Accursed Heat Wave

OK. I'm done with the stupid heat. Done. I can live without tomatoes* and eggplants. I am asking myself: why didn't I move to Canada or Alaska? Surely it isn't 90 degrees all night long there in the summer? 90 degrees might not sound that bad to some of you heat loving freaks out there, but after a three digit day all you want is for a cool breeze to come and bring the night air down to a comfortable 60 degrees. That's all you want.

But when it was 105 all day and then you try to sleep in a stew pot of human flesh and fur in air that stays steady and breeze-less all night at 90 degrees...it's enough to make me want to rip my own skin off so that my soul can sit around in its birthday suit unfettered.

It's going to be hot today too. Which means another night of no sleep. We've already had two steaming hot no-sleep nights and I'm not sure our fragile family unit can take another one.

I know Max and I went downstairs for some water at around 4am but apparently he was wondering the house by himself around 3am too.

In other slightly less cranky news... Penny and Pippa are getting their reproductive organs tampered with today so that they can't make cute little babies. I wonder if I had asked to get myself spayed with them if we could have gotten a discount?


Update: The kittens are home and feeling under the weather. Plus it's still flippin' HOT. We tried our air conditioning but I don't think it works because after two hours with it on it has only dropped from 91 degrees inside the house to 89 degrees. I'm sweating delightful buckets of sweat. Gorgeous sunset though. And we ate a wonderful salad with Sungold tomatoes and steamed potatoes I grew on my plot at the community garden, green beans, some cheese, lettuce, cold lentil salad, and a hard boiled egg. I ate it too fast to get a picture. Anyway, looks like another close suffocating night here at the farmhouse. I hope yours will be cooler!!!



*GASP!!!

Pleasures
(six of them, right now)

1. Brand new silver sequined flip flops to open the summer season with and a turquoise watering can all floating over cool long grass; the glitter and the color like silly decorations on a green coconut cake.

2. The first local strawberries of the season; so delicate they bruise when you covet them with your eyes and the juices meet you halfway across your fingers.

3. The microcosm represented in a single droplet of water suspended for only seconds on the leaves of lupines not yet blooming.

4. The anticipation of food still growing lushly in a pot; knowing that the best nature has to offer is right on your own front porch; planning meals while watching them grow.

5. The marriage of elegance and silliness in a flower so unabashed in form that it falls over itself to reach you; like a friend tapping you on the shoulder with delicious wit.

6. The constant purring, obnoxiously cute antics, bunny hopping bow legged ravenously hungry pip-squeak and her sister are a constant source of pure pleasure.

Our Own Private Ghetto

We Williamsons like to create our own private Ghettos wherever we live. We have a talent for letting rust take its natural course, for letting weeds live a life free of fretting or constraint, we like to build things half way and then let them sit in useless splendor shouting out it's potential to be wonderful.

Entropy is our worst enemy and yet we invite it to sup with us at every meal, at every turn, and let it envelop us like a gentle Victorian graveyard mist curling around the decrepit stone like tattered lace.

Come see our mess grow and swallow our beautiful porch whole...

Hey, wait a minute...I don't have to fall under the spell of insidious inevitable entropy! I can't put things away and finish projects. I can breath new life into this Williamson legacy! Just as soon as I get off this computer. Consider this porch shot a "before" picture. Some dirt has been delivered, an asparagus bed has been built, post holes have been dug, one kitten cleared of ring worm, both out of quarantine (though still to be handled with care), wood has been cut, exercise has been accomplished, and laundry has been folded.

That's quite a lot of progress for us. Happy Friday!!!

Kitten Candy

I cannot describe how tough it is to capture these girls well in pictures. Like all immature mammals they are in constant motion and my poor camera doesn't stop action well without a flash and the flash distorts the light and washes them out.

All I want is for the entire world to know how flipping cute they are.

Constant motion. Playing. Crying for food. Playing some more. I can't wait to let them out of their forced containment to explore the world because I just know that watching them will be a great big kitten candy extravaganza. Unless Chick really does think they're more promising as delicious lunch meat than as amusements.

I could just about eat them up myself.

This Cute Could Kill You

The vet says TWO MORE WEEKS OF QUARANTINE. The ring worm is almost gone but almost isn't good enough to set these babies free in the house. He did say, however, that on a warm sunny day like this we could let them play outside for a little while. He just doesn't think it's wise to risk infected hairs dropping all over inside where we are most likely going to come into contact with them with our skin. So, they got to romp out in our back yard for a little while.

Their cuteness very nearly killed me. What kept me hanging on was the arrival of my "North and South" DVD. I finally got to see the proposal scene and I have to say that the train scene is still the best of all time. However...back to the cuteness factor...

