Oh, goodie, goodie-

A dirty phone call. Make that THREE dirty phone calls, in rapid succession. Obviously a kid, offering to perform a particular "service" for me - as if he were old enough to know how -

The first time I got an obscene phone call, I was 19 and it scared me to death. Now, major YAWN factor.

I decided to report to the sheriff's dept. After all, this kid is on a cell phone that his parents probably pay for, and it's too easy to graduate from dirty prank calls to porn and other more insidious activities...

Very nice deputy. We had a good laugh about the whole thing.

Cleaning House!

I've never been a particularly domesticated woman. From the time I was a little girl, wanting to play house, I've been criticized and discouraged and even actively ridiculed - first by my mother, who wasn't capable of rising above the criticism she'd grown up hearing, then by my ex-husband (gay men are invariably more domesticated than most women, anyway)

Compound this little deficiency in my nature by the fact that I fell and ripped a hamstring a couple months ago - sitting, standing (we dubbed it this week-end, un-sitting), climbing steps... ranging somewhere from very uncomfortable to downright agonizing!

My house was a nightmare -

Enter friends: Stephanie. Mary. Emily.

Stephanie lives in Indiana, we talk on the phone a lot. She sort of jump-started the domestication gene long-dormant in my pathetic psyche. She also sent me the most gorgeous teacup, a graceful elegant thing of such feminine lines and proportions that I can hardly take my eyes off it. The cup was part of her grandmother's collection.
Mary lives in Texas. She recently sent me a set of dishes - red, Churchill dishes, again far more elegant than anything I've ever dreamed of choosing for myself.
Emily lives down the road in Charlotte. She gave me warm hospitality when I sang at the Eucharistic Congress last week, and I was so delighted with her little house, she offered to come help me with mine.

She came on Saturday. She was a busy worker bee, helping shift furniture, vacuuming in the odd corners I currently can't reach, pulling odd pieces from hiding places and setting them in a place of prominence. She set me to sewing curtains (the machine broke, my curtains are being hand-sewn) and ordered me about with meal-making while she did a regular "House Invaders" job for me.

I LOVE my house now! One more room to finish on my own, and it will become a "formal" dining room -
Photos coming eventually, okay?

Having introduced you to Bubba....

I thought you might like to see what Precious looks like. She's a small cat, only about ten pounds, max? but she'll stand down a big old dog like Tucker, who weighs probably close to 80 lbs.

I'm going to start a new cuss word -

CHIGGERS!
Yep. Sounds absolutely scandalous, doesn't it?

It should. I'm house- and pet-sitting for friends this week, lovely home about eight miles from my home. I spend nights there and come home to my place to work in the mornings. I bring Tucker, the dog, with me.

Tucker, if you are interested, is a sharpei-golden retriever mix.

On Tuesday, I decided that what I really wanted to do, while the weather was so nice and moderate and dry, was to spray the poison ivy that's threatening to take over my yard again. So I mixed up Round-Up (the only time I use this stuff is on poison ivy) and headed outdoors. A stroll along the driveway led to a stroll around the back yard, which led to a stroll in the woods...

Tucker has come back with ticks (so much for the value of Frontline) and I, my friends, am covered in chigger bites. My waist, arms, legs...

Yep - definitely worthy of becoming a cuss word. Forget those words alluding to bodily functions - let a new generation of profanity arise, founded in disgust over objects not wholly-enough separate from ourselves: CHIGGERS.

Next new cussword: tobacco hornworms!

It's so nice to be loved --

even when the love is from a poor little stray cat. The Ghost is still here; I don't have the heart to take him to the county animal shelter. He's under my feet all day long, and on my lap when I sit down. Last night friends stopped by, and he was even friendly toward them! I'm putting the word out around town, maybe someone will want to adopt him and he won't have to go to any of our shelters, even the no-kill ones.

Flannel Sheets and Christmas Music

It's FALL -- temps dipping into the 40s and 30s at night, highs only in the 50s in the day. Time to indulge in one of the great sensual pleasures of life -- FLANNEL SHEETS! and my great personal favorite, a red flannel popover from the Vermont Country Store. The Vermont Country Store is the place to find flannel sheets, too.

And with chilly weather, out comes the Christmas Music. I've been listening to Messiah for a while, but now I can really indulge. I've been listening today to Manheim Steamroller.

