New Post

Mother Pie just commented that I need a new post, which is coincidental as I was just about to put up this quote by a somewhat controversial Native American author, originally from:

I will tell you something about stories,
[he said]
They aren’t just entertainment.
Don’t be fooled.
They are all we have, you see,
all we have to fight off
illness and death
-Leslie Marmon Silko

It's something I am dwelling on, while holding a kitten on my lap.

Frank is earnest

I got word yesterday that Frank would need a home sooner than I had thought. We went over to the shelter, where I made arrangements to foster him, until it is time for him to be, as my mother would have said, altered. At that point, I can fully adopt him. If I had left D at home, I would have come home with another cat and perhaps a dog. But D wasn't having it.

Frank had been staying with my friend, who has a dog and three other cats. The shelter had put out an emergency call for help, so she stepped in and fostered two 3-kitten litters, bottle-feeding them. So Frank is quite well socialized.

I had thought I could pick Frank up from B, but the shelter is pretty strict, keeping tabs on all the animals they foster out/adopt out, so we had to go there. Yesterday, they had many, many cats, the majority of them black or Tuxedos (they even had a top 10 list of reasons to adopt a black cat; if you can, please do so!). They also had a rabbit and a ferret, cohabiting a cage.

Frank fits in immediately:



A miracle! They all enjoy and share!!

but watch the video for true sounds emanating from a couple whose noses are squarely out of joint. They also gobble up the kitten chow, as if doing so will eliminate its intended consumer.

specs

I have gotten new glasses, very thick frames, which still don't quite seem to fit properly on my head. They have graduated lenses, which has me moving my head up and down quite a lot. I need to go back in and get them adjusted.

This would seem an easy task, just an annoyance really. But the glasses lady scares me a little bit. She seems to see the need for an adjustment as the wearer's personal shortcoming. She runs the front of the house, so to say. She is there, seemingly in perpetuity, but the the optometrist changes yearly. The last one seems to have left after an affair with the hairdresser down the sidewalk ended his marriage (I know this, because the person who cuts my hair at a different place told me). Before that, there was a woman. Preceding her was a humorless man, who had an assistant. No more assistants, though.

I remember when I got my first pair, in high school. What an amazing realization to see that the leaves on trees had a distinct outline and separate colors! My mother had resisted my getting them, partly because I think she saw anything glasses as a failure on a personal level and partly because finances were so tight. I think because of that, I still have that pair.

The green pair are magnifying ones, for getting out of tricky knitting mistakes. Sometimes I have to wear both pairs at once, especially if I am fixing something at the same time I'm talking to someone else or watching something on TV.

teacher epithet questioned

Well, I just returned from parents' day, and I must say, I would not refer to that kind and expansive young man who is trying to drill some math into some teenage skulls as either old OR a "douche bag."

I enjoyed sitting in each of her classrooms for an attenuated version of her day; I'd say she is pretty lucky to have that group of individuals as her teachers. But she won't realize that for a good long time . . .

Just a thought,

but I don't think referring to your math teacher as a "douche bag" is going to help matters any, do you?

a little bit

This blurry picture didn't come out very well, but I think it's very interesting as a testament to determination. This spider must have spun this web, which spans the sliding glass door to the deck, last evening/night. I know she did it then, because yesterday afternoon, she was in almost the same spot, and D carefully removed her, thinking she'd spin where he decided to put her. Back she came, though, to set up again. I haven't moved her, but she sure picked an inconvenient spot. I hadn't realized that she would have a territorial aspect to her nature.



Just a few examples of my towel/dishcloth frenzy. The greenish/willow is linen and it is a mate to a grape one; the others are cotton. The cotton is from a regional producer in North Carolina, which makes me feel good about keeping my dollar somewhat local (although I had to darken the doors of Wal-Mart to purchase it . . . compromises, compromises).



I got the patterns for the cotton cloths from a crafter blogger.

By the way

over the years I've been following various blogs, I've been bookmarking them via RSS and then they appear on my browser's sidebar. Slowly, that sidebar has gotten built up and messy, with some blogs disappearing into the mire, everything confused and rumpled, looking not unlike a certain teenager's room . . . but now blogger has this Follower capability. I simply pasted all "my" blogs into that feature, and there they are, in alpha order, telling me when someone has put up a new post. It's so orderly and calm in there! Very beige and neutral. That's what I feel, anyway.

I chose originally to be anonymous (I wonder why . . .) but you can let someone know you are following them. I think I'll go in and do so.

Thank you to Gumbo Writer for introducing me to this.

Theme: key

The used key is always bright.

—B. Franklin

And necessary to start up many adventures.



Many years ago, we were surprised when my brother-in-law invited us to a resort where he had once been a groundskeeper, in the upper Keys in Florida. I had never been in this area before. During one day there, my mother, D, tiny baby L, and I drove all the way down to Key West. A revelation at the end of US 1. It seemed like a piratical version of a New England town. Bikes and chickens. A sign: Warning! Marine life beyond this point.


D and I returned to Key West another year (with L, who got around in style in a stroller), and in fact couldn't leave because of a snow- and icestorm that covered most of the East. It turned very cold one day, a record I think. Could it have been 40 degrees? It seems that it was, and a restaurant or bar had a fireplace stoked. It was a very strange, liberating feeling, knowing we had to stay somewhere we really didn't want to leave.


A map key is useful, especially in another country entirely . . .


A keystone is key; otherwise, the entire enterprise might crumble.


Postscript:

Just as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the self-same sounds
On my spirit make a music, too.

—"Peter Quince at the Clavier," Wallace Stevens

Birthday

a.m.



p.m.

Birthday list

Today, L is 17! In honor of this momentous day, she has put together some of her favorite things. (I'm using the time to remember her sweet babyness. Helen, I think you know exactly where this photo was taken!)

favorite books:







favorite songs:







favorite tv shows:








favorite movies:







favorite people:

Return

I had a yoga class this morning, after an entire summer in hiatus. I realize now what I would be like if I hadn't been practicing yoga at all these past nine years. Creeky. Stiff. Unwieldy.

Getting down on the mat, and focusing on that rectangle and my activity on it was liberating. I hadn't felt that sense of calm and centeredness in many months. It's a paradox to be in the body and working hard, and outside it, too.

We had an extended period of Shavasana; I almost felt that complete thoughtless, weightless point. Almost.

Bear's favorite napping spot, from which she can keep a regal eye over any proceedings in the backyard, and still beat a hasty retreat inside, should that white cat or some interfering dog happen by: