Bad kitty, good kitty; northern lights, and cooking

Yay, it's the weekend!

There are lots of reasons to be celebrating. My friends had a baby, and mom & baby are coming home from the hospital today. Their baby is a girl, healthy and all fingers and toes. The pregnancy was difficult and touch and go sometimes, so we are all thanking the Lord for a new soul added to a loving family this morning.

In Mid-September the heat breaks and fall here in Georgia is spectacular. Though today is supposed to be hot and humid, the rest of the week is supposed to reach only the upper 70s and low 80s for high temps. I truly love having the windows open all day and night, feeling the fresh breeze, enjoying my cats at the window smelling and chirping at bugs and birds going by.

There was a moderately severe solar storm this weekend. An X-class (the biggest) coronal mass ejection launched off the sun and hit earth. Though sometimes CMEs can put out radios or interfere with electronics, it usually just sparks auroras. The harder hitting the CME the brighter the northern lights. Get a look at this. It was taken at Casco Maine last night, a town only a few miles from where I lived for many years. I used to know the photographer. The photo was featured on Spaceweather.com

"I took the picture from Casco, Maine, facing north
towards the Presidential Range in New Hampshire,"
says photographer John Stetson. "Red, purple, green, blue--all the colors were there!"

The storm sparked Auroras as far south as Arizona! See the red glow?!

Aurora viewed in Payson, Arizona (Chris Schur/SpaceWeather.com)

My kitty Murray is coming along. His personality is developing. He is becoming more loving and demonstrative. He still won't let me pick him up from the floor. He runs away like smoke, it's like trying to cuddle a wisp. But when he wants cuddling he jumps on the table next to my laptop and lets me hold him against my shoulder. He throws a paw over my upper arm and nestles his little head in.

Last night he got yelled at three times in three hours. At 3:00 am he started trying to bang the pictures off the wall. There is a very heavy one hanging over the couch, and if I forget to build a pillow barrier, he sits on top of the back of the couch and gets a paw under the picture and whacks it. He actually did knock a picture down once, it broke the frame. It was a first edition, original Fred Thompson hand tinted photograph. Aside from being valuable, I love it. I would be crushed and upset if it had broken. I bought it when I was 8 years old at a church flea market, and my mom had it framed for me.

So I sat up in bed and hollered "No, Murray!"

At 4:00 am I heard him banging something around on the floor. I mumbled "nooo, murray..." and then remembered it was the empty stationery box I'd left on the bureau. That was the sound. I fell back asleep.

At 5:00 am I heard a tinkling like a bell or keys. But they weren't keys, it sounded more like change jingling. I could not figure out what that sound was, so I sat up in bed and hollered "NO MURRAY!"

At 7:00 am I was sitting at the table with my coffee, typing. Murray hopped up and looked at me. When I looked at him, his head bowed a little. If it was possible for a kitten to look abashed this was it. I folded him in my arms, and he threw his head and body into a full hug, tight. Awww.

It reminded me of the children's book, "No David!" by David Shannon, where on every page, David is getting into trouble. His mom is hollering "No, David!" until the last page where there is a big hug, and the mom says "I love you David."

I love my kitty. He really is a good boy.

Ahhh, weekends. I have a lot to do today and I'm happy about it. I already wrote a blog essay at The End Time. I will answer several substantive emails, people asking for help with research. I'll do the dishes, laundry, change the sheets, and vacuum. I want to get my chores done today so tomorrow I have time to read. I've got a lot of good books and somehow days and days go by with no time for me to read them.

The cooking for this week's meals will be: salmon patties, tomato-mushroom soup, banana-oatmeal bars, and quinoa salad. Of course the usual bible reading and prayers are added in, and hopefully a nap.

Oh my, that's a lot. I better get going!

School starts tomorrow, have to go to bed earlier

We have a three-day kindercamp. For incoming new students enrolled in our kindergarten, we have a pre-beginning-of-school opportunity for the kids to come and have three days of a mini-day. For three hours, they go through a regular day. They learn the classroom, where the bathroom is, lunchroom, practice recess, go through rotations for centers...

So that when the first day rolls around on August 15, they are ready and know what is ahead for them. it helps the kids tremendously and it calms the parent's anxiety too. It's really good.

This year I am working at it. So tomorrow I'll be working and that means I should get to bed.

As I've brought Murray in, and he has grown, he has shown me he's a smart cookie. He is also relentless in discovering things. For example, he found a bobby pin. I've lived here 6 years and I assure you I vacuum. I don't wear bobby pins. The tenant before me was a man and he didn't wear bobby pins either. So Murray found one and he plays with it. OK, good for you Murray. I won't dwell on the mystery.