Add a cup of Earl Grey tea and a bowl of homemade veg soup... Ahhhhh, bliss!

Shiny sink!

Blame Linda for this one; she thinks it's funny.

I posted about flying with FlyLady.Net a couple weeks ago (and here's the logo. I've emailed a request for permission to post, and not gotten a reply; if they tell me "no" I'll come back and delete the thing) -- well... got a call last night, a friend's coming through from out of town this afternoon and taking me out to lunch -- and all I had to do to get the house ready was to run the vacuum (Bubba left me the feathery remains of a bird scattered all over the living room this morning) and swipe down the front bathroom. My kitchen sink is EMPTY, the drain is tucked up under the counter, and all the surfaces are shined! I even took the trash out and set it in my can to await transport to the dump on Tuesday!

I'm so proud of me! Now I'm going to go do some needlework while I wait!

Now -- where's the smelling salts for those of you who've known me for a while? Hmmm?

How many cooking knives does one woman need???

I've long joked that I have one outstanding domestic quality: I live in a house. I've never been very tidy or organized, or in fact even known what needs to be done when where or how -- the result of growing up in a household that is the stuff of news items. Literally -- there was a path through the living room from the door to the hall to the couch to the television; the rest of the floor was covered in old newspapers and magazines, paper coffee cups, books, empty kleenex boxes... junk. Often the clutter had to be moved from the chair so we could sit down (it just got set on the floor on top of the other clutter). I don't remember my mother ever cleaning up our home or running the vacuum ... I have a faint memory of seeing her at the ironing board.

I always swore! I was going to be a better housekeeper than my mother. I've been successful, too -- of course, it doesn't take much to meet that standard! But I've long felt, too, that there had to be more... if only I could find out how to go about knowing what that "more" actually was.

Well, I'm happy to tell the entire world that my house is shaping up wonderfully thanks to Marla and the Crew at FLYlady. I've Boogied over 200 pounds of CLUTTER from my house in the past month, giving away to neighbors and Goodwill and hauling what isn't good enough to share to the dump. My laundry is caught up, supper is in the crockpot, and if someone knocked on my front door right now, the only thing I'd have to shift in order to have a fully grand living room is my sweater (which I'm about to put back on anyway -- it's chilly today!)

This week's Zone is the Kitchen. Today I pulled out a silverware drawer that has needed attention for a long time -- and discovered I own 1 chef's knife, 3 butcher knives, 5 knives that I think are for filleting (I got them at a box in my sister-in-law's yard sale), 6 paring knives, a bread knife, another serrated knife, and some half-dozen steak knives I never use. I have put all but one of each style in a box to go to a friend who often butchers his own meat.

This is kinda fun, ya know?

i love my cat

Dateline: The Farm. 3:45 a.m., September 27, 2005

I am sleeping deeply, enjoying a very pleasant dream (can't remember now what it was about), when it happens. First the heavy weight going across my back. From the way my body feels as I wake up, I know I am in need of a chiropractic adjustment I don't have the money for right now. Never mind -- try to go back to sleep.

Sleep, however, is impossible. A soft paw pats my face. "Meow," says the one cat on the planet bold enough to wake me up in the middle of the night. Bubba-Thor wants something. He can wait; I roll over. He follows me, walking back across my back and patting my face on the other exposed cheek. I raise my arm to cover my face. He persists.

Now, what he wants is food. The cat food bag is standing on the floor, wide open -- all he has to do is stick his nose in the bag and he can eat all he could ever want in one sitting. There is even a saucer on the floor with bits of fat from the ribeye steak I ate for supper last night. This is also a cat that easily will top the scales at more than 20 lbs. Bubba could very well wait... two and a half hours for breakfast. But, oh, no, what this cat wants is for me to get up and fill his bowl. Now. No excuses, no delays.

If I ever want to be allowed to sleep again in this lifetime... I get up, go fill the stupid bowl, stop by the lgr (little girls' room) and go back to bed... where I lie in bed, tossing and turning, wide awake. Boogers!

And that is why I am posting to my blog at 4:30 a.m. Maybe, with a little luck, I can get about another hours' sleep before I have to be at work?

And today marks the Autumnal Equinox -- so Happy First Day of Fall to everyone!

