There are 169 posts filed in Daily Life (this is page 10 of 17).
![[photo of chicken walking among kittens]](http://www.foldedspace.org/images/chickencat.jpg "Do the cats want to play with the chicken? I don't know.")
Here is a photo of the chicken that has decided to live with our kittens.
From the left, you see Max (who suspects this bird may be good to eat), the bird (whom we call Chicken, even if she’s not), and Duke (who looks a little wary here). The three often eat together in perfect harmony. Today they were milling around the shed, waiting for me to feed them. Unfortunately, I spooked the bird by hanging around with my camera, so I didn’t get any pictures of the group feed. Maybe tomorrow.
Yes, living in a hundred-year old house has its pleasures. The house has character, from the hobbit-hole window to the beautiful hardwood floors to the balconies and porches. Unfortunately, living here also has its problems.
Take the weather, for example. I’ve already written about fighting the rain — both flooding and leaks in the attic — but fighting the heat can be just as challenging. Our home sometimes seems like an oven.
Yesterday Kris and I fled to the movies to escape the heat. (We saw the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, which isn’t very good. It doesn’t make much sense. Anthony Lane’s review is pretty good.) Today we enjoyed an air-conditioned restaurant (and a bad meal) and some time in the mall. You know things are bad if I’m going to a mall.
It’s too hot upstairs for me to sleep, so I’m bedding down on the love seat in the parlor. This isn’t ideal. Unless you’re a mosquito. In that case, it’s as close to ideal as you’re ever going to find: a large, juicy man full of sugar. Yum. Why not bite him? Many times.
My feet and legs itch like crazy from all the bites. I’ve applied calamine lotion, but so far it hasn’t worked worth beans. The ball of my left foot is so swollen that when I walk, it feels like I’ve got a stone in my foot.
Kris is taking a long-term approach to the heat. She’s decided that maybe we could plant a tree in the yard, preferably a fast-growing shade tree. She spent an hour tonight making a list: sycamore, chestnut, oak, hawthorne, etc. etc. Of course, the tree solution won’t help us for, oh, maybe five or ten years, even if we plant it this fall. But still, it’s a start.
Now it’s time to go apply some mosquito repellant.
J.D.: Good grief — you’re addicted to NPR.
Kris: There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s like being addicted to carrots or something…
In college, like most folks, I was an enthusiastic devotee of ramen: that quick and delicious (and cheap!) meal of noodles and salt. Oh, how I loved to boil the water in those little plug-in appliances (the name of which now escapes me), to split the cake of noodles in two, two add the seasoning packet. What camaraderie to slurp a bowl of noodles with a friend. A tasty meal for only ten cents.
With actual adulthood came actual meals, though, and ramen noodles faded into memory. That is until I bought a couple packages on a whim a few weeks ago. Why not? It was a twenty cent gamble. Since then, I’m hooked: So savory! So delicious!
Why, I’m enjoying a bowl this very moment…
Kris and I had a busy weekend which was filled with frugality. Mostly.
On Friday, we stopped by the Milwaukie library book sale. This is the first library book sale I’ve attended where I haven’t felt compelled to purchase tons of books. I did buy a few, though, including:
Total cost? About $14, nearly half of which went to the old book. After a quick stop at Mike’s Drive-In for some milkshakes, Kris and I drove to Portland Nursery to buy a rain barrel for her birthday.
On Saturday, we made our first-ever foray to the Eastmoreland Community Garage Sale. Wow! There were 140+ families officially participating, and many more who were unofficially participating. We spent five hours walking the streets, looking for bargains.
I spent $21.75:
I also spent several dollars buying drinks and snacks from kids in the neighborhood. I always buy stuff from kids. This girl was selling jokes:
On Saturday evening, Tiffany and Andi joined us for a potluck BBQ at Paul and Amy Jo‘s. We were all famished, and gorged ourselves on the delicious food.
