three different single color images were superimposed on each other to create the full integrated color image -- It's the same idea the old technicolor film used. Duh. I've understood the process since Junior High, when the "green gun" blew out on the picture tube of our color TV. We had to watch pink and blue TV til we got it fixed. (I do have to admit that old movie did have some pretty cool sound effects, though. )

An Accumulation of Cats -- Part I: First There Were Two

2009-06-26T21:36:00.000-07:00

I have always loved cats, and in late 1996, I felt that age 48 was mature enough to assume the responsibility of pet guardianship. I was living in the apartment on 21st street at the time and by then I had been doing medical transcription for 10 years, and had been working from home for about 2 years. I decided I wanted two males and I wanted to raise them from kittens. The city pound seemed the ideal place to look for kittens who needed a home, but it turned out that they would not adopt out cats younger than a year old. I searched the want ads for people who had kittens to give away, but found none. Then I heard that a friend and colleague had a cat who had just had a litter of kittens.

If you are destined to have cats, sometimes you get to choose which cat you'll have, and sometimes the world chooses one for you. My friend did not know she was supposed to have a cat until the world gave her one. It seems a feral cat had been moving her litter to a new location and as she was carrying one of them along the top of their fence, she accidently dropped it and it fell down behind an oil drum that had been pushed into a corner of the fence. The space where it fell was large enough for a kitten to fall through but too small for the family's pet Labrador to get into; Unfortunately, it was also too small for the mother to get into either. My friend's daughters saw the dog barking frantically at the oil drum and when they went out to investigate, they found the kitten, rescued it from its predicament, and adopted it. It was a female kitten and the girls christened her "Angel" because "she fell from above." There were four kittens in Angel's first litter. The first two kittens, a male and and female, were born on 03/21/1997; the second two, both females, were born almost 24 hours later.

My friend was quite willing to let me take half of Angel's litter off her hands at one fell swoop. I definitely wanted the male, and the female I chose was the eldest one, the one who had been born at the same time as the little male. I based my choice on the rationale that since they were born together, they should stay together. All four kittens were black and grey mackerel tabbies like their mother, and the only way I could tell my two apart without getting rudely personal was that the little female had three white toes on her left forepaw. I named the male Jett and the female Shadow. Fortunately, as the kitties grew older, it became much easier to tell them apart.

The one I named Jett (at left and below right) proved to be high strung and skittish. He had a "hair trigger," and between one instant and the next, he could kick in his afterburner and vanish in a puff of cat hair. He was a high flyer and thought nothing of scaling my china cabinet, which is 7 feet tall, and would leap from the bathroom counter to the top of the bathroom door and perch there. He was a long, tall boy, on the large end of the size spectrum, and his normal, healthy weight was around 15 lbs.

One day, I had gone to a colleague's house to talk to her about the national service she was working for, with the idea of helping her do some work for them on a part time basis. On my way over, I picked up a pair of Josie's burritos for our lunch. As she was eating hers, a red bean (the kind Mexican refried beans are made from) fell out of it onto the floor. Before it had bounced once, one of her cats caught it and snarfed it. Turned out her cats loved red beans. The next time I had refried beans, I offered my two kitties a little dollop. Sure enough, once they'd gotten a good sniff of it, down the hatch it went. From then on, I couldn't open a can of refried beans or bean dip without them begging for their "share." Jett also had a "sweet tooth" for margerine.

I had decided that Jett and Shadow were going to be strictly indoor kitties. So, in addition to neutering them both, I had them both completely declawed. (Some people feel that declawing a cat is inhumane, but to me it seems more humane than spraying noxious smelling chemicals all over the furniture and yelling at them for the rest of their lives in an effort to "train" them not to shred the upholstery.) The vet I took them to had started using a tissue glue instead of sutures to close the incisions. When I brought Jett home, put his crate on the bed and opened it to let him out, he left little bloody footprints as he walked across the quilt. Aghast, I rushed him back to the vet, who realized the tissue glue they had used on Jett was defective and hadn't been sticky enough to hold the skin edges together. They had to bandage his little paws with 4 x 4 gauze pads and Kling wrap them. For the better part of that next week, our theme song was "Shake your booties." The vet at the clinic I was going to at the time didn't seem too concerned about having used defective glue on poor Jett and were rather cavalier about the whole thing. That was when I stopped going to that vet clinic and started going to the clinic I go to now.

As it turned out, Shadow (pictured at right) was aptly named as well. As a kitten, she had had the classic mackerel tabby pattern of black stripes against a light grey background, but as her adult coat came in, the shadows of tortoise shell markings began to appear, with clearly defined areas where the grey background changed to a light russet brown, and black stripes became dark umber. Her coat was as lush and soft as velour. She was the same height as Jett but not as long, and she was deeper through the body from back to belly. As she matured, her stockier body gave her a charming, slightly chubby look -- pleasingly plump. She had the sweetest little round face. She was my little brown girl and she liked to be near me. At some point, inexplicably, I started calling her "Sister" -- and she answered to it.

The apartment had a "shotgun" style layout, with a hall that started just to the left of the front door and went past a closet, the bathroom and the first bedroom, and dead-ended about 20 feet later at the back bedroom door. My dad is not a cat lover, and is firmly convinced that every loose cat hair in the place immedately seeks him out and gets on him the minute he walks in the front door of my abode. I ended up putting a bifold door at the front end of the hall to keep the kitties out of the living/dining room area. That way, when I had company, I wouldn't worry about the kitties slipping out the open front door, and when my folks came over, my dad would not have to deal with the kitties. It got to the point that whenever the doorbell rang, the kitties would go hide in the bedroom and I could just shut the bifold door behind them. However, on one occasion, I had a cable guy come to put a second cable outlet in my bedroom. He was in and out several times and once he left, I couldn't find Sister. I searched the apartment from top to bottom, looking everywhere for her. I called and called for her. She was completely declawed, she had never been out of the apartment except in a carrier, and she was very distrustful of strangers. I was terrified that she had been "caught out" by the cable guy, had been frightened of him and had "escaped" by bolting out the front door. I searched the neighborhood frantically for almost two hours, calling her and rattling the sack of treats, desperately afraid that she had become too confused, disoriented and frightened to respond. The area where I lived was bound by three very busy streets, and that knowledge kept circling like vultures in my mind. By then, I was over an hour late for work. I went back to my apartment, heart sick at the thought that I might never find her again. As I was sitting on the couch trying to pull myself together, a little brown furry body came oozing out from beneath the skirting around the footstool that went with a wing chair. There was only about 3 inches of clearance between the bottom of the foot stool and the floor, and it had never occurred to me to look there since it didn't seem possible that 14 pounds of cat could squeeze herself into such a small space! Guess again!

The back bedroom was my "office." When I wasn't working, that door stayed shut. But on the days when I worked, they would go back to the office with me and keep me company. The apartments had been built in the 1960s, and the electrical outlets were the original ones. There was one outlet where I had plugged in the UPS device I plugged my computer equipment into. One day, I noticed Sister sniffing around the faceplate of that outlet. Something about it had attracted and held her attention. This went on for several days. Finally, I got down and smelled it for myself, and caught the distinctive odor of ozone. Not the sort of smell one likes to have coming from an electrical outlet! I mentioned it to my landlord's daughter-in-law, who was managing the apartments for him, and she had an electrician come out to check the outlet. Turned out the source of the ozone was a pair of bare wires inside the outlet that were arcing! The electrician said it was a good thing I noticed the ozone smell and recognized it for the danger signal it was. Those arcing wires could very easily have started a fire. Now, my mother's sense of smell is quite acute, -- she's got a nose like a beagle -- but my sense of smell is not very good at all. I had to practically stick my nose in the outlet in order to smell the ozone. I'd have never been aware of it if Sister hadn't noticed it first and shown such a persistent interest in it.

I was quite happy with the two kitties I had. I had neither plans nor desire to get any more and for a little over two years, it was just the two kitties and me. I might also note that instead of requiring a pet deposit, my landlord simply raised the rent $20 a month per pet, and two was all I could afford.

Come Fly with Us

2009-06-03T16:22:00.000-07:00

Good evening, Gentle Readers, and welcome aboard Pibgorn flight 603 non stop to Total Confusion. While we await our turn to taxi out onto the runway, we’d like to take a moment to familiarize you with some of the safety features of this Comic Strip. Down at your side, you will find large white plastic cards that have been wedged between the couch cushions. On them you will find a set of emergency instructions. Please take a moment to familiarize yourselves with the emergency evacuation procedures. Once we are airborne, and it is safe for you to engage in speculation, our pilot will turn on the “Comment” sign. At that point you may theorize and speculate as much as you wish. However, for your own safety and that of your fellow passengers, we do ask that you not jump to a conclusion that is over 10 feet away. If we should encounter sudden shifts in reality, the captain may turn on the “Happy Hour” sign, at which point we ask that you please take your seats, deploy your tray tables, hold your glass above your head and rattle the ice. One of our flight squirrels will be by shortly to bring you a belt. If characters, costumes, or situations should cause the cabin to overheat, Llefty the 3-LLLama will immediately drop down from the overhead compartment and squirt you with the hose. In the unlikely event that the couch becomes caught in a flash flood of purple prose, your couch cushion may be used as a flotation device. Once you have achieved complete boyancy, please remain calm, raise both arms overhead with fingers spread (demonstrates) so that the rescue bats may grasp your fingers and tow you to safety. And now, on behalf of the captain and our crew, I'd like to thank you for choosing Pibgorn. We hope you enjoy your flight of fancy, and that you will fly with us again soon.

Welcome to the Confusion Couch

2009-06-26T21:05:00.000-07:00

There are as many reasons to enjoy Pibgorn, the comic strip created by Brooke McEldowney, (hereinafter referred to as "The Cannon") as there are people who enjoy it, and there’s quite a collection of them here. These enjoyers of Pibgorn (hereinafter referred to as “we”) are a diverse and motley assemblage bound together in mutual confusion by the uncommon thread of this comic and the very uncommon man who perpetrates it (from the Latin, perpetrare, “to completely bring about”). If you take the time to read the comments, you’ll discover quite an interesting cross section of humanity has accumulated on the cushions of the confusion couch. It was Brooke himself who christened us the Order of the Couch (hereinafter referred to as “OTC”).

If the strip has piqued your interest, I would suggest checking out the resources (hereinafter referred to as “the boilerplate”) that one of our number has collected and so kindly makes available every day. That is a good introduction to The World of Pibgorn (hereinafter referred to as “the Pibverse”). If your interest is piqued enough to want to dig deeper, and if you have sufficient disposable income at your disposal, becoming a member (“Genius”) of GoComics would be the easiest way to access the archives so that you may follow the thread from its beginning. However, Real Life (hereinafter referred to as “RL”) being what it is these days, if you have more time than money, you can always use the devious and circuitous method explained earlier in today’s comments to get to the East by sailing West (hereinafter referred to as “the Columbus method”).

In any case, feel free to check out our virtual digs, have a sit down on the virtual couch, and help yourself to the virtual goodies. We have a fully equipped virtual clubhouse here, with a hot tub, a pool, a library and various other virtual amenities. The llama is Llefty and the goat is Gruff (in name only). We also have several escadrilles of fruit bats aloft at any given time. They are all quite tame. They and the squirrel squadron (AKA The Crumb Police) help clear away the leftovers. Our volunteer virtual librarian has been compiling a list of books we have recommended to each other along the way. I also seem to recall someone was collecting recommended recipes. One hopes that, at some point, links to same will be added to the boilerplate.

One of the virtues of virtual couches is that there’s always room for one more.

In Memoriam

2009-06-15T18:24:00.001-07:00

Jett Catt

03/21/1997 - 05/11/2009

For more than 3 years, he fought against diabetes, but its inevitable complications had begun to take their grim toll. Today, I made the difficult decision to put an end to what had obviously become a losing battle. This afternoon, he peacefully closed his eyes in sleep one last time and at 4:45 pm, he set off across the Rainbow Bridge to join his sister and littermate Shadow. He has been a dear and beloved companion these past 12 years, and he will be greatly missed.

