Cats, Protests, and Teenage Boys

Boy oh boy a fresh sheet to write on.
It's about time I tell you about my new job.
But I also want to tell you about a recent protest.

So I'll start with three pictures that make my heart feel fizzy. Susan was throwing out old photos, so I snagged a handful of Big Bubba Brett when he was the opposite. Look at those little legs! And that belly!

It's strange to be able to see Brett in this very blonde teenager. I don't know him, and yet there he is.

Speaking of blonde teenagers, Brett, Erik and I went to a little pub to watch one of the World Cup games, and we were just minding our business, playing bingo (I won $15!) and eating fries when a seventeen year old boy plopped himself next to me at the bar and struck up conversation. I was shocked! The audacity! Erik was sitting between me and Brett so I got to see Brett lean forward to size up the little Casanova with an expression of disbelief. Erik laughed out loud while looking the kid in the eyes. Nothing shook Leo's nerve though and I had to talk to him for two hours.

 
During that time I learned that Leo wants to be a screenwriter or psychologist. He had recently returned from a school trip to Peru where he met a girl he thinks will wait for him. He talked on and on about himself and was shocked every time he found out that I have done many of the things on his radar. "Oh wow, you've also been to England?", "People had house parties when you were in high school?", "Really, you dated in college?" I began to wonder if there is something about me that suggests an unsocialized existence. I pleaded for help with my eyes, but Erik and Brett were busy enjoying the outing. 

Then Leo, who lacked the attention-span for a round of Bingo (I've never seen anything like it), pulled the cap off his Bingo marker with such gusto that the whole thing exploded. It splashed across his shirt and puddled in the crotch of his pants. It went all over the bar and dripped down onto the floor. He reacted with childlike confusion and looked to me, suddenly a mother-figure, to find a solution. I dabbed him off with napkins but the ink had stained his fingers blue. There was a blue puddle on the floor that he was unknowingly twirling his feet in and tapping around his chair. Erik laughed loudly at the explosion, offering no help and possibly embarrassing the child.

Moreover, the permanent ink splashed onto my white jeans and Leo was so focused on himself that he hadn't noticed the others affected by his ineptitude. I was not going to say anything or make him feel bad about ruining my pants but the more time that passed without him acknowledging it, the more miffed I became. When Leo went to the bathroom to wash his hands, I scolded Brett and Erik for leaving me alone with him but they didn't care one bit. Leo came back from the bathroom and rebounded from his blunder the way a seventeen year old boy would. He simply moved on. "You've had jobs before too? Wow. Interesting." 

Finally, I threw Erik under bus and made some comment about his assorted girlfriends and Leo became enlivened by the future possibility of being a ladies-man. He was enthralled with Erik, as though it had never occurred to him that one might be dating multiple people at the same time. Erik was surprisingly pleased by the awe bestowed on him by this child and began showing off. It was when Erik showed Leo a picture of a big-boobed girl he met in Georgia that Leo made fun of Erik for falling for an "AI bot" and then the two of them got into a spat about whether it was a real girl or not. I was still stuck between them, dabbing at my pants and checking the time, while Erik insisted he had made out with this person. 

We finally left Leo at the bar eating chicken wings, and within 4 seconds of stepping outside, a collection of blood-curdling screams ripped through the night air. My legs buckled. Brett froze. Erik leapt backwards. Turns out it was just a table full of my old pet shelter coworkers, with several dogs circling the table, who were especially excited to me. I received a barrage of hugs and rapid fire updates about several dogs and humans. Once the three of us recovered from the shock, I found it very flattering.

Here's a grandma Ruth style picture of Pipps sitting in front of the garden.  

Last year I got mad when I was driving Downtown on a day when my car thermometer read 103˚ and I found myself behind a carriage horse. The city has a "rule" about stopping the tours when it's over 95˚ but four different thermometers on breezy rooftops (not the hot asphalt where the horses are pulling overcrowded carriages) each have to show the temp for 20 minutes before the carriage companies will take them off the street. The result is that they rarely have to stop tours. The carriage companies are one of the biggest tourist attractions in town, and they pay certain city officials to ignore crazy rules about welfare. Well! I don't like that one bit. I found a group of other outraged locals (and tourists) and now we participate in peaceful harassment efforts to get the temperature threshold lowered to 85˚ - knowing they will still have the horses out when it is 90+. It's all were asking.

I brought some of my chicken group to my first carriage horse protest, and let me tell you, it is a contentious issue. The majority of people are either not interested or they agree that 95˚ is too hot. Fine.

 The carriage companies and guides (understandably... I guess?) disagree. They go on and on about how well the horses are treated "at the barn", except that's not what were arguing about, is it? A tourist told us that if we really cared about the horses, we wouldn't protest in the shade. (Great point, Sir. You really got us with that one!) One tour guide said "the horse's muscles would atrophy if they didn't pull that carriages and that would make them depressed." Another said that the horses would be killed if they couldn't have jobs. (But wait, I thought you said you loved them. It's almost like you're just... using them?) One outraged "horse-lover" called for a counter-protest that day, but no one showed up. Instead she came to pick a fight with us and I'm man enough to admit to you that my knees started knocking as she yelled. 

I'm accustomed to receiving The Finger or being shouted at from a moving vehicle, but no one ever confronts us. We aren't usually asking for things that anybody disagrees with (except the folks making money off of it - but they're never around). When this combative horse woman came over with her video camera trying to get a rise out of us, I felt like a little kid on the playground before a brawl was set to begin and girls would tear at each others weaves. I got scurred. Then she looked right at me as asked if I owned any horses. Everything I know about animal welfare left my mind and I smiled at her as though she'd given me a thoughtful complement. Why did I do that? Someone else had to jump in and respond to her. 

