Kitten update

Kittens' Nest Site
Originally uploaded by JugglingScarves.

This is where they used to live. The nest was right in that hole (it's in about the middle of the picture). Compared to that wee space, I'm thinking a cat carrier with a towel, water bottle, makeshift litter pan in the back, and food brought in a few times a day must be a great big step up, comfort-wise. The view isn't as good, though. Nothing to look at but the baseboards of the kitchen cabinets. Also, there's the whole matter of being on the wrong side of a locked door.

Shortly after the last blog entry, I emailed a friend of a friend and asked for advice. She suggested I call that adoption/fostering agency I'd mentioned last time. I assumed (wrongly, thank goodness) that they wouldn't be open on the weekend. Apparently they're open to the public only on weekends. I talked to someone Sunday who promised to forward my information to the person who coordinates fostering and adoption for cats. I gave her as many of the particulars as I had (not sure of age. I think 6 weeks--eyes are open, ears are up, they have teeth, and can eat solid food), told the woman I was planning to take them to the vet sometime this week, and gave her every phone number I have. She had a great suggestion, which I employed immediately.

She suggested I cut off the end of a shoe-box, put it in the back of the carrier, and put some cat box filler in it. She said they'd probably know what to do with it, and this way I wouldn't need to change towels nearly so often. I was a little skeptical about the "they'll know what to do" part. They've never seen a litter box in their lives. Guess what? Shortly after I did that, I heard one of them scratching around in it. Son of a gun! Wish dogs were that easy to potty train. Or people, for that matter.

I've been letting them out every once in a while to run around in the bath tub--treating it sort of like a play pen. While they were in the tub the first time, I tried a water dish again, using a saucer instead of the plastic thing I used last time. It took me dipping my finger in the water and rubbing their mouths with it before they paid any attention to the saucer. Then they drank it dry, twice. That made me nervous. I didn't want them getting dehydrated, but I was pretty sure that if I put a water dish in that carrier with them they'd just knock it over again.

Well, duh! How many hamsters and gerbils did my sister and I have when we were kids? What about a water bottle? I could hook it to the metal grille of the door. And so, kitties back in the carrier after play time, I went out and got one. Works great.

I need to reiterate that I've never done this before. Please remember that what may look like simple common sense has to filter through a bit of worry that I might accidentally harm while trying to help.

I think I've got one boy and one girl. They're both tan and black tabbies. The male's stripes are much thinner than the (I think) female's. I say I think she's a she because she doesn't like me picking her up, so I only got a quick glance. The male is much more outgoing, a risk-taker. He's the one who was on top of the stump hollering for help. He was the first one down the tree, the first one to climb up the gully, and the first one to let me pet him. He talks to me a lot.

She is reserving judgment for now. Sometimes she'll give me a long, measuring look and then mew, and sometimes she gives a little baby hiss. Comes out more like "Hhhh" than an adult cat's hiss. I'm perversely pleased by the hissing. Everytime she does it, I think, "Good for you! Don't trust someone just because they're keeping you alive. They could have ulterior motives."

I tried my vet for an appointment, and even after I explained the situation, the receptionist said the best she could do was June 14th. That's two weeks away! I told her apologetically that I'd check with other vets first to see if I could find anything sooner. A coworker suggested the place she uses--it's a veterinary hospital. It's much closer to me, and there are a bunch of vets associated with it, so there'd be a better chance of an earlier appointment. I did that, and now we're going Friday at 4. Much better than June [expletive] 14th.

One of the things the receptionist at the hospital asked was about names for the kittens. I guess they need it for their files. "I, um, I'm trying not to get too attached. I can't keep them." So for now the boy is "Kitten One" and the girl is "Kitten Two."

Delilah is still acting funny. She's been extremely quiet. She's 3/4 Siamese (mom was full, dad was 1/2), and is usually very, very vocal. Since Saturday she's maybe given me two very quiet meows. Sticks to me like flypaper, though. When she's in my lap, she purrs up a storm. But then, she usually does. Since her first look into the carrier, she hasn't been back into the kitchen. It's like she's deleted it from her mental map of the apartment. I've moved her food and water to the bathroom, near the sink.

She came into that bathroom once when I had the kittens running around in the tub--they're relaxed enough now that they're starting to play, by the way. I think that's a good sign. Anyway, she let me hold her while she watched them for a moment or two. She didn't growl or anything, just took it in. Then she asked to leave. I wish I knew what she's thinking. I hope she's not worried that she's getting replaced.

Unexpected houseguests

There was a feral cat living in the woods behind my building. This past Monday was the last time I saw her, and the first time I knew she was a mommy. I was coming back from the laundry room, and she was on the sidewalk ahead of me. Instead of vanishing into the underbrush the way she always does, she started meowing. Sounded distressed. And then I heard it: teeny little kitten mews in the woods. One of the kittens was out of the nest, looking for her, and she was torn between whether to go put the baby back where it belonged or lure me away from the nest. I saw it, too. It was a minature version of her--white with stripes. I decided to let myself be led away.