We ought to be seeing the end of these 90+ degree days soon, yes?

Beating the Heat

Officially 100 degrees today, 103 on my front porch, with a heat index of around 110 -- and I made a decision a couple years ago not to run air conditioning here at the farm. Folks seem shocked when they learn that, but hey! folks around here didn't even have electricity to run fans until '49, so I consider myself kind of fortunate to have that!
Here's some fun ways I beat the heat:
Get up early to do housework, what little is actually being done on these hot days.
Have a stack of quiet projects to do in the afternoon -- scrapbook materials, books to read, magazines to enjoy, music to play, movies to watch.
Run lots of fans. Sit in the middle of them.
Soak in a cool tub with a good book.
If I'm not reading at night, or using the webcam talking with a friend, I don't run many lights.
Cook on the grill a couple of times a week.
Shower using either Tom's or Doctor Bonner's mint soaps -- the mint tingles on the skin and leaves you feeling "cool" for a long time after you get out of the tub.
Iced tea is an absolute "must" in the South -- sun tea to avoid adding cooking heat to the kitchen.
I have some shorts and tops I wouldn't be caught dead wearing in public, but they sure help me stay cooler and more comfortable at home.
I try not to run any sort of errands during the heat of the day. The store's air conditioning may feel good, but it's too unpleasant adjusting to the extra heat of my car and back to the house. If I can't go early in the day, I wait until late when the sun isn't beating directly down on my head.
A cool shower immediately before bed -- no drying off! just lying in bed with the fan blowing on wet skin. Usually I fall asleep before I dry off.
Oh -- and God bless my dear neighbors who've given me an open invite to come jump in their pool any time!

Geocaching

(In process of editing )

For those of you who haven't heard -- and there can't be many, because I'm usually among the last to catch on to these things -- geocaching is one of the latest internet/hi-tech hobbies going. What it is, is, some creative soul hides a container out in a woodsy or public place so other people can come along and find it.

A more detailed explanation is: afore-mentioned creative soul determines whether to create a "micro" or a "regular" cache -- a micro cache only contains a few slips of paper so that finders can log in their find, and a regular cache might contain some little souvenir for the finder to keep (with the understanding that the finder will in turn leave some other bit of treasure for a future finder). Then said creative soul locates a place to hide said cache, records a global positioning location in latitude and longitude, then records the new cache on a website like this one. Really clever and creative souls will create clues, hints and other little goodies to help increase the thrill of the hunt.

I went geocaching for the first time yesterday. My buddy and former neighbor, Steven, came to rescue me from a Fourth of July spent in front of a box fan (no a/c) with my nose buried in a book and to introduce me to one of his favorite hobbies. He's been geocaching for at least two years now.

We looked online by my zipcode to locate some of the caches hidden in my area. I was astonished to learn that there are actually dozens, if not hundreds, of geocaches located within twelve miles of my home! We visited three locations during the afternoon; I made my first find over in Jackson Springs near the old spring.

This could certainly become a delightful (and addictive?) hobby. A GPS device is pretty necessary to save time and energy in locating the cache, but those can be gotten relatively inexpensively nowadays, I'm told (under $100). Looking for the hidden treasure is only part of the fun I experienced -- It gets one out of the house, and yesterday I discovered a local site I'd not known of before - an old cemetary (the originator of the cache used information on the tombstones to provide clues for the whereabouts of the actual cache). I look forward to visiting a number of other parks and woodland sites in our area over coming months. I think it's going to be quite a lot of fun!

More encounters with wildlife --

I am going to have to seriously alter some of my habits, down here on the Farm. You see, I have a window I leave open, without a screen, so the cats can jump in and out during the night without waking me up. And I've been in the habit of leaving my back door open to let fresh air in, up until I go to bed.

That has to change as of NOW.

I got off to a bad start when my neutered male, Bubba, woke me up a few minutes after six this morning with that funny little whirring meow that tells me... "Bubba, what have you done NOW?" Yesterday he'd brought me two little lizards, still living, and as soon as he dropped them on the floor they'd scurried under a cat food bag or behind the dryer (they're still around here somewhere -- too fast for me to catch! and of course, once he gave them to me, Bubba lost interest)... this morning it was a dead bird. A brown thrasher. I picked up the bird and tossed it out the front door.

