Where Does the Cat Sleep?

In answer to that I'd have to say anywhere she wants.  In order to get her 20 hours of shut eye each day she has to vary her routine.  She sleeps in windows, on boxes, on the music books by the piano, on the tv satellite box, under the bed, on the bed, on the end table with her head on the couch, on the kitchen table, the entryway tables and any other table that takes her fancy, on my puzzle, in any cupboard she can open, under the sink, on the newel post, on her window seats, in her tunnel and on her scratching post.  Where doesn't she sleep?  In any cat bed we've ever been foolish enough to buy here.
Lately her favorite place is on Mac's printer.  And just to be truly weird we found her this morning on the bathmat that was wet and laying on the tub faucets.  Cats!

Sunday

Where does the week go?  It has finally cooled off a bit here, if you can call high 80's and low 90's cooler.  Each day starts with a walk and a swim, absolutely can't walk later in the day and if our housing area wasn't full of tall shady trees we wouldn't be able to walk even in the morning.
I finally made it out into the garden this morning, pulled up about 700 weeds and the rest just laughed at me.
Mac dug potatoes up, brought tomatoes into ripen and a few green beans that I'm going to use in a green bean salad.
 Planning on seeing Jurassic World this week, first time we've been to the movies in years, usually wait for them to come out on Netflix.  But we decided the dinos need to be on the big screen.
I leave you with my favorite pair.

Five on Friday

Though I'm starting this on Friday, I'll bet it's Saturday before I get this done.  Somebody, and woe betide my memory, mentioned that I seldomly show my paintings so I thought I'd show 5 of mine.  The photography is really bad, but I was hot and tired so we'll just have to go with it.

Mary Cassatt is one of my favorite painters and I like painting children so I did a water color copy of her paintings, it's called Children on the Beach.
Here is her painting:

Here is my water color:  

The second is  a water color I did of an ocean scene, I can't remember where I found the original.

The next is  an oil painting I did of a beached boat.  I love to paint boats, no idea why.  The original was a photograph I found on the internet.

The fourth is a simple still life, no idea where I found the original.  Again it's a water color.

The last painting is a copy of a Rembrandt, boy don't I think I'm good that I'm copying his work, LOL.  Actually the reason I did it is because in ways it looks like our daughter, though she's much better looking.  Mac had to help me with the nose.  It's an oil painting.

Well I'm surprised, I'm about done and it's still Friday.  I'm joining in with Amy at Love Made My Home and others for this Five on Friday, click on the icon to visit.

Osiyo

Osiyo is Cherokee for hello.  A few days ago I got a magazine from the Cherokee tribe called Anadisgoi.  This is a new venture for the Tribe and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I am a member of the Cherokee tribe, finally got my tribal enrollment card a couple of years ago.  In order to get one you must prove direct descent from one of the people on the Dawes Roll that was established in the early 1900's.
In order to break the power of the tribal chiefs the federal government decided to give the reservation lands to individuals instead of the tribe holding it as a whole.  So a census was done to find all the Cherokees in what was then eastern Oklahoma, before it became a state.
My Grandmother Pearl Anderson Kennedy is on that roll as is my Great Grandmother Elizabeth Finn Anderson.  So all of my Mother's family was eligible for tribal enrollment.
The Cherokees have been a very successful  tribe having oil and gas on their lands long before casinos came along.  When they moved into casinos it was decided to not give the money from this venture directly back to tribal members as some tribes have done but rather to invest it in health services (hospitals and clinics), education (scholarships and schools) infrastructure (roads, sewers, water and electricity) and housing ( rehabilitating some houses, building new ones for the poor and elderly).
My sisters live in Oklahoma and receive free medical care, monthly commodities, help with utiility payments and in the case of my younger sister a brand new 3 bedroom home.
From the magazine I learned of other ventures the tribe is involved in, job assistance, substance abuse treatment centers and
donations to prevent domestic violence.
They're also bringing back bison to Oklahoma.

I'm rather proud to be a Cherokee.

