Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: high protein snacks, New kitties, pregnancy
I knew it was coming, and last night we became the proud grandparents of at least 3 kittens. She’s not letting us have much of a look in there yet, but I see a tiny golden one, a tiny grey (possibly striped) one and the most adorable little black guy with white blazes on him here and there. Mama Kat appears quite proud of herself and so far everything looks good. I am surprised (and grateful) that it was only 3 or so and not 7. lol She sure looked BIG.
All this, of course reminds me of when I was pregnant with my son, who will be 38 this year. I was barely 17, and had never weighed a hundred pounds in my life. By the time I unloaded the little bugger, I weighed 160 and could balance a dinner plate on the top of my belly. I could barely walk, as my equilibrium was compromised…except for the giant belly, I still looked like somebody’s little brother… lmao…
Anyhoo…tonight we have the memorial for my friend who died earlier this month. We are having a dinner and fellowship time and then a meeting after. I have to make the salad…so that means I have to get off my duff and go buy the ingredients.
I have puppies frolicking all around my feet, play fighting and making entirely too much noise. I tried to move the mama kat so I could at least put a towel under the kitties and her, but she is adamant about staying where she is, so I took the kitties out and laid them on a pallet I had put in that back closet for her a couple of days ago. (BTW–there are 4 of them). The box that she had made her little hidey-hole in was full of chandelier bulbs and other light bulbs and odds and ends. So…I took everything out of the box that was potentially harmful and put a pee pad in the bottom of it. And just in time, as she started methodically picking up her kits and taking them back to the box where she was determined to keep them.
Mamas rule about their own babies. And that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. Think I’ll open a can of tuna and give her a little high protein treat….I’ll take some pics soon…But here is a pic of the last time we had kittens…
[click to enlarge--Sam and Frankie]
Our springtime weather has gone the way of the storms from last night. Here one minute, gone the next. It’s in the mid 30’s now –the temps dropped 30 degrees in 12 hours. Cold thru the weekend and then temps slowly working their way back up top the 50’s by next week.
Fridays ROCK.
Namaste.
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***NOTE TO SELF**
Do not, under any circumstances think that you may can tomatoes without peeling them first. PERIOD.
I’m having a bowl of absolutely marvelous vegetarian vegetable soup for breakfast. It is delightfully rich and satisfying and made with mostly the fruits of my labours. But I canned a whole bunch of tomatoes last year (romas and cherries, mostly) at the last minute and did not slip the peels off first. Once again, I thought I knew better, surely, than a gazillion years of other people’s experience. HAH! The peels are annoying. They are tough. I grind up tomatoes all the time with the peels on, and those are okay. For sauces and stuff. But for whole canned tomatoes…forget it. I think I will also plant only 1 or 2 plants of the little cherry or grape tomatoes. I love them throughout the summer, to munch on as I’m walking around, or in salads…but they are not canning tomatoes–no matter what I think is possible. And the thing is this: they produce so well and for so long and I cannot stand to throw anything away, so when everything else is all done, I’m looking at these little beauties and saying ”What else can I do with them? I can’t just let them rot!” lol Anybody have any ideas for me?? Besides abstinence? lol
It’s a grey and overcast day, destined for something ludicrous like 65 degrees. It’s 53 already at 10:30…I have some laundry going and a list of things that need doing and may actually get done, lol. I have a closet full of brown grocery bags full of assorted and sundry dried herbs from my garden that all needed to be repackaged a month ago or more, probably. Oh, well. Better late than never, I suppose. Assuming the potency is still intact. We shall see. I know there is at least sage and oregano and parsely and basil in there. I’m finally down to the last 2/3 of my gallon ziplock of basil from 2 years ago gardens. (I had almost 3 gallons that year!! SO, I have used a lot of it.) And it’s still pretty strong, but is definitely losing some of it’s aromatic beauty.
We are getting pretty close to having a housefull (it looks like from the outside) of kittens. Poor little mama cat is so roly poly that she can barely clean herself without toppling over. It’s really obvious now, too, just how badly hurt she was whenever she experienced her Ubiquitous Event, before she found us. 2 of her legs are crippled badly (but she can still walk) and along her spine in the lumbar region, she is a little mangled. But she jumps and walks and seems to be a survivor. And now…motherhood. (yikes.) Here she is, in the earlier stages of mommyhood..
We have some lovely jazz playing on the stereo, the smell of lavendar candles filling the house, and the comforts of home all around. Everyone is in the house snoozing, hubby is at work, and I have things to do. So I’d best get off this computer and take care of business.
Blessings of health, happiness and friendship to all.
Namaste.