* * * * *
That was such a hard email to write. Can't believe he's been gone for over a month now. Someday soon, I need to blog about the both of them, Jett and his sister Shadow. Two dear, sweet souls of the kitty purrsuasion.

Dizzy Dean, Modeling Clay, and the Game of the Week

2009-06-06T13:20:00.000-07:00

It would have been in the 1950's, about '55-'56-'57. My Mom and Dad had built their first house, and we moved into it the summer I turned 6. It had three bedrooms, one bath, a kitchen, living room, a one-car garage, and a den.

The den was an oblong room. It and the kitchen formed an "L" shape, with the den being the longer leg. The living room was on the inside of the "L" and the garage on the opposite side. It had knotty pine paneling. Like the kitchen, it had those old foot-square, "asphalt" tiles on the floors, off white with dark green dribbles. The dinette set (table and four matching chairs) was on the living room side on the end near the kitchen, followed by a doorway into the living room that had a set of "bar-room" swinging doors and then my dad's recliner. On the garage side of the room was the door to the garage, a 1950's answer to a futon couch, and a built-in bookcase with two cabinets beneath it. The television (we just had one) was at the end of the room, up against the windows that looked out on the back yard. It was a Motorola TV, black and white.

My dad loved sports, and it was right about that time that they started broadcasting sports games on TV and in the summer time, they would broadcast baseball games played by all those great old teams: The Brooklyn Dodgers, the New York Yankees, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Boston Red Socks and the Braves, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Chicago White Sox and the Cubs, the Baltimore Orioles, the Cincinnati Reds, The Cleveland Indians.

Television wasn't all that much older than I was then, and it hadn't been all that long ago when the only way you could "see the game" was to go down to the statium, buy a ticket, and watch it from the stands. Your only other option was to listen to the announcers describe it to you on the radio. In fact, the games that were being broadcast on TV were using the same audio feed that went out over the radio, only with two or three strategically placed TV cameras up in the stands to show you what was happening on the field.

Football is a fast-paced, busy game. It has time limits; things have to happen within a certain period of time, and you can be penalized for taking too long to do something. There's a countdown clock on the scoreboard, and when that clock gets to zero, the game's over and everybody goes home. Baseball, however, is a open-ended game. Sure, the game starts at a certain time, but after that, it takes as long as it takes. It's played at a different pace. If you went to the ballpark to watch a game, you planned on being gone all afternoon and probably not getting home until dark. And in those early days of TV, that's the way they broadcast it. No cutting to commercial. No fancy onscreen graphics. None of this frenetic flick-flick-flick back and forth from image to image, no slo-mo instant replays. In those early days of television, the announcers were all important.

While one team was taking the field, and the other was going back to the dugout, it was up to the announcers to take up the slack just like they did on radio. -- They might mention one of the sponsors and give a product plug, or recap the inning up to that point. While the batter was fixing his hat, and digging his cleats in, and hitching at his uniform shirt, and rubbing dirt into his hands, the announcers would keep your attention by giving you some of his stats, or mentioning some colorful little biographical tidbit about him or one of the other players. While the pitcher and the catcher were deciding what to pitch or the pitcher was going through his little song and dance on the mound before he would actually wind up and throw, the announcers would be commenting, filling the time with useful, interesting or intertaining information. And the announcers always worked in pairs so they could play off each other. One would be the stats man and have reams of baseball stats ready to hand, and the other would provide the "color" -- the little anecdotes, and bits of personal trivia.

My dad loved sports, especially baseball, and he would always watch the "Game of the Week" on Saturday afternoons. The announcers were Dizzy Dean and some other guy whose name I don't ever think I knew. Not surprisingly, Dizzy Dean was the "color" man. He had a bazillion anecdotes from his days in baseball, and he had nearly as good a command of the English language as the inimitable Yogi Berra. The home plate umpire would decide to interrupt the game, walk halfway out to the mound and ask to see the baseball, and right on cue, Dizzy would launch into some anecdote about the fielding team's third baseman who missed three games last season because he got cleated in the ankle when the runner "slud" in to third base on a "dribbler" that got past their shortstop.

I wasn't all that into baseball in particular or sports in general, but the sounds that came out of that old Motorola TV were a part of my world. I guess that's why Dizzy Dean caught my ear. Even at that early age, I was aware that the "TV people" talked differently from the people in my childhood world way out in the flatlands of the Texas Panhandle. Nobody on the TV (unless it was a locally produced commercial for some local business) pronounced the words the same way, or used them in the same way. The sounds were different, the rhythms were different. Except for Dizzy Dean. He sounded like the people in my world. Hearing him and that other guy announcing the games was like a dialog between my world and the world of the TV people.

I can see that den so clearly. Looking down it from the end of the kitchen, backlit from the glare of the windows behind the TV. We had screen doors on both the front and back doors, and in the summertime, the back door would be open, there'd be a baseball game on TV and my younger brother would be crouched on the floor in front of the TV.

My brother was a spindly, knobby-kneed kid, three years my junior, with bad allergies and asthma and, as a result, he couldn't play outside a lot. He liked sports. We had baseball gloves, a bat and ball, and he had a baseball cap. He had baseball cards. But through circumstances beyond his control, for him there was no little league, no games with the neighborhood kids, only the occasional game of catch with my dad. Still, he found his own way to play baseball, on his terms, indoors, all by himself.

The 1950's equivalent of Play-Doh was modeling clay. It was oily, stiff, wouldn't dry out, and came in four colors: Red, yellow, blue and green. Inevitably, the colors would get all mixed together and it would end up this blechy greenish dark grey. My brother would get a lump of modeling clay and use it to lay out a complete baseball diamond on the floor. He would painstakingly roll the clay into long strings about the thickness of raw spaghetti and press it flat on the tile for his foul lines. He'd carefully form pieces of clay into little square base bags, use a kitchen knife to cut out a clay home plate, and form a pitcher's mound out of clay. For his baseball teams, he would use those old green plastic army men with “stands” that came in 50-count bags for some ridiculously low price. He and his teams du jour of little army guys would play game after game there on the floor. He would do all the sound effects -- the crack of the ball against the bat, the roar of the crowd, the announcers' commentary. He'd spend hours recreating on the floor what he watched on TV.

It took a lot of time to lay out his little baseball diamonds and, once he got one made, he wanted to leave it there -- for weeks! He would become quite irate if it was disturbed in any way. It would drive my mom crazy. My mom is a neat freak. It is her mission in life to rid the world of "piles of crud." If you are not actually reading a book or magazine, you couldn't just set it aside and come back to it later; it had to be closed and put away (if it was a magazine, you'd better take it to your room and hide it, because if it had been in the house more than a day or two, it was likely to get thrown away!). The instant you are done playing with a toy or game, she wants it picked up and put away. If you were working one of those 500- or 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles as my dad and I loved to do, or you were playing some board game, or coloring in a coloring book, or constructing a little room with cardboard furniture in a shoebox, or putting a plastic model together, or making a blanket cave/hideout/secret headquarters, or whatever else you might be doing, you'd better be able to finish it in the time you had available so that when you had to stop playing, you could "put all that crud away." But, since my brother was the youngest and because he frequently couldn't play outdoors, she'd suck it up and let him have his baseball diamonds on the floor. But even he would periodically have to scrape them up so she could sweep and mop. I think about two weeks was her maximum, ultimate limit.

The Littermaid Automatic Kittie Poop Box Modification

2008-03-03T21:40:00.000-08:00

Here's the problem, folks. I have multiple cats. I started out with two. Scooping two litter boxes every night of the world gets really old really fast. Then I accumulated a third cat. Three cats won't divide into two litter boxes, and I just flat didn't have room for a third litter box. Then I saw a commercial for the Littermaid. It's true, they are pricy but one will pay for itself with what you save on kitty litter. It sure solved the problem of space and they do control odor very nicely. However, right away, I noticed a drawback.

No doubt its inventors thought they'd make a fortune selling the disposable containers for it at $20 a dozen. Three cats can fill up a container every other day. There are people who can and will spend $20 every 24 days to get rid of kitty poop. I'm not one of them. Right away, I got the bright idea to line the containers with plastic grocery bags. That solved two problems: A single Littermaid container now lasted for 8-9 months and I can now do something with all those plastic grocery bags besides throw them out or hunt down some place to recycle them. I'd collect full grocery bags in one of those "flip top" trash cans and then lug the bucket out to the dumpster once a week. That worked pretty well. Changing the bags was easy, but I still had to change them every other day. And, let me tell you, three or four plastic grocery bags full of kitty "clumps" are astonishingly heavy.

Then one day while I was shopping in Wal-Mart, I saw those stackable drawer thingies they sell in a variety of sizes, and had a brain wave. I got one of the largest size they sell -- cost me $15, but turned out to be cheap at the price. I put a Littermaid container upside down and traced around it for the opening in the top of the drawer holder. I used my drill to drill a hole at the four corners so I could get a little hand-saw blade in and do the cutting. The drawer holder is not wide enough for all the Littermaid to fit on top so you have to put something beside it to support that end of the Littermaid. No problem. Whenever I buy something that is packed in big, fairly smooth pieces of solid Styrofoam I usually save them. They come in handy now and then when I need to "shim" things. Like now.

The next thing I did was get a clean Littermaid container and cut the bottom out of it. It is important to note that there are some little notches on the bottom of the container that fit over two little bars on the Littermaid. When you are cutting the bottom off the container, DON'T cut these off! Cut around them. They are what hold the edge of the container against the side of the Littermaid. The bags I'm using are small garbage can liners -- they're pretty flimsy plastic so you might want to double bag. When you put the bag on, leave 4-5 inches of "cuff" to turn down over the sides of the container. On the side of the container where the notches are, tuck the edge of the bag over the bottom edge of the container and use some large paperclips to hold it. This will prevent the weight of the kitty poop from pulling the edge of the bag loose. Also, use a scissors to round the points off the corners on the top of the container so they won't poke through the plastic bag liners and tear them. Now you can put the container in the Littermaid in the usual way. I suppose you could put the container lid inside one of your plastic liner bags too before you affix it to the lid holder of the Littermaid. I don't, but you could. The lid does get kinda icky after a while.

This is the finished setup. (I normally keep the drawer closed. It's open here to show the bottom of the bag hanging down.) Notice the large piece of Styrofoam next to the door jam (by my kitty's head) which is there to support that end of the Littermaid. I took this pix before I realized the importance of securing the edge of the plastic bag to the bottom edge of the container. If the paper clips were in place, you would be able to see them in this picture, or at least one of them.

My kitties caught on right away. They can easily climb on the edge of the drawer holder to get to the Littermaid. But, if your kitties are older or do not handle change well, you may need to "walk them through" how they get to the poop box now. Some kitties resist change. Some are just stubborn. You might want to put plastic down on the floor around the new setup until they get the hang of it, or if you anticipate a contest of wills. If your kitties are older and have difficulty getting around, I suppose you could make them some stairs if you are handy with woodworking. I have a throw rug down under mine because I rent, and the utility room is floored with that nasty old cheap grey "asphalt tile" from the 1960's -- the kind you have to wax, and that was in every school I ever went to. It's ugly, scuffed, and icky.

When the bag is full, remove the paper clips and pull the top of the plastic bag loose from around the container and twist tie it. If you pull the plastic bag up on the side of the container you can easily get to and push it under the lid assembly far enough to where you can pull it through from the inside, it's much easier to get the bag loose from between the container and the Littermaid. Don't let the bag get real full the first time you change it. There is a learning curve involved here. I suppose you could wear a pair of old rubber dish washing gloves to do it, but I just use my bare hands and wash my hands good with antibacterial soap afterwards. Notice the little notches sticking out on the bottom of the Littermaid container. Those are what you don't want to cut off when you're cutting the bottom out of the container.

When you've twist tied the bag, reach in and flatten it down with your hand so you can get the drawer open. Also, open the drawer carefully so as not to tear the bag. If you didn't double bag, you might want to carefully roll it over into a plastic grocery bag before you try to move it just to reinforce the bag. I certainly would not want to have to clean up the mess that would happen if a bag tore.

Now remove the container from the Littermaid and put a clean bag on, put the container back on, and you're ready to go.

This little modification will almost "fourple" the capacity of a Littermaid container. With three cats, I only have to change the bag every five or six days. Now that I have four, I change it about every four days.