Herb Garden

Mac planted some herbs for me in my laundry room window---basil, mint, sage, and some hen and chicks.  I have all of these out in the garden, but it's nice to have them a little closer so I can snip fresh bits off.
They were just in regular pots until I saw what Sue over at Our New Life in the Country had done with her herbs, she's planted them in pewter.  Well we've collected pewter for years so Mac went around the house and collected a few pieces and replanted the plants.  Don't they look great.

Lollygagging

One of me favorite words, it so describes me.  I lollygag a lot.  Which means I waste time, fiddle about, flit from one thing to another, but hardly ever get anything done.
I looked the origin of the word up and it's wrapped in a bit of mystery.  It is believed to have shown up here in the States in the 1860's, I betting  here in the South.  I can remember my Mom saying it too, she meant it to be lazy.
I'm not lazy, just conserving my energy.  I did mow the lawn today, there's almost an acre of it.  Note to self, should have put on sun screen (Melisandre my dermatologist will get me) and I should have worn a mask, I'm wheezing now.
Time to exercise and then a bit more lollygagging.

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to my husband Mac.  Bless his heart he's out in the awful heat we're having watering all the plants.  If they depended on me they'd be dead.
I'm cooking him one of his favorite meals today lamb chops with roasted potatoes, a little heavy for the weather, but he loves lamb.
Miss Kitty and I found him a P.G.Wodehouse book he hadn't read and our daughter April sent him a load of food goodies from Japan.  We Skyped this morning so she got to watch him open the box.
Both of our Dads are gone now, but live on in our hearts and memories.

Book Time

As any regular reader of this Blog knows I read, a lot.  Read some good ones lately and a few clunkers too.

This week I read Julian Barnes Man Booker Prize winner The Sense of an Ending and I liked it very much.  Reading reviews of it I discovered that people were very divided about this book, they either liked it very much or didn't like it at all.
It's the story of Tony, told in the present tense and of his teenage years, the friends he had and his girlfriend Veronica.  His friendship with Adrian and his romance with Veronica are central to the story.  The author asks what is memory, what is true and what is only what we want to remember.  And is history the  lies told by the victors or the self-delusions of the losers?
Remarkable book.

Another one I quite enjoyed was A Nasty Piece of Work by Robert Littell.  I've read a number of Littell's books, most of them about spies (The Company about the CIA was excellent).  This one was a bit different, Lemual Gunn--that's Gunn with 2 n's--- is living in the New Mexico desert inan old airstream trailer built for Douglas Fairbanks when he was making a movie.  He's a former cop who also worked with the CIA until they parted company,  acrimoniously.
Onella Neppi, who he calls Friday---that's the day he met her--has been working as a bail bondsman for her uncle and she's afraid that the $125,000 bond she put up for a client, one Emilio Gava, may be forfeited, that he has done a runner.
The book is the story of their search for him and about finding each other.  The ending definitely caught me off guard.

Another I really enjoyed lately was Trigger Warning by Neil Gaimen.  Trigger warnings are those things that put us on edge, maybe even frighten us.  This collection of short stories is one that will stick with me for quite a while.  I particularly liked "The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury".  The premise being, dothose we forget cease to exist?



Right now I'm rereading  Rebecca by Daphne Du Muarier (it's even better than I remember)  , High Rising by Angela Thirkell and Minding Frankie by Maeve Bunchy, one of her last books.


What have you been reading lately?

Five on Friday

I'm joining in with Amy at Love Made My Home  and others (click on the icon at the bottom of the blog) for our weekly Five on Friday.  This week's five are a mixed bag.

The first is my favorite invention:  Air conditioning.
The temperature here yesterday was 98º, it is supposed to be that again today and then 100º on Saturday and 101º on Sunday (Happy Father's Day Mac).  So of course what happened yesterday afternoon?  Our air conditioner went out.  ARGHHH!!!!  You can't, or at least I wouldn't want to, live in the south without air conditioning.  Thank goodness we'd just added a window air conditioner to our bedroom window or we could not have slept here last night.  We would have had to stay in a motel.  It was 87º (that was the temperature in the house ) when we went to bed at 11 pm.


