Rainy days and sleeping kitties

A few days ago we were madly covering pipes and adding antifreeze to every engine we own in frigid, below zero wind chill weather. Now we are listening to tornado watches and preparing our storm closet in 60 degree weather. Weird!!

I plugged in the weather radio, so the tornado siren would be on and could alert me. Though here in Georgia they don't say "plugged in" they say "plugged up". And they don't press buttons here, they say mash the button.

I made my new favorite recipe, Veggie-slaw wrap with hummus sauce, for lunch. Now making apple crisp. I've had a busy morning and when the crisp is done I plan to sit down and read with tea and dessert.

The addition of a new kitty is an exponential impact to the scene here at Prata Plaza. It's like earthquakes. As this guy said, "What this means is that for each whole number you go up on the Richter scale, the amplitude of the ground motion recorded by a seismograph goes up ten times."

I clean the litter box three times a day now instead of once. I vacuum almost every day now, instead of once per week. And when I do, I move furniture. I wash each and every throw I've put over the 2 chairs, couch, and bed. That's two extra loads of laundry.I've already made a couple trips to the store for more litter and more food. But it's all to be expected and I don't mind at all.

I've been playing with the three cats each day so that if there is any aggression or hierarchy-shifting pecking order fights then they will have less energy to do it. Bert stays away from Murray. Murray will play-attack but Bert just sigh and lumbers over to a spot where he can put his back to the wall and watch with a wary eye (weary eye?)

Things seem more active between Luke and Murray. I think that Murray is either playing the way kitties do, or he is trying to establish himself as new Alpha cat. We will see. Hence the play times.

I drag a fishing pole with a ribbon attached to the end that looks like wings of a bird. Each cat gets a turn and they each wait their turn, lol. I forgot how much Bert loves the fishing pole. As he has aged, I'd take it out and entice him with it, waving it in front of his eyes or dragging it across the rug in front of him. He would simply look at me like I was an idiot. After a while I'd feel like an idiot and I just stowed the pole. Now that Murray is on the scene, Bert is suddenly VERY interested. Amazing what jealousy can do.

After the play sessions, Murray gets pooped and collapses on the hassock. Then the other two clamber up on the table and look at me accusingly and then heave a sigh and lay down around the laptop. I make sure to give each some attention and reassurance. All in all, things are going well.

We have received a tremendous amount of rain the last two days. The entire lawn is a standing pool. As I walked out the door and crossed over to the garage to check the laundry, I saw the whole patio between my apartment and the rest of the house (shaped like a square U) had at least 4 inches of water! I sloshed over to check out the problem, the cold water covering my entire foot up to the ankle. Oh, it's only that the neighbor decided to put her patio umbrella stand directly over the culvert drain.

I mean what sane person says, when looking for a spot to set up the patio table and put the umbrella down the center hole into its stand, "Here is a great spot COVERING THE DRAIN."

I got soaked while trying to find the drain, move the table, and then in the rain, standing there moving the leaves that drain down to the mesh and with my foot, swirling it again and again so more water can drain before it clogged up again. It took a while. The gutters were just gushing more water down, and the place was a pool ducks could safely paddle in.

I don't know much about home ownership and house infrastructure, but I do know what a drain is for. Oh well..

 Well the apple crisp is done and I plan to have some dessert and maybe take a lesson from the 3 sleeping cats and take a nap myself...

Bert heard me coming in and sat up a bit to see what was going on.

That lump is Luke under the throw.

Murray. Cute isn't he!

Even sleeping he is all-motion.
He stretched a nanosecond after I snapped the first photo of him

A cold welcome to a new family member

The real temp was 7 degrees when I got up at 6:30 am, and the wind chill was 7 below zero. That's cold for Georgia. I know it's peanuts to other people but for those in the south who have never lived where the temperature goes below freezing for months at a time, never mind chills below zero, it is very cold. There wee many burst pipes and cars that did not start. I'm really glad we got to stay home from school.

Our Superintendent called off school for today so the children would not get frostbit waiting for the bus. I can't remember a time when school was called for cold. My little apartment was cozy and everything stayed on. The gas heat warmed the place just fine and the pipes did not freeze. I kept a trickle going and opened the cabinet doors under the sink to let warm air flow around the pipes.

The yard kitten, Murray...well he's mine now. I formally took him as owner. He would have died outside last night, and I'd brought him inside on Saturday in advance of the cold weather. I could not envision him going back out, so seeing that my other two cats accepted him I decided just to keep him on. He seems content enough.

Yeah. He hates it here.

Definitely stressed.

Here is the family now:

As for me, I'm headed to Ikea.

