Sometimes I get the strangest photos because of low light conditions, flash that doesn’t go off, subject moving, me moving, the whole world moving, the rotation of the solar system in the Milky Way Galaxy….and the Big Bang. Some of these results just make me laugh!
Dougy the Alien
The past few days haven’t been particularly pleasant for me for reasons I prefer not to go into in such a public place. Generally speaking, though, they have to do with getting through the issues of my mother’s small estate.
This brings me back to the theme of this post: weeds.
This fellow stole burrito money from his boss, was hunted down by vigilantes, shot in the throat, and died the next day in Alliance, Nebraska. That marble Celtic cross marks his grave. A weed in life. Someone’s son. A stranger in these parts from Dallas, Texas, who stole a little money. The vigilantes (hoping to capitalize on their brand of capital punishment) self-styled themselves as the “Silver Dollar Boys”.
True story, folks. It happened in the early 20th Century in a sparsely settled part of Western Nebraska. I discovered it in the historic microfilm files of the local newspaper in the library. Silver Dollar Boys. Sound kind of weedy themselves.
Louie’s fine tail.
The interest of the photo is the dandelion, a weed in the grass. Of course, it also shows my late cat Louie’s fine tail, nicely adding to the color composition and interest (I think!) of the photo. A bunch of dandelions makes a fine little kid’s bouquet of flowers for Mom. Grass. Dad has to spend his rare spare time from earning a living to water, fertilize, weed, and mow the dang stuff. Or maybe Mom does. Or maybe it becomes the dandelion bouquet-giving kid’s job once he or she can safely operate the power mower. Some question in my mind which is the weed here. Dandelion? Grass?
No idea what this weed’s name is, but it’s common along roadsides in disturbed soil or yards where grass hasn’t taken hold after an excavation for a broken water line (in this instance). Not much to it. It has this tiny lavender blossom, is kind of sprawly and wild-looking. Yet, from a distance, millions of them in bloom make a lovely lavender wash over the coming green of spring. Spectacular! A harbinger of good things to come. Hardly a weedy thing when viewed from afar. Or very close up.
I’m largely convinced we need the weeds to appreciate the full bounty of life. I’m just not happy with the current crop sprouting in the affairs of my Mom’s estate. Sometimes I just don’t feel like dealing with the weeds in life. I’m tired of it, and look forward to the day everything is complete so I can get on with happier things.
My last words of wisdom: Never name one of your children to be personal representative for your estate unless that child is a lawyer or CPA!
Two posts on a reaction to Michelle Obama’s dress served an unexpected but good purpose: Two people on opposite sides of an issue came to the conclusion that we have more in common than not, that we can move on. In the spirit of Easter, I’ve deleted those posts.
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We’ve settled on a truce — an understanding, really — that came out of a little time spent discussing (by message) issues that came out of my postings on her timeline. I agree with her on a couple of things: 1. I was a lot too rough in how I expressed my opinion, and 2. we can come from opposite sides of an issue, respect each other’s point of view, but remember to be civil in doing it! (Nr. 2: That’s mostly a reminder to me!)
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I removed my two posts from view (apparently, deleting one blog post deletes them all, if I understood the message) so only I can view them. I could delete them on my blog, so both are. I feel better about that than leaving them up. I can be a terrible grudge holder, which is why that is what I work on for Lent instead of giving up chocolate or television. Wiser people have thought about this process, and have this to say:
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Thanks, Diana, for your understanding and cogent remarks on political discourse in America! They must be brilliant because I agreed 100% with what you had to say! 😉
The window by the dining room table is Andy’s preserve. That’s where he watches the rose-bush birds and people doing people things outside.
This morning, however, I heard cat chattering, something I haven’t heard Andy do, but Dougy does for any prey he sees and can’t get. The other day, he was chattering at a wasp!
Yes, today, Dougy was on the windowsill chattering, and, presumably (since Andy told me so and I didn’t bother to verify…!) Dougy is the kitty that knocked the plant off the windowsill trying to catch birds through the screen.
Bad boy!
Dougy stopped chattering long enough to check out what I was doing. He hates the flash on my camera, and suspected that was coming next!
The flash didn’t go off, and Dougy soon went back to worrying the house sparrows through the window.
I put the plant back up on its perch before I took these photos, of course. Amazingly enough, it’s remained in place through three cats using that sill for bird watching. Today is the first mishap it’s suffered. Fortunately, it landed in a way that did little damage to it or its pot.
“Good potted plant! As much as I neglect you, you should be dead!” I thought.
Enough for today. Andy just stopped by to get his chin and whiskers rubbed.
There was a photo of a cat that caught my eye in tonight’s Alliance Times-Herald. I swear it looks exactly like Andy and Dougy’s Mommy!
It may or may not be their mother, but it looks like her. I’ll try to find out. It could be a male cat, for that matter.
Mommy?
I decided to slow cook a stew today. Preparations began a good eight hours before I thought I might want to eat.