My second is the blessing of good friends.  Our friend Mike, who in addition to being a great piano player and bass player, is a jack of all trades who has just finished 2 years at a Tech School updating all his home repair skills including heating and air conditioning.  Mac called him last night and he was here by 9 am this morning, fixed the problem, a bad capacitor  (he says the parts coming in from China are very poorly made and don't last), and charges us---and only because we insist on paying---a nominal fee.  You're a life saver Mike.

The third is food for a hot day.  I'm making a Spanish tortilla, with lots of onions, potatoes and chorizo.  Paired with a salad that's dinner.

The fourth is orange sherbet ice cream, so fresh and tangy. What a treat on a hot summer night.

And my fifth is a picture I saw on-line this week and it made me giggle.  I think that if I were to try and hitchhike I'd find a better traveling companion than the raccoon did.

How to Fold a Fitted Sheet

II don't know how to fold fitted sheets.  I've tried and tried and they always look like I rolled them up in a ball and stuck them in my linen closet.  It's embarrassing. I swear the sheets that people are folding in the videos are toy sheets, I could fold them.  My sheets are King-sized and they're a monster to fold.
 I found this Martha Stewart video on Youtube and she is the head domestic goddess around here, so the next time I fold my sheets I'm going to try this method.  If that doesn't work I'm going to follow the tip Martha gives at the end of the video.

Summertime, Serious Summertime

All housework has been suspended until further notice.  The temperatures have been hovering in the upper 90's for days now with no end in sight.  We've had no rain either which would have been nice.  At least the humidity isn't too bad.  So it's air conditioning broken by breaks in the pool, followed by cool meals.

Can't Believe It!!!

We've been Monty Python Flying Circus fans since the early '70's, owned all the videos of their tv show and all their movies. But other than meeting Michael Palin at a book signing at Harrod's one summer we've never seen them live.  That's finally going to change or at least partly.
John Cleese and Eric Idle are coming to the Savannah Civic Center in October and we've got tickets.  We're so excited we're bouncing off the walls.

Walk on the Wild Side

This weekend while doing our morning walk, even earlier than usual because of the heat, we chanced upon some rather prehistoric looking critters known as 9-banded armadillos.  I’m not a big fan of armadillos, they come in and dig up your yard in search of grubs.  We have enough animals digging up our yard, moles, opossums, deer, without the ‘dillos coming in.

Here are some photos Mac took.

Look rather innocent rooting about don’t they.  Well I’ll leave you with this article.

Three People Diagnosed With Leprosy In Florida; Nine-Banded Armadillo Implicated In Transmission

Mar 1, 2015 05:10 PM By  Anthony Rivas

Three new cases of leprosy have emerged in Florida, and two of them are suspected to have stemmed from the nine-banded armadillo.  Leppyone, CC BY 2.0 

Since 2001 Leprosy has been considered eliminated throughout the world, with only one case per 10,000 people. There are only a few regions of the world in which cases of the disabling disease still exist, and one of those regions is Volusia County, Fla., where three people have been diagnosed in the last five months.

Leprosy, which is also called Hansen’s disease, has been around since the ancient Egyptians, causing painful skin lesions and growths; thick, stiff, or dry skin; paralysis, numbness in limbs, and enlarged nerves. Complications that arise from these symptoms of the infection, or a secondary infection from injuries sustained from these symptoms, often lead to the hallmark deformities that have caused so many people to become ostracized for their illness.  

The infection is caused by Mycobacterium leprae, a slow-multiplying, tropical climate bacterium that incubates for up to five years, and whose symptoms can take up to 20 years to appear. It’s also far less contagious than it’s purported to be. For these reasons, Volusia County health officials don’t believe the three new cases signal an emerging outbreak. However, the sudden increase in cases has caught eyes due to the fact that in the past 10 years, there’s only been one case of the disease in Volusia County. Florida as a whole tends to have an average of eight to 10 cases of the disease per year, according to a 2009 report from the Department of Health and Human Services, ABC News reported.  

It’s believed that two of the current cases stemmed from contact with nine-banded armadillos, animals that are not only prevalent in southern states like Louisiana and Texas, but also known to carry the bacterium — a 2011 study found this connection after analyzing the genomes of leprosy patients who had never traveled to regions where the disease is prevalent and the armadillos. For this reason, health officials have warned those who handle or get near the animals that while the risk of infection is low, precautions should always be taken to lower risk.