Murray

We are supposed to get very cold overnight, temps in the single digits and wind chills even lower.

I never saw so many men in the Dollar Store, all looking for the recently moved automotive aisle. I bought the second to last gallon of antifreeze. It finally paid off to go to the Dollar Store so often you know where everything is.

The property kitty that my neighbor on the other side of the house had casually adopted, is an outdoor cat. She feeds it, but the possums eat the dish right out from under the kitty. His water bowl freezes up each night. He sleeps under the shed. He is alone all day with no human interaction. He is four months old and very pretty and extremely lovable. With the temps so cold these last few nights he sits outside and cries. I couldn't take that, so I brought him inside my apartment. I really resisted. I tried not to. But I hated waking up every morning and peeking outside to see if he is alive or dead. 

He has fleas. I am going to hate that in a few days when the one or two that escaped flea bath I gave him shows that the fleas have multiplied and attacked my other two cats. But what is a humane person to do? Leave him in the sleet and 7 degree temps? No way.

I put out the call for someone to adopt him but I'm conflicted about it. I love the l'il guy, and my other cats seems to tolerate him OK and maybe will accept him into the family one day soon. I'd LOVE to keep him. But financially I can't commit to him. I already have a hard time keeping up with food and litter for my other two cats, and if there is a vet bill, oh my. Now more food, more litter, budget for a vet bill.

Oh well, I think I've adopted another cat. Or he adopted me. I'll worry about the money later. First, is the love.

Murray

Brrr it's cold

Well I can't complain, I'll complain a little. It was a wind-chill/real feel of ten degrees this morning. It was cold, cold cold. I had to bang against the front door to get out, it had iced up all around.

The midwest and north got a worse dose though so that is why I can't complain. It will be warm here in a few days, and up north it will be warm there in a few months.

My Christmas vacation is winding down. I will head back to school Monday for an in-service day (no kids) and then on Tuesday it will all start back up. Routine, kids, headaches, laughs, business...everything.

Church will wind up too. We have not had a Wednesday night prayer meeting for two weeks because of the holiday and many people have been traveling so attendance has been low, and our SS teacher was traveling so we have had subs. All the routines will ramp back up for the new year, which for me is like the second half of the old year because I go from May to May. ) School out to school out :)

I finished When Crickets Cry which was a good book. A heart surgeon confronts his past via the illness of a little girl. Well written, and absorbing, if a tiny bit slow. It was a bit sentimental but not overly so. I give it a B+. I started an Anne Rivers Siddons book so we'll see how that goes. So far it is OK. A jilted wife rebuilds her life.

I watched many good movies on snagfilms. City of Gold, about the Yukon Gold Rush and followed that up with The Fatal Glass of Beer, an early WC Fields short, a spoof on Yukon Gold Rush movies. City of Gold is a great documentary about the city of Dawson during the Klondike Gold Rush. The narrator uses photos in a realistic way, a method Ken Burns said he copied in his Civil War documentary. Anyway, after that, I watched WCFields in the 1933 short, "A Fatal Glass of Beer" spoofing all the early movies about the Klondike Gold Rush. In the short, WC Fields would constantly open the door and say "T'aint a night fit for man or beast!" and an obviously fake bucket of snow would hit him in the face. It was funny, and even funnier *after* watching it. Like, I chuckled when I remember WC Fields had a dachshund in his dog sled line. "Mush!" Or he went outside to the well and pumped and ice cubes came out. Or he announced to his wife, "Bessie, I'm a-goin to milk the elk!" The fatal glass of beer is a spoof temperance song he played for a Canadian Mountie, off key, on a zither, in mittens...It was very Monty Python-esque movie. Seeing the 'City of Gold' and then 'Fatal Glass' was a hoot.

I had coffee with a friend yesterday at the local yuppie cafe. Our coffee turned into breakfast, then three hours of chat. Girls!

I made a kickin' slaw this week. Cabbage slaw, roasted broccoli, raisins, and hummus-mayo sauce. And wrapped in a flour tortilla. Yum!! I also made roasted veggies, and penne with veggies. I baked a pumpkin-angel food cake with chocolate chips too. That was delicious and- light.

January is hard. After a blessed vacation like this, in fleece jammies, drinking steaming tea, cooking, reading, and watching movies, who wouldn't be loathe to have it all end? But work is good too. It does me good to get back. But not yet. Monday is still three days away ;)

Bubbles

Here is a picture of a bubble machine at a family festival in Danielsville. I snapped this a couple of years ago.