Now that I've worked with this modification a while, I can suggest several improvements. The Littermaid containers are kind of flimsy. I tried gluing two together, one inside the other. This didn't work very well because the side of the container that goes up against the Littermaid had a tendency to bow inward and stuff falls through the gap. However, I tried it again with two more containers only this time I cut a piece out of the inside container on each side to decrease its diameter, which solved the bowing problem. You also need to choose your glue wisely -- choose the kind that says it glues plastic. Otherwise, the glue may melt the plastic. Also, I would put the hole in the drawer holder more in the center of the drawer. This would enable you to use a tall kitchen trash bag liner. Not only do they hold more, but the tall liners are made of more substantial plastic. I don't think I would have enough room to do this with my current setup, and there's no other place where I would want to put my Littermaid that is near a plug.

If you keep your Littermaid in the garage, where odor is less of a problem, you might want to consider doing it this way: Cut the hole in the drawer holder about half an inch smaller on all sides and put the hole in the middle rather than close to the edge. Then put a litter box liner in the drawer. You could use those really big, heavy duty paper clips that clip a bunch of papers together to hold the litter box liner onto the drawer. Then put a bag over your Littemaid container, but cut the bottom out of the bag so it will act like a chute and let the poop fall through into the lined drawer. When the drawer gets as full as you can deal with, open the drawer, take the liner loose, twist tie it and dispose of it. Reline the drawer, and you're back in business.

I've seen commercials for a new "automatic litter box" that flushes itself with special solution and "liquifies solid waste," dumps it all into the toilet bowl, then blow dries the litter. Nice idea. Certainly an improvement on the Littermaid, but you've still got to flush the toilet -- and buy the flushing solution stuff -- want to bet it's pricey? However, lets face it. Nothing will really solve the problem until somebody invents something porcelain that attaches to plumbing pipes, drains into the sewer, and flushes itself automatically. If they do the job right, it can be easily (and cheaply) modified to work for dogs as well as cats.

They could call it "The Pet Bidet."

P.S., I refer you to the post for Monday, December 08, 2008,
The Poop Box Modification Revisited, for the latest tweak. . .

Guinness Fondue

2009-04-15T19:01:00.000-07:00

Ran across this recipe -- haven't tried it, mind, but it sounds yummy.

Melt 1 pound of grated cheddar cheese on low heat, stirring continuously. Add a quarter-pint of Guinness, 3 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce, half a tablespoon each of corn flour, salt, black pepper and cayenne pepper. Stir until thickened slightly and serve with chunks of bread.

Dip the bread into the fondue, drink the left over Guinness (for every quarter-pint you use in the fondue, that’s three-quarters of a pint left lying around loose.)

It's Official!

2009-03-04T01:47:00.001-08:00

Spring is Here! I watered really good Friday night (See previous post) and this is my reward. I transplanted these little yellow beauties from the back yard several summers ago.

When I moved in, I swore up and down that I wasn't going to fool with a yard, but within a year, I couldn't stand the accumulated neglect any longer and launched into a serious yard sorting out program that has been ongoing for the past 7 years.

In the back yard, I cleared out dead wood and cut down "volunteer" seedling trees till the world looked level. I put in edgers around the existing rose bed in front of the storage building, created and edged beds around the climbing roses along the back fence, and created a new bed along the back of the house that I planted with honeysuckles. I began "treeing" the roses that were already there and planted more rose bushes. There were already a scraggle of purple irises in the rose bed, and I discovered a little iris growing right in the middle of the path up the side of the house to the front gate. I relocated it to the rose bed; it not only survived and bloomed (yellow) but prospered and begat many corms. The one above is one of its offspring I relocated to the front. I bought a packet of every color of iris Wal-Mart makes and planted them in the rose bed, too (plus some in the front bed), and my late sister-in-law gave me some of the two-tone purple irises from their yard for my birthday one year, which I also planted. I planted a jasmine vine to climb the trellis by the storage building, and some clematis vines. My brother gave me the old concrete bird bath from their yard. The bowl was cracked and wouldn't hold water so I turned it upside down and made a sundial pedestal out of it for the sundial a friend gave me one year for my birthday. I trained the climbing roses to the fence, and got a happy surprise when a bush I thought dead grew out pink climbers. I was actually able to transplant some of the pink canes into the red bed and they are going to town now too.

In the front yard, somebody had tried to make a rock garden without laying down the black plastic first and the front yard was a mishmash of bricks, *&^%$#! little white rocks and weeds. I dug up about half a pallet of bricks that had been laid out in some arcane design in the rock garden and sifted about half a ton of *&^%$# little white rocks out of the dirt, leaves and 20 years of neglect they had sunk into. I laid a catch basin filled with the rocks along the front walkway to catch the runoff from the roof, then laid out a flower bed beside it. I used the bricks as edgers around my new bed and the bed I created around the crepe myrtles. I put more rocks beside the front door and used eight 12 x 12 cinder block pavers to make a front porch and then used 6 x 12 pavers to continue on to make a walkway along the front of the house behind the boxwoods all the way across to the gate. I pruned and shaped the crepe myrtles, thinned and pruned the boxwood, and planted day lilies, spiderwort, and a honeysuckle in the front bed, which has gradually extended from about a 3 x 5 plot right beside the door, to a 12 x 8 plot that extends almost all the way down the walkway, and then put in a short little cinder block walk from the side walk to the edge of my flower bed so the yard guys can get the mower in to mow the grass I will have in my front yard if it harelips the governor. I paid a friend to cut down all those *&^%$#! holly bushes by the car-port.

This past October, right before my shoulder surgery, I made a new trellis out of rebar and bailing wire (third time is charmed) for the honeysuckle by the door and it has begun climbing it in earnest. I got drip hoses laid in both beds in the front yard and connected them to a "Y" connector by the hose. And I FINALLY got the last of those *&^%$#! white rocks sifted out of the yard and all the dirt pretty much leveled out.

All I've done since then is pick up trash that blows into my yard from the employees and visitors at the nursing home across the street, the clods who live next door, and all the trashy people who drive up and down the street short cutting to the fast food places on the other side of the loop. I desperately need to lay a drip hose in the beds along the back yard fence, and weed all the beds in the back and get them leaf-mulched good. Less urgent is picking up all the *&^%$#! sticks and twigs from my neighbors trees so I can rake the leaves out of the grass and into the flower beds where they belong. I'm going out this afternoon, and at least lay the drip hose and weed that back bed -- which reminds me, I need to charge up the old MP3 player. . . .

Fred's Texas cousin Joe Don

2009-02-27T21:57:00.000-08:00

My boss lives in Cincinnati, OH (WKRP!) in a 109 year old two-story that she and her husband have restored. She has some kind of a building in her back yard where her "office" is located. There is a gang of raccoons that terrorize the neighborhood, and they also have possums. A particularly large, scruffy one hangs out in her yard, which she has nicknamed "Fred." In her daily updates, she not infrequently refers to Fred's activities.

I have been watering my flower beds this evening, and when I went out the back door to move a sprinkler just now, there was an animal on the walkway to the alley – at first glance I thought it was a cat as there are a number of feral cats in the neighborhood, and there’s a grey one who frequents my yard. Then I realized it was a possum! Sucker was almost as big as my cat Stormie. He/she didn’t seem particularly afraid of me and didn’t even move until I started toward him. I knew we had them in the north part of town, but as many years as I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen one until tonight. Son of a gun! -- And this after that stunning conjunction of the moon and Venus -- a "smiley" moon with Venus right beside it -- we had just after dark this evening.

I tell you, it's been a soap opera - A real soap opera!

2009-02-05T00:12:00.000-08:00

When I took Jett, my oldest kitty, to the vet for his shots and exam, Dr. Preston informed me that he needed to have his two upper fangs removed. He'll be 12 years old in March and he has been diabetic for well over a year. However, he has no other known health issues and the vet seems to think he will do OK.

There is some truth to the expression "getting long in the tooth" -- The vet says that it sometimes happens in both dogs and cats that, as they age, the bone around the roots of their upper fangs starts growing for unknown reasons and literally starts pushing the tooth out -- Apparently, that's what's happening to Jett. If you look closely, can see how they have started to protrude. On top of that, he has gingivitis around them so they are also loose. (His jaw teeth were OK. The vet checked and cleaned them at the time of surgery.) I've fed all my cats nothing but kibbles since I got them as kittens, which helps keep their teeth in good shape and prevents tartar buildup. However, they don't chew kibbles with their fangs (the vet calls them "canines," but on a cat?!?) and Jett is getting on up in years. The teeth in question were already wiggly loose and for the past week and a half I'd been living in fear that they'll get to rough-housing and play-fighting, which he still does with his youngest brother Jaks (whether he wants to or not, sometimes!), and one would get knocked out, and etc., etc., They're big teeth with deep roots. (They had to do a flap graft to cover the socket). Obviously both his age and his diabetes are potential complicating factors for any kind of procedure involving sedation.

Dr. Preston was to do the surgery. He lives next door to my dentist, Dr. Morgan. (I've been dealing with a cracked tooth with a root abscess and am about halfway through a root canal on it, myself, so I can empathize with the little guy.)

Well, I fasted him Sunday night, and Monday morning, I caught him and shoved him in the crate (literally) and got him down to the vet -- he just howled the whole way -- only to find out that I had written the date down wrong and the surgery was scheduled for TUESDAY, not Monday. Needed a fasting BSL on him anyway so got that -- 197 -- under 200, so that's good. I felt like such a rat! They all know that when mommy takes the food up at 10 pm (and hollers at Gobi for whining about it until 2:30 am!) that somebody's going to the vet, usually either Gobi to get shaved, or Jett to get a fasting BSL. Everybody had slept on the bed the past two nights, and Jett was sleeping by my pillow. Poor guy. He had terrible halitosis. The extraction seems to have cleared that up.

I'd felt so full of forebodings Monday and Tuesday. Kept thinking of poor Sister Shadow. After I got him home Monday, I went to put the carrier up, and it still had a label on it from it from when I lived on 21st street and had Sister's name on it as it was her carrier.

So I have to do the whole fasting thing again, and get up at 7 o'clock again, get dressed and go boot up my computers. I think Gobi knew it wasn't him. Jett was hiding in "The Forest of Chairs" under the dining table, and Gobi came over and stood by him a while and then came over to me and wanted some reassurance. I managed to catch Jett, again, literally stuffed him into the carrier, again, and went beetling off to the vet at quarter of 8. When I got him checked in for his bilateral upper fang-ectomy and teeth cleaning, they told me I could come get him after 3 pm, and that no news was good news. After the tech took him and I was on my way out, a woman came in with a carrier. She had obviously been crying, and still was. Took the carrier into an open exam room and left it and headed out the door, still crying. I choked up and had to almost run out to the parking lot. Don't even know what kind of animal it was -- dog or cat -- or even what was wrong with it.

So home-again, home again, jiggity jig, and try to settle down to work. I'm thinking if the phone rings, I'm going to come unglued. All morning, work was only dribbles and drabs until about noon when we got really busy and then I looked up and it was creeping up on 5 pm, and the vet closes at 6, so I go Yipe!, grab some shoes and go pelting off to the vet to ransom the little critter, that'll be $532, thank you very much!!!. They give me his Rx's, and my instructions, and off we go.

Wouldn't you know, before I can get him home, he pees in his carrier and gets it all over his tail and lower belly fur, and as he walks out of the carrier, he leaves little wet footprints on my kitchen rug. The poor boy has just gone through the whole "being at the vet/having surgery/being doped up on drugs" ordeal, so I'm not about to put him through another ordeal by grabbing him, plopping him in the bathtub and washing him. I just dry him as best I can with paper towels, and then wash him as best I can with wet paper towels, and dry him off again. They tell me he's supposed to be on soft food for two weeks, and naturally he heads straight for the kibbles. So I've got a cat with pee all over his tail and hindquarters heading across my kitchen rug for kibbles that he's not supposed to have, and I've got a carrier with cat piss in it sitting in the floor in the kitchen. I shift into Keystone Kops fast forward, do an end run, grab the kibbles and put them on the counter, grab a long strip of paper towels and go after him.