A few days later, I heard the kitten again, very loud and insistent. Its voice was joined by another, just as urgent-sounding. Some of my neighbors came out to see what the noise was about, and one of them got right up to where the kittens were. He said there were three of them in a tree trunk. We were conflicted about whether to take them out of the nest or not. I figured Mama Cat was just off hunting somewhere, and would be back soon. We agreed to leave them there, untouched, because if she smelled human scent on them she might not feed them when she came back.

When I came home from work yesterday, I heard nothing from the woods. Today, however, more crying. And now there are only two kittens. That little whitish one is gone. I don't know what happened, and I don't think I want to know. The two remaining ones were so hungry that they came out of the woods to me. I sat on a rock in the gully that separates the woods from the lawn, and watched them climb down the tree trunk, come through the underbrush, and walk right up to me. They'd sniff me and back away, but they never left entirely. I'm pretty sure now that something has happened to the mother cat. Either she tangled with a ground hog (I've seen quite a few of them around this year), or got hit by a car, I don't know. The kittens were hungry enough start chewing dead leaves they found in the gully.

So I went into the apartment and got the cat carrier, put a towel in it, and went back out to the woods. I didn't even need to climb back into the gully -- they scaled the side of it to get to me. They're now in my kitchen. I fed them some dry cat food (it's all I have. They ate it, though), and gave them a little bowl of water. The water may have been a mistake. All they do is step in it.

I need to get them to a vet, to see if they're healthy. I'm pretty sure they have fleas, and goodness know what else. They've been living in the woods, after all. Of course I decided to play savior after my vet's office closed for the day. I doubt very much any of the vets in town have Sunday hours, and Monday is Memorial Day--no one will be open. So it looks like Tuesday, provided I'm not on the reference desk at an inconvenient time.

I have no idea what to do with them after a vet's visit. I can't keep them. My lease only allows for one animal, and that would be Delilah. The local SPCA is a little too quick to destroy animals. Now granted, these are kittens and probably easier to place than an adult cat, but still, I don't want to run the risk of them being destroyed. In reaction to the SPCA's practices, a group has formed that acts as a sort of pet adoption agency/foster center. These animals live in peoples' homes temporarily until someone else adopts them. There's usually a waiting list to get animals into this program.

Delilah's been in the kitchen to see what's making all the noise in the cat carrier (they were crying to be let out a while ago. They seem to have settled down now). I don't know what's going on in her head. She hid for a while, then sat on the bed staring at me for a while, and now she's curled up asleep--nowhere near me. Normally when I'm on the computer, she's right next to me in her bed. I think she's upset with me.

If Mama Cat is alive, I'm sorry for the distress this will cause her. But I've spoken with other people who saw this cat more regularly than I did, and she hasn't been seen in days. I feel justified in taking these little things in. I think they would have starved to death out there.

I just wish I knew what to do now. Maybe the vet will have some ideas. She probably gets things like this all the time.

Inspection imminent

My apartment complex is getting inspected soon. I had a feeling this was going to happen, what with the new CO- and smoke-detectors they put in last February.

I came back from fetching my camera from the UPS depot two weeks ago to find a typed-up letter from the management (we all got one) warning that the maintenance folks would be in and out of apartments for a while, doing pre-inspection inspections, to see what needed fixing before the Code Dude (not his official title) came to look things over.

It's hard to take a person seriously when they write you a letter asking you to make sure your apartment is kept in a "clean and tidy manor." Spell-check strikes again.

So anyhow, that's where I've been for a week and a half, furiously cleaning my apartment. The usual image of my mother standing on her hips looking disgusted has been replaced by one of a faceless bureaucrat with a clipboard--someone who really is an authority on pig sties.

The bathroom looks great, the kitchen pretty good, the living and sleeping areas are a nightmare. I have come to a conclusion: I have too much stuff. Just when I think I've got a handle on things I find more crap. DVDs, CDs, magazines (mostly about embroidery or jewelry-making), yarn, embroidery supplies, jewelry-making supplies, books. Good Lord! The books! They're everywhere! I am officially not allowed to buy one more book until I read everything I have.

I also need to stop hanging onto clothes that are too big for me. I don't ever want them to fit again, so why are they still there? And why oh why do I have so many socks? I probably won't need to do sock-laundry for the next two months. They're all white. All about the same length. Where did they all come from? I thought you were supposed to lose socks in the laundry, not find them. Or maybe this is what happens--at one end of a wormhole is a clothes-dryer. At the other, a closet floor. The socks get pulled through the wormhole and pop out the other side, having lost all color and distinguishing features.

Or maybe every once in a while I go buy socks, thinking for some strange reason that I don't have enough.

I have an entire shelf in my closet devoted to jigsaw puzzles. I haven't put together a puzzle since I got the computer, mainly because the computer sits on the only surface I have that's large enough to accommodate puzzles. Oh wait, I tell a lie. I remember buying a difficult one the week my Grandma was visiting. She was staying at my parents' place, and I went upstate for a visit, puzzle box under my arm. We spent most of our time chatting and putting that thing together. My mother was grateful. She always felt at a loss for how to keep her mother-in-law entertained.