The cabbage, broccoli, and carrots presented no problem: slice’em up, and add them to the pot. I sautéed the yellow pepper, added the stew meat to brown it and get some of those great juices to add to the stew.
Pepper. I needed pepper. Then all hell began!
The cap on the pepper mill came off, and dumped enough peppercorns onto the frying pan of yellow peppers and stew meat to burn down California!
The photo is an “after” shot. Most of the peppercorns on the cutting board were on the yellow pepper and stew meat in the frying pan moments before. I tried to remove as many as I could, but ended up picking up yellow pepper and meat in tiny amounts in the tongs, knocking the peppercorns and excess pepper off before putting them in the stew pot.
A big &$^#^-ing mess!
Tedious! (Note the coffee mug with Louie the ginger cat on it at the top center of the photo: That was me, waving my arms and saying very naughty things when the cap came off the pepper mill. It was not a happy moment!)
If it didn’t take too long to clean off the excess pepper from the meat and yellow peppers, the stove and everything else took much more time to sort out. That’s what I faced in the photo above, the whole mess.
The cutting board mess was contained and easy to clean up.
I dumped the meat and peppers into a serving dish to sort what I wanted to save from the excess pepper…one or two pieces at a time.
Did I mention the fire alarm went off while I tried to straighten out the mess? Peppercorns fell under the hot burner and sent up a smoke screen. I opened a window and the back door to clear out the smoke. The vent fan couldn’t keep up with it. Though I reset the fire alarm to shut it off, that is to say, yelled several blasphemies and poked the reset button, enough smoke remained to set it off again and again.
“What the %^$#*,” I said to myself, “As long as I’m dealing with the fire alarm and the clean up, I may as well roast coffee beans, too. That always triggers the fire alarm. The window and door are already wide open. I already ready with the broom to poke the reset button, and…” The fire alarm blared again. That’s five times total for both causes.
Little by little, I disassembled the stove top to clean it out and off, vacuumed the floor of its liberal dusting of peppercorns, and ended up with a yummy looking pot of what will be stew this afternoon.
Cabbage, carrot, broccoli, diced tomatoes, yellow pepper, and cubed beef. I decided against potatoes in case I end up freezing some of it — very likely! Potatoes get a strange texture when frozen, one I dislike.
Supper better be delicious!
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I keep referring to the pepper as a “yellow pepper”, which it was when I bought it. In the day or two after I bought it before I used it, it became an orange pepper! (No, I’m not color blind. I just hadn’t noticed the ripening that took place in all the hubbub that came about in making this stew. Orange pepper. Yeah. That’s what it is!
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If adversity doesn’t bring knowledge, then you better take a look at yourself! What did I learn from this episode? Simple: measure your herbs and spices into separate containers, then add them when you are ready to add them to the food you’re preparing! They do it on cooking shows, but it didn’t register as good practice to me until I learned from personal experience why you should do it!
Shortly after I reset the fire alarm for the fifth time, second time while roasting coffee beans, I realized I hadn’t added salt to the stew…! Did I truly learn my lesson or am I just blowing air?
Happy day! I did learn my lesson! I measured out the amount of salt I needed with a measuring spoon, then added it to the stew. Any other time, I’d use either the salt mill (which is the same style as the pepper mill that emptied on my stew) or shake some out of a salt shaker on the stove. Not today, folks! Not today!
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I’ve mentioned before how hard it is to take photos of my cats. They have tricky hair that photographs differently in different light. I present two examples. One where I couldn’t get the color to look right because of how it interacted with artificial light, and another that I converted to black and white for the same reason. (Oddly, the black and white one is the more realistic of the two.)
Orangish Andy takes a sly upside down look at me while I work on my computer.
Here’s the same photo in black and white, a much nicer result!
What the heck. Here’s a second photo of Andy sleeping on my computer desk shelf. He may be scarce, very scarce when I need to catch him to give him his medicine, but he likes to hang out with me otherwise!
Breakfast is one of those meals that challenge me. I rarely feel like eating when I get up, but make myself eat something since this is the most important meal of the day. So they say!
Today, though, I remembered something I read about making muffins from pancake batter. Pancake batter is simple enough, doesn’t need a great lot of thought. Just “dude it up”, I thought, and it becomes muffin batter!
I often make pancake batter without milk, using applesauce and egg for the liquid. Today I had milk but no eggs, so I made the batter with applesauce and milk for the liquid.
Fortunately, I had a scant cup of flour. Sometimes I “make do” up to a certain point, then discover I’m missing an absolutely vital ingredient in sufficient quantity to finish the experiment! Flour, typically, is that vital ingredient I discover I haven’t enough of, but not today!
The pancakes that evolved into muffins that ended up becoming mini-loaves. Oh well!
I added cinnamon and grated some nutmeg into the batter, which I divided into five mini-loaves in a mini-loaf pan. Yeah, I decided to make mini-loaves instead of muffins! No significant difference, really, except shape. That and I found the mini-loaf pan first.
I made a crumble of butter, walnuts, and brown sugar to add to the top of the mini-loaves that were supposed to be muffins that would have been pancakes were I short any more ingredients than I was…!
