Herban Sprawl

31 July 2009
Last night I was doing a search regarding an obituary in the Star City’s paper for a lady who shared our family’s last name. We were all of the opinion we were the only ones and that we were all related, so she was news to us! When I had exhausted all of my options, I decided I hadn’t Googled myself in a while.

Much to my amusement, there was something related by the president of an online branch of AAUW that was relative to my writings against the idea of open membership for American Association of University Women. She stated that I had “invited” a member of the bylaws committee to comment on my blog.

That is the first mistake she made. This blog allows comments. People who comment on blogs, my loquacious self included, know it is proper to be pithy. Short and sweet does it. I didn’t invite him. I simply allow comments.

The man sent me a three page op-ed piece and expected it to be posted as a comment. Even though I disagreed with his position, I would have allowed a short comment, but a three page document was really presumptuous of him, I thought. So I told him he had to limit it to 50 words. He declined. Instead he posted the thing on his own blog, which is where it belonged anyway.

What I also found amusing was that I was given author credit for an excellent piece that was drafted by some very astute women in Florida. All I did was lend my name to it as being in support of their positions on various bylaws issues. I didn’t agree with every single detail, but on balance, it was pretty good, so I said I’d let them put my name on it.

I tripped upstairs gleefully and announced to Big Kitty that I had been misrepresented! I was delighted and he was amused. Big Kitty gets it.

It’s a high honor when one’s writing rattles the chains of those who seek to shove something through. To be misrepresented means they are seeking to be dismissive and to muffle one’s voice. I had no idea my blog had attracted that kind of attention. To be sure, I had some new people who registered, and a cursory check of IP addresses indicated there were some very interesting people monitoring my blog. I was flattered that I posed such a threat!

And so it is with being misrepresented. You know you are getting someone’s goat, and you know they are paying attention. That, my friends is validation. I might be viewed as a mere crackpot (probably true), a threat to the grand plan (who? me?), or simply a thorn in the side of someone who doesn’t like my writing style (read something else, then). Whatever the case, this woman named me by name, named my blog by name and left a link for that man’s blog, but not mine!

Oho! That is censorship. I read through the comments in that particular thread, and there were some who disagreed with open membership. Did she seek to keep information from them? Gee! Was I really so on target that she feared allowing them to read it and decide for themselves?

Regardless of the reasons, she didn’t, but there ensued a lot of last minute shuffling to prick holes in the arguments of that mailing. I especially enjoyed that. The authors of that piece worked very hard on it. None of us agreed completely with the quorum we suggested, and I loved how that got so much opposition verbiage.

And, because we had taken a pre-existing chart that sought to explain the changes by comparison and tweaked it to reflect our own positions, and because we gave credit to the people who wrote the original chart, we got criticized for that! The intention of the original chart, she informed her online branch, was NOT as we had it! Well, duh. But we took their work and we needed to give them credit. We were just trying to be nice.

Bottom line is that I am still basking in the thought that she mentioned all the pieces I’d written. Nothing pleases a writer more than to know the work is being seen. It doesn’t matter if you agree with me. As long as you don’t send me a three page treatise, I’m happy to approve your comments. I have friends who haven’t been able to register and even  post their comments for them. Just don’t send me something that’s longer than what I routinely post myself! Get your own blog, y’know?

There’s been a lot in the news while we’ve been having our UU DNA replenished. The Star City’s council decided to scrap plans for an amphitheater in the downtown park. One councilman is grumping that they did it while he was on vacation, in spite of his request that they table that until he was back. The others decided to pull the plug anyway. Smart move. The city doesn’t need to venture into another black hole of endless subsidies.

The Times reported the city schools have had to shell out something in the neighborhood of 52 grand on this whole testing scandal. They are still paying the salary of the cheating principal and the citizens are squawking. Sorry, folks. It’s called due process and if it were you, you’d be mighty annoyed if your right to due process was denied. I’m not saying I’m happy with the situation, but I am a veteran of the four step grievance procedure, having represented teachers in a few of those. There are rules and in order for it not to come back and bite the school division and the school board in their respective tuschies, the process must be followed with extreme attention to detail. The devil is in those details.

The behemoth hospital juggernaut is having its hands slapped by the anti-trust watchdogs. A complaint was filed that when the jug bought out a couple of out-patient facilities, they violated anti-trust rules. So now they are having to spend some of their millions on defending their greedy habits. Awwww gee. Po’ thangs.