Right in the middle of this flurry of activity, here comes Gobi, who promptly gets totally bent out of shape because Jett has cat pee and vet smell all over him. Gobi launches into his famous hissy face/growly puss routine, and gets Stormy all upset, and they're growling and hissing at each other, Jett, me, and half the furniture. Jaks doesn't know from nothing. He evidently isn't old enough yet to get very territorial, or else he's just clueless -- possibly all of the above. However, he is vastly entertained by all the brouhaha and wants to get in the middle of it and stir things up some more. So here I am trying to clean up Jett, with Gobi going ballistic and Jaks going into his bouncy Tigger routine and I need to feed Jett something because it's been about 15 hours since he's eaten anything.

The vet folks must have been giving him the kitty equivalent of D5 because when they did his labs, they had to give him 2 units of insulin at about 2 pm. So now I have to get out my food processor and grind up kibbles to make some kibble mush for Jett, and the food processor makes a terrible racket doing its thing. (I have this mental image of a beaver in a hard hat and construction worker tool belt yanking the pull starter on a beaver-size chain saw so he can cut another tree for his dam. . .) Fortunately, Jett is still so out of it -- his pupils are huge and he must be higher than a kite on pain meds and residual sedation -- that the food processor noise doesn't phase him. I grind him up some kibbles and mix the powder with water, and make him some nice kibble mush -- it starts out soupy and after a few minutes, it really soaks up the water to the point that it gets curdy like very soft cottage cheese. Oh, boy! We are so hungry! He just tucks right into it. but his tongue is so spastic that until the mush curds up, only about half of it is actually getting down him, and as he's trying to lap it, he's got this whole Jackson Pollack thing going on just slinging it everywhere, so I grab another paper towel or three and make him a "table cloth." (My poor kitchen rug!!)

Jett is very hungry, which is a good sign, and he goes through two batches of kibble mush, so I give him another 2 units of insulin. By now, it's almost 6 pm, and I need to get back to work, but I still have a carrier with kitty pee in it to deal with, so it's off to the kitty bathroom. (Since I have two, the one with the shower is mine, and the one with the tub is the kitties'). I whip out the antimicrobial dish detergent, break the carrier apart and scrub it down good in the bathtub. Now it's nearly 7 o'clock, so I grab a bowl of kibbles and head back to my office. I've got two growly hissy kitties wandering all over the house, one Jaks in Tigger mode bouncing about, and one stoned little boy kitty who can't settle, and here I am trying to work. Every time Gobi or Jaks wanders through, I put the bowl of kibbles down, but Jaks is the only one who will eat anything to speak of. At 8 o'clock, I feed Jett again, two more bowls of kitty mush (and get another paper towel masterpiece from Jettson Pollack) give him his antibiotic tablet and squirt a syringe full of pain med down his mouth, and skin pop him another 3 units of insulin because he's eaten so much.

I finish up my shift with a dish of kibbles on my desk and every time Gobi or Jaks wanders through, I shove it in their respective little furry face saying, "Eat, eat!" like a Jewish mother, and what with one thing and another, it's pushing 2 o'clock by the time I get to bed. So who, but who, wants to sleep by my pillow? (I'll give you a clue: His Indian name is "Peed on His Tail.") I run get one of the towels from the kitty bathroom and make a bed for him on the sheet beside my pillow. I think maybe I'll read a bit and see how things settle down. So while I'm reading, Gobi walks across the top of my pillow and stands there growling and hissing at Jett for about a page and a half, and I'm not moving a muscle because Gobi is close enough to bite me in the face if I startle him, and just freaked out enough to do it. Finally, Gobi goes back to the night stand, sits there a minute on the edge and then decides to hurl. Yes. The little schlemiel proceeds to come completely unfed all down the side of the nightstand and on the rug. So yours truly has to get up and grab another long swath of paper towels, the pet mess spray and the Fabreeze spray and clean up kitty chuck at 3 o'clock in the morning. Finally, I just turn out the light, pull the covers over my head and let them argue a while and stomp off to the living room in a huff or whatever.

I manage to snatch about 4 hours of sleep. The alarm goes off at 8 am, I go find Jett, herd him into the kitchen, feed him another two bowls of kitty mush (about 1/4 cup, all told), give him his insulin, pop his antibiotic pill into his gob, and then give him a syringe full of pain med. I have to sit there with him (all the while doing my Jewish mother routine with the dish of kibbles) until I'm sure he's not going to go into insulin shock because I haven't got the dose right. Then I stumble back to bed and sleep until the alarm goes off again at 1 pm. I've got a conference call to be on at 2 o'clock for work and I need to get up and feed the mushnik again. As I'm feeding Jett, I finally get Stormy to eat something -- it's been at least 20 hours since she's eaten any thing and she manages to bolt down about 6-7kibbles before Mr. Growly Puss comes growling through again and sends her flitting off. (As I'm looking over the last paragraph, "bowls" looks funny and without thinking, I put an "e" in it. Can you tell I've been in medical transcription for 22 years?)

Now, it's time for my call and, as I carry my bowl of kibbles into my office and sit down at my desk to boot up my work puter in case I have gotten an email cancelling the call, I notice I have a phone message. (I've got one of those cordless phones that has a base unit and multiple handsets -- 3 in my case -- and they have a little light that blinks on them when you have a message, and you can play back your messages from any of the handsets as well as from the base unit. Pretty cool.). The message is from MY dentist (I'm halfway through a root canal myself -- he didn't like the way he packed it and wants to unpack it and pack it again) saying they need to reschedule the appointment I'm supposed to have at 3 pm that afternoon. Their office is closed for lunch from 1-2, so I have to wait to call them back until after my 30-minute conference call that my boss has scheduled for every Wednesday at 2 pm, smack dab in the middle of my day off (hiss! growl!) -- although I should count my blessings. Back when I worked 9 pm to 5 am, I'd have to get up in the middle of the "night" to do conference calls! I suppose it's par for the course, thought that now that I work days, the conference calls are invariably scheduled on my days off. . . . .!

So after my conference call is over, 10 minutes early, I call the dentist and reschedule, then call the vet -- I'm not sure I can do this two different kinds of food thing for two whole weeks -- ! So I debrief the tech on the mission so far, and once I explain all the ramifications, she says, "Oh, we just tell owners that about the soft diet because they always seem to be calling in because their pet won't eat after tooth extractions. If he wants to eat kibbles, you can let him." Well, hallelujah! Right after I hang up, down go the bowls again, and Stormy comes in and eats again. Poor little tyke. She's probably half starved. Jett is still going to be offered kibble mush, because I have about half a cup of ground up kibbles that I don't intend to throw away if I can help it, but now I'm just supplementing the kibbles with the mush.

At some point tomorrow, I need to take the brush to Jett, brush him good, strip down to my birthday suit (because when I plop him in the bathtub, he gets a bath and I get a shower!) and clean him up. But sufficient to the day is the evil thereof, or to quote Ms. Scarlet O'Hara, "I'll worry about that tomorrow." It's beddy boo for yrs trly.

No reading tonight, although I would like to. The book I've just started is called "The Reader" by Bernhard Schlink, which has been made into a movie starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes. I saw a trailer for the movie on TV last week -- it looked very interesting. I saw it was based on a book, got on Amazon.com, searched for and found it, and saw that used copies were available. I bought a "like new" copy for a price which, including shipping, was more than half what the book would have cost new had I bought it at the local Barnes and Noble, and it arrived in three days. Maybe tomorrow I'll treat myself to a good long read. We could all use some chill time.

Some Thoughts on Inauguration Day.

2009-01-20T08:11:00.000-08:00

Irony: Much ado is being made of Barack Obama being black. Am I the only one who sees the irony in a man with one black parent and one white parent being called black? He's not black. He's only half black -- he's also half white. Does no one see the irony of blacks reveling in the blackness of a man whose "blackness" is based on the same criteria historically used to discriminate against and enslave black people? It is a criteria firmly rooted in that most despicable of Human institutions, slavery: a person with any black blood at all -- "even one drop" -- was legally considered black, and could therefore legally be enslaved. It is a criteria that reflected the reality that "mixed race" children were common, most of them fathered by white male owners on their female slaves. Degrees of blackness were carefully labeled: "octoroons" were persons who had a single black great grandparent -- that's 1 out of 16! It didn't actually become scandalous for a white man to father a child by a black woman until he could actually be legally married to the mother of his child. (Being black was more of a stigma than being a bastard!) But to have a black father and white mother was outrageous ("Guess Who's Coming To Dinner"was made in 1967) , even criminal, and potentially fatal for the man who "dared to besmirch white womanhood" especially when you consider that black men have been beaten to death and lynched for accidentally touching, for "not being polite enough" or even for simply "looking at" a white woman -- not just "in the olden days," but within the living, eye-witness memory of people who are watching this event today. Now a man with a black father and a white mother, who were openly married to each other at the time of his birth, is being sworn in as President of the United States. That, to me, is what's historic about this occasion.

Ironic that this event comes after an election in which Democrats were asked to choose between a black man and a white woman, and Republicans were asked to choose between the lesser of two evils.

Ironic how much mention has been made about a black President being sworn in before a building built by slaves -- yet, black members of Congress have been engaged in the business of government in that building since February 25, 1870, when Hiram Rhodes Revels was elected to the US Senate from Mississippi (of all places). And even more ironic, that Obama's black blood comes not from a descendant of those blacks who, against their will, were dragged in chains to these shores and subjected to centuries of dehumanizing servitude, abuse and discrimination. Our newest President is not the descendant of slaves, but of a man who came from Africa to America of his own free will, to continue his education by attending an American college, and who voluntarily returned to his home country once he had accomplished his goals. Still, as the child of a black, Kenyan father, and a white, American mother, he is, literally, an African-American.

Another irony that hits pretty close to home: That a black man would be elected to the highest office in the land, before a woman of any color. There is historical precedent, I'm sorry to say: Black men were enfranchised on February 3, 1870. Women, black or white, were not allowed to vote in national elections until August 26, 1920, nearly 50 years later. Black men had been serving in Congress since 1870, 46 years before Jeannette Rankin became the first woman in Congress, when she was elected to the House of Representatives in November 6, 1916. I hope it won't take 40 more years to finally get a woman elected President. That would mean I'd have to live to be 99 to see it.

However, I think my favorite touch of irony was the comment someone made about the job facing Obama as President as being "a tough row to hoe."

Nice Touches: Our first "black" president will be sworn in using the same Bible that was used to swear in Abraham Lincoln. -- I wonder whose idea that was? Whoever it was, that person had a great sense of history. I just hope this Presidency doesn't end the same way that one did.

A string quartet consisting of a Jewish violinist, a black clarinetist, a Chinese cellist, and a Hispanic pianist playing music for the ceremony. That pretty much covers all the bases.

A woman, Senator Dianne Feinstein, is the mistress of ceremonies for the inauguration.

"Re-Re" -- Having The First Lady of Soul, Aretha Franklin, who sang at the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King, to sing "My Country Tis of Thee" with its stirring chorus "Let Freedom Ring!" - Amen!

Having Rev. Joseph Lowery, an icon of the civil rights movement, deliver the benediction. I cannot imagine how moved that man must have been to find himself in that place at such a time.

Thoughts: A slogan from my youth, born amid the turmoil of the civil rights marches and the tragedy at Kent State, came to mind as one of the innumerable "talking heads" on television commented that possibly as many as 1 billion people world wide were watching live, real-time, as the 44th President of the United States was sworn in: "The whole world's watching." Mind-blowing.

My favorite comment so far regarding the election of Obama has been: "Black people have been cleaning up white people's messes for centuries. We're still doing it." Touché.

CNN has a thing going where they want people who have taken photographs of "The Moment" that President Obama was sworn in to send them to CNN. They are being computer averaged into a 360 panoramic interactive view that can be viewed on the CNN website from the privacy of your home. Cool.

CNN has also been showing a photograph taken by satellite of the Capitol and surrounding areas at "The Moment" that shows the hordes of people out for the inauguration. The pictures we usually see of important events always focus on the "important" people in attendance. I was looking at the satellite picture and thinking of how many pix that I've been in and that I've taken at various family occasions -- and how many times I've heard, "Get a picture of everybody." -- Well, that's just what CNN has done: "Get a picture of everybody" -- Cosmic!