According to HHS, there are currently about 6,500 cases of the disease in the U.S., with about 3,300 of them requiring constant medical management. While the disease is easily treated with antibiotics, health care providers are often unaware of the symptoms of the disease, causing delays in the process, and worsening a patient’s outlook.

Five on Friday

Running a little late as usual, though in most things I'm way early, just ask Mac who gets dragged off to airports HOURS before we have to be there.  This week my five are things that make me happy.

 The first is the sweet southern town we live in.  This morning we went to the bank to order foreign currency and were greeted by name, Mac took a box to the post office to mail and didn't even have to wait in line, there was no waiting for my prescription at the drug store, to say nothing of our soft spoken southern doctor who never yells at me and tells me I'm going to stroke out.  In fact  my blood pressure has gone done and stabilized since we moved here. God bless the south.

 The second is the the bouquet of flowers Mac cut and put in a vase for me yesterday.  He always bring me flowers, what could be sweeter.

The third is all the Hydrangeas growing in the garden, they range from almost white to soft, soft pink.

The fourth is my Confederate rose that started blooming this week, isn't it gorgeous.

And the fifth is the day lilies that have started blooming out front, such a pretty yellow.




It's be a good week for us, I hope it has been for you too.  Please join Amy at Love Made My Home  and all the others participating in Five on Friday.


                                       

Alarm Clocks

Alarm clocks are strange little critters.  Sometimes they work properly, go off at the correct time and send you on your way.  Sometimes they don't, in fact ours didn't in February when we were due to leave on a trip, so it was retired and we pulled out old blue.
Old blue is pretty reliable, it's not electric so it doesn't matter if the electricity goes out.  It doesn't have a snooze button, so you have to turn it off when it beeps.  We've often wondered how long  it would beep if we didn't hear it right away.  Well we've partly answered that question.  We had it set for 7 am yesterday because we had doctor appointments and we wanted to get up early enough to do our morning walk before we left.
As it turned out we woke up  early and were out of the house before 7, no one thought to turn the clock off.  We walked for about 40 minutes and when I came back in the house I heard a persistent beep, beep, beep and I realized it was the alarm clock.  I hurried in to turn it off.  We now  know it will keep beeping for at least 30 minutes (it was 10 to 7 when we left the house).  So if we try and sleep on it's not going to let us.  Good to know.

Some of This, Some of That

Back from our 6-month check-up.  All is well, except we're both having massive allergy attacks and I have a rash of unknown origin on my leg.  It's been that kind of year for me, one little niggling problem ( though my foot was not so little) after another.  Some years we only see our doctor for our annual physical and the 6 month follow-up.  I don't even want to think about how many times we've seen him this year.
 He offered us steroid shots for our allergies, but we declined, will muddle through with antihistamines even though they raise my blood pressure a bit.
My foot is doing much better and I told him that mostly it's been a problem when I sit for long spells, like on a flight.  When I got off the plane from Utah I was really hobbling, the man in the arrival tunnel offered me a wheel chair, which I declined.
The doctor says to get up and move around a bit during the flight. Seeing as they always want us buckled up while we're in the air that might be a problem, I may have to get an extension for my seatbelt.   I also asked about wearing compression socks on long flights (we have England this year and Japan next year) and he said definitely yes.
Someone (Rowan at Circle of the Year) said she was surprised that we have poisonous snakes in Georgia. Well, with the exception of Gila Monsters I think we have every poisonous critter there is.  I don't mind the green garter snakes and the corn snakes, but I loathe water snakes, and we have both poisonous -- water moccasins-- and non-poisonouse-- black racers.  There's just something evil about water snakes.
I just finished reading Still Alice  by Lisa Genova, really liked it, such a sad story.  A Harvard Professor gets early onset Alzheimer and the book is written from her perspective.  I haven't seen the movie based on the book, but I've read that it's very moving.
I also finished A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler, which I liked, but didn't love.  It's  the story of a family and I usually like family stories, but this one didn't connect all that well with me and I really didn't like the ending.
Well I've gotten nothing done today so I best get moving.