We all love bubbles. Even adults stop, look, are mesmerized by their fragility, their beauty, their ephemeral nature. We watch to see how long one will fly, how big they can get, how their rainbow colors catch the sun.

Here is an interesting story about a mom and son who made homemade bubble juice, and went outside in the freezing cold to blow them. Now these are some pretty bubbles!

Mother and Son Blow Bubbles in Freezing Cold and Discover Something Beautiful
"After finding a soap bubble recipe online that consisted of dish soap, karo syrup and water; the mother and son braved the elements to see what would happen. The results were a breathtaking series of close-ups that showed the frozen soap bubbles in various states. Not only did each bubble freeze with their own unique pattern but they also deflated and collapsed in spectacular fashion. The series, which can be seen in its entirety on Facebook (here and here), has spread online in recent weeks."

Visit the links above to see them all. All photos by Angela Kelly

I'm revealing secrets here

It is a cold day, and we are supposed to get over 2 inches of rain this afternoon into tomorrow. It is a good day for making soup or something else equally warm and comfy. I just put on sweat pants straight from the  dryer. AHHHH.

A few days ago I'd made a pumpkin-angel food cake with chocolate chips and that sure does taste good warmed up with a cup of chamomile tea. I plan to make split pea soup tomorrow. At the store today in addition to the split peas, I also got a bag of shredded cabbage-slaw mix and chicken tenders. They both were reduced in price. So naturally I bought them. Naturally when I got home I googled recipes with both chicken and slaw in the title and found a good one that also uses chick peas. It will be a chicken slaw taco with chickpea-mayo sauce. I don't have chickpeas but I do have hummus, and the recipe calls for grinding the chick peas up with the mayo and lemon anyway.

So that's how I roll. Whatever is on sale goes into my basket. Ask no questions first, google later.

I took this snap as I was driving:

The sky often looks very pretty over the fields in that spot. Today the sky was pinker than it looked in the picture, even though it wasn't dawn or dusk, and the streams of light were glinting down between the small openings in the clouds.

Here is a shot of Luke and one of Bert. Luke typically is next to me when I'm active, "What's going on? Is something happening? I want to be a part of it!"

Here is Bert, typically laying down. "What's going on that woke me up?! Is something happening? I don't care, I want no part of it."

My backyard before the rain hit:

My dinner, cream cheese-craisin-lettuce wrap!

Things you may or may know about me:

Secret: I like country music
Potentially embarrassing secret, hereafter named PES:
I still like Billy Ray Cyrus' "Achy Breaky Heart"

Secret: I don't like ice cream.
PES: Sometimes I eat it anyway.

Secret: I have no children.
PES: I never wanted any.

Secret: Babies are cute
PES: I feel obligated to say that, whether they are or not

Secret: I love to read novels
PES: I dislike sentimental or romantic books

Secret: I like cowboys
PES: I like cowboy yodeling

OK, that's enough for one day. I've spilled my guts, told all about making soup and my cats and my secrets. Now it's time to watch a documentary or two and drink more tea. Life in the fast lane, I tell ya.

Google's Auto Awesome

I discovered a new service from Google, that ever intruding expanding behemoth with tentacles that reach into your very heart blog. If you have "Auto Awesome" clicked on, the following are some of the services Google will perform:

Action - Take a series of photos of someone moving (dancing, running, jumping) and Auto Awesome will merge them together into one action shot where you can see the full range of movements in a single image, capturing the movement in one captivating still.

Pano - If you've taken a series of photos with overlapping landscape views, Auto Awesome will stitch these photos together into a panoramic image.

HDR - High Dynamic Range is the process of taking multiple exposures of the same image. By merging these images together, your photos will achieve a greater range of shadows and light. Uploading three similar images at different exposures--low, medium, and high exposure--will create an HDR image for you.

Motion - If you've taken a series of photos in succession (at least 5), Auto Awesome will stitch these photos together into a short animation.

What you see below is the animation Google has done to my formerly static photo of a cabin in the snow in Maine

I like it...and  don't like it. I can click OFF auto awesome, I suppose...somewhere. But on the other hand, despite being a little intrusive and creepy, it is also helpful. I guess that sums up Google these days- the behemoth that lumbered into your house and started rooting through your bureau drawers, but matched all your orphan socks before it left.

Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you are where you want to be. If you're not, I hope the peace of God fills your heart and you can make the best of it where you ended up...

My plans on this bright and sunny morning here in Georgia are to bake pumpkin-chocolate chip muffins and cook corn chowder. I received 4 ears of corn in my Bountiful Basket on Saturday and I'll use the freshly steamed corn for the soup. As for the muffins, I'll use an angel food cake mix along with the canned pumpkin for a lighter version.