The next day she plastered photos of us on the interwebs, calling the twelve of us "uneducated lunatics" and claiming someone spit on her. Commenters chimed in that unemployed people like us should be thrown in jail. Someone else said we were paid protesters - wouldn't that be wonderful?

Here I am laughing in the face of fear! (If I keep smiling, maybe she won't hit me.)

Now here I've rambled on so long, I'll save the rest for later. In the meantime enjoy this photo of all four animals sitting in the same room. This is quite an accomplishment.

Also, see how Cam doesn't stand out against the rug? This has become problematic in the kitchen. He likes to lay in there while we're cooking and we just can't see him. 

We constantly kick and step on him, but he never wises-up. He just keeps taking the hits. 

Spot the cat in this photo.

The Hot Weather Chronicles

This time last summer I was in the thick of inner turmoil. There was no eating nutritious meals or enjoying the twinkly twilight time before the sun goes down, oh no. I was too squeamish to participate in life. A few times recently the anxiety monster that lives in my brain has said, "This weather reminds me, aren't we supposed to be panicked? Yes, yes I think so. It was dinnertime wasn't it, when we'd take on a sense of impending doom?" 

And I've had to do my best to ignore the monster's calls. It's going well, thank you, but disadvantageous at times. Instead, I've been enjoying the hot weather season - an attempt to make up for last year. I've been in the creek, in the garden, in the pool, in my new oversized office chair, and frequently in bed during the heat of the day taking a nap to power-up for a wild evening of watching tv when it's still a little blue outside. That feels wrong, doesn't it? My favorite is a post-dinner walk around the neighborhood. Something about it feels very adulty. 

Since last summer's withering of body and spirit, I've put on weight in new, inconvenient locations. What was once hard is now soft and what was soft has fallen down. I don't understand what happened and why it happened so suddenly. Is this yet another level of degeneration for the mentally insane? Just when your mind gets better your body tags itself in? Or, worse, perimenopause. I often smell cigarette smoke, have itchy ears, and create night sweats that could irrigate a small lawn, and I feel like if I don't tell people about it I'll have to endure the demise of my only body on my own, and that thought genuinely frightens me. So now I abide by "if you see something, say something" and Brett is almost done feigning sympathy. 

Now, the office chair. I'm thrilled about it. It is extra wide and slightly more deep so that one may sit in it in a variety of unsupported ways; upon one's ankles, Indian style, or in an upright cannonball position. I have long lamented the standardized human chair because who finds it comfortable to sit with their legs at 90˚ and their feet flat on the floor? Sincerely? I can hold that pose for five minutes before my feet long to be elevated. I almost purchased what's called "a cross-legged meditation chair" but I felt mild embarrassment about how stupid they look. I then considered a kneeling chair, thought better of the age of my knees and settled on what is effectively an office chair you would find in the Big and Tall section at store for pre-teens. It's pale blue and fuzzy. Brett tried it out for a while and got jealous, so I'm definitely onto something. 

As for my birthday, we did burgers on the grill and then bobbed in the creek:

And later had a family dinner at one of my favorite spots. Lee's dinner came with a side of fries that were so good we ordered some for the table, and Mom even found one of the chefs and told him how great those fries were. Interestingly I'm sure, my favorite french fries in all the town are located at a restaurant across the street from this one, so now I feel torn and delighted. When I need fries, I'll know exactly where go. We will park the car, make our way up the road, and only then, when we stand directly between the two restaurants, will I choose chunky sweet potato to the right or herby regular to the left. The spontaneity. The anticipation! Which one will she choose?

In cat news, Nora has decided to revoke the curtesy she was extending towards the disabled cat in our home. She is now being rude to both me and Cam, though she happily tolerates Brett. Ferguson is over all of it and just wants snacks and cuddles. Cam is usually drunk and just wants someone to play with.

Oh! Also, he escaped on the fourth of July and spent the night out setting off fireworks and vandalizing personal property. I worried the celebratory bombing would scare him too far away and he would get lost and then eaten by a predator who spotted his jimmy-legs from miles away, but he was in the driveway in the morning, just happy to be alive.

My garden meanwhile, is nearing its most productive state as well as what looks like the beginning of the end. There are lots of colors and tiny edibles in there but there are also some yellowing leaves, droopy stems, and an occasional self-implosion. The heirloom tomato and the bell pepper plant, who sat across the aisle from each other, participated in an early morning shinju last month and now their little empty plots remind me that I wasn't good enough for them. The tomato plants however, are as tall as Brett and just as busy.

Currently growing in the yard:

Tomatoes

Eggplants

Cucamelons

Bramble berry

Scuppernongs

Figs

Persimmons

Basil

Parsley

Dill

And a single pomegranate on a tree planted too far into the shade. We're really rooting for it. 

And then there was the fourth of July. There was a Guy/Union family gathering with the usual summer fare. The centerpiece was Dad's "yard art" to celebrate America. Later he added some American flags.

 

A mere 48 hours later, Brett and I were over at Jeff's house celebrating Julian's 10th birthday. How did that happen? He was just five!
Highlights include a wonderful taco dinner, all four boys sporting their new cuban-linked chains, and a water stain that has developed on the ceiling over the dining room table that is remarkably phallic. When I noticed it and pointed all four boys (and their mother) burst out laughing. I got tickled at the idea of an important gathering taking place there while that is just up there on the ceiling. What if their pastor came over?