The media is still sniping at President Obama about his blue jeans. Good gawd gertie. Have those idiots nothing better to do????? The man has his favorite jeans. Okay, so they aren’t GQ worthy. So the hell what??????? Are these arbiters of fashion…the same people who think those plug ugly costumes worn by Sarah Jessica Parker in the Sex in the City series were great fashion….really people we should be listening to?  Come on.

When it comes to de figura, New York ain’t all that and a bag of chips, too. I say that if the Prez wants to wear comfy jeans to the ballpark, let the man be. He looks better than Howdy Doody did for eight years, so let’s move on to more important things.

The last thing on my list today is the matter of the birthers. Maybe it’s the Maxine in me, but I think it’s perfectly fine that they want to continue that rhetoric. They’re showing their behinds and that’s good. It shows them for what they really are. In fact, their slate for 2010 should be Sarah Palin for President and Rush Limbaugh for President of Vice. Could they win against Obama-Biden? Um. Hm. Even my Republican broker is probably slapping his knee over that one!

I’m leaving a rant about the bank bail-outs to my fellow Fighting Scot over at Rossiferous.blogspot.com.  He’s pretty much covered those bases, and he wasn’t wearing fashionable jeans when he did it, either.

Strike two, ball three! It’s a full count and the bases are loaded…

07/20/09

We are in the lovely, sleepy town of Radford, renewing our Unitarian Universalist DNA. Last night our director, Jerry King, said that it wasn’t until his first SUUSI that he understood what it meant to be a UU. I get that. I have never felt that complete connection at church, and I have mostly been so frustrated with the way church behaved that I was happier being a solo practitioner of the denomination.

However, this morning we were treated to Rev. Buice’s idea of religious transformation. In upcoming services, we will hear the way others view the theme of the week, Rekindle the Flame Within. For myself it is the annual reconnection with friends from up and down the Atlantic seaboard, and the opportunity to learn new skills and think of things in different ways.

As friend from the Pacific Northwest and I discovered we had each drifted away from our churches. Not from the denomination, mind you, just the churches, and both for similar reasons. We didn’t like the way they approached difficult issues or the way they preferred to pretend conflict didn’t exist. Her way of putting it was that she identifies as a UU. My way of putting it is that there is no other denomination in which I can fit so well.

So here in Radford, we’ve come together to BE together. To try new things, to spend time with old friends, to make new friends, and to renew within us that which feels so right about being Unitarian Universalist. It will be this energy that we take with us as we return to civilian life, and it will be within the spirit of renewal that our spirits will be replenished and revitalized.

Blessed be.

07/17/09
The inevitable happened yesterday, and it happened right on schedule, by Big Kitty’s and my calculations. The day before Kim was about to pack the truck to get herself and her mother-in-law to SUUSI, the poe-leece rolled up and took her away to jail. They have charged her with first degree murder. We just knew they would time it accordingly. Never mind that it would disrupt the registration process of 100 Unitarian Universalists as they arrived for thier annual camp.

I must admit to a certain amount of confusion. Our webmaster had talked to her the day before and it seems Kim knew there was a warrant for her arrest, as well as blood and DNA samples. However, I talked to her that night and she didn’t tell me that. She was sick and attributed it to stress. My worry at the time was that she had, due to stress weakening her immune system, contracted a communicable bug that had the power to infect the lot of us next week. I’m thinking she was sick to her stomach over what was about to happen. That is, if our time frame is correct.

So where does this leave us? Two women are being accused of having an affair. Is that a crime? No, but then again, in North Carolina a wronged wife can have “the other woman” charged. It turns out they will do that for a gay couple, even though gay marriage is not a legal reality in that state. Go figure.

Taking it one more step, two women are accused of not just having an affair, but also of killing a very sick woman partner. Could it have been a mercy killing? Not likely. A mercy killing would probably involved drugs, rather than a violent death. And a mercy killing by someone who won’t even consent to having her aged and very sick cat put down? Doesn’t really compute.

So now we have two women who are accused of having an affair and just want the sick partner out of the way so they can get on with their life together. This is what the poe-leece and the district attorney seem to be thinking.

