The REAL Kitty TV

Since our yard is currently without any animals of thte feline persuasion, the birds and squirrels have been very, very happy. They feel safe, and can eat and make use of the yard without too much fear or interruption. The birds can be very mean to each other though, chasing each other away from the food or best pecking area.

For the first time ever that I can recall, we have cardinals, blue jays and robins, not just the ubiquitous sparrows and squirrels. There is a black squirrel in the neighborhood, I've seen him on Doran Ave a few times, and once I spotted him in our back yard. Which is no surprise because every time I've seen him, I've given him a personal invitation and directions on how to get there.

The sounds of the bird calls, especially in the morning, are just fabulous. I enjoyed having budgies years ago partly because of their cheerful chirping. It's lovely to wake up to sunshine and tweets.

The squirrels sometimes do the oddest thing, something I had never seen before: they go on the roof of the garage and spread themselves out flat and bask in the sun. They don't do it for that long, maybe 3-5 minutes at a time...I guess they've heard that too much sun can cause fur cancer.

And the best thing of all about our outdoor friends is that it is an endless source of entertainment for the kitties. Even Mickey watches the squirrels sometimes; the other day he growled at one that was on the railing of the deck near the pantry window (he was looking out). I think he's transferred his negative energy from P. Kitty to them.

But when will there be a CHANNEL devoted to cats?

http://www.wcbs880.com/The-Purr-Fect-Game-Show/2455805

WCBS 880 reporter Sophia Hall was at the Helen Mills Theater, on 26th St., between Sixth and Seventh avenues with dozens of people who lined the streets with their cats to audition for the new Meow Mix game show.

And forget the cat carriers, said Hall, Ty Scores' cat, Gaby, walked around on a leash."She doesn't do tricks," said Scores, "but she does this Houdini Cat -- she escapes -- four times from the house. That's why i have her on a leash."

Executive Producer, David Doyle said they choose the 'catestants' with the best personalities.
"We want to get away from the perception that all cats are shy and introverted," said Doyle.

OK, so I guess here's another show I won't be able to turn away from, no matter how bad it is. It's like they know my weakness!

Good Eats

Finally, fresh, locally-grown, organic produce via our membership in the Greenpoint-Williamsburg CSA. Yeah, we have to go down the road apiece to Brooklyn, which is a nice trip on a Saturday morn. We've learned about some neat neighborhoods as we pass through that borough, such as the area around McCarren Park, where we pick up our food. Our distribution site is in one corner of the park, sandwiched between the Greendome, a terrific neighborhood garden, and a composting station, where people drop off small bags of tables scraps, etc. for the volunteer master composters. For us, that's fun. This week's CSA share included pea shoots, cilantro, garlic scapes, snow peas, and several kinds of lettuce; we also got a nice bouquet of flowers. All this from the Garden of Eve farm way out on the North Fork of Long Island. Since contributing your time is part of membership, we shuttled some of the leftovers to a church on Milton St. that has a soup kitchen. Today our fridge is well-stocked with greens, and we just have to figure out how to cook some of those less common items--always a fun challenge.

Regrettably, our trips through Brooklyn also let us see many case studies of the rampant, runaway, over-development of the Bloomberg era. Rising on all sides of McCarren Park are newly-built, tickey-tackey little condos with tickey tackey little terraces. All around, you see big holes in the ground--huge digs where last week there was a warehouse or a factory. There's big money to be made, as this community moves from hipster/artistic to money/money. What is happening to Brooklyn, a borough with lots of history, color, and charm, which even the ugly old commercial sites contribute to?

Size 6 Street, Size 12 Truck

It continually amazes me how completely moronic the businesses down 72nd Dr are not to warn their vendors that, hey, the street we're located on is kinda narrow. Oh, and hey, the outlet street is also kinda narrow. And people try to maximize the parking in every nook and cranny. So hey, don't send any 18-wheelers, okay?