Last week, Kris and I discovered the Milwaukie farmers market, which takes place midday every Sunday during the summer. We’ve lived here two years, but have never gone. That’s a shame, because the market is much better than we had expected. There’s lots of fresh produce, of course:
But there are also vendors selling flowers, sharpening knives, serving lemonade, cooking sausages and elephant ears, and selling meat (lamb, pork, clams, etc.). I spent $7 on flavored cheese curds. What an awesome snack: garlic- or chipotle pepper-flavored curds are delicious!
On Sunday afternoon, we wilted in the heat. In the evening, Mike and Rhonda joined us to celebrate Kris’ birthday at Higgins, one of our favorite Portland restaurants. I promptly spent three times as much for one meal as I had spent over the entire weekend buying books, scavenging garage sales, and looking over fresh produce. But it was worth it.
It was a very good weekend.
Custom Box Service has three kittens.
Earlier in the week, Jeff startled a black cat from the lawnmower shed. She took off like a flash. Yesterday he discovered three hungry kittens in the same shed, hiding under some tarps. The black cat must be there mother, but there’s no sign of her now. Unfortunately, Mama Cat may have abandoned her babies.
The three kittens — which are as adorable — are hungry. We don’t know how old they are, or what to feed them. We have a case of cat food from several years ago — the cans are marked “best by July 04”. We figure it’s our best choice. I gave them each a dollop of wet food this morning. One devoured it, another munched on it idly, and the third ignored it completely.
Later I took out a bowl of water, but my little friends were oblivious to it. They walked through it, stumbled in it, stuck their noses in it, but they did not drink.
What should we feed a trio of kittens that are a few weeks old? They don’t seem big enough to be weaned. (They may only be a couple weeks old. As I say, we can’t tell how old they are.) Is wet cat food safe? Should we get them some milk?
They already have little personalities. One of the grey kittens likes to follow the guys around the lawn. The black kitten has an amazing set of lungs, and its wailing can be heard from a great distance.
But I have to tell myself not to get attached to these babies. The odds that they’ll survive are near zero. It’s hard, though. I love kittens. I really do.
What’s a typical May evening like at Rosings Park? Let’s take a peek…
It’s not raining when I get home from work. In fact, it hasn’t rained since mid-morning. I check the grass: it’s basically dry. I check the sky: it’s grey and ominous, but there’s no rain. I decide to risk it.
I set the mower wheels on high and start it up. I mow at light speed, nearly jogging. Even so, it’s a slow go — the grass is tall from all of the wet, warm weather. After just ten minutes, it begins to sprinkle. I continue mowing. A light rain comes and goes as I sprint through the tall grass. I mow the road lawn, the front lawn, the side lawn. I’m just about ready to start on the back lawn when there is a crash of thunder and the sky falls in. Rain comes down in a torrent. I park the mower under the maple by the back porch and go inside. So close! Another five or ten minutes and I would have mowed it all.
Kris comes home.
Our gutters, which were well-cleaned in January, have become clogged in the recent monsoons. I cleared the gunk from the lower gutter last night, but I wasn’t willing to brave the cold and the wet and the heights to clean the upper gutter. We stand at the kitchen window and watch the rainwater splutter-splutter from the top of the house onto Kris’ precious planter box.
In the spirit of “responsiveness”, I grab a stepladder and make for the roof. Simon helps. When I lean the ladder against the guestroom wall so that I can open the door, Simon climbs onto the bottom rung and wriggles his way to the top. There he surveys the room. He isn’t happy when Kris pulls him down. (You may recall that Simon loves ladders, as demonstrated by the following photo.)
Kris holds the ladder while I climb onto the upper roof. A single fat, waxy leaf is clogging the works. (Not much can reach the upper gutters. They’re very high.)
When I climb down, Kris is gazing longingly at her gardens. She loves her gardens. Sometimes I think she loves her gardens more than she loves me! “You should take a picture of the gardens,” she says. “I’ll go move the yard waste container.”