I had to go to the Dollar Store for the corn chowder's milk and chips for the muffins. The bakery aisle at the store was pretty well wiped out. I got a slab of chocolate and thought to chunk that up to substitute for chips. I asked a clerk lady if the substitution would be acceptable and she said that there was a second bakery spot and we should check there for chips first. She was a very nice clerk. She was cheerful and happy and helpful. It is so nice to interact with people who are that way, even though she had every right to feel grumpy for working on this holiday. But not a hint of that, and she was service-oriented and kind. Kindness rubs off. Her lesson by action was to teach me that. I have to remember to be cheerful and kind because our attitudes affect people.

I'm almost done with my novel, "When Crickets Cry," and I don't know what I'll read next. I absolutely love turning away from the computer in the evening, sitting on the couch with no tv, no music, no noise at all, except the hiss of the gas heat, and read. It's so quiet I can hear my snuggling cats snuffling in their sleep. I've got a few novels on deck and also the John MacArthur book "Strange Fire" on the coffee table also. So, it will be something. There is no dearth of reading choices in this house.

For me will be a warm and quiet Christmas Eve. I hope yours is wonderful. Whether quiet and just the two of you, or loud and clamorous with the whole family, or in the desert sands in a war place, or stuck in holiday ice, I truly hope your holiday is wonderful, right where you are. It is a heart matter- celebrating love, given from the One who came down as a babe to establish love as possible and everlasting.

Creative hobbies: here today, gone tomorow

Here is a watercolor flower I painted:

And then here is the result of inverting it on Photoshop:

I dunno...I think I like the inversion even better!

I recently went through all my scraps and ephemera and crafts. Over the last 7 years I've given most of it away. I've tried at intervals to revive my interest in the painting/bookbinding/collage/paperarts I'd been so involved in for many years. The drive and the interest just went away. Leaked out like air from a balloon.

I'm not particularly sad about it, but the hobby was interesting and fun. I was never that good, and I still have on my shelves the mistake books that I can't in good conscience give away and also unfinished books laying around, a testament to my overall crafty ineptitude. But still...it was fun to scrounge for materials and it was fun to make stuff.

It was a good run. It must have been, for me to have 7 years' worth of books and cards and stuff to still have around to give away. I am back to what has been with me since the beginning and has never left me in 45 years: my writing. That and taking photos still are my number one creative outlets. And a good knock knock joke now and then.

It's enough. No matter what creative urges come and go, I let them.

Bountiful Basket day, weird weather, and a quiet Saturday (updated)

Today I pick up my new Bountiful Basket of fruit and veggies. There won't be another basket offering until mid-January so I'm especially looking forward to this since I'll be home until January 6 and will munch on it at home all throughout the vacation.

I have only 3 pomelos and two mangoes left from the last one. I'm making broccoli cottage cheese casserole with a bit of the broccoli I have left, and that's it. I'm looking forward to new produce for new recipes.

I spent a quite and relaxing evening last night on the couch under my new lap blankie, a kitty or two snuggled up and my book. It was wonderful.

This morning dawned drizzly and weirdly warm. I'm a bit afraid of the tornado storms headed our way later. Whether they turn into tornadoes here or remain severe thunder and windstorms matters not to me, I'm just afraid of the severe storms. We used to have a respite from October to April, but these last few years tornadoes or the threat of them seem to come in any month now.

So I'll get my basket, go to the grocery store for essentials, check the mail at the PO and be home quick as a wink. The humid drizzle does not entice me out and I'd just rather stay in until the weird weather blows over. I'll post a photo later of the produce bounty. Even though I've been a life-long vegetarian, it tickles me that there are things in the baskets I don't know. Pomelos were new to me, as were persimmons. Pomegranates I knew but hadn't eaten one for decades. Satsuma tangerines were new to me, as were Hatch chiles. It really is like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, an edible treasure and a healthy scavenger hunt combined. I love playing "What's this?"

So that is my Saturday here at the ranch. OK, the two room apartment, AKA the Nest.

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This week's basket was great as usual. I received a large head of Romaine, 2 English cukes, a large head broccoli, two yellow squash, and 4 ears corn. Those are the veggies. For fruit I received two half pints blackberries, a huge amount of grapes, a serious number of bananas, 4 large oranges, and two pomegranates. I'm so thrilled!

I am also thrilled I made a cottage cheese-broccoli casserole this morning with the last of the broccoli from last time, because more is a-comin' in. I enjoy looking up things to do with different veggies so I will once again enjoy another broccoli dish in the upcoming week.