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Mid afternoon here and I am watching the firetrucks rolling up our road to put out the brushfire that some idiot lost control of…in 3 different places. The biggest problem is that noone out here has anything but well water, so they had to bring tanker trucks with water too. All the ground is so wet the trucks are sinking up to their wheelbases…
I have to go get hubby from work in a bit. I have some meaty pork ribs in the oven to partially cook so that I can finish them off on the grill. I’ll bake a couple of potatoes and find some vegetable and that will be dinner.
It’s a marvelous sunny and 60 degree day here today. Sure doesn’t feel like February. Supposed to rain tonight. I had a chiro appointment this morning and then I went to see a nun about a book for the group discussion we will be taking part in for the month of March. Then I hit the noon meeting and then I came home. I will stay home tomorrow and do household chores, including laundry.
My computer was down last night…the internet signal completely lost. Sigh…I wish I had options re: a carrier, but I don’t. I’m sooooo tired of this one. Anyway, it’s mostly back today, and messing up a little still. Think I’ll call the company to get a repairman out here…I have the plan with all the bells and whistles, so it won’t cost me anything if they have to rewire the whole freaking house. lol
Things to do and people to see, so guess I’ll sign off for now.
But first, here’s a picture of spring…
Namaste.
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So…Fat Tuesday. Shrove Tuesday. The day of gluttony and carnage before the beginning of lent. Get it while you can.
I love the way all these goofy holidays are all tangled up in religious sacrifice and hedonistic pagan ritual. There’s just something so right about it all…
I read a wonderful book years ago by Ishmael Reed called Shrovetide in Old New Orleans, a collection of essays by a delightful writer. He was born in Tennessee in 1936, I believe, and is a prolific writer. I was just looking to see if I still have it…can’t find it offhand, but I cannot imagine I would have ever gotten rid of that book, I was so enamored of him.
Taking husband to work this morning, we saw a coyote on the side of the road, just sitting there watching the cars go by. HUsband said he must have been hurt, they just don’t do that. On the way home again I looked for him, but he was gone. So naturally, I’m thinking…sure they do. They get tired of their coyote lives of running running running (like me) and just have to stop sometimes and take a break. Then, a little farther down the road, a huge owl swooped in front of my car. I couldn’t tell if it was a Barred owl or a Great Horned Owl, as I am just not fast enough or knowledgable enough to be able to make those identifications on the wing, as it were. I garnered what information I could at such a fast pace and when I got home looked it up in one of our scared texts, the Birds of North America guide. It was a thing of beauty. I love owls anyway. One night I was coming home and just as I came over the rise before our driveway I had to come to a screaming stop…right there in the nmiddle of the road was one of our resident Great Horned Owls, just sitting there in the road, looking at me. He sat there for about another 3 minutes as I watched him. Then he lifted those powerful wings and was gone. It was a moment of religious ecstacy.
So, happy Mardi Gras, y’all. I actually have some photos of some Mardi Gras floats we passed on a highway in Louisiana about 4 years ago. I’ll post some, in honor of debauchery. *LOL
Things to do today and people to see. I need to be out this door before 11 o’clock, so I’d best get a move on.
Namaste.
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The mercury only reads 35, but it feels like at least 40 out there. Sunny with no wind. I guess that’s what makes the difference. I turned the computer on for a bit this morning and then turned it off again after a bit. I have cleaned house and worked outside and cared for critters great and small. I burned the paper trash out back, cleaned up the chicken coop, swept the front porch and cleaned the glass on the storm door that the dogs seem to think is their personal message board. It feels like a productive day. Only 2 things on THE LIST didn’t get done…so–we just sweep them over onto tomorrows list. Voila!
Just finished chatting with a friend from Australia. It was lovely and she is getting ready to head for bed. I love the internet…
I finished the chicken and rice soup for my lunch/breakfast today. Guess I need to make another batch of soup now. I love having it in the fridge as a back up in case I can’t stand the thought of cooking something. lol I was trying to think of a healthy soup, something I haven’t made in a while. I just keep coming back to good old vegetarian vegetable soup. Big chunks of veggies and a rich broth. I have home canned tomatoes, green beans and frozen zucchini all from my garden. May even have some corn left. Have some butternut squash under the bed in the guest room. Lots of onions and garlic and some spices and I’ll have it made it in the shade. It’s also a good way to use up the last bits of celery and carrots in the fridge, and whatever other errant vegetable may be hiding out there.
Sounds like something I need to get going on, doesn’t it?
Namaste.
Bright and beautiful and sunny and cold. A beautiful day for a morning meeting and lunch after and then home again, home again…clippity clop. The husband has gone out for a walk after ingesting about 5 pounds too many tortilla chips along with his burrito… lol He was watching the NCIS marathon that’s on today…one of our favorite shows.
