Un Gatto Racconto

Cast of Characters:

Tabby  (also "Tabitha", "Mathilda ", "Meow")

Murphy (also "Murph", "White Kitty")

The Scene:
It is Summer in a suburb somewhere on the East Coast.  Several States are in the grasp of a heatwave that will crush long-standing records.  To add insult to injury, more than 1,000,000 homes have been without power for several days following a freakishly strong storm and there is no official word when electricity will be restored.  The home where the scene is set is one such residence.  Power was lost on Friday at 11:10pm.  It is now Monday at 4:45am.  With no air conditioning available, Tabby and Murphy were relocated to the relative cool of the basement, which was divided into separate, single feline "rooms" to prevent any arguments.

Action:
Female Human, asleep in bed above the basement, wakens to hear what may be distant sounds of a cat yowling.  She slowly trudges through the home and makes her way down the stairs, expecting to see chaos but, instead, is greeted by calm.

Puzzled, female human slowly reviews the room and locks eyes with an innocent-looking Tabby.  With no obvious signs of trauma, female human then advances to see into the second "room", where she is greeted with an equally innocent-looking Murphy.

Realizing that there is no problem, female human then turns to trudge back upstairs but, before she's left the area, hears Tabby rather emphatically say "meeeeeowww".

A beat goes by.

Murphy then responds with an equally meaningful "meeeeeowww".

Next from Tabby is "merrrowww".

Murphy counters with his own "merrrowww".

Confused but with no action required, female human makes her way back up the stairs, through the home and back into the bedroom.

Male Human stirs as female human crawls back into the bed.  "Everything alright?" he sleepily asks.  "Mmmmhmmm" says female human.  "They weren't fighting then?" male human continues.  "No" she responds.

Silence falls over the room.

Then female human adds "Tabby was just teaching Murphy a bunch of Italian swear words."

More FMD 2012 Fruit Pics

I've already posted a few pics of the fruit we're using for jam (link).  Well, as is often the case, I should have ended that post with "... but wait - there's more!"

Those are yellow cherries.  No, not Rainiers, which always have some blush on them but these are straight-up yellow.  I've seen them referred to as "Stone Harvest Gold" cherries, but who knows.  They're a nice balance between tart and sweet and they made GREAT jam.  I hope we find them again next year.

These are, of course, blueberries.  See how some of them have stems?  Yeah, well before we jammed them, we picked through each berry to remove those stems.  There were over 20 pounds of berries, by the way.  Ponder that when you're enjoying this on toast, ok?  We didn't just slap these guys together - each berry gets inspected.  THAT's why I don't "sell" FMD jam.  I'd have to charge way too much.  (Note "sell" is in quote marks there.  This year, there will be a way to donate anything you'd like to contribute to a worthy, fully tax-deductible cause very close to my heart.  More on that later ...)

Raspberries.  I just love 'em - maybe even more than strawberries.  The ONLY drawback are the seeds.  So these are also inspected piece by piece to make sure that there are no leaves or cores and then I split the quantity in half and remove the seeds of one pile by pushing them through a sieve.  Or, at least, that's what I *used* to do.  This year, thanks to The Awesome Fiance, we used the Kitchen Aid mixer with a strainer attachment and geez - it did the task in just under an hour (and yes, that's a huge improvement).

Unfortunately there is no such shortcut for blackberries.  See how those raspberries above are hollow?  And see how these lovely blackberries aren't?  Well, while there's no reason to de-seed a blackberry, I do take the time to remove those cores.  It's just for looks, mostly.  If ya' don't remove the core, they can look like little white worms and ... well ... yeah, that's just not cool.  So we purchased close to 19 pounds of blackberries and once again, each one was inspected and cores were removed.  It's ok, really.  I don't mind.  I don't like creating something half-way great so if it means a few extra hours, so be it.

There will be more fruit pictures soon ... but that should cover things for now.

Go To Hell

It could be worse.
No one is on fire.
No one is shooting at me.
No limbs are at risk.
No lives are at stake.

I embrace that.  Really, I do.  I am now, and have always been, the glass-size-is fine type.  I have found silver linings in the darkest things.  (Health issues?  Thank heavens for well-informed doctors.  Car troubles?  Automobiles are a luxury.  Airplane delay?  Travel is amazing in this century and airports are great for people-watching.  Bad hair day?  What a cute hat!)

Along with a good portion of the state, The Awesome Fiance and I lost our electricity late Friday evening.  It was hoooooooooooooot that day.  We scrambled Saturday morning, calling vets to see about boarding the cats (no dice - no power there, either), rearranged the entire house to move the felines into the basement (yay!  moving hot, angry cats to strange parts of the home is sweaty work!), picked up dry ice for our home (and two others), adjusted our whole weekend plan (more jam-making) and tried to keep our heads on straight.  We skipped dinner (it was too hot to eat) and spent the night in two different homes (notice I didn't say we SLEPT in different homes ... there was very little sleeping where I was due to bouncy kitties and a not-comfortable sleeping surface).  Sunday morning started early with setting up a generator to power the bare essentials in three homes (not including air conditioning unfortunately) and lots of sitting in the dark trying too not notice it was 87 degrees inside the house before Noon.

Oh - and our air conditioner was having issues last weekend, too, so this was the second weekend in a row with too-much in-home heat.

And I drank a big gulp of sour milk (accidentally).  And got chewed up by mosquitoes.  And The Awesome Fiance walked into the corner of a dresser and bruised the heck out of his arm.  And we sweated.  A lot.

By Sunday mid-day, we were done with it.  We went out for lunch and to a bookstore - mostly for the indoor cool air.  We reluctantly headed back home and re-rearranged the feline population, recognizing it was too warm inside for them to be too angry at each other.  The house properly trashed (boxes everywhere, hastily arranged drapes, cardboard blockades in stairwells), we gave up by 9:30pm and tried to get *some* rest.

So of course the power popped back on at 10pm.

Thus began the un-trashing of the house, the un-hooking of the generator, the re-re-rearrangement of the now totally over it felines.  Showers were taken, fans were strategically placed and by Midnight, we were nearly back to normal.  I awoke at 4:45am to relocate the final feline (once the air conditioning had done the trick upstairs) and pretty much was up from that point onwards ... just in time for work.

So go ahead and tell me to be grateful that the power is restored (I am) and that the air conditioning is even available (of course).  Remind me that there huge wild fires eating up a good portion of Colorado (I'm aware of that) and that we're lucky our water service was never interrupted (I agree).

And I will still tell you to kindly shut the fuck up.