Those of us who have dyke friends know they don’t operate that way. If someone wants out of a relationship, she just packs her stuff and moves out. What’s that old joke my dyke friend once told me? “How do you know it’s a dyke’s second date? When you see the U-haul hooked up to her truck.” Unfortunately, my friend acknowledged, there is more than a grain of truth to that.

In a society where gay marriage is reluctantly gaining traction as a bona fide right, we’re seeing those who do marry struggle with the same issues straights have always had with their marriages. Only now, if they have legally married, they are also finding out that splitting up isn’t as easy as it used to be. There are all the warts associated with marriage…child custody battles, distribution of common assets, messy affairs that destroy trust….

We have to ask if Kate would have had an affair while she was still devoted to her sick partner. Maybe. But if she did, something tells me it would have been merely a sexual thing with the understanding that she was committed to Sharon and there was no probability of anything else until she saw her partner through to the inevitable end of her life. That could have been many years hence. And that’s what the poe-leece seem to be hanging onto for a motive.

Other dykes in the community have come out saying they could picture Kate murdering her partner. Um, I can swear on a stack of Bibles, or whatever other book, that I have had murderous thoughts from time to time. Would I ever have acted on them? HELL, no. It’s one thing to get so exasperated with one’s spouse that one would like to throttle the daylights out of him or her; it’s totally inconceivable to actually do it. Granted, there are some who go into a rage and do just that. But the Kate I know is the child of divorced parents and she has enough savvy to know how to roll with the punches.

Kim maintains that on the night of the murder, she was in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, getting stone drunk in a bar. Does she have witnesses who could corroborate her story? Don’t know. It was five years ago, it was in a bar, everyone was drinking, and the big news of the night wasn’t who won the game, but rather that Janet Jackson had bared her boob. Would anyone have any memories beyond that of a pretty normal looking woman sitting at the bar drinking? If she was a regular, perhaps, but five years ago? Let’s be realistic.

In the end, there is the circumstantial evidence. There are two pillows that ostensibly were used to muffle a pair of gun shots. There was one woman with two bullet wounds in her back, and one who had sustained a pretty nasty cosh on the head and who was interrogated while she was concussed - not to mention the fact that she was denied medical care. The poe-leece are struggling with the fact that she was knocked unconscious for an hour or so. Given the knot that existed a year later (I felt it, folks, I felt it!), I don’t find that hard to believe. In a way, I’m surprised she survived it, and I’m also surprised she hasn’t had the symptoms of a severe head injury since the event.

An affectionate series of emails are considered evidence in the civil suit against the two women. If a women who makes her living as an IT specialist was plotting to kill her partner, would she leave any of that sort of evidence lying around in her computer?

Kate had also allegedly had a key made for Kim, and allegedly met her in a local restaurant where she gave her the key. Uh-oh. I have a problem. I gave a key to a kid who was helping me out with my yard. He was later convicted of child molesting and is now serving a 15 year sentence. I had no idea. Uh-oh. I gave a key to our house to how many different people over the years for one reason or another? Is this going to come back to haunt me?

Sharon and Kate had pets. Could it be that Kim was going to come down and housesit their pets?

There are a lot of questions. There are also innocent answers to them. If you read crime novels, as I do, you could probably piece together a good story, but it would be fiction. Sometimes when the police piece together a story it is also fiction, and we have the innocent people who have served sentences for crimes they didn’t commit to prove it.

07/13/09

My mission for today was imposed by Big Kitty. I needed to clean up all the garden junk that was cluttering the porch. I also needed to clean up all the garden junk that was cluttering the patio. Both jobs were guaranteed to be messy and I procrastinated as long as I dared.

The good news is that a couple of serious thunderstorms over the weekend had rendered the rock hard clay malleable and I was able to plant twelve new perennials that I found on sale. I was also able to rearrange the last plants that went into Uncle Doc’s Garden. Now there remained the matter of cleaning the patio, which has been a dumping ground and pot graveyard for far too long.

Scrubbing clay pots isn’t my idea of a good time, but if they were going to be stored, they certainly couldn’t be put away in that condition. I filled the washtub and a utility tub and got to work with a scrub brush, fragrant with the lingering scent of Eau de Off. While I scoured, I heard that old familiar BZZZZZ.