I was thinking about how much I love being home today. Maybe it’s old age…maybe it’s just that I can be in the same room with mE these days. Unlike the past, when I was always fidgety and discontent and wanting to go, go,go. I always had to be somewhere else, doing something else, never living in today or being happy with what I had or where I was. It was exhausting living like that. Today I have less than I have ever had in my life, yet more than I have ever had. More serenity, more satisfaction, more happiness. Less strain, less money, less turmoil. I just have to walk out my back door and down the deck, and I am in the middle of a retreat setting. On any given day, I can sit out at my little table and watch the Canadian geese in winter, the Great Blue Herons in summer, the turtles in spring/summer and the fish swimming lazily on the pond. There is a small table and chairs down there and a small shepherd’s hook that has some tiny tinkling wind chimes on it. The soubnds in the air are the birds singing and scolding, an occasional dog barking and sometimes the murmuring sounds of voices from across the way. Just far enough away that they are a melodious murmuring , indistinct and musical. My chickens, of course, are part of the symphonic background noise…they cluck and chatter as they scratch the ground looking for fat juicy bugs and preen to keep themselves looking grand. In the spring and summer, as the warm sun fills you with that feeling of comfort and contentment, the rest of the world feels a million miles away. It’s heaven. And I can do this everyday if I want to. It’s like going away without leaving the neighborhood. I often eat my lunch out there, or have my morning coffee and read. I feel especially blessed to have it.
(Barely a beginning…March 2005)
It has taken a bit of work. The people we bought from had a nasty habit of tearing things up and spoiling them and leaving them that way. There were abandoned junked cars out there, garbage everywhere, and all sorts of stuff that I have cleaned up and moved out, little by little. It was their private landfill…and I have reclaimed it in the name of all that is beautiful and am slowly but surely building my little piece of heaven back there. It will probably always be a work in progress. Planting things, moving things…having new ideas and making better the old. Seeing what works and what doesn’t. And there is no hurry…Mother Nature takes her sweet time with things, and as her steward, I am afforded the same extravagance.
Sometimes I wish it were all done and perfect and then I think…what would be the lesson in that? The same with the house. For all that we have to go through sometimes here, it has been an incredible learning experience.
What more could a person ask for?
Namaste.
It’s noon now, and I have been wafting in and out of a weird dizziness that I have never experienced before (except maybe when I used to eat magick mushrooms). lol It’s very strange…a brain glitch, I suppose.
I am constantly amazed by the ever growing number of people who spout their opinions as if they were hard and true facts. No one around this blog site, but everywhere else. lol I know people who can barely put together a sentence, and yet wax interminably about this or that. I look on in amazement.
Opinions, as we all know, are opinions… like buttholes, everyone has one. And, really…in my world, anyone can believe anything they want to, but that doesn’t make it true for everyone. Certainly not me. I am one of those hard headed people who have to know what they know and that knowledge comes only through personal experience. I’m going to go take a shower, and only after I get in there will I know if the water is hot enough. It m ight well be. It may not be, but once I feel the sting, I will know for sure. This is just how I am wired. I don’t particularly take anyone’s word as gospel on any given subject. I also don’t particulalry LOVE this about myself, but it just is what it is, baby. I wish I were more open, more trusting, more vulnerable. But the world from whence I came taught me at a young age to stop-look-and-listen. To pay attention, because if you didn’t you might not make it through the day. To question everything. I have been like that in life and I have been like that in sobriety and I have been like that–period.
Ah, but it’s Saturday and I need to get in that shower and check out that water. lol
I’ve been lying down off and on, trying to rebalance my neurons (hence, still in my pajamas.) This is a very strange feeling….
Whoop it up, kids.
[24 hours...that's all...just 24 hours at a time]
Namaste.
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It’s Friday. Husband is off today and I have been playing the domestic goddess all morning. I have a lovely bread pudding in ther oven right now, so the house is awash with the scintillating aromas of vanilla and nutmeg. I had a part of a loaf of white bread in the fridge from when hubby’s parental units were here…they don’t eat that “nasty old brown bread with all the twigs and seeds in it.” LMAO. So, I got sandwich stuff (that we never ate, BTW) and a loaf of that nasty white bread they have to have. Anyway, I thought I’d use most of it and make a bread pudding out of it…all custardy and rich with eggs and cream. I put both pecans and raisins in it (might as well live it up, right??) and it’s cooking away, even as we speak.
It’s been a day of feeding wild birds and cleaning chicken coops and sweeping porches and cleaning house and I have almost everything on my list finished. Woohoo! And it’s only 3:30…. I need to figure out what I’m fixing himself for supper. MAybe a stir fry with shrimp…I have leftover rice. Or maybe some enchiladas…cheese and onions. hmmmm…
I’m sitting down with a nice cup of rooiboos tea just now. Got a little chilled outside. It never quite made it to 40 today. I sure am ready for spring, I can promise you that.