A few minutes ago, I heard a cat munching cat food in the automatic feeder just inside the back door. Glanced up... RACCOON! a bright-eyed, half-grown raccoon, standing INSIDE MY HOUSE in my back hallway! I think I gasped. He looked up and seemed as startled to see me as I had been to see him.

"Excuse me -- WHAT are you doing in MY HOUSE? Don't you think you belong OUTSIDE?" Don't ask me why I was speaking to a wild raccoon. I also talk occasionally to inanimate objects.

He stared at me for a moment then turned around and waddled out the back door. I grabbed my battery-operated sweeper and headed for the back door. He was standing just off the deck, and when I appeared in the back doorway, he peered at me again.

I knew we had raccoons out here. I regularly see tracks around the back dirt roads. But I've never even seen one waddling down the road at night. So this was quite a treat.

Still, it is not a good thing for wild animals to come meandering into one's back door. From now on... the door remains shut and locked. Otherwise, I might step out of the front bathroom to find a deer in the living room, next!

Summertime!

Woke up this morning with the very strong sense that I HAD to get to the local home improvement warehouse and pick up some flowers. Half of them are now potted on my back porch; the other half will go in pots or in the ground later today. So begins my summer.

Randy was here over the week-end, and Sunday afternoon I brought him to the Farm for a couple of hours. It was a time of wonderful gifts of the kind I like best. As he unfolded his nearly - six-foot frame from my little Escort, the first thing he said was, "Man! it's quiet out here!" and almost immediately we heard the plaintive little "bob-WHITE" of a quail in the woods behind the tobacco barn, and another across the road answering him. The buddleia I almost killed last year by transplanting late in the spring is blooming like crazy, and so are the daylilies and the spiderwort. There are deer tracks within twenty feet of the front steps. I wouldn't have seen the fox if Randy hadn't seen it first, gazing curiously at us through the underbrush of the hedgerow in the back yard. When the sun set and it grew quite dark, we went a little way up the road so he could see the stars unimpeded by city lights or my back-yard security lamp.

The one thing I couldn't arrange for him was one of our glorious summer thunderstorms. We had a grand one Monday night after he had left, and another here last night, with heavy downpours of rain and rumbling thunder in the distance. The lightening bugs also did not cooperate while he was here. I saw a couple last week-end from the kitchen window where I'm now writing. We used to have hundreds of them blinking their way through the early summer evenings, when I was a kid. I suppose the extravagant use of pesticides and other chemicals has destroyed most of them. They've become quite rare, and you just don't hear kids bragging about how many they caught and bottled the way we used to do. It's a pity, the things we've lost over the past couple of generations.

Well, duty calls in the form of a cluttered back porch and two six-packs of impatiens. It's a gorgeous morning, and I'm glad to be home for a while to enjoy it.

Signs of Summer

I'm at the farm for the week-end, ostensibly to clean up and get ready for company next week-end and my return home for the summer. The reality, though, is that I've just about crashed! Our first Finals were on Friday, and now that the let-down has begun I am very very tired.

It was a hard semester in a number of respects. Teaching Philosophy was a real stretch. Whereas Grammar, at this point, I suspect I could teach while blindfolded, I haven't read any philosophy since Rudy Behar's Comparative Arts course at Guilford College in 1988. I loved the subject! Getting into the kind of depth we did, by focusing only on the "Big Three" -- Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle -- has proven to be, for me, a mind- and soul-stretching experiencing. But staying one step ahead of my students who are exceptionally bright and eager young men and women, has been quite a challenge, to say the least.

Then there are those unpleasant occasions where the behavioral and character deficiencies of certain students had to be recognized and dealt with. There are students with a variety of personal crises, too, covering an astonishing range for such a small population. Their concerns weigh heavily on me; I want to fix everything for everyone, and of course I can't.

So with everything beginning to lift for a few weeks, I arrived home on Friday afternoon, shortly after noon, and with all my work to get ready for the carpet cleaners, I first had to lie down for a few minutes. After the carpet cleaners left, at nearly 3:00, I had to lie down again. I think I've taken five or six naps over the past two days! And -- nearly unheard of! -- I slept eight straight hours Friday night.