Sure enough, a pair of hummers zipped past me in an aerial dogfight of miniature proportions. I managed to get most of the pots cleaned up and the area somewhat sorted through when I decided to sweep up more of the detritus. Pausing for a minute to enjoy the geraniums, BZZZ sounded next to me. I turned very slowly because I was standing next to a feeder. A female hummer helped herself to a port that was almost opposite me, but still close enough that I could observe her. She didn’t bother perching. She dove at the yellow flower and backed up over and over. She figured I was okay, and began to take her time slurping up the syrup.

I was transfixed. She was actually a little bigger than I expected, but she was definitely more interested in food than in the stupid human who gaped at her as she dined. When finally she rose into the upper reaches of the dogwood, I realized I hadn’t been doing much breathing!

By now, we would be dining on the screened porch, where we have ringside seats to the hummer feeders. I’m still miffed that the porch painting didn’t get underway until very recently, but at least I got a treat today. I hope we’ll be able to have supper outside soon. Watching those little helicopters zing this way and that is one of summer’s finest pleasures.

07/07/2009
The YouDocs had an interesting piece in today’s paper about the efficacy of Vitamin F. They noted that people who are involved in the lives of their friends, and who have someone with whom they can talk on a regular basis, are healthier than others.

This got me to thinking about the various strands of friends in our lives. Big Kitty and I are the kind who are always happy to be social, but if left to our own devices, would squirrel ourselves away like little hermits. We’re content with our books, our music, our computers, the newspaper, NPR, and so on. The only really social thing he does is contra dancing. I’m a tad better than that, but not much.

On the other hand, thanks to Maffa, I’ve learned to like women. I didn’t used to. In fact, I considered female friends a necessary evil. With a few exceptions, such as Little Linda and Hare, or Julie Anne, Janette and Bettye, I avoided really close ties with women. And, aside from Little Linda, I don’t hear from the others - Bettye passed away a year ago and I do feel sad about that. She was a great person, but we hadn’t spoken since I sent her a 40th birthday greeting.

But living in the South has lessons for people like me. I’ve learned the value of keeping up with people, even when they make it hard - like moving to another continent! When we meet people on the street in the South, it’s the rule to ask, “How’s your mother?” The only way you get out of it is when Mama has passed. (We don’t die here in the South. We pass. We go on to our great reward. We slip away to Jesus.) The only other way to get out of it is to know that Mama is locked up, either at the home, or that other institution.

Learning how to be a girlfriend turned out to be an important health benefit. Who knew? So if that’s the case, Maffa shouldn’t ever be sick, and neither should another friend (who will put out a hit on me if I mention her by name or disease). Once again, I have to question the YouDocs, simply because they also tout the virtues of statins, and this in the face of mounting concerns about their side effects. I also disagree with a lot of their food advice.

Friendship can be frought with issues that defy explanation and cause consternation. It can be the source of great amounts of stress and anxiety. Being close to people means laying bare certain aspects of one’s self that often are better left unknown by others. Knowing I am crazy is one thing. Letting other people experience that craziness firsthand is a giant leap of faith. It’s like my friend from New York said, “I don’t like to share a room. I’m an old lady. I fart and snore in my sleep.” I get it.

On the other hand, Maffa and I know this kind of stuff about each other. Once upon a time, before middle age took hold of our bodies and transformed them into shapes we never imagined, we wore the same size bra, for pete’s sake. She is the sort of person who can take a lot of disparate items of apparel and transform them into a fully accessorized outfit. I have to buy the things that go together, and accessories are a mysterious and murky subject I’ve never grasped. Where she agonizes over the nutritional content and the possible bad effects of certain foods, I eat with abandon.

Part of the wisdom in having close ties, however, is the idea that if she’s feeling bad and like she is a hopeless mess, Maffa can call. She knows I will acknowledge she’s a mess, but she also knows I’m the one who said, “Look, if that bastard can’t see all the good that’s in you, then he’s blind and he doesn’t deserve you.” She also hears me telling her she ain’t broke and to quit trying to fix herself. I mean it, too. She’s a great person, with a motherlode of wisdom. She always knows the right thing to do in ticklish situations.

Having someone who is unselfish with her time and her affection for her friends is really important. Maffa knows just how to shoehorn me out of my rut. This year, our rut was disrupted by a convention. We missed our annual girlfriends’ outing at the Replacements Ltd. annual yard sale. If I had known it ahead of time, there’s no way in hell I would have gone to that convention! On the other hand, I formed relationships with other women from all over the country. That is something I wish I could share with Maffa.