I need that shelf space. I think a coworker of mine is going to be inheriting those puzzles, because she foolishly told me a few weeks ago that she's just recently picked that up as a hobby. I'll make sure I only give her the ones with all the pieces, though. I'm desperate, not cruel. Well, not today.

The cat is trying to figure out what the blue blazes is going on. The first few days, she hid every time I started to head off for work. If you'll remember from the post I did on cleaning back in February, the next step after cleaning is wrestling the cat into the pet carrier, to keep her from getting underfoot of whoever's coming that day. But she's not hiding anymore, because I haven't tried to crate her. I think she's decided that I'm just going crazy, and that I now enjoy spending my spare moments taking apart and slowly putting back together the various set-ups in my teeny little apartment.

Inspection isn't for another month. It was supposed to be this week, but the complex was granted an extension because they had a lot of things to fix. Whew. That gives me more time to get things organized. Although it means once I'm done, I'm not allowed to touch anything until the end of June. Hmmm. We'll have to see how that goes.

Comments

I've been hit by a rather aggressive spammer in my comments box. I've received the odd spam comment before now, sighed, shrugged, and deleted it. This particular program, though, sent 12 in 15 minutes. So on goes the word verification.

What, me worry?

Called my Mom recently and during the course of the conversation she mentioned that she's having a stress test soon. She had some sort of painful attack recently that she thinks has to do with a hernia, but the doctor wants to rule out a heart condition. She kinda slid it in there, between talk about the new riding mower they just bought, how the garden is shaping up this year, and what silliness the dog has been up to lately.

She then informed me that she wouldn't have told my sister or me at all, except that we made "such a big deal" about that time she thought she'd had a stroke and never told us until after all the tests came back negative. They still don't know what happened that time, but it's never recurred. I can't have a hangnail without her needing to know about it, but she thinks she might have had a stroke and is surprised when we got mad at her for keeping the information to herself? She didn't want us to worry, I suppose, which means I'm expected to act nonchalant now that she's told me about this test. If I get all upset, see, she'll never tell me anything again.

So I'm going to sit here quietly and churn stomach acid for a while, until I get told that my Mommy's okay.

Watching the tumbleweeds blow by

It's been like a ghost town since Friday of finals week. Graduation was this past weekend, and summer classes started this morning. It's still very, very quiet out there. And so I give you "Stray Bits II"

Bumper sticker: "EARTH FIRST! We'll screw up the other planets later."

Best Underground Newspaper/Alternative Press Title Ever: (So far. I'm only in the B's) The Buddhist Third Class Junk Mail Oracle (has the variant title of The Barking Rabbit)

With Friends Like These: Overheard on a bus. The young lady was discussing the return to town of her "best friend from high school" with (I assume) her boyfriend:

"You remember Bob. Dirty, skanky, hippie Bob?"
"Ohhhhh. Yeah."
"He's back. Still filthy." Silence for a moment. Then, "You wanna go over and say hi?"
He shrugs. She pulls the cord, and they get off at the next stop.

Huzzah

My camera's come home! Yay! In celebration (and to make sure it's working) I took the accompanying picture of the cat. The second I pointed the camera at her, she came over all coy and decided to pretend she was asleep.

The hafla was a lot of fun. Some of my (more advanced) fellow students performed -- one to Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride," which went over pretty well. My teacher and two of the members of the Tribal class did some improv dancing, the teacher playing zills the whole time. Then they did a piece of a choreography that they're putting together for a show next month -- dancing with swords! That was pretty cool. At one point they were each balancing a blade on one hip while dancing, and at another point they had the blades on their heads (like this). Wow.

After all the performance pieces were done, we moved some of the tables out of the way, joined hands, and did the "circle bellady" dance we'd been taught while our teacher played zills and her private student/apprentice played a drum. I managed to do that without tripping over myself. Then she put on some music and we cut loose. Well, most of us did. I got hit by a wave of shyness and sat down a little while after we were done the circle dance. I preferred to watch people who knew what they were doing and make mental notes.

I brought my friend the Chief Loon with me. As we were leaving the party she turned to me and said, "Now I want to belly dance." She also pointed out that you could really see the difference between our teacher and most of the students. She's right. When we dance, we concentrate on the muscle we want to move and hold everything else fairly still. When my teacher dances it appears effortless and fluid. I wonder how long it took for things to get like that.

I'm noticing some improvement in my own dancing. This past Sunday was the start of a new 8-week session. Most of the women who were in the class with me last time have graduated to Belly Dance 2 -- they'd been in BD1 for quite a while, some of them at least a year. Last Sunday we had six new people, one other woman from the previous session, and me. Our teacher went through the whole introduction again--positioning, arms, walking--and then had us walk in a circle, just like last time. I caught sight of myself in the mirrors and was pleased. I look like I know what I'm doing. I don't have to remind myself to keep my lower abdomen pulled in, or to roll my shoulders back. Looks like I'm catching on.

