Mrs. Gill, Mr. Gann and Mrs. Lilly

Can you find me? (Click to embiggen)

Best dog name, ever.

I'm always pretty embarrassed after I vomit out something particularly maudlin onto this blog. Usually I try to move on to the next post as soon as possible, because pushing it down off the page at least hides it from me for a while.

I've been pretty unmotivated to post for the last long while though. ME! Queen of the overpost!

Ah well.

Take a moment when you can

This afternoon I walked over a few doors down to the bank to deposit some checks. As I came back into the parking lot of my building, I saw a raptor of some type or another alight on a branch nearby. I have a short day today, with little pressing to do at work; just a lot of catch up. So I decided to see what was up with the bird, and see if I could ID it.

I'm not so great with birds of prey. The ones I most easily ID around here are red-tailed hawks and bald eagles. But the problem is that there's another hawk, the red-shouldered hawk, that looks enough like a red-tailed (in repose and from below) that at this point I don't try to distinguish them anymore unless I have binoculars on me.

Which I didn't this afternoon.

Luckily, Mrs. Red-tailed Hawk (which is what I eventually decided she was) sat patiently in a big old willow oak, letting the jays swarm her. They were really quite ruthless and daring. As Mrs. RTH sat there, one jay after another would dive-bomb her back and peck her. She didn't budge.

I stood there for at least 10 minutes (time flies when you bird), walking around to the south side of the tree to get the best light on her. The jays squawked and buzzed around her. We were all just doing our thing.

And then I came in and wrote this, trying not to scratch my arms, face, neck, ears and face where the 3-month old rottweiler a board member brought by to visit licked me all over earlier. I know that dog spit is likely to do this to me, but rolling around on the floor and holding a baby puppy with puppy breath and sweet soft fur who likes to bite my hair and rip my earrings out of my ears apparently trumps any other need I have not to have a blotchy red countenance. If I don't scratch, hopefully the hives will just chill out and not swell. (Yes, I've doped up)

What a great afternoon.

Reason #240 I love my job

I'm going to a Sweet 16 party the 2nd weekend in March, for one of the girls I work with. For some reason, I'm tickled, well, pink about it. As pink as the invitations.

It's a very formal affair, it seems. The invite is embossed and has a very detailed schedule of events. Here's how it will go:

3:00-5:00 p.m. Dinner Served
5:00-5:15 Musical performance by the birthday girl
5:20-6:00 p.m. Cake and ice cream
6:30-9:30 p.m. 70's dance for ages 12 and up. (come dressed or bring 70's attire if you like)
*Games and Prizes*

ADDRESS:
Random Baptist Church
Family Life Center
Very Rural Town, NC

Baluntimes

The winner in the category of unexpected letter closings:

We heart you! Love, Mom and Pete

I think she may have gotten that phrase from me.

For Jerrypants, Marianne, and the Sprog

PUPPY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG! Marco saved an eensy little girl Ethiopian puppy from being run over and/or dying of dehydration! She's living in his house with Toby Toberson, Dammit Janet and Bobo the Spider! She's only 6 weeks old! She's TINY!

Will she stay in Bole with the Marco Family? Will she come home with them to the US of A?

What's her NAME?

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!

(Pardon me while I pick myself up off the ground from rolling around in ecstasy)

OH, and here are Toby, Janet and Boris, in solo pictures.

I am SUCH a sucker.

Every so often something is so cute it makes me cry.

Like this:

Long story short:

Two guys in London in the 1960s. Buy a baby lion from a department store and name him Christian. Live the high life with it for a year. Lion gets too big. Coincidentally the stars of Born Free run into the lion in London. They hook the two guys up with the Born Free lion guy, who takes Christian out and successfully (as far as we know) integrates him into a new pride.

A year later the two men who raised the cub return:




Did YOU bawl?

p.s. I saw this at Metafilter

Hrm

May have spoken too soon about the roomie situation. We'll see. There are some external circumstances that need to be resolved before her decision can even be finalized. The prospect of actually having a seemingly sane roommate really amped me up though. It's felt so undoable that it's hard to motivate to keep. going. already. At this juncture I can either let myself feel beaten down and miserable or I can do that whole dusting off thing.

I overslept this morning, and I'm a little discombobulated still. I have a deadline, and after I get that work done and taken care of, I'll be through for the day. Speaking of motivation, I'll be getting on with that here in a minute.

I've plans to watch movies with a co-worker this evening. He has dogs. Dogs are good. I spent a little too much time yesterday shopping for doggies at rescue sites within, oh, 2-3 hours from home.
This one charmed me, not surprisingly. Not looking for a puppy, though.




I dropped an open can of soda on my foot this morning when leaving the house. I left it where it lay; couldn't be bothered to pick it up. I considered going inside to change my shoes, considering it drowned my entire right toe box, but decided that since it was diet it really didn't matter that much. And besides, they're sandals.

OK, off to do a little writing.

Oh. My lone cantaloupe is ripe. It's teensy--maybe six inches at its widest part. Sure does smell good, though.

Roly Poly

I get to babysit this cute thing again tonight! YAY! I hear the boy has chilled out some since the episode when I almost exploded. I've been advised of the evening routine, and Emily is even going to feed me.