It Feels Like Summer

Indeed it does, temperatures near 90º, humidity high, yes it feels like summer.  Weeds growing like crazy and everything in bloom--Mac's having allergy problems, I did mine in Utah, or so I thought.  I've been weeding in the garden and now I'm wheezing, gotta love those weeds.
This weekend Mac  found a copperhead snake in a flowerbed near the garage.  He's not keen on killing anything, but poisonous snakes should not take up residence near the house.
Swimming in the pool the last 2 days has felt wonderful. We're going out later this week to look for a net gazebo to go on the deck so we can sit outside more--without it the bugs will get us.  For example, even though I sprayed bug repellant all over I have 3 new deer fly bites.  Deer fly are all mouth and nothing repels them.
Summer meals, ribs and potato salad followed by a nap in the heat of the afternoon.
I've been trying to get the house back into shape after our trip and catch up on laundry while Mac has tried to catch up on the yard.  My job is hot and hard because we don't turn air conditioning on till noon, but his is hotter, I don't know how he does it.
The daylillies and the gladiolas are quite spectacular this year.

And here are the latest additions to my National Park animal
zoo, a Utah prairie dog and a 3-line chipmunk.

The Hogback

One more story from Utah.  On the day Mac fished at Calf Creek we were really on our way to an Anasazi village.  To get there we drove scenic route 12, a bypass that runs from Highway 89 to the town of Torrey about a 124 miles away.  It passes through some beautiful scenery, you'll see the remains of ancient seabeds, alpine forests, pink and red stone turrets and sagebrush flats.  It's the road that goes to Bryce and to the town of Tropic where we were staying.
So up bright and early one morning we took off, stopped for ice in Escalante where they have a teeny, tiny petrified forest (we had visited it last year) and off into new territory for us.  We stopped at the Escalante River where Mac talked to a forest ranger who advised him that the fishing was better on the Calf Creek, and it was.  There's a 126 foot waterfall that many people were hiking to, but Mac was after fish and I wanted to paint.
After the fishing we headed back onto Route 12 in search of the Anasazi State Park.  Immediately the road started climbing with rather deep drop-offs on the far side of the road.  At this point I need to tell you I have a morbid fear of heights, not just a fear, an absolute terror of them.  And scenic Route 12 turned into a nightmare.  It was just a narrow 2 lane road with little or no shoulders, no guard rails and a sheer drop off on BOTH sides.  I was terrified, I began to shake and cry, Mac asked if I wanted to turn around and I said YES!  We had to wait for a turn-out and even that scared me, had to close my eyes and not watch while he backed up.  Then back down the way we'd come, me crying the whole way.
When we got back to our cabin I Googled The Hogback and found that people either loved this road, found it exhilarating or were terrified by it like me.  Like I said, I don't do heights and if I do there had better be guard rails, lots of them, high ones.

No photos, my eyes were closed.  But here's the painting I did at Calf Creek.

Five on Friday

I'm a bit late, travel hangover I guess, plus having to go out and get my B-12 shot---about a week late.

I'm going to make this simple, just some photos from our trip to Utah.

The first is from Red Canyon and Bryce viewpoint in the park.

Hoodoos at Red Canyon

Bryce Canyon

Utah Prairies Dogs, an endangered species.  They were so entertaining we visited them twice.

Calf Creek, absolutely loaded with trout, Mac
said it was his idea of heaven.

 The second set is of the Prairie Dogs.

A Pronghorn grazing behind the Prairie Dog town.

The third is of deer, there were 3 in the meadow behind the prairie dogs and when one got close enough I snapped his

picture.



The fourth set is of Mac fishing, he got several days of it in.

He fished at Calf Creek, Pine Lake, the stream at Tropic Reservoir and along the Servier River.  Without a doubt Calf Creek was the best.  I sat and painted while he fished.

Mac with one of the Brown Trout he caught, this one was in Calf Creek

And the fifth is me in the snow, we even made snowballs.

Me sitting by the snow at Cedar Breaks, a national park at 10,000 feet or so.  It was around 52º which felt great after the heat of Georgia.


Check out the Amy at Love Made My Home and the other bloggers participating in Five on Friday.