Cisco Systems has used a John Lennon song "Only People" in one of their TV Ads that have been running during the inauguration. His voice is distinctive; it caught my 1964-sensitized ear on first bounce. I first thought "they got (his son) Julian to record it." (Julian does sound eerily like his dad.) But apparently not. Apparently, that's John's original recording they're using. Imagine!

Pepsi's commercials use the song, "My Generation" by "The Who"-- their version of it, too, not a cover, and complete with stutter. It's a clever commercial as it fast forwards through all the generations who have drunk Pepsi. Very nicely done. All the main actors in the commercial are white. Oops!

As I write this very paragraph, I am listening to the U. S. Marine Corps band play "From the Halls of Montezuma" as they march down Pennsylvania Avenue in their dress blues, led by a cadre of Marine Corps officers with drawn swords (held at their sides tips downward in peace, but at the ready to raise in defence), and I think, Semper Fi, dad. Semper Fi.

Of Potsherds and Plastic Frozen Food Trays -- a Rant

2009-01-13T23:56:00.000-08:00

Will somebody PLEASE invent a biodegradable microwaveable frozen food tray that does not contain petrochemicals! One made of sugar or starch that you could run down the sink disposal when you're done with it, if you don't mind. . . These stupid plastic frozen food trays we use now are piling up in our landfills. In a thousand years, they will be littering the landscape like potsherds in Babylon!

One wonders what future archaeologists will make of them. I can see it now: The scholarly papers discussing the "Bird's Eye" culture and the "Green Giant" people and how the two co-mingled across the landscape, and the charactaristic "blackware" of the "Stouffer" people that was found over a surprisingly large geographical area. And how wave after wave of these plastic pan people gradually supplanted the earlier metal cylinder culture. And theories will be propounded about what became of the glass vessel people who produced glassware in such a myriad of shapes and colors. . .

You may think this archaeological scenerio is somewhat far-fetched, and I agree with you. At the rate we're going, any archeology that is conducted on this planet a thousand years from now will be very far-fetched. It will be conducted in our absence by archeologists from another star system, and those future archaeologists will return from their dig sites to their camp of flying saucers. And they will sit around their solar powered campfire sipping their postprandial beverage of choice, mulling over the day's trove of artifacts, and wonder about the culture that produced them -- who they were and what they were thinking. I've been wondering the same thing myself for years.

Three Things You Can Do With A Baked Potato -- All of Which Involve Snarfing. . .

2009-01-13T22:49:00.000-08:00

This past weekend, I fell prey to a hankering for baked potatoes. I was in luck. I had previously ransomed several nice Idaho bakers from my local Wally-World with the intention of sealing their fate. . . . (Bwahahahahah!)

Defining Terms: Baked potatoes, baked in the oven, not the microwave. I massage their little skins with some EV olive oil prior to putting them on a cookie sheet and baking them at 350 degrees for an hour. This makes their skin very soft and delectable. Since I don't pierce the skins before baking, these well-oiled taters have a tendency to "sing" once they get warmed up. In fact, while I was baking the pair that prompted this blog, one of them dog-whistled a very high C# for several minutes. My youngest cat, Jaks, was extremely intrigued by the sound and inspected the oven door and surrounding area quite thoroughly and hopefully. Alas, he failed to locate anything that corresponded to what his genes had primed him to prey upon when he encountered high-pitched noises. He has revisited the oven and vicinity several times since then for another quick inspection, just in case. One never knows. . . .

Thing #1 Baked Tater with Fixin's
Involves Green Giant Frozen Vegetables. They are available in single serving containers and 2-1/2 minutes in the microwave will turn said frozen contents into succulently hot morsels of veggie goodness. The broccoli, in particular, but the broccoli/carrot combo also, are extremely relevant. Now, hold that thought.

Take a freshly baked potato, slice it open and morselize its innards with your weapon of choice: slice it to pieces with a knife or rake it thoroughly with a fork -- right down to the skin. Next one may apply margarine or drizzle with EV olive oil (I like the herbed kind made for dunking bread into). Here is where the GGF broccoli, or broccoli and carrot combo, come in . Add a container of either, freshly nuked, to the baked potato. Other condiments such as chopped black olives, a drizzle of Ranch salad dressing, a large blop of sour cream or plain yogurt may also be included. Top with grated cheese -- for my money, the Kraft Mexican 4 Cheeses blend (Cheddar, Colby, Monterey Jack and Mozzarella) is the garnish of choice, but if you go with the blop of sour cream, try chopped parsley, scallions and/or cilantro. Try them even if you don't go with the blop of sour cream. If you go for the cheese, give it a brief nuke in the microwave to melt the cheese. I like to prepare my "baked tater with fixin's" in a soup bowl and eat it with a spoon. Skin and all. Ladies and gentlemen, start your snarfers. . . . .

(Tangent: If broccoli is plural, what's the singular? Broccolus? What would a brocculus consist of? And would it be big enough to be worth fooling with?)

Thing #2: "Tater salid"
Most people boil their potatoes when they make potato salad. Unless you plan to use the "potato water" to make gravy or soup, this is a waste of good potato, as boiling them boils out the vitamins. It also makes them gummy -- which I suppose is OK if you like gummy potatoes. There is, after all, no accounting for taste. However, baking the potatoes makes them easier to peel, if peel you must, and makes them "lighter" (versus "heavier") in texture, as well as tastier.
Start with :
2-3 baked potatoes (I cut them up skins and all).
1 white onion (tennis ball size) diced.
3 Vlasic Kosher Dill spears, fillet off the seeds then diced (use spears NOT pickle relish).
1 small can of chopped black olives.

Dressing:
3/4 cup Hellmann's Mayonnaise (use mayonnaise, NOT that Godawful Miracle Whip crud!).
2 tsp Dijon mustard.
1 tsp chopped horseradish.
1 tsp wasabi.

Mix the dressing ingredients together thoroughly, then pour over the "dry" ingredients, stirring them until everything is nicely mixed and moistened. Serves 4-6.

Comments: Don't use pickle relish. Most pickle relish is (a) sweet, (b) chopped too finely. Those diced dill pickles make a nice crunch. Also use Kosher dills, not some other kind. It's not about being Kosher, it's about the Kosher recipe and how it affects the taste. That's also why not to use Miracle Whip instead of mayonnaise. Miracle Whip is not mayonnaise. It's salad dressing. Miracle Whip is also cheaper than mayonnaise for a reason. You get what you pay for. Use mayonnaise, preferably Hellmann's. There used to be a French's Gourmayo "wasabi-horseradish" -- evidently word got out that I love it, so they have now apparently quit making it. Figures. You'll have to resort to the wasabi paste and chopped horseradish, both of which can be bought in small quantities, since it is universally recognized that a little of either goes a long way. Don't use regular old French's mustard instead of a Dijon mustard. Again it has to do with taste. Grey Poupon is what I use. I'm worth it.

Give your 'buds' a break: Followed the recipe faithfully, and snarf when ready.

Thing #3: "Smashed taters"
As stated earlier, unless you plan to use the potato water to make gravy or soup, bake the potatoes rather than boil them for your mashed potatoes. Raw potatoes are jam-packed with nutrients. A good many incredibly hardy Irish were raised on potatoes and buttermilk. Period. It is a nutritionally complete diet. If you oil the skins with EV olive oil before you bake them, you can "mash" them, skins and all, in a food processor, with a little chopped parsley and/or chopped cilantro and/or chopped green onions, and milk for liquid. Or try using chicken or beef broth for liquid. Or the vegans in the crowd can use soy or rice milk for the liquid. The mashed potatoes with the bad rep are boiled -- practically pure starch, with little food value except calories. Prepared this way, they will be light, fluffy and good for you.

Try putting some in a pastry sleeve and "piping" a top crust for a chicken or beef pot pie instead of using a pastry crust, or for garnishing a beef or chicken stew, or the ubiquitous green bean casserole, or using them as a garnish for hors d'oevres made from thinly sliced beef

Try them without the butter and/or gravy. You may decide you prefer them "straight" -- Snarf away.

A Brief Dip in the Gene Pool

2009-01-14T01:34:00.000-08:00

This blog was kind of instigated by those commercials on TV about finding where certain of your traits comes from by finding out about your ancestry

My mother's mother's people migrated to Texas in the 1800s from Germany, including 3xgreat grandpa J. Adam Neuthard who supposedly was raised Catholic and at some point, either before or after he received his degree from Heidelberg University in Germany, converted to Lutheranism, whereupon his family disinherited him and marked his name out in the family Bible. That probably explains why he immigrated to Texas in 1864. A great many of his fellow Germans were already there. After his arrival, he committed matrimony with Emma Bauer, whose father, Carl Sigismund, had immigrated to Texas from Saxony some years previously. (I have a photograph of Emma in my bedroom.) Adam and Emma's daughter Mary Martha married Mr. Paul Helmecke, who was the foreman of the Schiege Cigar Factory. The house Mr. Schiege provided for his foreman, and where my mother's mother was born, is now a B&B known as The Hideaway. Martha Helmecke married Mr. Jamison -- which implies his people were Irish, Scots, or English (there were many Jamies and their sons were legion). (One of Mr. Jamison's sisters was the first woman to work in a bank in Houston.) The last of their 12 children was a girl, Florence, -- and her first child was yrs trly.

My father's father's people were supposedly from Coffee County in south Georgia, and his paternal grandfather worked as a conductor on the M-K-T ("Katy") Railroad. My father was born in 1922, so that will time-frame it for you. His father's mother was neé Molly Bailey and supposedly she was named after and related to Mollie Bailey, who owned and operated a traveling circus. Mollie Bailey was not the "Bailey" of "Barnum and Bailey"as some folks would have you believe--that was James Bailey. "Our" Baileys were brothers Gus and Alfred. I suspect that Molly was Alfred's daughter, and it was supposedly Molly's mother who was a Dalton and was supposed to be related to the infamous Dalton Gang. (Father says his grandfather used to tell her not to be talking about her family tree since most of her relatives were hanging from it!) Father's mother was neé Mabel Lee (who, along with half the South, was supposedly related to Robert E.) and her mother was a Windom, referred to as "Grandmither." "Grandmither" Windom was cared for as a child by a black "Mammy" and I suspect that "Grandmither's" family had a good deal more money before the Civil War than they did after-- they were not alone in their reduced circumstances. She may have lived in Magnolia Springs, Tx, where I believe her son Theodore ("Uncle Teddy" also lived). My father was the fourth child of five, and the third boy.

I discovered yet another checker in my checkered ancestry only last Friday when my father let slip that one of his uncles was married to a woman of the Scandinavian persuasion named Sieglisa Eric?-something-or-other, AKA "Aunt Shug" (as in "sugar"), who lived in SE Texas and had pomegranate trees planted on either side of her front gate, from which my father would pilfer pomegranates during his boyhood visits. He mentioned this little tidbit during a conversation with a mutual friend about AriZona Pomegranate Green Tea, so it was not entirely off topic. I assume he used the pomegranate seeds for ammo in his pop gun, since he professed not to like eating them, yet never seemed to depart her premises without heisting one. I suspect "Aunt Shug" was married to the paternal side of daddy's family. I will have to see what I can find out.

Oh, Good Grief!

2008-12-28T20:12:00.000-08:00

The thing that I remember best about all those "Peanuts" cartoon specials on TV was the wonderful music. That, boys and girls, was a kind of music called "jazz!" Specifically, jazz as she is spoke by Vince Guaraldi, the composer, arranger and keyboardist on all those wonderful tunes. The sound track from the first special was available as a 33-1/3 record shortly after the first one aired in 1964, but I was still in junior high, in deepest, darkest Texas at the time and in those days, we were so unhip it was a wonder we could keep our pistol pockets up. Later on, after I had fledged and flown the coop, I did manage to score a cassette tape from one of the later specials that also had Dave Brubeck (and scions) involved and, as everyone knows, two hips are much better than one.

