Good morning

So I am sitting here at my 1950s Formica topped table with the chrome rim, looking out at the clouds and hoping we get some rain to ease this drought. At my right hand is a large mug of Maxwell House coffee with peppermint cremora and a quarter teaspoon of brown sugar.

On the floor in front of me is Abby, banging the accordion closet door in hopes that I will immediately get up and allow her in the closet, where she lays in peace, safe from her kitten brothers. Luke is crouched behind Abby, hoping to make his move and leap his older sister for kitten yuks. Bert is hunched by my left in front of the book case where he insists on pushing the latest milk ring, and then whines plaintively and looks at me, hoping I will immediately get up and retrieve the ring with the stick I have laid there for just such an occasion.

OK, I'm back. I let Abby into the closet and I swished out the milk ring for Bert, along with the other 6 that were under there. I've got my iTunes going and am listening to Emmylou Harris, "Boy from Tupelo." The day is waking up here at the ranch, someone just drove in, I don't know who, and soon after this likely some workmen will show up to do some project or other that the landlord has lined up in never diminishing priorities.

On the docket today is to attempt making Squash Casserole. Also fruit salad. Squash is in season and so is cantaloupe. I am trying out Southern recipes to perfect and subsequently bring to wakes, covered dish suppers, and the shut-ins. The squash casserole I will split and bring to an 83 year old friend who is a cook, but is weakening so the offer will accomplish two things: asking her to professionally rate my result, and leaving it there so she won't have to cook a meal in her weakening state and in this heat.

I finished Joel C. Rosenberg's Dead Heat yesterday and I am in that hole left behind when you finish a really good book and haven't started another one. That's on the docket too, start another book. And laundry- a friend invites me to their house to do laundry which is WAY better than the un-air conditioned laundromat in town. We have fresh picked salad and fruit and we talk. Much more pleasant than the fly-swarmed dirty laundry place at the intersection in Comer. Though I DO appreciate that there is a laundromat nearby.

Time to get started with the day! I've been staying up till midnight, watching Jon Stewart's The Daily Show and then Colbert Report, and as a result the mornings have been getting later. But the guys crack me up so much!!