The vet says they are doing way better than when they first came in two weeks ago. They do have a trace of the round worm left so obviously they still have a couple of issues. But their big bellies are just good old fashioned fat baby bellies and not distended at all. Their eyes are clear (no conjunctivitis) and they are spunky and did I mention the cute.

You know what's not cute though? Full grown women who wear candy scented perfume. I don't think it's cute when women try to smell like bubble gum or icing. Now, I am sure that there are some of you out there who like to wear food type scents and while I think that's just fine (because who the hell am I anyway?!) I just needed to say that it isn't cute and it kind of weirds me out. Especially when women wear a perfume called "Child".

So, yes, I'm talking about both the Simpson sisters now. What's up with them and their little girl obsession? I wonder if either of them have ever thought of growing some vegetables? Or some herbs? Do you think they grow tomatoes every summer?

Now I have to add that their father, Joe Simpson, gives me the ever-lovin-creeps and I wouldn't let him near a daughter of mine if I had one. Especially not if she had some boobage and was teen-aged. The man is a total pimp to his own daughters and it really freaks me out.

OK. You know what's sad? This is all old news. I didn't just read a gossip magazine. I did, however, just flip through the first fashion magazine I've looked at in two months. I have a bunch of them stacked up, waiting. I haven't wanted to look. Normally, no matter how unfashionable and frumpy I am I still love to look at fashion. I suppose I had the Simpsons on my mind because there was something about Ashlee's favorite things. One of them being a perfume called "Child" that she wears when she goes out and wants to feel sassy. Dudes: that's SICK.

My In Style is coming up for a subscription renewal and I kind of think I'm not going to renew. I love that magazine but my heart's not in it right now. I wanted to reduce the number of magazines I get anyway. I have been subscribing to four. I only want to renew Elle because it has the most relevant and interesting fashion coverage (more indie designers featured, more ecological talk, better writing, plus the good horoscopes.)

I don't really know what's going on but I guess it's a new chapter in more ways than I realized. I am much more interested in having great garden and herb books. I'd much rather bury my nose in books about roses and cooking. I'm sure if there was a magazine devoted to what celebrities are making meaningful ecological choices and which ones are growing their own (I mean- and getting their own hands dirty doing it) then I'd be pretty interested in reading about it.

It's gorgeous outside but I need to rest my back and do a small amount of cooking. So I'm not going to garden out there. I would like to start some lettuce and cilantro seeds. I'm dying for cilantro. As it turns out, it doesn't freeze all that well. It's OK. There's nothing like a big lush fresh bunch of cilantro to perk up almost anything. Yum. Wow, this post has become incredibly random. I was just going to post about the cuteness that is killing me over here. Here I am wanting to tell you all (because I know you want to know) that I want to try pressure canning some corn this year.

I kind of wish I had something scintillating to say.

Well, I hope you all have a great Saturday and if it's sunny for you? Good God! Get off the damn computer and go enjoy it!!!

For The Love Of A Lemon

My new blog friend Cindy and I have discovered some disappointment in our local food shed. Mine has no lemons and hers has blueberries, but not good ones and certainly not cheap ones. So we are doing a trade by mail. There is surely at least one harpy out there who is dying to point out how doing such a trade is doing nothing to help our carbon footprint and certainly isn't adhering to anyone's notion of a local diet.

I think the future holds a lot more local eating for everyone by necessity. I think that reverting to our old methods of getting our grubby hands on culinary treasures is a noble one: getting them through personal travels, souvenirs from other people's travels, or by trading with friends from afar. These lemons still got to me through the use of oil consumption, but it's use has doubled it's measure by also cementing a new friendship. If oil must be used for any transaction, better that it have personal meaning than just convenience.

You'll be noticing that my lemons have become naked. It's not weird fruit porn, if that's what you were hoping worried about. I'm making limoncello. I'll post more on that soon-ish. I had a rare spare few moments yesterday and decided not to wait a minute longer since it takes a total of 80 days to make this elixir of heaven. The Meyer lemons are from Cindy's garden. You should check out her blog because she is not only funny and politically sharp tongued, she writes a lot about food.

I guess I really am a slip-shod style gal. When I lose a flip flop I just keep going. I chuck convention and go the one shoe route. It's a queer sensation when it's my regular shoes but barely noticeable with these breezy barely there numbers. I suddenly realized I was making limoncello in one flip flop and I thought I should share the state of affairs around here.

Ubiquitous kitten shots: I spoke too soon about the conjuntivitis. I believe Penny has that right now and that means that Pippa will too. I couldn't take them into the vet yesterday or today so maybe tomorrow. They are insufferably cute.

And still tiny.