Still, it's summer! If we couldn't see this and feel it by the thermometer, which has hit the mid-80s for the past two days, we'd know it by the evening song of the whipporwill, that perfect herald of the season. For the past two evenings I've been pleasantly surprised to hear his call as dusk settled. Both evenings, I stopped what I was doing and just... listened, holding my breath after the first call, until I was sure my mind hadn't been playing tricks on me.

I ran down the road yesterday afternoon to a local farm that has a stand for its own produce. Strawberries are in -- these were so sweet and so flavorful! I didn't need sugar or whipped creme or anything, just popped them into my mouth like candy as I worked on the kitchen and cooked supper. There were perfect,tiny butter-yellow straightneck squash and emerald zucchini. The tomatoes, the girl admitted, had been bought at market, coming from Florida, but it won't be long now before our first locals are ready. I was shocked to hear her say the first peaches for our area will be pulled this morning.

Then, last night, I was on the computer talking with a friend and a tiny flash of fluorescent light caught my attention: a lightening bug!

So it must not be my imagination, or mere wishful thinking. "Behold, the winter is come and gone, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land." Er, sorry, Solomon -- the whipporwill.

Finding old friends and seeing rabid possums

I'll start with the worst first. When you see a nocturnal animal reeling through your yard in broad daylight, you've got a problem on your hands.

This possum -- at first I thought it was a stray cat dragging something through the yard, I've never seen a dun-colored possum before -- was staggering underneath my maple tree just about ten feet from my front door. I watched as it went by the south end of my mobile home, and when I looked out my bedroom window to follow its progress, it looked straight at me through the window.

You ever been stared down by a possum in broad daylight?

I watched, and it limped (hurt back foot) to my garden shed, where it ducked underneath and disappeared. When my neighbor arrived, .22 in hand, we couldn't find it, it's up under the shed, hidden by floor joists. So this morning my first order of business was to call the sheriff and Animal Control and ask for assistance. I'm waiting for a return call from the local wildlife guy.

We had a problem with rabies here five years ago. A rabid racoon wandered up in my neighbors' yard, middle of the day -- got treed by their dogs... whose rabies vaccinations had expired not long before because my friends had been tied up in a series of family illnesses. Every single one of their dogs had to be destroyed. Two mama dogs and two litters of pups, and the daddy. It was a horrible, horrible day.

So here I am, the pollen count is way down, I have spring cleaning to do, linens to wash and hang out, a yard to clean up, some flowers to transplant... and I'm scared to go out of the house.

On a brighter note, I mentioned in my little post introducing Randy to my friends that I'd actually been looking for some other people in the old group, Heirship. Well, I've made contact! I'm happy to report that Ed Stiltz is now a United Methodist pastor down the road from me, in South Carolina. I'd bet Ed's congregations have a good shepherd in him and will be sorry to see him transferred to a new charge next month. Dave and Lisa Boyd, the original friends I was looking for, are in Vienna, Austria, doing some very important work with the Vineyard Fellowship. Ron Elms, who was manager and sound man for Heirship, is the first of the old friends to enter Eternity, in September, 2000. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and may perpetual Light shine on him.

May God bless the developers of the Internet!

How to Grow Bermuda Grass

My friend Bill is frustrated by his yard's resistance to the bermuda grass lawn he's trying to get established. As my yard is overrun with the stuff, I offered him this simple advice for getting bermuda (or perhaps any spreading grass) to "stick," and I offer it to you for what it's worth:

One must remember, first and foremost, that bermuda operates on a principle of contraries; where you don't want it is where it will thrive.

So toss out your sprigs with as great an air of carelessness as you can muster. If you can find a way to casually drop them along the ground as you run your lawn mower, or better yet the rototiller, the sprigs will think they have been dropped as "volunteers" and may not really be wanted in that spot. Then stand where you most want quick and thorough coverage, and say in a loud voice,

"Gee, this is a great spot for a vegetable garden! I sure hope the bermuda doesn't overtake it!" Actually going through the motions of putting a few vegetables in the ground, for reinforcement purposes, will guarantee the effects of your announcement.

Using this method, the sprigs can be tossed onto the ground and not "set," covered in black plastic for two years... it won't matter; you'll have more bermuda grass than you will know what to do with.

And I'll be glad to send you some sprigs from my vegetable garden to prove my point. Yeah, the grass that survived the two years covered in heavy black plastic.