But clearly there are never any such advisories to their presumed "valued business partners. "

Here's a truck that was left in the middle of 88th street for about 25 minutes during morning rush hour while the driver tried to figure out what to do about trying to reach his destination. People were driving around on both sides, nearly hitting oncoming cars on one side and pedestrians on the other, and honking horns and using their fine command of modern day slang and euphemisms.

Here's another one from during my lunch time at home during the week. I heard honking and more honking and even more honking, so though I have very limited time I finally just had to go look to see the source, and there it was. Another fine citizen of the world who got himself into a tight spot and wasn't sure if he'd be able to make it.

These two happened within a couple weeks of each other when we happened to be home. I wonder what goes on when we're not here!

I remember how my brother's car got completely dented in on the driver side when he still lived here. He had stopped at home after his shift for 15 minutes, just long enough for a quick shower before he went to pick up his wife (he was driving into Manhattan to pick her up back then!) and when he came out...the deed was done.

Fleur de Jour

Neither the hubby nor I are the greatest or most enthusiastic gardeners (though he seems to think I have some kind of Earth Mother wisdom about plants that was passed down through the generations...sorry Jack, ain't got it...) but sometimes the garden manages to look nice despite us. Here are some pictures I took this spring:

I don't have a clue what the white flowers are, but the purple stuff is a vine that gets literally EVERYWHERE in the garden if you let it.

The irises look nice every year for about 10 days. Hubby laments every year that they don't last longer. It was a waterfall of roses this year until that crazy storm we had (see the post a few back from this one). This rose bush dates back at least 40 years. I know it was in place when my parents bought the house. It's amazing how it still thrives!He picked the flowers for the box this year. I wasn't totally thrilled with his choice of marigolds...they're nice enough flowers, but I just think of them as being really COMMON. But these particular kind almost look like daisies. We planted way too many (they only came in a flat of 12 plants at Home Depot) but they look so friggin' lush! Though if you went outside right now and looked it would be pretty disappointing, with maybe 2 flowers. But there are a lot of buds, so in a week or so it'll look like that again. See, if we were better gardeners, it wouldn't be just feast or famine all the time, we'd know how to keep it going so it never looked empty.

And currently the hydrangea is in bloom. If it seems a little saggy, that's because it is. Every year it sends up blooms on these long stems that just can't support the weight. Though it's better this year. Maybe it needs to get a little woody to be stronger. (More proof that we're just making it up as we go along... hey! stop trying to peek to the left to look at the dead stalks that used to the iris, and the weeds growing in the cracks in the concrete, and the crabgrass that's starting to outgrow the baby ferns under the pine tree...)

The Scottish Play

"The Scottish Play" is theatre code for "Macbeth", as it is considered unlucky to mention it by its real name. [There is a VERY funny scene in the third season of Black Adder that refers to this superstition.]

"The Scottish Play" also happens to be Purple Ferns code for my mother. Though I have broken all ties with her, I guess really I haven't, as I haven't made that final step of changing our phone number to an unlisted one. I guess I feel that since my brothers already both have unlisted numbers, it behooves me to keep mine listed--should any estranged family members who we would actually want to hear from try to look us up. Maybe some day we'll be called to let us know that our uncle has died, for example. Though at this stage in my life I don't think I would travel to the funeral. But I would send flowers. And it's unlikely that some long lost cousin is thinking about us.

Anyway, the Scottish Play hasn't been calling much (knock on wood!--one thing I got from her is being oddly superstitious), but she did call twice in a row the other day. In one of the messages she referred to me as Lenore (one of my aunts' name). And so it's no surprise to me that she ended up in one of my dreams. I don't remember the exact details, but it was one of those dreams where it is nothing but challenges and difficulties, though at least it was one where in the end I was able to overcome. It was something about my mother being around, inappropriately, naggingly, insatiably, and I vanquished her because she was some small (about the size of a volleyball), fuzzy, white thing filled with air, somewhat sheeplike but definitely inanimate--I punctured it with a pin and squished the air out of it. But in the dream I couldn't figure out what to do with the deflated remnant, and so I was walking around with everyone else, carrying it around, and no one else had any ideas what to do with it and weren't willing to give it any thought, either.