I'm on my lunch break, so I have to cut this short. I'll try to remember for next time to explain the difference between "tribal" belly dance and what I'm learning.

Desperately waiting for fashions to change

Clothes-shopping makes me grumpy.

All I wanted was a skirt and blouse to wear to the hafla today. The skirt was easy, I found that right off. Apparently the long, flowing "bohemian" style is back in. Great, wonderful, that'll be good to dance in. Now, finding a top, that's another story. How come all the summer tops are sheer, or have these teeny tiny little spaghetti straps? Call me old-school, but I really don't want my undergarments showing through or peeking out from under my clothes. It took 10 minutes to find a skirt, two hours to find a blouse. Thank goodness I wasn't looking for slacks, I'd probably have been in the mall until the place closed for the night.

Part of the down side of living in a college town is that most of the clothes you find in shops are aimed at the twenty-something set. I haven't been twenty-something for a while, and even if I did want to dress younger, I don't much care for the style right now. Almost everything looks like it's been shrunk in the wash. The clothes are too tight, and the waists of the bottoms don't even attempt to meet the waists of the blouses. You get about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch of exposed skin. It looks all right on a certain body type (that of a stick insect, I mean), but for those of us who aren't a toned and fit size 6, it just looks horrible. We keep getting told that the U.S. is the fattest population on Earth, and then we're expected to wear sausage casings. Is this to prove a point? Are they trying to embarass us into looking better? 'Cause it ain't working. Most people just wear that horrible stuff whether it looks right on them or not, and when I walk down the street I wonder whether no one checks a mirror before they leave the house anymore.

I'm not what you'd call slender. In fact, I'm a bit chunky. I'm working on fixing that, and since I started a couple of years ago I've lost 100 pounds. Then my Grandma died, I got a bit depressed, and 20 of those lost pounds found their way back home again...but I am resolved. They are not here permanently.

I'm nowhere near my goal weight yet. The losing of those pounds only brought me down from "obese" to "overweight." I'm still not in any sort of shape to be wearing clothes that expose my belly. Funny, then, that I should take up belly dancing as a hobby, where the end result (supposedly) is to get up and dance in front of people in a costume that shows a lot of skin. I figure by the time I'm coordinated enough to do that, I'll be closer to the way I want to look. It's a very, very long-term goal.

And in the mean time, I guess if I want to find an outfit, I'll need to take a day off of work to do it. Oy.

Must dash. Going to go paint my toenails. If I'm dancing barefoot, my feet should look happy, no?

What's been going on

There was a forest fire yesterday, on a mountain the next town over. This mountain doubles as the local ski resort. They had it mostly under control by this morning, but have lost about 400 acres of forest. Luckily, no one was hurt, though I'm sure the wildlife didn't get off so easily. The fire started when a tree fell on a power line and set off sparks. We haven't had much rain lately, which is why the thing caught as fast as it did. We couldn't see the fire at all where I live, but we got a lot of the smoke. It smelled of autumn (when people around here tend to rake their fallen leaves into big piles and burn them), and yet it looked like spring. It's an odd juxtaposition, and contradictory sensory input made for much confusion in the brain. At least it did with me.

I know it's been a while since I posted. Sorry. I've got a project at work that involves a lot of typing in Word and Excel, and the last thing I want to do when I get home is sit in front of another computer and type some more. Not to mention that the weather has been glorious, which keeps me out until dark. All sorts of trees are flowering. There are lilacs in bloom everywhere and sometimes when I pass one I get overcome with the need to go bury my nose in the blossoms -- after first checking for bees, of course.

It's finals week for the university. A very tense hush has settled over the area. All around campus and in various eating-places downtown you will find bleary-eyed, overcaffeinated, anxious students, trying desperately to cram into their brains every stray fact from every page of notes from every class they went to over the past four months. The library is open until 2 AM this week, everyday until Friday. We close early on Friday because the last final starts at 6:15 PM. Every student who isn't taking a test or preparing to take one is either out getting drunk or has already skipped town for the summer.

I encountered my first "last final drunk" of the semester on the bus ride home today. It was approximately 6:30, she'd been drinking since 4, and I'm pretty sure she'd already hit the stage where she won't be remembering how she got home. She got off the bus looking like she wanted to hug all of us good bye, but she settled for a wave and a heartfelt (if slurred), "Have a great evening, everyone!"

My belly dance instructor has put together a hafla for this Saturday, which also happens to be my Ditter's birthday. A "hafla," as it's been explained to me, is an Arabic word for "party." There's dancing involved. Anyone who wants to can get up and perform--they just have to run it by the teacher before the event. She's taught us all a dance that we're supposed to get up and do together at the end of the party--a folk dance, done in a circle. I'm looking forward to it. I'm bringing the Chief Loon with me.

That's about it. It really has been beautiful out. I wish I had my camera. I had to send it off to Connecticut to be fixed, and I don't know when I'll get it back. Soon, I hope. I bought a one-use camera, which is what I used to do before I had my digital one. I think I've been spoiled by being able to see right away how the picture will look, though.

I'll write more after the hafla. I'm sure there will be things to tell you.