Not that I need it. I've been really damn good at eating locally, which for me also corresponds to eating pretty healthily. Cause you know, convenience is so key in my world. Having a garden has made ALL the difference in my veggie consumption.

Lunch: insalata caprese, deviled eggs, cucumber/beet/dill/onion salad, dilly beans. Copious quantities of all of the above.

I have on a cute new black dress today. $7.49, baby. Unfortunately I didn't notice my underpants are sporting a big ole hole in them. Why I just told everyone that is beyond me.

Photo once again courtesy JRandalls Photography.

Sooooooooooooooieeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Jerrypants and I headed out this a.m. for Hog Day, knowing we'd score us some good eats.


And we did, oh yes we did. In fact, we had to go back for seconds, me and Jer.

I ran into another friend of mine, M, who works in solid waste management as a recycling educator. She GOT my compost love. "Hey, Sue, Stew's got a 140 degree hot pile!"

M also helped me get a new arm adornment. Here I am showing it off. Can you read what it says?



As we went through the crowds, I was compelled (and this is hardly surprising) to snorgle every doggie I found. It began as soon as we got in, with a greyhound rescue organization, and eventually wrapped up with me flailing around on the ground with some poor other woman's puppy. See?


As we were heading out to get back to the car, we saw the "Got to be NC Big Cart," a 13 foot tall, 15 foot long shopping cart with a Chevy 386 V8 engine, which the NC Agriculture department is using to market (groan!) (I mean, grown!!) locally produced foods. I chatted the people up at the table, and learned that there's a really common local peanut producer (!!) I had missed. Also, Jerry asked what the main NC crop is. Do you know? Sweet potatoes. Yum.

Before we had even left for this adventure, though, Jerry and I came across the most intriguing sight of the day. Right there in Jerry's parking lot we saw this:


What in the world does that mean?????

_________

Thanks for the photos, Jerrypants!!

Or maybe I'm just boring/bored and trying to sound all erudite and shit to hide it.

I've been thinking a lot in the last few days about identity, but also about minutia. I really like learning about the different minigroups that people can feel a sense of belonging about.

Maybe that's why I like Craigslist.

Just looking in one section tonight has provided me with a ton of interesting new information about the different appeal people find in animals.

Humans feel a LOT of emotion about their pets. That's not new to me. Most of the postings here are about finding new forever homes for their babies. Posters worry about their pet's mental health. There's also a fair amount of activism. Marketing, too. And who knew that there were fake pet scams?

This listing is just sad. I wonder what's going on? The desperation pet owners feel is just so touching to me.

I've heard of crazy cat owners, but not this. Odd? I'd say so.

I've decided not to look up what sugar gliders are, because really, I'd prefer to fantasize over what they might be.

Finally: some randomness that caught my eye:

* Horse hair pottery made from your horse's hair *
Chicken-eating Bulldogs must go
Aren't Quakers supposed to be real peaceable? I wonder why these ones are so aggressive.
Perhaps the best dog name ever.

Miscellany

● I think that my Mom once had a narrow pad of paper that stuck on the fridge and was labeled "Chopin Liszt"

● I have a new nextdoor neighdog, named Alistair. Very cute to have him wander up and nose me. His dad worries Alistair will pee on my garden beds. I'd be OK with that, if it keeps the cats from shitting in it.

● On Saturday at work I got: ear seeds, a massage and a geranium.

● My nephew, in explaining to me where exactly the deer's position had been, said: "You know Grandma's cage? Well, take twelve paces towards the lake."

● My step grandmother on my Dad's side, aged 97, is soon to leave this world. May she not be in pain in the meanwhile. And may there be all the Coca Cola she should want.

● The local rollerskating club I have a rather distant connection to has a slogan on their cards: "Drama free skate club"

● I like pointers

● Raw milk is to pasteurized as a Tillamook cheddar is to Velveeta.

● Benadryl is the only thing that works.

When your life revolves around food

Jamie is here still, and we're having a BLAST. (Well, I am, at least. And Jamie is probably not too freaked out or she'd have left by now. Heh.)

I have a lot to tell about what we've managed to pack in so far, but suffice it to say our activities have revolved around food, gardens and farms.

Oh, and goats. Baby goats. Baby goats who nibble. Baby goats who nibble noses and fingers and suckle them (both the noses and fingers!). Baby goats who are exactly one week old and so soft and clean and sweet that you don't even want to eat them!

Today is the first day of the Pennywise Eat Local Challenge. We split a 5-egg omelette filled with green onions, local feta and asparagus, accompanied by hot cornbread for breakfast. The cornbread had my blueberry-lemon jam and a local apiary's 'raspberry creme' honey to top it. The eggs and onions are from Jamie's, the feta from the Chapel Hill Creamery, and the asparagus from Maria (and likely from Jamie as well: we have asparagus coming out of our ears here!) The cornbread is from a NC self-rising cornmeal, and it turned out decently for once! Oh so frequently I end up with my cornbread way too dry.

Need to take a shower. There's more to tell, but I have some seeds to buy and some plants to bed.

Online Gem

I've had a post about Craigslist and Freecycle bouncing around in my head for months. I doubt I'll ever get to it.

So here's an example of why I love Craigslist.