I was eventually able to score a couple of re-re-issue CDs from Ralph, who has made a long and illustrious career out of slipping "the Devil's music" du jour past the bastions of organized Protestant religion that pimple the plains hereabouts. If parents hate it, Ralph's got it. But what Ralph's is best known for is his encyclopedic knowledge of artists and repertoire. Even if nobody else in town has heard of it, Ralph will know album and artist, and if he doesn't already have it, he'll know where to get it. I do not exaggerate when I say, "If you can hum it, he can find it." I couldn't tell you Ralph's last name. Like Cher, he doesn't need one. The standard answer to "Do you know where I might be able to find x music?" is "Try Ralph's." His original first store was called "Ralph's Records," which should tell you how long he's been at it. (He relocated that store to a larger location in a defunct pizza restaurant about 4 blocks away, but still across the street from the Tech Campus.), With the advent of tape, he added "and Tapes" but after that he gave up trying to keep his signage in step with the evolution of the media, and by now it's pretty much a moot point anyway. His second store is located on 82nd and Indiana. The building is painted Pepto Bismol pink and black. You can't miss it.

While he does sell current stuff, Ralph's middle age has slowly but surely spread into "vintage." You can still buy records in his store, as well as cassettes and CDs. It's probably just as well that he's shifted his focus. Earlier this evening, I signed on to the Rhapsody music service I subscribe to and searched their "artist" data base for "Vince Guaraldi." Within about 20 seconds, it had coughed up over 18 titles (including his "Peanuts" soundtracks), plus about 10 more compilations that had at least one cut by him. Inside of about 20 minutes, I had assembled myself a playlist (8-1/2 hours' worth, no less) from his catalog, arranged in chronological order oldest to most recent -- I like to hear how a musician's style evolves over time. If I should decide that any of his albums fall into the "must be able to put my little hot hand on the CD at a moment's notice" category, I will be suprised if I cannot acquire a used copy on line through Amazon.com without even leaving the house, and at a price, including shipping, that is lower than a new CD would cost -- if new copies are still available. Guaraldi's oldest album was initially released in 1956, back when they were called "record albums" and cost more if they were in Stereo. It antedated the first "Peanuts" animated cartoon by a good 8 years and was also, judging from the cover photo, pre handlebar.

I have been enjoying his music for about 6 hours now, and what prompted this blog post was the realization of how inadvertently true his "Peanuts" music is to the essence of "Peanuts." The track that appears on every one of his "Peanuts" albums -- in fact, the song that has come to be most identified with "Peanuts" -- is not, as one would think, the "Charlie Brown theme, " but the one that goes: da-da-DUMP da-da-DUMP DAAAH-duuumm da-da-dump-DAAAH -- "Linus and Lucy."

Poor Charlie Brown. Upstaged again. Oh, Good Grief!

The Famous Toyota Crayolla Reaches A Hysterical Milestone

2008-12-28T23:06:00.000-08:00

I bought the Toyota Crayola new in May of 1987, and my daddy told me at the time, "Just because you have a car doesn't mean you have to drive the wheels off it." I took his advice to heart. When I got it, I lived less than 2 miles from where I was working and neither of the places I worked after that was further than 3 miles from my house. Six years after I bought it, I started working from home, where I have worked for the past 16 years now, mostly evening and night shift. I've only had it on the highway once -- a trip to Phoenix, AZ and back. I am not what one would call a gad-about.

Earlier this month, while driving myself to my twice weekly physical therapy sessions for my shoulder, it became apparent that all was not well, and that I was going to be getting a new muffler for Christmas whether I wanted one or not. When I accelerated, what I heard was not the robust raspberry of its mighty engine. It was more like all 27 of its ponies were full of the wrong kind of gas, and were energetically leaving it behind. A cursory inspection of its undercarriage revealed why. The muffler was shot. In fact, judging from the entry wounds, Father Time had emptied about half a clip into it. However, owing to budgetary constraints, it would be almost three weeks before funds could be allocated to replace it. I was still in rehab for my shoulder and twice a week, when I headed up the access ramp to get on the Loop to go to therapy, it was like leading the pack at a motocross race. I drove in fear of being reined in by the local constabulary and being issued a citation for rude and obnoxious noises with a motor vehicle and impersonating a herd of bumble bees.

So, it was not until on December 19, 2008, that I made my way to the local Midas Muffler establishment and informed the muffler guy that I needed a new muffler. When I was told patronizingly but courteously, "If you'll give us the keys, we'll put it on the lift and take a look.", I motioned him into a crouch and with equal courtesy pointed out the several large holes that corrosion had eaten into the muffler's outer casing. We fast-forwarded ahead several paragraphs in the script and went right into the "Midas Muffler with the Lifetime Warranty for only $129 parts and $50 labor" pitch, at which point I called his attention to the illogic of forking over that kind of dough to put a top-of-the-line muffler with a lifetime guarantee on a 21 year old car. Finally, we agreed that their "exhaust guy" would put it up on the lift, find out what size it took, rummage about in the bargin bin and see what he could come up with that would fit it.

I mentioned the date above because, while I was ensconcing myself in their cheerefully decorated waiting room, the muffler guy was out in the mechanic's bay noting down the Crayola's vital statistics on his little form, and upon his return, much ado was made of the fact that it only had 39,997.4 miles on it. The oil change guy even went so far as to do the math and announced to all and sundry that it worked out to only 1500 miles a year.

So, about 30 minutes later + one new muffler, and -$121.49, I'm doing what my mother refers to as "going on about your rat killing," which is to say beetling off to the next stop on my list of errands, and while traveling down 50th street toward the high school I attended entirely too long ago, the hysterical milestone occurred, and my odometer rolled over to 40,000 miles. I might add that I had last filled the car with gas on October 2, 2008, and there was still over half a tank left.

The Poop Box Modification Revisited.

2008-12-08T22:38:00.000-08:00

In my March 3, 2008 post, I detailed how I modified my Littermaid so that, even though I have 4 of the little poopers, I only have to change the container once a week. I have since perfected the modification. Now, instead of a stackable drawer, I'm using one of those heavy plastic storage boxes with lids that latch. I have cut a hole into the lid to allow the bag to hang down into the storage box where there's plenty of room for "contents" to collect in it.
I'm also using standard kitchen drawstring bags (20-gal size) instead of the wimpy little wastebasket liners I was using. They hold more, and are much more sturdy. Now to change the bag, I remove the paper clips that hold it to the side of the container, pull the top of the bag loose, pull the drawstring, then push it down into the storage box. I can then set the Littermaid aside, open the lid and remove the trash bag without worrying about it tearing. Then I simply install a new bag, and put the Littermaid back on top of the storage box. The whole process takes about 10 minutes, including carting the bag out to the alley.

And, a not-entirely-off-topic "DUH!" moment: There is a sink+cabinet unit in the utility room (you can see it to the left of the Littermaid in the top pix). The Littermaid has been in its present location beside this cabinet since I moved into my current digs on September 23, 2001. (Yes, that September.) I buy kitty litter in 40 lb boxes, which I keep in this cabinet. About a week or so before my shoulder surgery on October 8, 2008, it occurred to me that I could take the hinges off the cabinet door closest to the Littermaid and move them from the right side of the door to the left side so that it would open to the left instead of to the right, and I could refill the Littermaid with more litter without having that stupid cabinet door in the way. So the day before my surgery, I did. Seven years I scoop litter out of the box in the cabinet to fill the Littermaid with that stupid cabinet door in the way before it finally occurs to me to move the hinges. Took me about 20 minutes to do the deed. Double "DUH!"

"Old Snort & Stomp," The One and Only Original Home Baked Amaretto

2008-12-07T08:24:00.000-08:00

Not only are you going to get "The Recipe" -- you're going to get the emotional baggage that goes with it.

Gary Rouse gave me The Recipe. We worked together at Texas Instruments. At the time I knew him, Gary was married and had two young boys. I expect he now has grandchildren older than his boys were then. I hope he does, anyway. I've lost touch with them over the years. We were birds of a feather: pragmatic hippies in sheep's clothing with a fairly high BS tolerance who could play the corporate games well enough to make a halfway decent living at it and were willing to make the necessary trade-offs. As Corporate Team Player Man, he could support his wife and family in the customary manner, and still be happy enough. He used to make his own beer -- and was very good at it, too, as I recall. He also gave me a recipe for Kahlua. He was a fun person to be around and he did a lot to make my later years at TI bearable.

I started working at TI in 1980. The previous year, my marriage had crashed and burned shortly after takeoff, and I had moved back home from WVA. Literally, back home. Back to my old bedroom in my parents' house. That lasted all of two months. It was nothing personal. I was just too used to living unencumbered and unsupervised to go back to living with the pair of parental elephants in the living room. Thomas Wolfe nailed it when he said, "You can't go home again." In the eight or so years since I'd moved out for the first time, I'd gotten too used to living in my own space, on my own time, in my own way. The corners I'd always had, had gotten larger, stronger, tougher, to the point that I could no longer fold them over flat enough to squeeze into that nice little round hole in the front bedroom of my parents' house any more (It had always been a pretty tight fit, anyway). I already had a car and now that I had a job, I moved back out again that February (fourth time was charmed) into an apartment off the south loop. That next December was when I acquired Phred, my pet tree. The following March I moved to the apartment on 21st street because it had two bedrooms instead of one,was half a city closer to TI, and there were no upstairs neighbors. And it was while I was living there that I acquired The Recipe. Over the years, I've modified it, renamed it, made it my own.

So, here it is: The Recipe

Yield: Approximately 5 to 6 fifths.

Ingredients:
6 cups water
4 cups brown sugar
16 oz pure vanilla extract (not imitation!)
16 oz pure almond extract (not imitation!)
stick cinnamon
whole cloves
whole allspice
nutmeg (if you are willing, buy whole and grate it yourself; if not buy ground)
1 fifth peach brandy
1 fifth apricot brandy
1/2 gallon vodka.

Preparation: (the way I make it)
In a large pot that will hold 5 quarts of liquid, mix water and sugar and put on the stove on medium heat. Use a rolling pin to crunch the three sticks of cinnamon into small pieces. Add cinnamon, 1 tbsp of whole cloves, 1/2 tbsp of allspice and 2 tsp of nutmeg. Bring to a rolling boil and reduce heat slightly to a low boil, stirring frequently, for approximately 30-45 minutes. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature. Add the extracts and the booze. Stir well. Pour into bottles by dipping out with a measuring cup and pouring through a funnel.

Notes:
1. Use the cheapest booze you can get, especially the vodka, but don't skimp on the other ingredients, especially the extracts and spices.
2. I like the spices loose and I like to leave them in when I bottle it. That way, the flavor continues to "mature" the longer you keep it. The spice bits settle to the bottom eventually and if you pour carefully, they won't go into the glass. If you're picky, you can strain them out by pouring the liquid through a fine strainer or a cotton cup towel (the kind you dry glasses and crystal with).
3. There's enough alcohol in this stuff that, if properly bottled, it will keep for years, literally. The longest I've ever kept any is 6 years. Personally, I think it improves with age.
4. Play around with the recipe. If it's too sweet for you, use less sugar. Use 24 oz of almond extract and 8 oz of vanilla, or don't use any vanilla at all. Experiment. Try different combinations of fruit brandies (plum and apricot, peach and cherry, etc) or use three brandies and a fifth of vodka or four brandies and no vodka. Use more or less spices and vary the proportions. Try adding some Grand Marnier or Cointreau. You're making it; make it how you like it.
5. No matter how carefully you follow the recipe, every batch will be different. Deal with it.

Warning:
This stuff is "hard liquor," right up there with vodka, slivovitz and schnapps, and it will eat your sack lunch if you're not careful. So go easy with it. It's sweet enough to give you one hell of a hangover. If this is too "alcoholic" for you, leave out the vodka, not the brandies. The brandies add flavor. All the vodka adds is kick.