Wikipedia meme

Here's a meme I found at Kinjo's blog:

Go visit Wikipedia.org, enter your birthdate (excluding year), and pick three events, two births, and one death that occurred on your birthday.

Events:

• 1693 - Date traditionally ascribed to Dom Perignon's invention of Champagne.
• 1944 - Holocaust: A tip from a Dutch informer leads the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse where they find Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family.
• 2005 - Prime Minister Paul Martin announces that Michaëlle Jean will be Canada's 27th — and first black — Governor General.

Births:

• 1901 - Louis Armstrong, American musician (d. 1971)
• 1929 - Yasser Arafat, Palestine leader (d. 2004)

Death:

• 1875 - Hans Christian Andersen, Danish writer (b. 1805)

"This is what happens when you play with Lincoln Logs too long."

Aha! Figured it out. File name was too long. Blogger doesn't get my mother's sense of humor. I went to my computer and changed the file's original (huge) name to "stackowood" before I uploaded it, and Houston, we have liftoff. Now I'm going to go change the my file's name back. I like Mom's title better.

Backstory and horses

These are Dan and Cee, the two horses that the Amish work crew brought in to help them clear the land where my parents wanted to build. There was a lot of salable timber in that lot, most of it cherry trees. In lieu of payment, the lumber was carried off, milled, and appraised. Then it was decided how much the work had been worth and how much wood would be an equitable trade. The leftover wood was handed back to my Mom and Dad. There are enough board feet of cherry in what they got back to cover the dining room and living room floors. The cherry will be lying almost directly over the place where it once stood. I think that's pretty cool.

This idea of a cabin in the woods has been an ongoing discussion for as long as I can remember. There have always been magazines about log home-building and books of floor plans tucked in various corners of wherever we were living. It's been so long in coming, I was beginning to think it would never happen. They bought part of this property back when I was in high school, some 20 years ago now. A little while after that, a lot right next to it came up for sale. They bought that too, and joined it to the first piece. This gave them access to the cul-de-sac at the top of the mountain. Now their property extends from the top of the mountain all the way to the bottom.

A couple of years ago they finally got the finances sorted out, found a plan they both liked from a company named Lincoln Log Homes -- yup, same name as the toy building blocks. There's even a link to the home-building site from the toy site. See it? In teeny print at the bottom?

The way the Amish got involved in the whole thing is like this: a lot of Amish having been moving into my parents' area in recent years, coming mainly from Ohio. It's a fairly large community now. Mom and Dad were out for a drive one afternoon, having a conversation about finding a contractor for the house. Just then they passed by an Amish farm that had a sign in the yard, advertising the farm's owner as a builder and carpenter. They pulled into the driveway and talked to the man, asking him if he thought he could build a log cabin from a kit. He thought he could, and he knew a lot of people who'd welcome the work. And just like that, with a few words and a handshake, they had the promise of a team of builders. He asked that they not refer to him as a "contractor"--something scriptural about contracts, apparently. So Mom asked what they should call him. "How about calling me 'Danny?'" he responded.

The horses in that picture are his. I'm not sure I have this right, but I think he's the one who milled the wood. He deals a lot with the English (the Amish really do refer to anyone from the outside world as "English." That wasn't just a gimmick they used in Witness), and has provided a lot of work for his fellow Amishmen. Wherever he lives, though, he tends to annoy the bishops. He skates right on the very edge of what's allowed, and I know of at least one time he was approached and formally corrected. He had too many worldly possessions to suit the group, apparently, and they told him he needed to give away one of his horses. Yes, he had to give it away, not sell it. He wasn't allowed to profit from the loss of it. So one of his little boys had to say goodbye to his pony. But Danny did get his point across to them. He made sure it didn't go to an Amishman. If he wasn't going to profit from his loss of it, neither would they. He gave it to a little English boy.

He finally got sick of them meddling in his affairs. I have a feeling this happens to him wherever he goes, too--he's lived a number of places. Not long after he finished my parents' house, he auctioned off his animals, his furniture, and various pieces of his farm equipment, sold the land, and moved his very large family to Virginia. Everybody misses him, especially my folks.

I live too far away to have witnessed most of the construction. Mom got a digital camera for Christmas a few years ago, and would email Ditter and me illustrated updates. The pictures had filenames like "still life with cement mixer" and "this is what happens when you play with Lincoln Logs too long." I've been trying to upload the latter to this Blog, but Blogger's having none of it. I wonder why. Oh well. Maybe next post. Since I didn't take the pictures myself, I can't load them into Flick'r, or I would. Well, I guess I am able, but I may not do it. Copyright infringement and all.

The new homestead

Every time I go visit my parents, something has changed. When I visited last November for Thanksgiving, they had installed cabinets and (finally!) a sink in the kitchen. Up to that point they'd been drawing water from the bath and toting it out to this contraption they had leftover from their days as restaurateurs -- an old salad bar cold table. It worked fairly well as a sink, except that it wasn't connected to a drain pipe. So dishes were washed in basins in this thing, then the water was schlepped back into the bathroom and flushed down the commode.