Another friend, who doesn’t like to me write about her, has a different dynamic with me. I am technically the elder, but she is the leader. She’s smart and she’s savvy. She’s also got style. However, she has a knack for not keeping in touch and then wondering why I haven’t called her! Maddening, but who cares? She has insight into some of my quirks that has helped me be more at ease with myself. That’s really helpful for me, but I often think I don’t provide anything that important for her. I understand her family dynamic, but even that need has waned with the years.

Thus it is with friendships. They ebb and flow as our proximity to one another shifts. We hang onto them, or not. We nurture some of them and cool some of them. When they need attention, sometimes we aren’t too good about feeding and petting them. What the YouDocs failed to cover was the unhealthy ones.

They really didn’t get into friendships that have become destructive or detrimental. Nor did they discuss how stressful some friendships can be. So, I take what the YouDocs have to say with a grain of salt. They’re getting rich on dispensing advice, but the bottom line is that we are all responsible for the things that add significance to our lives. It doesn’t matter if it is letting the neighbor’s dog out when she has a late meeting or picking up the phone in anticipation of being on there for an hour. It also doesn’t matter if it is the email we send telling about what has been happening. It’s the connections that count.

07/05/09

I promised a friend I would date these things, but doggone it, I always forget. Anyway, it is Wimbleton time, and Big Kitty has had the tournaments on. He mutes the t.v. and follows in his own fashion.

I know nothing about tennis. I had a unit of it in high school p.e., but I never did catch on to the scoring or any of that. I earned my gentlewoman’s C in gym class, and my mother was relieved. (My sister and I were notably non-athletic.) Watching the Cubs is another matter, but that’s a story for another day.

As I watched Serena examining her trophy yesterday, I thought what a nice tea tray it would make! I guess that makes me a philistine, but all those silver trophies wind up in someone’s antique store, and they are mostly pretty useless pieces. You’d think they’d at least award a silver teapot, or something she could actually use.

We have public tennis courts in the Star City, and every now and then I see people on the one near our house. They aren’t all dressed up in the proper tennis togs; they are just out there having some fun. It isn’t like the women who, on their way home from The Club would stop by my friend’s nursery to browse and bitch about our selection and prices. (Of course, they would gladly plunk down 1/3 again as much for the same stock at the new nursery on their side of town, just so they could say they bought it at…) Here they would be, in their tennis clothes. Not a speck of dirt on that outfit, and no sweat stains on their color-coordinated visors. Did they really play? I often wondered, as I sweated my way around the nursery, dragging hoses.

Recently, I learned The Club and another country club are in talks about merging. It would seem that if they combine memberships, they’d have a collective of about 1000 members. Not too many people in terms of their bottom line. I guess that’s what happens when you exclusive yourself out of the neighborhood!

This amuses me greatly as I really have no use for those institutions. In fact, last week I had a huge guffaw when I read an invitation Big Kitty and I got to come tour The Club at an open house. Mind you, his mother is a member. And recently, in an effort to help her with her food and drink minimum, we had brunch there. The food was cold as ice and all of it had been frozen. Nothing homemade except the omelets. The pancakes were made from food service batter in cartons.

So what is their problem? In an economic downturn, the exclusivity they once enjoyed is now no longer meeting their needs. Does this mean that if an electrician and a retired teacher show up that they will offer us a membership? I have my doubts, but if they are also in talks to merge two country clubs, then perhaps they are having to reconsider their membership policies.

Ironic, when you think of it. One club was begun by the town Jewish golfers because The Club wouldn’t admit Jews. Now the two need each other to survive? Oy.

My mother-in-law can ill afford that damned membership, but she hangs onto it like some kind of badge of honor. She is still living in the day when being admitted was a sign of affluence. Hell, they needed that money, so who was snowing whom? When she and her late husband joined, The Club was still subsidized by corporate money. In those days, law firms, the railroad and other large entities paid for their upper echelon employees to belong to the country club, and junior partners were sponsored by senior partners. It was so they could network and do business on the golf course.

Nowadays, the corporate perk of country club membership has gone the way of knickers and argyles. Only a certain elitist segment of the Star City’s population sees it as part of their lifestyle. You don’t see young families joining the country club because they don’t run big fitness programs with nursery care for the stay at home mommies. Instead, they join mega churches that have those offerings in their ‘family life’ centers.