Whew! Breakfast is so complicated!
Baked and removed from the mini-loaf pan, the mini-loaves looked edible! I congratulated myself on making something different yet edible with barely enough of anything to make anything. Then I put a dollop of butter on top of each mini-loaf and a wee bit of marmalade.
It’s a good thing I make coffee strong and black because the mini-loaves needed something astringent and bitter to knock down the sweetness, but the result was mighty tasty, light, the reason I will skip lunch, then finish the day with homemade vegetable and noodle soup. If I have enough ingredients, that is!
Breakfast is less complicated in Kittylandia: Open the can, smoosh it on the plate, and present for the boys to consider eating. Or not.
For reasons I can’t discern, my computer desk reminds me of the messiness of a life unexamined.
A bit too philosophical for something that, simply, is house cleaning deferred in favor of writing this post. (You aren’t at fault! I’d write it even no one read it!)
This is the Easter Season, and I need some time to reflect on the clutter that stands between living a life that brings glory to God or one that satisfies some temporal, trivial end. The Lenten season, for me, isn’t one of sacrificing chocolate treats for spiritual gain or giving up television for 40 days.
[At this point, most readers are thinking, “A holy roller! Dang! I read this for funny things about his cats, Andy and Dougy! There aren’t any cat photos or videos today, either! Rats!” That’s OK, too, but I remind you Andy is named after Saint Andrew, one of the apostles of Christ and patron saint of Scotland.]
I suppose my upbringing in the Presbyterian church may have something to do with my somewhat dour attitude toward observance of this most important holiday on the Christian calendar.
The way I find best to find expression of my faith and a sense of the true meaning of Easter is to listen once again to J.S. Bach’s “Saint Matthew Passion”. Think of it as soul cleaning. No bunnies need apply.
[The first one has subtitles, but a very tedious tempo I find too slow for my taste; the second has a better tempo, has a cleaner audio track, but lacks subtitles…!]
Listen if you have the time, or to as much as you have time for. Bach is balm for a life-torn soul or a soul looking for more meaning in Easter than Cadbury eggs, the Easter Bunny, and the emphemera of the secular observance of the holiday.
I no sooner posted yesterday’s whine about nothing was happening here, than Dougy committed the most foul of things: He actually spread out on Andy’s new favorite thing, the mailer from Adrian Smith, Nebraska 3rd Congressional District Representative.
Andy was aghast!
You remember the mailer, right?
Andy’s still defending that Smith mailer.
There he was. Dougy noticed Andy’d stepped away from the Smith mailer for a potty break, and plopped right down on “The Mailer”!
I assure you, THIS is not Andy!
La-la-la! Quite pleased with himself, too, that little rascal!
Andy is about to settle Dougy’s account!
Things began to happen faster than my little point-and-shoot Nikon could keep up — notice how less focused the story becomes once Andy pops up!
“Look here, Fluffybutt! I’m going to rip that tail off!”
Andy was not amused. The routing was on, Andy Victorious! RAWR!
Andy oversees the mailer. No Dougy in sight!
Just before Andy got bored guarding his territory and ran off to bird watch out the bathroom window….
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Shortly before I finished this, Andy and Dougy were working as a team to track down and eat some sort of flying insect that slipped in through the open door, most likely through one of the holes Andy (my screen climber) made in the screen.
They have their priorities! Mostly it is to just get along with each other, sleep, eat, wrestle, play “Catch the Antelope”, and to avoid upsetting each other.
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Also, I picked Dougy up this morning, noticed a lump on his butt feathers. Yep! A big mat that managed to slip notice when he was groomed or formed after. I didn’t have anything to trim it out, so pulled gently on the hair till I found the start.
With a small protest from Dougy, I managed to pull it off in one piece since it was mostly made up of loose hair that tangled on a few attached ones. Don’t worry! I was careful to minimize Dougy’s discomfort.
Ordinarily, Dougy is very interested in mats or hair removed from a pet brush. I don’t know what the attraction is, but he’ll eat cat hair if I don’t catch him first!
The door’s open, and birds (including some blue jays) stopped by to take baths in the little bird bath.
I hoped to show the boys enjoying the bird show, but they are off doing other cat things…sleeping, opening cabinets, eating dry cat food and ignoring the wet, acting like they’d rather not play with me today, acting like they want to play with me today…erg! Just being cats!
How bad is it? I had to dig out the photo above from yesterday to show something.
You might recognize Andy (on left) because this is the photo I cropped to get a picture of Andy walking over to the door yesterday.
What’s Dougy doing in the top photo? Darned if I can figure it out. He was on the cat lounger staring at the wall. Spiders? I hope so, or he’s going “nutz” on me!
Andy’s still defending that Smith mailer.
I did get something on record for today’s cat activities, such as that is. Here’s Andy not doing much. His horns are up, but I’m not sure why. The mailer’s still contested territory between the boys, but Dougy isn’t interested in it today, not now.
Not much happening today.