Bottles:
Save up your empty liquor bottles, wash off the labels and "recycle" them. Wine bottles won't work unless you have one of those little corking machines and can put a new cork in. Those with screw on lids will work well enough, but my preference is Harvey's Bristol Cream and cream sherry bottles. Their bottles have a lid with a cork on it, and I like Harvey's Bristol Cream. That's what I bottle my "private stock" in. If you plan to give some as gifts, recycled fancy liqueur bottles are nice. You can use a desktop publishing program to design your own labels. I would advise printing the labels on regular paper, not sticky labels, and affix the labels to the bottles with clear plastic packing tape. Covering the label with the tape keeps the ink from bleeding. This is the voice of experience speaking. The people I give this stuff to as gifts always seem to be returning the empties for refills, and doing the labels this way makes them a lot easier to remove so you can properly clean the bottles in hot soapy water (rinse well!) in preparation for the next batch.

The "Poncho Sanza" Short Knitted Poncho

2008-08-03T22:18:00.000-07:00

Below you will find the pattern for the "Poncho Sanza," a short, knitted poncho designed to be worn during seated activities such as reading, working on the computer, watching TV, knitting or doing other handwork, etc. Except for the way the collar is "rolled," this is otherwise a very easy pattern. Once you get past the collar, it would be a perfect project for "on-the-go" knitting to make use of that otherwise idle time spent riding in a train, car or bus, waiting in a doctor's office, etc. (As for airplanes, I seriously doubt whether those whose job is to protect us from nail scissors wielding terrorists would allow you to take pointed metal knitting needles or crotchet hooks on board.)

For the sake of clarity, each underlined phrase below is linked to a relevant webpage of the wonderful "KnittingHelp.Com" website where you will find a video with that name demonstrating that stitch or technique. Profuse thanks to Amy, and all the other fine folks at "KnittingHelp.Com" for providing such an excellent resource. Thanks to their website, I just discovered that I use the "combined style" for both knit and purl, but, since I am self-taught and work mostly on my own, I never knew that's what I was doing until I saw their video of it!

I might note, though, that since I purl as well as knit using combined style, when I work stockinette stitch on the flat (knit a row, purl a row), I've never had the problem she mentions of every other row having twisted stitches. Apparently, purling using the combined method has the effect of "untwisting" the loops so they are turned around the right way again for the next knit row. However, when I work stockinette stitch in the round, all the stitches of every row are twisted, because there is never a purl row to untwist them -- I won't tell you how many years it took me to figure out why that was happening!

*Equipment:
USA size 10 knitting needles: one set of four 10-inch double pointed "sock",
USA size 10 knitting needles: one 32-inch circular double pointed,
USA size 10 knitting needles: one 40-inch circular double pointed,
USA size G, H or I crochet hook
Circular stitch markers, 4 each.
Yarn:
knitting worsted thread of desired texture and color that will give the below gage
Gage:
4 stitches = 1 inch, 5 rows = 1 inch

Note: If you are "serious" about knitting, consider buying one of those "interchangeable knitting needle" sets that has multiple diameters of needle "points" and multiple "connector" links. You can get a decent set for about $55-$60, which seems like a lot, until you think about how much it would co$t to buy each of the various size/length/style needles separately that you can make using the parts that come in the kit. The kits come in their own case. Very neat. I like the Denise Interchangeable Pink Kit as $5 of the purchase price goes to breast cancer research.

Glossary:
inc = increase using the make one away method.
k = knit using either the continental or English method.
pmo = pass marker over from one needle to the other.
Tk = Twist knit stitch: this is a knit stitch made using the combined knitting style. I'm calling it a "twist knit" stitch because when you work this style of stitch in the round, all the loops of every row knitted this way are twisted.

Note: You can knit the whole thing with "regular" knit stitches if you want. It's up to you. However, I'm going to write the pattern the way I actually did it.

For a neck opening of 22 inches:
Collar:
On the 10-inch double pointed needles, cast on 66 stitches (22 stitches per needle) using the single cast on or "backward loop" method, with 22 stitches per needle.

Rows 1-9: Knitting in round, Tk 66.

Rolling the Collar: The first 9 rows of knitting are going to be rolled up and "sewn" into a tube to form the collar: With the purl side of the work facing outward, *insert the crochet hook through the bottom loop on the foundation row and hook the corresponding " stitch" loop from the left-hand needle. Pull it off the needle, through the bottom loop of the foundation row and transfer it onto the right-hand needle.* repeat until all stitches on the needle have been pulled through their corresponding foundation loops.

Note: Be sure that the "tail" of yarn that marks where the casting on started is still "hanging out" of the collar "tube" so you can tell where the row begins/ends. Later, when you finish off the garment, you can use the crotchet hook to pull this loose "tail" up inside the "tube" of the collar where it will be neatly tucked away and completely invisible.

Body:
Row 10: work 1 Tk in each stitch for 66 stitches.
Row 11: Tk 6, inc, place marker, k 11, place marker, inc, Tk 22, inc, place marker, k 11, place marker, inc, Tk 16.
Rows 12-95: *Tk to marker, inc, pmo, k11, pmo, inc,* twice.

(Note: As 4 stitches are being added every row for rows 12-54, at some point you will have to switch from the 10-inch double pointed needles to the 36-inch needle. )

Row 96: *Tk to marker, remove marker* for 384 stitches.
Place a marker to mark the beginning of a row.
Rows 97-120: Tk
Bind off using basic knit bind off method and finish.

Note: I detest the "pull skeins" that "manufactured" yarn comes in. It's hard to locate the "beginning" end and pull it out without having a lump of yarn come out with it that you then have to sort out, and I don't like the huge tangles you can get when you near the end of the skein. The first thing I do when I get ready to make something with yarn that's in a pull skein is to roll it into balls. I have this great ashtray that I got in the 1970s. It's made of thick orange glass, it weighs a ton, and it's shaped like a tilted hemisphere. I quit smoking over 20 years ago, but I've held on to that ashtray because it is just perfect for knitting. I put my ball of yarn in it and the yarn feeds out through one of the notches in the rim that are meant to hold a lighted cigarette. It's heavy enough that tugging on the yarn won't budge it, and the lowest lip is high enough that the yarn ball won't jump out of it very easily. If the ball of yarn is too big for the ashtray (and some of the balls of really thick yarn are), I go into the kitchen and get a bowl. The slick glass/glaze surface allows the ball to turn freely with minimal tugging and I can knit fast and continuously without having to pause every so often to fiddle with the pull skein. I don't need/want a ball winder either. I can do it by hand, too, and without stretching the yarn. Stupid pull skeins. . . .

Adventures in Gardening.

2008-04-17T15:37:00.000-07:00

I work Saturdays through Tuesdays 9 a.m. to 7 p.m, which means ALL my "weekends" (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) are three-day weekends. MOST agreeable. So yesterday, being Wednesday, I worked in the yard all day, from shortly after I gave my eldest cat his morning shot of insulin at 8 a.m. to nearly 7:30 in the evening.

A long-time family friend is moving next month. Her husband was my brother's orchestra teacher in junior high, and they raised four kids here, and we've known them forever. However, her husband passed away several years ago, and all her kids live someplace else, so she's packing up and moving to Colorado Springs where one of her kids lives. She's in her 80's, and at the time in her life where she needs family close. A couple of months ago she told me that she had "a lot" of day lillies in the "yard" of her duplex and said I could have some if I'd come get them. So yesterday morning, I suited up and trundled over to Francis' place to do the deed. I ended up digging all of them up, taking over half of them for myself, and spacing out the rest of them evenly along her walkway that leads to the alley (they were all wadded together at one end). So I got home with a 2 x 3 box and two paper grocery bags full of day lillies. I planted about half of them in the flower bed in my front yard and planted the rest of them in my rose bed in the back.

My front yard has been a work in progress for about 7 years now. I rent the "B" side of a duplex, and at some point in its checkered history, somebody got the bright idea of turning the approximately 10 x 14 "front" yard of my side into a "rock garden" by putting about half a ton of those (expletives deleted) little white rocks all over it and laid out some abstruse design with about a pallet-full of bricks evidently left over from when they built the duplex. However, they neglected to lay down any plastic weed barrier first, and after about 20 years of total neglect, all those little (expletives deleted) white rocks worked down into the ground and the net effect was a barren waste where nothing would grow but scroungy looking weeds, and not very many of those. The second summer after I moved in, I decided I'd had it. I built the contraption you see on the right side of the picture out of 2 x 4's and wire screen, and began the long drawn out process of sifting all those (expletives deleted) little white rocks out of the dirt. I've done all of it but the approximately 4 x 4 plot just to the left of the sifter. If you think the yard looks bad in this picture, it looks 100% better looking than it did before I started. In the process, and over the years, I thinned and "pollarded" the two crepe myrtle bushes at the top of the picture into two clusters of some nice sized small trees. I need to thin them once more down to four trunks apiece. The mass of green on the left of the pix is a boxwood hedge that was there when I moved in. It was terribly overgrown and full of trash. I thinned, cleaned and trimmed it. In the lower left corner is a honeysuckle vine I planted that desperately needs a trellis. (I'm working on it -- Since that's a northeast corner, it needs to be metal, and round/rounded in shape(feng shui), so I'm thinking rebar and wire. I've already got the wire.)

As for the piles of little white rocks I've been laboriously sifting out of the yard over the course of the last seven years, -- no fear. I've been "repurposing" them. My part of the duplex has no porch. The sidewalk goes along the outside wall right to the door and that's it. So I got eight 18" x 18" cinder block pavers to put beside the door, and put down about two inches of little white rocks underneath them, which raised them to the level of the sidewalk and provides drainage so water falling onto them off the eave of the roof will drain into the little flower bed I put by the door.

At one time, the eave of the house that parallels the sidewalk had a rain gutter on it that drained down a downspout and out into the yard. Apparently there was a problem with the gutter always clogging up with leaves, which some genius solved by taking the gutter down, so now the rain runs right off the roof and falls beside the sidewalk where it would wash away anything that was planted, and puddle up onto the sidewalk. So I dug a trench that was about a foot and a half wide and a foot deep all along the sidewalk , and filled it with more white rocks -- solved the problem rather elegantly, I thought. The rocks break the force of the falling water, the trench gives it plenty of room to collect and allows it to soak gradually into the flower bed beyond. I used some of the ubiquitous bricks to edge the trench, positioning them with the holes in the bricks facing the rocks. The bricks keep the rocks contained, while allowing the water to drain through the holes into the flower bed. The picture above is over two years old. The honeysuckle eventually got so heavy it broke the little wooden trellis I had just made when I took this picture, the flower bed is now twice that size, and I've since moved the birdhouses to the opposite end of the flower bed.

There were already some irises (little yellow ones and dark purple ones) in the back yard left over from the original owners (two sisters who never married) that built the place in the 1970s, and since I love irises, I've bought some of every color they've had at Wal-Mart and planted them in the bed in back with the left over rose bushes. That first summer I planted several rose bushes to fill in the gaps where bushes had died, but that was before I'd lived there long enough to realize the main reason the bushes had died was that it was really too wet and not sunny enough for roses in that particular spot. However, several of the bushes I planted have done all right despite the poor drainage and low sun, and I have been slowly but surely "treeing" all of them -- pruning and shaping them to grow tall -- so they form a layer above the irises. We had a really dry winter this year and I was afraid I wouldn't have any irises this spring, but once-a-week soakings in late February and March did the trick and they bloomed spectacularly.

Irises, like cats, accumulate. I need to relocate a bunch of the yellow ones and some of the purple and white ones to the front bed. They are also perennial. Ditto day lillies, on both counts.

The interesting thing is that different colors of irises bloom at slightly different times. First the yellow ones, then the purple and white ones ("Earl of Essex").
I also have some pure white ones, some pure blue ones (a sort of periwinkle blue with violet tendencies), some peach colored ones, and I planted some "black" ones but so far have not seen a black bloom. I also have pure white ones and smaller, all purple ones in the front as well as in the back .

When it comes to irises, my planting strategy is to get multiple colors, dump all of them into a bucket so as to mix all the different colors together, and then grab one and plant it -- so I never know what color I planted where until they bloom.

Several of the varieties I have are "repeaters." Generally, irises only bloom once a year in the spring. But the "rebloomer" varieties bloom again in the fall. The white ones ("Immortelle") are one of the rebloomers. I am inordinately chuffed by my irises blooming. Hopefully most of the day lillies I transplanted will survive and start blooming later in the summer. That will also be a chuffing experience. I'm really big on perennials. The only annuals I go for are the self-seeding variety, and so far I have not been able to get any of those going. Maximum beauty with minimum maintenance is my goal.