By the way, if Jay is reading this today? I want you to know that I am deeply gratified by your compliment. But kind of embarrassed that I had to ask my husband what a Gonzo writer is. However, the mention of Hunter S. Thompson was all he needed to tell me and I got it. Dude*- that's almost like getting an award! It's almost better than beer. Thank you.

Well, I'm off to my second to last Master Gardening classes. I am sure I'll come back with the fire of passionate contrariness in my boiling blood! Have a great Thursday everyone!

*Jay does not automatically mean a dude, but without knowing, I'm going with the greater likelihood that Jay is a dude. If I'm wrong- please don't throw rocks!

Kittens-R-Us

Pippa seems to be a pretty laid back gal. She has started knocking a purr around in her ribs every time I pick her up even though she can still only manage a tiny squeak noise for a meow. She's tinier than she looks in the pictures. She's so tiny that that seems to be all I can talk about all day long. Is this the kind of thing midgets have to put up with? She has really long fur that will be even more gorgeous than it is now when she's done revealing all her bald spots as she is bathed and treated for the ring worm.

Penny is becoming more playful and was feeling well enough today to chase her own tail around and pounce on Pippa who just looks at her like she is the worst kind of spaz. She also has gorgeous fur if you discount the many many bare patches, which, like on Pippa, are multiplying as she's being bathed and scabby bits come loose. She's sweet too and would really like to get out of the confinement of the tub and crawl around on us.

These are the babies getting a bath at the vet's office.

They don't love this exercise in personal hygiene. As far as they're concerned, that's what tongues are for.

Here are some highlights of our kitten adventures for the last couple of days:

• All houses should be designed with bathrooms that have good ventilation and (preferably) windows that let air in just in case you ever need to store sick kittens in your tub who have nasty poop.* Ours does not have this fine feature and Max has let us know that we need to step up our efforts to improve the odor of the main bathroom.

• Like all babies, kittens poop, pee, sleep, and eat...all day long. Also like babies, they make messes with poop whenever unsupervised by a mother of some kind.

• The meat baby food that people feed their children is surprisingly disgusting as well as being very expensive. I got some for the wee cats because I thought it might be easier for them to digest than the regular wet cat food that is full of creepy crap. I love baby food jars. The babies love the smelly pink pureed meat. So in the end it works out.

• The babies are on the following medications: medicated shampoo for the ring worm, internal medicine for the ring worm, anti-diarrhea drops, internal parasite medicine, and ear mite drops.

• Two things they don't have: conjunctivitis or upper respiratory infections.

• Angelina Jolie is pregnant again and I can't really say why, but it depresses me. Oops, that's not a kitten highlight. See how I hunger for these scraps of useless gossip? I just read the headlines now in the grocery store.

• Everyone in our veterinarian office thinks that Pippa and Penny are both going to be fine. And I want to point out that I am not the only one running around saying "She's so TINY!".

*It didn't take stinky kittens for us to notice how unfortunate a design a windowless bathroom truly is. It's not rocket science to deduce that a place that collects moisture and in which people routinely eliminate is a place in which air should circulate. I'm a big fan of good ventilation.

The Story Of Our Dangerous Pet

One night in 1994 I had a dream in which I found a kitten and in the dream I knew his name was Ozark and in this dream I also knew that this was supposed to happen in real life. I woke up and told Philip that it was time for us to get a cat. The cat had to be orange and we had to name him Ozark. This is when Philip truly got that he had married a mad woman, but because he is always in need of more sleep he said "sure" and rolled over and drifted off into his own cat-less sleep.

Interestingly enough very shortly after this dream I had, a friend called up to invite Philip and I to come look at a large gathering of semi-wild kittens which were the shameful result of her boyfriend's mother's habit of feeding feral cats in her back yard but not getting them fixed. My friend tried to reason with her boyfriend's mother about how she either needed to stop feeding all the strays in town or she needed to take proper responsibility for them. She was feeding approximately 15 feral cats. Many of them were females having kittens.

I told her I would only come up if she could confirm whether there was an orange kitten in the lot of them because I was determined that the cat must be orange and we didn't want to drive two hours for anything less.

She got back to me to say that there was at least one orange kitten there. So we went. We met Ozark. Ozark was the member of a three kitty litter who we realized (over the course of several hours of observation) was abandoned by their mother. No mama cat nursed them or came to see how they were doing. This litter was distinguishable by the fact that they were the only three kittens with orange on them. There were thousands (OK, maybe twenty) frisky semi-healthy looking black kittens and it must be said that our good sense told us to pick a healthy kitten.

But we saw Ozark by himself trying to get at some water. We saw him not get a scrap of food when the gravy train arrived. He was the smallest and sickest kitty there. It's true that I'm a sucker. I couldn't leave him there. He was tiny and had no mama and didn't seem healthy.