The cabinets, by the way, were finished by my Mom--in more ways than one. A lot of the people associated with the building of this house are Amish, and there have been a few miscommunications due to the fact that German (Old, Swiss, High German) is their first language, though most of them speak English very well. Mom and Dad had asked Andy (the carpenter) to leave the cabinets unfinished, meaning "don't paint them." Well, he didn't paint them. Nor did he sand, attach hardware or doors. He built the cabinets, shelves, and drawers, and left them "unfinished," as requested. So Mom spent a large chunk of autumn doing all of that before she could get to what she'd meant by finishing them -- painting them either a brown so dark that it's almost black ("espresso," I think that's called) or an antique white.

But as I say, that was done last November. This time it was the bath room that's looking more pulled together. More storage, and a funky toothbrush/soap/cup holder made out of brushed nickel that looks like a plumbing fixture. And huzzah! Knobs on the doors to the bathroom and the bedrooms! Previously, Mom had taped over the knob-hole of the bathroom door (for privacy's sake, much to my Dad's amusement. As if he's going to peep at her), which meant that if you shut the door all the way you had no way to open it again and you had to ask someone on the other side to let you out.

On Easter Monday, they'd decided the weather was such that they could start the heavy carpentry-type stuff again. Dad's been installing a radiant heat system in the floors. This cabin has a cathedral ceiling in part of it, so baseboard heat made no sense--the heat would leave the units, climb right up the wall and hang out at the roof line. Instead, the heat will come from piping in the floors, and heat the place from the ground up. Slight hitch: you can't use the system until all of it has been installed. They've spent the winter using propane space heaters and kerosene heaters, and lots and lots of layers of clothing. Brrrrr.

So Monday, I helped Mom shift everything in what is currently the dining area into what is currently the living room, after moving a few pieces of the living room to other parts of the house. With the floor clear, Mom and Dad then proceeded to lay down the wooden guides (that Dad designed himself) for the tubing of the heating system. Pip (their dog) and I stayed in the front bedroom, where I knitted and Pip sat on the bed, facing the doorway, watching the sub-floor get built. Every time Dad came into her line of sight, she wagged her tail. It was funny. Poor dog. She is not a fan of change, and that's all they've been doing for at least two years now--change in small increments.

There will be more later. I've promised G a blog entry with pictures of the horses that cleared the land, and that will need a bit of an explanation. It's way too much to add to this post. Let me leave you with a picture of how things looked outside as of last August.

Hippity hoppity

Perched atop the packed overnight bag by the front door, my cat is eyeing me suspiciously. There is an overflowing bowl of cat food and an extra bowl of water on the kitchen floor. The cat box is scrupulously clean. I went bed last night very, very early, and my alarm clock went off at 3:30 AM. She thinks Something Is Going On. She's pretty sure I'm leaving for a long weekend.

She disapproves of this activity. There's one she disapproves of more than my traveling without her, though, and that's when I take her along. For then she has to be in the cat carrier. She hates that thing. O, the indignity of riding in a box with a handle on top! The entire time she's in it, she shouts to be let out. She's three-quarters Siamese, and when she gets upset all that heritage comes right out her mouth. Drives people crazy. Who wants to hear "MAAAAAAAOOO!" from the back seat for hours on end? So she stays home, and I feel guilty about leaving her alone. I make sure I stay away no more than 4 days. Any longer than that, and I'd have to arrange for someone to come in and check on her. That means I'd have to clean. And I think you know how I feel about that.

I'm headed north-west to my parents' (not so) little log cabin in the woods for Easter. I don't know whether I'll be able to get online while I'm there. Mom was saying yesterday that they're having trouble with their Internet connection at the moment. And if the day is cloudy, turning on the computer would mean running the generator, which Dad might not want to do. Their house is solar-powered, and they're still in the experimental stages with it. They probably need another panel or two, but they're not sure yet.

On a completely unrelated note, I have an earworm that only knows Rodgers and Hammerstein tunes. Ever since last Friday's impromptu rendition of "The Farmer and the Cowman" in a public toilet, I have not been able to get the sound track from Oklahoma! out of my head. Argh! I keep getting ambushed at odd moments -- folding my laundry and suddenly I'm humming "Poor Judd Is Dead;" taking a walk over my lunch break, I suddenly realize I'm striding along in time to "It's a Scandal;" washing my hair this morning with "I Cain't Say No" on endless repeat. Help!

Taxi should be here in about half an hour to take me to the bus. I should probably go eat some breakfast and fuss over Delilah for a bit. Happy Easter to all who celebrate it. Does one wish a Happy Passover? I don't know. Well, have one anyway. And to anyone who celebrates neither, enjoy your weekend.

Bathroom Humor

"I may be abandoning you for a while," says the Chief Loon as we walk through the front door of Barnes & Noble.

"Okay," I reply, heading in the general direction of the craft books.

"Oh, yes," says C.L. a moment later, "definitely abandoning you." She's still right behind me. Sounding a bit distressed, in fact. We're both trying to get around the couple ahead of us, who are sauntering down the center of the aisle. Mercifully, they turn off into the sports section. The way ahead is clear.

