A Cold Wind and Curious Cats in Everyday Ramblings

I apologize for all the iris pictures lately but it is a banner year for them here and I am enthralled. I was talking to Kes last night and she was telling me that one of her knitting teachers develops her own varieties. The picture I put up on Instagram yesterday has almost an exact mirror opposite color scheme to these beauties across the road. And I appear to be attracted to purple this year.

Kes has been having some auspicious encounters lately in the rather small community she lives in compared to metropolitan Portland. In the grocery store she was commiserating with an acquaintance about the recent loss of her dog, and how hard it is in general to lose our beloved pets and it turns out that this woman is the one who rescued a litter of four abandoned kittens and their mom because of a foreclosure and had them spayed.

Two of those cats turned out to be…Jack and Leo! Our cousin cats.

The woman was close to tears when she found out what a good home they had gone to and how adored they are. Awww.

Speaking of cats…we have had a big couple of days discovering new things.

Because Sammy was pathological about any kind of water for the whole 13 years I lived with him I had to close the bathroom door when I took a bath or a shower. Otherwise he would just yell at me as if the house were on fire and get all end of the world worked up. Not good for a cat with a heart condition…

So when Carlo and Diego arrived I just kept that up. Last night, (as part of my mystery illness my skin is acting up) I was taking a soothing bath and Diego just stood outside and yelled and threw himself against the door and was making a huge stressed out racket so I got up and opened the door.

He was quite intrigued by the whole wet mom bath thing. We both survived without injury or drama and the rest of my bath was much more peaceful.

Today’s big discoveries were ice cubes (I had them in the sink to stop the cooking after I steamed a big beautiful bunch of rainbow chard in batches). Carlo was playing with them. Who knew? And drinking straws. I had one out because I bought another small box of early sweet strawberries. Hours of fun, particularly when the straw goes under the refrigerator and mom has to fish it out.

(if you don’t already know this, one uses a drinking straw to pop the green tops off fresh strawberries, a fact I learned via a link XD posted here on Prosebox.)

Oh, and Diego let me clip the claws on his thumbs this morning and we both lived to tell the tale. I had my haircut yesterday and my hair person was saying that it was really a trust breakthrough that he let me touch “all” his toes and I thought that was a lovely way to put it. Diego and I are bonding in that deep way cats and people sometimes do.

My hair is really short. It is a whole new look for me, easy to care for and that is good because I don’t have a lot of extra time to fuss around with it.

I have a brunch date tomorrow with my poetry friend M. I just adore her. She is busy, still working full time, has grandmotherly responsibilities, sings in two choirs and writes poetry as well as keeping house for her lovely husband. We manage this now about twice a year. It will be so cool when we both retire as that will open up new options for getting together.

We had a cold wind blow through today and that incredibly creepy guy was digging another hole in the vacant lot again today. This time he had help. The hole was so big I couldn’t see who it was. He must think there are drugs or cash in there.

My hope is that he finds what he is looking for and is so inspired he needs to go to, oh say, Mexico and then… karma unfolds. I would very much like to never ever under any circumstances see him again. I swear this is like something straight out of an Elmore Leonard story. Shiver.

Still…its all good. Whatever it is… Or at least that is the story I tell myself.

Last updated May 03, 2015