In the front bed, I planted a variety of iris called Chickasaw Sue (at left). I had only a few to bloom last year, but this year most of them have bloomed. I need to move a bunch of the yellow ones up to this front bed.

Along the back fence, there are two big red climbing rose bushes (see below), also probably dating back to the duplex's original owners.

I have been pruning and shaping them by "espaliering" them to the fence. I'm rather proud of the "fence friendly" way I do this. I take some heavy cording, cut off about a 8-10 inch length, double it and secure it with a half hitch around a piece of tree branch about twice the diameter of a pencil. (The neighbors on both sides have big trees, so I have no shortage of dead branches in my yard, whether I want them or not.) Then I go out into the alley and poke the ends of the cording between two fence pickets where I've decided I need a tie, pull them through from the other side and tie them around the rose cane tight enough to hold them securely, but not so tight as to strangle the plant. The piece of branch prevents the cording from pulling through the fence and I can slide the cord up or down between the pickets to get the height I need. Works beautifully. It gets really windy here at times, and those long canes can get whipped around, battering the leaves and occasionally breaking the canes. Tying them to the fence not only solves that problem but gives the branches support so they don't droop over into the yard trying to get some sun. A $4 ball of cording is way cheaper than a large metal trellis, and I can reposition the ties whenever I need to.

As for that white pole looking thing -- When my brother and his late wife moved here from Mississippi, the house they bought had a big cement birdbath out in their side yard. The basin was cracked and wouldn't hold water. They hated it and said I could have it if I'd come get it, so one hot August afternoon, my 80 year old mother and I rolled that sucker over to the curb and hoisted it into the back seat of my trusty Toyota "Crayola" --. I might add that the bird bath comes as two pieces: The plinth piece and the basin piece. But they're both solid concrete, big, and heavy. Very heavy. Especially the plinth. For scale, that's a six foot fence behind it. Fortunately, I have a red "Radio Flyer" wagon. I was able to unload each piece from the Toyota into my wagon by myself so I could schlepp it into the back yard. As I said, the bowl was cracked and wouldn't hold water, so it was really of no use as a bird bath, but I had a plan. I turned it upside down and put the metal sundial plate on it that my friend gave me for my birthday one year. The neat thing is that most people don't realize it's an upside-down bird bath until I tell them. It looks like it was always intended to be a sundial plinth. I refer to it as the Debbie Memorial Sundial in honor of my brother's late wife. So yesterday, I planted the rest of my day lillies along the front edge 0f this bed with a cluster of them around the base of the "sundial."

In the back, over in the far corner of the yard was a rose bush of unknown variety that I thought was completely dead, so I cut it off at the ground and threw it in the Dumpster with all the other dead stuff, and trash when I "cleaned house" that first summer. Turned out only the graft was dead. About two years later, totally out of the blue, it sprouted canes from the root stock that proved to be a variety of pink climbing rose. Both the red and the pink are "heritage" roses -- the kind that will grow wild if they get half a chance, and often do in Appalachia; they have only a double row of petals and a golden center. They're hardy and were once common in "pioneer" communities all over the central and southern U.S., and I happen to think they're lovely. About three years ago, I transplanted some of the pink ones to the bed with the red climbers to fill out that far end of the bed and they're now tall enough that I've started espaliering them to the fence as well.The picture of the red climbing roses is about two years old, taken about two months after I transplanted a couple of canes of the pink climbing roses to the left end of this bed (see above), which in that picture is the little wad of vegetation on the pole on the left side of the picture. They have since been fruitful and multiplied.

Hopefully this year I'll FINALLY get done sifting out all those (expletives deleted) little white rocks and maybe I'll hire somebody to rototill the designated grass area and get some kind of grass going. And over in the southeast corner by the crepe myrtle, where it's really too shady for grass, I might do a little patio thing with pavers where I can put a bird feeder for the cats to watch out the window. A bird feeder has always been in the plans and there will be one. I've got lumber scraps, and some panes of glass I found in the store room. It's just a question of design and build. The cats love to watch the birds, and the birds certainly don't mind being fed, especially in the winter and early spring. If I can come up with an appropriate container(s), I might do some kind of container garden thing. We'll see. . . .

In the meantime, I've got the sifting to finish, a walkway across the front of the house to finish, a bed to edge and plant in front of the boxwoods, and I want to redo the brick border around the bed with the crepe myrtles. And those (expletives deleted ) holly bushes some fool planted all along the carport wall MUST go. I hate them. They're TERRIBLE feng shui -- the spiky leaves just shred the chi all to pieces. They never have any berries and they are pricklier than cactus. They trap trash, and viciously attack me when I try to remove it. I've already bought the poison, I know how to use it, and one of these days, I'm going to commit herbicide, with malice and aforethought.

Down Time

2008-04-18T00:59:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, I worked in the yard all day. I weeded and planted day lillies, and pruned roses, and raked a trash can full of weeds and cuttings and dumped them, and got sunburned on my forearms and otherwise generally exerted myself from about 9:30 in the morning til after 7 p.m. I also needed to take out my garbage-- the wastebaskets in the kitchen and bathroom and laundry room are all full. I needed to change the bag on the litter box. I've started using the tall kitchen bags now and can go a whole week without having to change bags-- I did "shake down" the "contents" and bought myself another day. But after working in the yard all day, I blew it all off. The pile of clothes on my bedroom floor that I emptied out of my laundry hamper and intended to wash Wednesday night are still there. When I do wash them, probably this evening, I will also have to fold up the sleeping bag liner, set of flannel sheets, and the blanket that I pulled out of the dryer and set on top of it weeks ago, intending to fold them later.

But after working so hard in the yard Wednesday, after I got up Thursday morning to give my eldest cat his morning dose of insulin at 8 a.m. and put down food for everybody, I decided I needed some down time, so I went back to bed and slept til noon.

When I woke up again, I mumbled into the kitchen and got something to drink, and assembled a plate of ingredients for single-cracker sandwiches -- Slices of deli ham cut into fourths, slices of Sargento Muenster cheese cut into fourths, and Kashi Party Crackers, the 7-grain variety -- and brought plate and glass back to the bedroom, put the second pillow on the bed and settled back in to read my complimentary copy of "Scottish Life" magazine.

Single-cracker sandwiches are an art form. First off, you can't assemble the sandwich until just before you eat it. Otherwise, the cracker gets soggy from the ham juice. So you've got your ingredients in three piles on the plate. You select the cracker, lay a slice of ham on top of it, and then lay a slice of cheese on top of the ham, and then you eat it. -- The Kashi Party crackers are nice and thin, crisp and tasty. Those and the Red Oval Farm's Stoned Wheat Thins crackers, Carr's Table Water crackers, La Panzanella croccantini and good kosher matzo are about the only crackers I care for. The other 90% of the "crackers" out there are all "too" -- too salty, too cheesy, too artificially seasoned, too full of ingredients I can't pronounce, or any combination of the above, and "saltines" are too much like too salty but otherwise tasteless library paste. For single cracker sandwiches, my cracker of choice is the Red Oval Stoned Wheat, but I can't find a store here in town that stocks them any more, so I had to go with the Kashi Party crackers -- not a bad second choice.

Eating single cracker sandwiches while reading requires a strict protocol. The food is handled solely with the right hand, and the reading matter is handled solely with the left -- You put the book or magazine down and turn the page with the left hand, then pick it back up and continue reading. One doesn't want to get food stains on the pages.

So, I'm snuggled in the bed, appropriately accoutered with kitties, reading my "Scottish Life" magazine, and mentally drooling over the pictures of gorgeous Scottish scenery and their wonderful buildings and I'm reading "the building was begun in 1104 as a hunting lodge by Duke Somebody of Someplace,. . . " (continued on page 78) and I'm thinking, there is absolutely nothing in this entire town that is even 150 years old except the dirt it's built on -- 800 years ago, there was nothing here but buffalo chips and bald prairie.

I'm reading about walking tours between Forres on the Moray Firth coast and Granton-on-Spey in the Cairngorms (continued on page 75) through heather and trees and along pastures, and over stream beds, where there's deer, and birds, and rabbits and foxes, and there's green everywhere you look. And I'm thinking, yeah. I would walk 16 miles through land that looked like that and breath dirt-free air that smells of heather. Oh, yeah. Just let me off at "Lady Catherine's Halt. . ."

I'm reading about the island of Ulva off the Scottish coast (continued on page 73) that is so small you can walk from one shore of it across to the opposite shore in about an hour and a half. It has a population of 12, no cars, and you can only get to it by an aluminum hulled ferry boat that can't carry anything larger than a 4-wheeler motorcycle. It's got a B&B, a tea room, and broadband access (!), and is positively knee deep in utterly gorgeous scenery. It's also hanging way out into the north Atlantic, flapping in the breeze at about the same latitude as the southern tip of Norway, and/or the boundary between the Northwest Territories of Canada and the lower provinces, and I know I'd freeze my appurtenances off in the wintertime, but that doesn't stop me from wishing I could go there and live in a peat-heated stone house with two-foot thick walls, and never come back.

I'm reading about how the MacGregors have had four and five generations of outstanding bagpipers, --- Duncan MacGregor played for Rob Roy on his deathbed and piped him into the next life, and John MacGregor was Bonnie Prince Charlie's piper at Culloden, and here's the thing about bagpipes: You either really really love them, or you really, really can't stand them. There just isn't a middle ground. I first heard the real thing, albeit recorded, when I was a small child, and I had no clue what it was or where it came from, or anything about it except that I liked it. A lot. I was not sat down and told to listen to it. My dad had a record of the Scots Guards massed pipes, drums and regimental band (the really good stuff), which he bought and was listening to because he liked it and I just happened to hear the bagpipes on it, and was drawn to their music as if by a rope around my heart. Bagpipe music does stuff to me that has to be genetic.

Now I'm not talking about those watered-down Irish thingies -- the ullean pipes, with the bellows and the adenoidal pweedly-dweedly-tweedly-deedly. They're all right in their place, but I'm talking knock-down, drag-out, highland pipes -- the kind you can't play indoors in rooms under a certain size because of their armor-piercing capabilities at short range. The kind you can hear over armies fighting with cannons. Now nobody has actually proved that any of my dad's ancestors came from Scotland, but by the same token, nobody has proved that they didn't. My mom's dad was a Jamison, but she has no idea where his people came from. There's all kinds of "sons of James" out there. You can buy them by the gross on both sides of the Tweed, and the spelling of the name is no guarantee as to country of origin. And I'm lying in the bed, looking at the pictures of the guy standing out in the heather playing 100-year-old, FAMOUS bagpipes with silver chasings on the drones, and thinking, Thom Campbell, wouldn't it be just grand if you could come skirling down from Amarillo right this very now and pipe outside my window for about an hour and a half, without the neighbors lynching both of us.

And I'm reading about the Scots Tongue (continued on page 76) that contains luscious words like "blootered" (drunk ), "ramfoozle" (to confuse or bewilder somebody), "smirr" (a light misty rain-- we don't get those here. Here, it's either raining cats, dogs, mice, and bumblebees, or it isn't.), "hoatching," which means extremely crowded, extremely lively, and "dunt" which means to dent, punch, bump or bestow knighthood on (!), and in my mind's ear, I'm thinking of Sean Biggerstaff , the Glaswegian actor who played Oliver Wood, the quidditch captain, in the first Harry Potter movie, and that accent . . . . Oh, that accent. . . I could listen to an accent like that all day and (especially) all night long. . .

And then the author tosses in a quote from The Burns. . .

"But pleasures are like poppies spread:

You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed;

Or like the snow falls in the river,

A moment white -- then melts forever"

Too right, Bobbie, too right, I think, as I turn the last page. I am definitely going to have to scratch together $22.50 and subscribe to this magazine. I wasn't aware that Karen Matheson has a new album out called "Downriver" that I need to troll Amazon-dot -com for, and while I'm at it, I should see if they have that book by Alistair Moffat about the border reivers . . . So, where's my economic stimulus check, Dubbya? -- Get on the stick and lay half a dozen C's on me, man. I got some serious economic stimulating to do here . . . .