In many ways, the country club is a tradition among the upper classes that is no longer important. There are all kinds of golf courses around here, and my mother-in-law’s insistence that The Club’s is the best is heartily disputed by my golfing acquaintances. As one guy told me, each course around here offers something a little different, and he’d rather pay a daily greens fee and have the variety. Says it keeps his game sharp and he doesn’t have the overhead of “those abominable food and drink minimums.”

So, Wimbleton, because of being a fixture on the tennis scene, continues with its traditions. The Club, because of it’s antiquated membership system, is about to become extinct. Both instances are win-win in my book.

The morning paper greeted me with an intriguing headline. Sarah Palin is resigning as the governor of Alaska. Wow, I thought, that’s interesting.

The pundits all had their opinions, of course, and so did the blogs that Big Kitty reads. While we scraped and sanded the porch, we discussed it, and it comes down to this. It’s hard to dress up in designer clothes when you are hampered by the rules and regulations, not to mention ethics and etiquette, of being a public official. It’s hard to be squirreled away in Alaska, when all the action is in the lower 48.

Some are saying she’s throwing away her chances at the 2012 election. I say she knew she didn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hawaii of getting the nomination because the moderates are desperately trying to stitch the party together.

The other piece of this is that Sarah Palin got used to all the attention. She loved being all dressed and made up and being in front of the cameras. The trouble is, her shoot from the hip style got her into trouble as a politician. That wouldn’t be the case if she was the female version of Rush Limbaugh. And certainly, she is photogenic enough for television, so there it is. I’m thinking she got an offer that would insure a designer wardrobe, a lot of money for a big family, and she wouldn’t have to worry about staying inside the lines.

Did her kids really want her out of politics? Probably. The teenagers were probably thinking how good it would be to be able to make out with their boy/girlfriends at the drive-in without worrying about the paparazzi for the National Enquirer being in the next snowmobile over. If Mama’s on t.v., though, they’re gonna continue to have problems - at least it won’t be hurting Mama’s shot at the White House.

If I’m a heavy-hitter moderate in the Republican party, I grease the wheels to make sure she gets some kind of television deal because then she’s only a talking head. She and Rush and O’Reilly and Ann can continue to stir up the conservatives, but the moneyed moderates can retake the party.

Is this the last we’ll see of her? Never. That woman loves the limelight, the cameras love her face, and she’s still the darling of the right wing nuts. I’m thinking her picture will produce a lot of material for the sperm bank, so maybe she’s not a total waste after all.

I never miss an opportunity to pet a cat. Sometimes a cat presents himself and I really do not want to be pestered, like when I read the paper on the floor and Simon decides to sit on the box scores, or the NASCAR racing order. But overall, when one of the boys puts himself in my way and I have a free hand, he gets a few healthy scratches on the head, behind the ears, or just a nice stroke along his backbone.

Why, you non-cat people might wonder, do I bother with such a mundane thing, and why write about it. Simple. It’s a stress-buster like no other.

Those of us who are owned by cats are unanimous in our assertion that if everyone in the world had a purring cat on his or her lap when stressed, it would reduce the world’s aggressive, destructive behaviors exponentially. My cats are like homing devices when it comes to knowing when to show up. They aren’t as tuned in as our late feline, Polly, but when you combine the efforts of three rambunctious males, it’s pretty close. One or the other will know, and then they tag team.

Recently I was the subject of a massive temper tantrum by a woman who had been sorely misinformed on some issues. I was hurt, angry, and feeling really sore about the whole thing in general. Then something magical happened. I needed to sort through some things, and decided to do it on the living room floor. I was lapped. Out of nowhere appeared Simon. He stuck around long enough to get hugged and cuddled (he’s the one who French kisses, mind you) and then ambled off. Charlie wandered by and stretched out near my papers. He effected his spine stretching yoga twist that displays his white diamonds, which is so adorable that I have to mess with that tummy. No sooner does he exit, when I hear the “brrrrt, brrrrt” of Barney, who is bringing me a ball or a mousie to play with.

It wasn’t long before my shoulders went back down, my neck muscles relaxed and my breathing got deeper. The power of cat.

Today Charlie is hanging around trying to get the attention of The House Goddess. She isn’t crazy about cats, but Charlie is determined to convert her. She talks to him, telling him he’s wasting his time. Um, sorry Goddess. The mere fact that you are talking to him is a sign that he is working his black and white magic on you!