Turns out C.L. and I are both headed to the same place. Rest rooms are right next to arts & crafts.

"I may need some indemnity." say C.L., slamming shut the door of her stall. Indemnity? Maybe she means amnesty. Whatever. Something tells me this isn't the right time to ask.

"Vee?"

"Yo."

"Sing!"

"Sing?"

"Please."

A command performance. The little DJ that lives in my mind is caught napping. I have never before been called upon to provide cover for public potty noise. In a blind panic, the DJ grabs the first thing she can find and slams it onto the turntable without looking at it. This is the only reason I can think of that explains why I am throwing my head back and belting out:

"Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends!"

[laughter from the next stall]

"Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends...
I can't remember the next two lines,
'Cause I learned this 20 years ago,
But that's no reason why they can't be friends."

"Thank you."

"That is so going in the Blog."

Upon reflection, I suppose I should have been singing scat.

Still Alive

I just realized I haven't posted anything since the crack o' dawn Friday morning. Let's see, what's happened since?

I bought a coin scarf from eBay. It's black with gold beads and coins. To tell the truth, it looks pretty much like the photo I linked to earlier, though I didn't realize that until after I bought it. The noise of it freaked out the cat. That was fun. I was opening the envelope, and one second she was doing a figure eight around and between my feet, the next she's on top of the computer, sure that she's just heard a snake (I think. It made a slithery rattling noise when it left the packing materials). She hissed at me when I tried to show it to her. Then she sniffed it, realized it was clothing, and was disgusted with me. I am a one-woman franchise of Confuse-A-Cat.

My digital camera played a nasty April Fool's trick on me. It's stopped working. I can still review pictures and I get read-outs when I hit buttons, but all I have is a black screen when I point the lens at something. The Service Center is sending me a box, in which I am to put my poor sick camera. I then send the box away, and when it comes back to me, it will be fixed or replaced. First time I've ever used Circuit City's Protection Service, though I've bought it for everything I get from them. I'll be interested to see if I got what I paid for.

My old college roomie is in town. We talked on the phone a little bit last night (she was at her hotel), and this evening we're meeting for dinner. We picked up right where we left of 15 years ago. Good Lord. Has it been that long? (Graduated in...Carry the one....Yup). Oy. Feeling old now.

As soon as I publish this, I'll be headed for the bus terminal to buy a ticket to my parents' house for Easter weekend. I don't think Ditter and her hubby are coming up, but then, I haven't asked. I figure they'll be too busy packing their apartment into small boxes to be interested in anything else, but they might just be tired of looking at it all and decide to run away from it for a weekend. My mother's expressed an interest in how the dance class is going. Maybe I'll bring the coin scarf along and scare her animals too. Mwahahaha.

That's all I can think of at the moment. Only a few weeks left until finals. Tension is mounting. The computer lab I'm in is quiet except for the sounds of rapid typing, and is almost full. Almost, which is why I don't feel guilty writing a blog entry while other people are working (I'm not at work myself because I work Saturday afternoon. This means I get four hours off somewhere else in the week). As soon as I see someone waiting for a computer, I'll log out.

Compare and Contrast

Here's the text of the Fay Inchfawn poem, if you'd like to compare it to the Nagys one:

Early Spring

Quick through the gates of Fairyland
The South Wind forced his way.
'Twas his to make the Earth forget
Her grief of yesterday.
"'Tis mine," cried he, "to bring her joy!"
And on his lightsome feet
In haste he slung the snowdrop bells,
Pushed past the Fairy sentinels,
And out with laughter sweet.

Clear flames of Crocus glimmered on
The shining way he went.
He whispered to the trees strange tales
Of wondrous sweet intent,
When, suddenly, his witching voice
With timbre rich and rare,
Rang through the woodlands till it cleft
Earth's silent solitudes, and left
A Dream of Roses there!

More Springtime Poetry

As part of a cross-training "job enrichment" program, I spend a couple hours a week at another library's reference desk. I've been working my way through their training modules. Each module ends with a quiz. I'm finally to the ones that deal more with the library's collections, as opposed to proper reference desk etiquette and our libraries' policies in general. I zoomed through those earlier ones (having had most of those things drummed into my head years ago), but these later modules take longer to do. The questions are getting tougher.

The first question on this week's quiz sent me on a 2-hour snipe hunt before I finally gave up in disgust. Either I'm missing something, or the point of the exercise is that you can't find everything all the time. If it's the latter, the librarian in charge of instruction is a sadist.

I was trying to find a poem by Henrikas Nagys. Mr. Nagys was from Lithuania, and partway through his career he pulled up stakes and moved to Montreal. I couldn't find anything on Lithuanian poets, and the book I found on Canadian ones mentioned him but didn't say much more than I just did. The question I was working on gave the poem's title or first line in English and was supposed to have been written "sometime in the 80s or 90s." Our library doesn't own anything by him, and when I went looking in other libraries' catalogs, the only writings I could find by him were in Lithuanian, which I can't speak or read. Welcome to my world.