I grab my camera and snap a few shots, but can’t get anything framed that I really like. (“These pictures aren’t any good,” Kris tells me later as we are reviewing them. “You’ve cut off this plant here. And what about those roses? And we don’t need to see the lawn.” sigh)
While Kris and I are otherwise occupied, Simon has come outside onto the lower roof and scampered along a little outcropping to the balcony outside Kris’ office. We decide to let him have some fun, and so go inside to eat our dinner. When we come back up to get him, he is gone. Kris goes outside into the yard to see what she can see. What she sees is Simon, now on the upper roof, lounging away.
“How’d he get there?” I ask.
She looks at the balcony outside her office. “I have no idea,” she says.
I look at the area around me. It is conceivable that Simon might have climbed up a low, angled bit of roof. But to have reached the upper roof, he would have had to twist himself at an odd angle while jumping, similar to the way he had climbed the ladder earlier. I shudder at the thought. Any mistake and he would have plummeted to the camellia hedge below.
I go to Kris’ office and out onto the balcony. Here the situation is almost worse. The only way Simon could have made it to the roof was to make a six foot leap to a small platform above another camellia hedge. A tough jump for such a big cat. (From there, though, it would have been easy for him to scamper up.)
These are the only two routes he could have used. It’s difficult to conceive that he would have tried either of them, but apparently he did, because now he is lounging on the upper roof. I climb up the rickety ladder and call him over. He trots to me, tail tall and proud: “Look what I did!” He trills and even purrs at me as I pet him. But then I turn into Bastard Dad, hauling him down to the top step of the ladder (which is wobbling beneath me).
He stomps off to sulk in the bedroom.
His little brother, Nemo, is proud of himself for sneaking into the basement during the excitement upstairs. At dinner, I went down to fetch a bottle of salsa. I must not have fully latched the door. All three cats have a special sense that tingles whenever they approach an unlatched door. I don’t know what Nemo finds so exciting in the basement, but he loves it. He can spend hours down there. (No doubt he’s tearing open the spare cat food bag — that’s one of his hobbies.)
At the moment, Toto, my misunderstood daughter is sitting on the arm of my easy chair, purring and staring at my face. She wants attention. Every so often she reaches out a paw and gently claws my ear, pulling it toward her. Why? Because she’s a cat.
Kris is upstairs watching the Lost episode from three weeks ago via BitTorrent. She’s sad that we’ve forgotten to download last week’s episode, because it further goofs up her sequencing. Basically, if tonight’s two-hour finale contains episodes D and E, and the one she just finished is A, she will be watching them in this order: B-A-D-E-C. I hope she can keep that straight in her head. (Update after the fact: she could not keep them straight in her head. Apparently episode C contains critical stuff, because she was completely lost. She gave up and will have me download it for her later.)
And me? I will soon be taking a hot bath while reading The Wealthy Barber, which I hope to review soon at my personal finance site.
And that is a typical evening during springtime at Rosings Park.
Good grief.
Portland is the land of gentle mists, not these torrential downpours.
Driving home today, the rain was falling so hard that I had to slow to ten miles per. On the highway. Onncoming traffic seemed to float on a grey and foamy sea — the cars swam through the bouncing rain and through the thick pools that did not have time to drain from the roads.
At home, Simon asked to be let out. I offered, and he took a quick step down, but then paused. He looked up at me and dashed back in side. He can hunt birds some other time, he says. He does not like the rain.
The current shower has subsided so that I can see the vegetable garden: it’s flooded! And here I thought I would be able to mow the lawn today.
On Monday morning — after Sunday’s initial onslaught of rain — the drive to work was gorgeous. Low clouds hung over the Willamette River, clinging to the tree-lined hills. Perpetually in the distance stood a grey veil which divided me from the rest of the world.
Lovely.
But now the rain begins again in earnest. This is like Texas!
from mid-April —
Noon.