So there I am. In real life I don't know what to do with the deflated remnants of my mother that I carry around, either.

Bloomsday

We turned off the TV earlier this evening, came upstairs, and paid off credit cards. Then we tuned in the Bloomsday stream from Symphony Space. I thought it was going be the usual marathon reading of Ulysses from the opening "Stately plump Buck Mulligan" to the final "Yes." But no--they jumped around, and it was a little annoying, especially with the host's naming of the Broadway actors. They were somewhere in the Ithaca chapter, which I do not like, and, while I had a copy of the book and wanted to follow along, I could not. But after a while we put down the book, just listened, got a little more into it. We enjoyed the small bit about Bloom's morning breakfast ritual and his cat. "They understand our language better than we understand theirs." At 10:15, I went downstairs, fed the cats, scooped the poop, took out the garbage, and when I came back upstairs she was asleep. Heart.

Storm

A major storm blew through our neighborhood yesterday. When it started to rain we closed all our windows, and my lovely wife and I went out on the front porch for fresh air, and to watch what we figured was a passing sunshower. Things moved quickly to a higher level, as we looked up from our books and we were actually able to see the sheets of rain moving towards us along the road across the way. Then lightning hit really close, startling us, followed by thunder booms, and we noticed the leak coming through the porch roof into the entranceway. We put down towels and went inside to check the basement, where we had to set out a few buckets to catch a small amount of water backing up from the street--nothing major, but a little unsettling. Then I heard a big noise, and I saw that a huge tree had fallen over in our neighbor's driveway; it took down the canopy over their door and part of their gutters. it looked monstrous, leaning against their front stairs, their car, and the fence between our properties. The rain was pouring down too hard to do anything about anything. All would have to wait. We were grateful we had power, and glad that it all happened before darkness, which would have been doubly scarey. This morning I made a tour of "the lower forty," and all was well with us. A block away a street was closed because a huge tree had fallen over, taking roots and sidewalk and all with it. I saw our neighbor surveying his damage, and he seemed ready to handle it--a "good Fathers Day gift," he said.

Fresh Direct

We use Fresh Direct regularly. I know some of you out there might have a preconceived notion of us based on that little piece of info (oh, they must be rich to afford it, how nice to be able to lie around in luxury while waiting for some actual workers to deliver your food). However, if you had ever seen the two of us at the supermarket trying to get through the experience, you'd understand why it's much better for us to order online.

He just has no patience for my looking at ingredients, comparing prices, and god forbid I should look through the bananas to try and pick the ones that are just right. "All the bananas are the same, just pick some!" he said to me, crossly, once.

So you see, Fresh Direct has saved our marriage!

But that's not to say they're perfect. Today we ended up with 2 sets of 3 bananas instead of 1 set of 4 bananas, for example. I suppose that's my fault for not seeing how oddly their "update order" system works. What I intended to do was add 1 banana to the existing order of 3 bananas, for a total of 4, but clearly instead it added 1 set of bananas to my order (they have a 3 banana minimum).

Plus we get the occasional random unordered item--today it was a half gallon of 1% milk--which I'm sure is something some other poor jerk ordered and didn't receive. And I'm sure the occasional missing thing(s) from our order arrive with someone else's order. We're still trying to figure out what someone else was planning on making when 6 (count 'em...six!) 5-lb bags of sugar arrived unexpectedly in one of our orders. FD customer service--one thing I'll say for FD, they do have excellent customer service--generally tells us to just keep the items when we call to report it, so it's like 2 years later and we're still working through the sweet stuff. Well, at least it doesn't go bad quickly, unlike today's milk which is likely to remain undrunk before it sours. Though it is a good season for chocolate eggcreams...

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog. This blog isn't about just one topic, but all the stuff that comes up in our lives and floats around in our heads.

We're dedicating this blog to our dearly departed cat, P. Kitty. She guarded our yard for 10+ years, and she is sorely missed.