Later, on my own time, I Googled him (the quiz discouraged the use of Google. I was supposed to use only library resources) and found some more information and a few of his poems (translated, thank goodness), though not the one I was looking for.

One in particular has been rolling round in my head all day. Reading it, I kept thinking of the poem I made reference to last time by Fay Inchfawn. Nagys' arrival of spring is much wilder:

SPRINGTIMES

Restless forests keep muttering in sleep.
Hot heavy breathing makes the windmill wings tremble.
The eyes of a blue moon shine in the gloom.

At night, a shrill savage laughter resounds throughout the woods.
Clouds bend and sway the pinetops.
Then the wakened waters pounce and are swallowed in gorges.

Rivers embracing the shattered ice carry it off to sea.
Stifling reverberations of thunder echo along the horizon.
A long lightning flare lifts the sky open.

The muddy fields are covered in a morning rain.
People stand bareheaded on the waking earth.
Far off, with night outdistanced, the forests heave an easy sigh.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis

Same topic, completely different mood.

Footprints of the South Wind

A friend of mine reads for Librivox. Ever heard of it? I hadn't until recently. Volunteers take literature from the public domain, read it aloud, record those readings as mp3 files and ogg's (I think that's the iPod version), and put them on the Internet for anyone to listen to and/or download. Like books on tape, only...not on tape, and not just books.

My friend's been taking part in weekly short poetry readings, and the last one was of a poem called "Early Spring." The South Wind, personified, is doing his best to cheer and warm the Earth. There's a line in it that dovetails nicely with a photo I got yesterday on my way to the bus top:

"Clear flames of Crocus glimmered on
The shining way he went."

Ah, yes. The crocuses are blooming. Maybe now the daffodils will loosen up a little. There are plenty of them about, but not one one them has opened.

Please do go visit Librivox. There's lots of good stuff there.

How Dancing Is Going, Among Other Things

My belly dance class doesn't meet this week--our instructor is off being taught, herself. She's at a workshop in D.C. for a few days. We also have Easter Sunday off. That's a relief. Pretty sure I'd be in the dog house if I skipped Easter weekend with the parents for a lesson in butt-shaking. I'll probably spend the time I'd normally be at class today by practicing what we've been taught so far: the stance, cross-step touch, pelvic lock, and steps on the down -- affectionately renamed by me "that butt-clench thing."

This last one involves moving your hip down when you take a step, which is against what your body wants to do. In order to do it, you have to clench the opposite side of your buttocks -- this moves the hip up on that side and forces down the hip of the walking leg. So it's step right/clench left, step left/clench right. You waddle. We have been assured that the waddling thing doesn't matter, because when you're in costume no one will see it. The skirt covers your knees and feet. The image of me in costume filled me with mingled terror and amusement, set me giggling, and made it that much harder to concentrate on what my body was doing. I swear, I have spent more time thinking about my hips and bottom the past few weeks than I have ever done the whole rest of my life.

I think I've decided it's time to go buy a coin scarf. I've only had two lessons, but I'm pretty sure this activity is a keeper. I also think I need to join a gym again. I need better muscle control than I have. I also need more exercise. Once a week isn't nearly enough.

In other news, I got an email this week from one of my old college roommates. She's going to be in town the first week of April, and wants to know if I want to get together. Well, yeah! I haven't seen her since before she had kids. She has three now. At least, the last time I heard from her there were three. There may be more by now. We haven't corresponded for a while. Last time I tried, my email message bounced. Apparently she switched providers and forgot to tell me.

My sister and her hubby are busily packing their possessions into boxes, prepatory to moving into their new house. They've gone in on a large one with his parents. There are in-law quarters, so the households don't have to worry about tripping over each other. And my sister and her mother-in-law get along very well. Though the cynical voice in the back of my head wonders how long that will last with everyone under the same roof.

I should probably think of a name for my sister instead of calling her "my sister" all the time, shouldn't I? Gets a little tedious otherwise. How's this: When my mom and my aunt were growing up, my aunt (who was 7 years younger than Mom) used to call Mom "ditter" instead of "sister." It's become family slang. So my sister's name in this blog is now officially "Ditter." There.

While I'm thinking of it, here's another couple of pieces of family slang: napkins (serviettes, to some Europeans) are called "nakips," because that's what my cousin Doug used to call them. And that high-pitched noise you hear in one ear when there's a pressure change occurring? "Tuning in Mars." No ideas about that origin.

So anyway. Ditter said when she called our parents and told them the bid was accepted on the house, Dad broke down and cried. He was in the background shouting "I'm happy!" while Mom was telling Ditter what was going on. The big softie. It took years for us to figure out that when we gave him presents or Valentine's Day cards or things like that, he got all gruff and grumpy because he didn't want to cry. Now he might as well do it. We're onto him.

A note to anyone who was here earlier--I thought better of what I'd written ahead of the belly dance report. It made me a little too identifiable, and certain opinions were hinted at that are probably best kept to myself. Paranoid? Youbetcha.