He likes to eat the flowers in the bud base in the kitchen window. He slaps the pictures hanging over the back of the couch. He tosses the stack of books that are on the coffee table, off the coffee table. He strips away at the paper on the magazine spines. He likes to pick at the strip of wood lining the bottom of the tub where it meets the floor. He shreds the toilet paper. I have to hang that on a bungee cord higher than he can reach. But sometimes in the summer I use the bungee for the front door (don't ask) so when I do I have to put the TP somewhere high and out of reach AND remember where it is before I sit down in the morning! He sits on the desk and smacks that picture too, sometimes bouncing it off the wall.

I leave lots of kitty toys around on the floor, it's not like he's deprived. He and the other cats can go anywhere in the entire apartment, except the kitchen counter. They have latitude. It's just that Murray is a kitty. I hope he grows out of some of this.

So this means my going to bed routine has lengthened. I have to start in the kitchen; put the flowers in the fridge. In the living room I line the back of the couch with the pillows that are normally on the couch. I put a heavier book atop the stack of smaller books so he can't fling them off. I let him eat the paper on the magazines. Kitty's gotta have fun. I put the 20lb kitty litter bucket next to the strip of wood he likes to pick at. He is not big enough to move the heavy bucket. Yet. But he tries. I fix the TP so he can't get it. In the bedroom I put more pillows as a barricade against the picture over the desk.

I do all this while I sing A Chorus Line's "What I Did For Love"

I am SO trained

You've heard the expression: "Dogs have owners, cats have staff"? Here is how Bert has neatly managed to train his staff:

As I sit at my table writing, Bert peeps for the milk ring. He is a peeper, not deigning to meow, or even growl. He makes tiny bird noises. That's why I named him Bert. Kind of like 'bird' and kind of like the noise he makes. So: 'Peep?' Pleeeease, mom?'
















I toss the milk ring and he races after it like no tomorrow. He likes to grab it with his mouth and put it on his paw like a bracelet. Then fling it all over the room. 'Wheee! This is fun! What's coming next is even more fun! Bwa ha ha'















He usually flings it toward any piece of furniture that is low to the ground that has an inch or two of access under it, like this bookcase here. The bed is high. That'd be too easy. 'I'm just going over here to the BOOKCASE and play here for a minute. Yeah, that's it.'















'Oh noes! I accidentally on purpose pushed it WAY under the bookcase, Mom, I can't get it! Peep! Peep! Peep! Peep! Peep! Peep!
















So because the peeps are so cute, and after thirty of them, pretty annoying, I get up, fish the milk ring out with a stick, and toss it again. TRAINED!

Feline personals: Bert

I am a one-year old cat, enjoying indoor life in the apartment on the horse ranch. I am private, solitary, and high-minded but I do occasionally enjoy playing with my rambunctious, athletic brother, and to a lesser extent, my grumpy older sister.

Don't expect to see me if you visit, I disappear like smoke when I hear the downstairs door slam. Unless it is Beth, in which case I sit pertly near the door, looking regal, and not at all expectant. I am not skittish, no, I do not skit. Instead, I enjoy long naps in the laundry bag and a good tossing around of the milk ring. I will admit [cough] that I er, become somewhat excitable when the cardinals feed at the feeder in the morning. I like that. Indeed I do.

Beth calls me "Squeaker" sometimes, on account of my meow sounding like a rubber duck squeak toy. I really become vexed when she does that. So in retaliation I toss the milk ring under the fridge, look plaintively at her, and "squeak," which prompts her to get up immediately, go into the bedroom and find the stick toy, come back into the kitchen, kneel down, and fish for it. Sometimes this involves moving furniture. I enjoy this show very much and I play it in direct proportion to the amount of times she calls me that odious name.

So that's me, Bert.

A kitty play in three acts

Bert LOVES his milk ring.

Luke loves anything Bert loves. For about a second.

Abby could care less about milk rings or Bert or Luke.
Or about most anything, actually.

Ho hum yet another video of someone's kitty

random moments so far today

I love this word I've just learned: quagma. Matter in its fifth state is known as quagma or quark-gluon plasma – no ions, protons or neutrons yet. (The five phases of matter are solid, liquid, gas, plasma and quagma).

My nephew wanted to know why you have to bow down when you say your prayers. The answer he got was: because God is Great, and makes the world wonderful for us etc etc and then he said, "could he make my waffles?"

I am bringing fruit salad to the lake today, where I've been invited to a BBQ. So I drove to the local farm stand early this morning to buy a basket of local peaches. The peaches were charmingly arranged in an oval basket in a pyramid. They were soft and had dew on them.

More kitty cuteness: relaxing against my leg after a hard day playing with string