Out for walk with Jason. Thermometer reads seventeen celsius. Sun is bright, though obscured by veil of clouds. Birdsong all around. Hum of lawnmowers in distance. Dead skunk by side of road. I carry a book to read: the Journals of John Cheever. “He meant by his writing to escape this loneliness, to shatter the isolation of others,” his son writes in introduction. Fascinating. Much about Cheever appeals to me. I meet Jason halfway and we walk east on Heinz Road. “A sweatshirt and a hat, huh?” Jason observes; it’s too warm for these. We talk about health care, houses, and books. We talk about dreams. Almost back to his place. I inhale deeply and say, “I love these smells: fresh-cut grass, the scent of the pines. It smells like a forest.” We say our farewells and I take out book again. A bee, punchy from sun, lands on my shoulder. I try to brush it away, but it is too groggy to leave. It clings to sweatshirt. I decide that it is not bothering me, and return to my book. My footsteps disturb a bumblebee by side of road. He flies slowly in parallel, matching my pace, buzzing, then lands on fragrant peach-colored rhododendron. No — it is the daphne next to it that is fragrant. Bee on my shoulder flies away. Birdsong all around. A flicker sounds its jungle cry. Robins chirp. Little birds titter and twitter. Pass culvert with running water — from where? Is nearby nursery irrigating? At corner, I startle pheasant. He rises up, beating air with his bronze wings, drifts across the road to new hiding spot, all the while chortling his gravelly call. I startle second pheasant, takes flight in opposite direction, skimming surface of field until he disappears into tall tuft of grass. He, too, squawks in flight. Across from Lams, long-haired black cat emerges from arborvitae hedge to gaze at me with baleful green eyes. “Move along,” he seems to say. Across from the Zimmers, boy is mowing lawn. Lawnmower has died, and boy — who looks about twelve — yanks on cord: pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull. He gives up and squats by machine, unscrews gas cap. I pass skunk again, hold my breath. I look at Carlsons field: fallow now for three years and filled with unofficial Oregon state plant — the Himalayan blackberry. Across lawn and into office.
One.
Warning: This entry may not be suitable for sensitive readers.
I was nearly to work this morning, was wending the s-curves between the Lone Elder Store and Martin’s Town and Country furniture, when a cat ran out in front of my car.
As always happens in situations like this, time slowed. From the right of my peripheral vision, I spotted a blur of motion. I turned my head slightly and slowed the car from around 35mph to I-don’t-know-what. The blur resolved itself into a long and slender cat — orange and white with subtle striping, beautiful — racing at top speed at an oblique angle to the road. Into the road. I smashed the brakes, but even then I knew it was too late.
I hit the cat.
My car scraped over the top of the cat and a small something flew across my windshield. The cat made no sound. There was no hump or thump. No yowl. The car simply scraped over the top of the cat. My stomach fell. I felt momentary panic.
There was no traffic approaching me, and there was not traffic behind me, so I slowed to look for a place to pull over. (If it were my cat, I’d want somebody to do the same.)
Suddenly I was startled to see, in my side-view mirror, the cat — seemingly whole, but who can tell? — continuing to race away at top speed, across the road, leaping a ditch, and then dashing into the alpaca pasture. Surely it didn’t survive?
I didn’t stop. How could I find the animal now? I drove on, my stomach sickened, hoping that the cat’s people find it soon and take it to the vet just down the road.
Be well, little cat. Be well.
I haven’t hit many animals before, but it does happen from time-to-time, especially out in the country.
The biggest thing I ever hit was a dog. I was fifteen and had my learner’s permit. Mom and I were driving to Oregon City along back roads at dusk on an autumn evening. We came over a rise at moderate speed and a black lab ran out in front of the car. I didn’t even break — there was not time to react. “Should I stop?” I asked. “I don’t know,” Mom said, but I didn’t. I drove on, shaking.
On the drive to Costco today, I saw a more pleasant animal sight. A blackbird, glossy blue-black in the sun, had picked up a plastic produce bag — presumably for nesting material — and was attempting to walk with it, but it kept tripping over the bulky load and dropping it. Very funny. That bird probably thought he had hit the jackpot!