So we took his mewling self home with us and we promptly fell in love. We immediately took him to the vet where they ripped us a new one for removing a 5 1/2 week old kitten from his mother. Which made us angry because we would never have taken such a tiny kitty from it's mother before it was ready but we were sure that this kitten would have died if we left him. The vet told us that Ozark was very sick and too young to be weaned and had a 50% chance of surviving the parasite in his stomach, the upper respiratory infection in his lungs, and the infestation of fleas. Which confirmed our gut feeling in the first place.

Ozark is the feistiest scrappenist kitty that ever lived. Although he loved us and would snuggle with us and fall asleep on us and all good kitteny things, he was not particularly affectionate with anyone else. In fact, he quickly got a reputation for being a cranky cantankerous and combative cat.

He is famous for inviting strangers to touch his unbelievably soft belly and then attacking them when they made contact with his fur. When introducing people to Ozark we would always provide ample warning, which many people immediately ignored. It goes something like this: "This is Ozark. He looks cute, he'll sidle up to you, he'll invite you to pet him, but don't fall for it because he will almost certainly scratch you." Or "This is Ozark and he wants to kill you because he finds all humans annoying." Or "Watch out, the orange guy is dangerous." And most importantly "Never ever pick this cat up."

For some reason people often interpreted our warnings to really mean "While Ozark will harm most people- you are clearly special and this warning is not meant for you." Or "Please, pet the cat!" And best of all "Pick the cat up because he only scratches the eyes of people who aren't YOU."

It's amazing we've never been sued. We have a special knack for having pets and kids who come with warnings. We don't care. We've always loved our special needs cat.

In spite of his vicious reputation (his vet files are stamped with the giant red letters: "W A R N I N G", he managed to deal with the "thing" pretty well. Once he finished having a midlife crisis over it.

Ozark with "the thing" that changed his life. This is back when I had a pretty tidy house and even had houseplants. Ozark let us know that "the thing" was barely tolerable to him. We expected Max to be mauled by the cat and were expecting neighbors to report us to social services for keeping a dangerous animal near our kid. Shockingly, Ozark has rarely scratched Max. He has endured a lot of indignity at Max's hands that he would never have taken from anyone else.

Ozark was neutered when he was four months old. We hoped that this would help him to mellow out. Which, obviously it didn't. Ozark not only fought with people, he also fought all the time with cats twice his size. He's spent many an evening at the pet urgent care getting wrapped up or examined for puncture wounds. We really didn't think he'd live to be seven years old.

The scrapping is why he has FIV. Vaccinations for FIV are relatively new and he had already been a fighting trouble maker for many years. We didn't realize they were giving vaccines for FIV until we found out he already had it. It is lucky for him that he has not been fighting in the past two years or we would have had no choice but to euthanize him for the safety of the neighbor cats because it is impossible to keep him inside. He's mellowed quite a bit in the past two years. He still comes with warnings though. Because this is a cat who will take on raccoons.

We take him to the vet today. Maybe we'll come home with a miracle in our pocket. Maybe this decline he's in right now is something fixable. I'm not holding my breath. It's weird though that Max and Ozark have become so close in the past two years since we moved here. Ozark sleeps with Max every night. Max is very gentle with him and doesn't try to sit on him like he does with the dog. Max loves that Ozark doesn't eat his toys. Although Max is a pretty fastidious person in some ways and one way is that he really hates that Ozark frequently vomits in his room. Yet if Ozark wakes up and leaves Max's room (which means we have to let him out, he wakes us up by banging on the door) Max will wake up and not go back to sleep.

Even with a miracle in our pocket we know that Ozark's time here is limited. Such is the nature of FIV. So I thought I would say here, before he's gone, how much we love him. I've been sitting with him and petting his bony back and putting my ear to his side like I've done since he was five and a half weeks old to listen to his enormous purr. I've never met a cat with a louder purr than Ozark's.

Although Ozark has been quite a bastard and has made me want to strangle him, I can honestly say that I think he's one of the best cats ever. Whether we get to keep him for a few more moths or only for a few weeks, or mere days, we will forgive the peeing and the attacks on the dog and love him til it's time for him to go.

Update: Back from the vet now. He either has a kidney infection or kidney disease. If it's an infection there's a chance he can live quite a bit longer if he responds well to antibiotics (FIV can make it hard to treat infections) and if it's kidney disease then he will slowly die and we will give him fluid injections and potassium pills for however long he lives to help him feel his best. The vet says that kidney disease isn't painful (someone here was just telling me that.). We will find out on Monday or Tuesday when they get the lab results. Fingers crossed!