During nap time, I often find another black and white kitty who wanders into the yard. He comes for his nip fix. He likes to hang out with me and he has learned I’m good for a nice little neck rub, a belly rub and an ear job. Cats are like Ferengis when it comes to ear jobs… That contact between human and feline is soothing. They impart their calming energy and we impart our affection. It’s a nice trade agreement. It keeps itself in balance, unlike our relations with China.

I’ve noticed that I am surrounded by friends who have cats. Carmen has Felix and Daisy. Jennie Sue has Holly. Allyson has Midnight. Linda has Charlie, and so on… We had a dinner group that boasted ten people at its inception. All five households had at least one cat. When my nephew was forced to give up his two cats, I was saddened. There was something endearing about a 6′4″ guy’s guy stretched out on his sofa with an orange cat basking on his lap. Max missed Steve when he traveled, and would demonstrate this by leaving a calling card.

That’s the thing cat-less people don’t understand. Cats own us, and when we’re not around, they grieve. Sure, they sleep away most of the day, so why could they miss us? They’re like humans in that they never miss us until we aren’t there. While I was at convention, the three terrors had Big Kitty all to themselves, but each, in his own way, let me have it for deserting them. They have gotten used to me being here and they bully me accordingly. And, like any responsible cat person, I fall in line like I’m supposed to.

This weekend we will be working on the screened porch. We miss dining out of doors, and the cats are rebelling about not having the cushioned chairs and the tabletop for naps. We’re anxious to return to our normal summertime routine, but the motivation is the three sets of eyes that glare accusingly when there is no comfortable perch from which to guard their territory.

Yep. It’s tough living up to a cat’s standards…

Dry weather has set in here in The Star City. Yesterday I ran up the water bill with a brand new giant, economy-sized oscillating sprinkler in the back. The front needs it today, but first I have arranged a play date with the Neuton mower. Okay, here is my plug for the greatest mower of all time.

I hate gasoline powered mowers. They get to be the devil to start, they require all kinds of maintenance, and then you have to drain them for the winter. They are also noisy and emit pollution. If I want Briggs & Stratton decibels, I have my black and white charmer, Charlie at five in the morning! A few years ago, after our dear Mr. Johnson passed, we had Lawn Lady. The first year was okay, the second was a disaster. I decided to investigate this new mower I had seen in the gardening magazines.

I lucked into a pre-season online deal and popped for the Neuton, and even though the blade on my early model is small, it really doesn’t matter. I love this machine. I don’t like the trimmer attachment, but that’s okay. Black and Decker came out with a cheap battery powered trimmer and I’m happy with it. When it croaks, I’ll get the new Neuton hand-held trimmer. The mower, however, is the bee’s knees. I keep a pair of batteries charged. That way I can alternate, and I have gotten to the point where I only need most of one battery to do both front and back.

Those who have seen the back understand why, in spite of the small amount of real estate, it is a chore to mow. It’s steep. It requires healthy ankles and knees, not to mention good upper body strength to shove the mower into tough corners. This year, I have been blessed with all of the above, so I’m getting a weekly workout!

Anyway, Big Kitty watered in my absence, but there were plants that got neglected because he’s not one to check for details. He doesn’t do garden. He does computer. Today I will see if some goodies have revived. I’m hoping for the best. If not, well, c’est la vie.

Now it is time for the garden project to swing into post-convention scheduling. I have more plans to execute, and in order to dig, I have to water thoroughly because this clay is brick-hard. That is the issue that has dogged my efforts all these years. That is the reason I about killed myself digging up those little weeds with the red stems before I left! I checked the prairie garden last night and saw that I did a better job than I thought. I’m going to run the sprinkler on it later on and hopefully I can eradicate the last of those little interlopers.

Next up is a trip to the mulch place for a truckload of hard work. If I can get things mulched before SUUSI, I will consider this gardening season a genuine success. Everything after the heavy-duty mulching will be gravy. Oh, sure, I will still be out there with the Japanese weeder, doing damage to errant pokeweed, locust, paper mulberry and other assorted uninvited miseries, but mulch is what makes the garden look better, feel better and  grow better. The hostas need it badly, and there, it pays to be careful. They also need heavy duty slug control!

And so it goes. It’s good to be home.