Got another seed catalog in the mail yesterday. I am itching to plant something. But it would be silly to do anything until after the 2nd week in March, even starting seedlings. I think they send those catalogs out so early just to torture me. lol So much good stuff! We were talking over breakfast this morning about setting in some more berries and tearing out some more yard. Believe me, The less I have to mow the better. A friend has some raspberries she is dying to get rid of, and will give me a bunch of those in the spring. I’d like to put in blueberries too. And maybe plant corn out front along the rock wall where it’s bright and sunshiney all the time. That way we wouldn’t be wasting so much garden space with it either. Corn is one of those crops that you have to weigh the pros and cons before you take up your garden with it. We didn’t plant any last year…and we so love it grilled on the bbq in the husk. We bought corn , but it’s never as good as the stuff grow yourself. If we decided to grow it out front, we could plant squash or pumpkins between the plants too.
So, it’s researching the best times for succession plantings, figuring out what we want, and trying to pull it all together into one lovely package.
And you thought life out here in the country was boring and uneventful!
Namaste.
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It’s brutally cold out there this morning. I am just back from feeding chickens and feeding the neighbors dogs. The temps have actually soared up to a whopping 21 degrees, but the wind chill is at about 7. The walk over to the neighbors, that’s maybe a 1/4 mile away, was freezing and I was wrapped pretty tight. (That hasn’t always been the case. lol) My face and lips are windburned from the trek.
I’m home today, until tonight’s women’s meeting. I was thinking I would bake a dessert and maybe make another chicken pot pie. Warm, satisfying, nutritious. Warms up the house a little more while it’s cooking. Smells heavenly. (It just doesn’t gert any better than that….)
I can do a little straightening up, though there’s not a lot to be done. It will be a rest-filled relaxing day, for the most part. Just the way I like it.
I’ve been reading some of the most beautiful Indian poetry. Bhakti-love letters to God.
Bhakti poetry manages to describe a pathway to return to Oneness with the Divine – while using the immense power of the erotic impulse to hold our attention and draw us ever deeper into the spiritual drama.
He’s there among the scented trees,
playing the notes he has taught you.
Too late for embarrassment, shy doe
nibbling at the forest’s edge,
shawled in deep blue shadows.
He’s calling you. The flower of your soul
is opening, little deer.
The river of scent will lead you
deep into the trees where he waits.
The bihanga also plays tonight –
do you hear his more distant flute?
Black bees carry the moon’s luster
from flower to flower.
The rest of the grove will bloom tonight, I think.
How he looks at you, young animal.
He shames the moon with his own dark light.
Let’s bow down before the young Lord,
the deep blue flowers at his feet.
- Rabindranath Tagore ( 1861 – 1941, India )
Bliss.
Namaste.
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Boy, this month is skating by so quickly!
It’s a stay at home doing household chores kind of a day. The laundry is going, the chicken coop got cleaned, all the accompanying critters have been fed and watered within an inch of their lives. The dusting is done. the neighbors dogs are fed. The service patch for Windows has been painstakingly installed, and it took forever! I have some pork ribs thawing, and have to decide whether to bbq or teriyaki them. I’m leaning towards teriyaki so that I can make some Thai Jasmine rice. With some steamed broccoli on the side.
I talked to my tax girl…and I called the company that I’ve lost the W2’s from, and I can get the other ones off the Social Security website she says. I called to make an appointment with a new doctor at a health clinic, and they can’t get me in until March 26th…sigh.
i still have vacuuming to do, but otherwise, most everything is right on schedule. Except that I haven’t eaten wnything yet this morning. I need to stop this bad behavior….it’s probably adding to my weight gain. Sometimes I just don’t feel like eating and then don’t eat until laste afternoon and then supper. I need to get back on the every 3 hour plan. My body actually functions quite well that way, and I never get so hungry that I overeat. Also, I tend to eat healthier…although we are pretty healthy eaters compared to most people anyway. But I do eat more fruits that way, like apples and bananas and oranges. I have gained an exorbitant amnount of weight this past year. It doesn’t help that my mobility is limited and that I am so lazy. lol I’m thinking about going back on one of the medications they have had me on in the past for neuropathy, just because I have had so much pain. But, if I would just get back into some daily yoga, that would help too. Time for a 4th Step health inventory?????? arrgghh…it just never stops, does it? 
Well, the washer has stopped so I guess it’s time to load the dryer and get the next load going. Thebabydawg is inside right now, but she has been outside running her little legs off. I watch the look of pure joy on her face as she races around and around the house and yards, just loving the act of running. I’m really grateful that she has recovered as well as she has.
Okay–I need food. And the vacuum is calling….
Namaste.
