Heat Wave.

.... and I'm not talking about that 1960s song by Martha and The VanDellas, either.

The weather has been horrid..... terribly hot (way over 100 every day this week) and very dry (the ponds are beginning to look like big puddles again) and even the humidity has been creeping up each day.

The baby barn swallows have been falling out of one of the nests on the back porch...... a nest with five babies is now a nest of one baby. We were able to put two of the babies back into their nests, but they fell out again--- they were literally hanging over the edge of the nest and gasping for air on the day the temperature reached 108. It didn't help that the nest holding those five tiny birds wasn't built large enough for that big a bird family. Two eggs would have perfect, three eggs would have been pushing it, but five eggs was just downright overcrowding.

The last little baby bird from that particular nest has been living on the ground in the flower bed for the past three days. Our outside cat Gatsby has watched that tiny bird but hasn't bothered him. Gatsby has seen me up on the ladder and I have to wonder if he understands that I'm trying to keep that baby bird safe until he's able to fly. Or maybe it's just so hot outside that the last thing on Gatsby's cat-mind is expending energy to trounce on a baby bird. Either way, the adult birds are feeding the baby bird right there on the ground, and I check on the baby from time to time to make sure he's not in direct sunlight.

And in the midst of the heat wave........ the air-conditioning system that covers the 2nd and 3rd floors decided to die a slow death. As of the day before yesterday, we could have erected a tombstone in front of the outside a/c unit. We called the repair guy, who sounds like Gomer Pyle in the old "Mayberry" shows with Andy Griffith. 'Gomer' always tells us that he's on his way...... but we've learned from experience that his "on myway" phrase can mean anything from one hour to seventeen hours, depending on his work schedule for the day. He's a good a/c guy, and knows what he's doing, and won't let you spend money if you don't need to, but he just doesn't have enough workers on hand during his busiest months. So you wait. And you wait.

For the last two nights, we've been sleeping in the TV room..... the a/c system for the first floor is fine (knock wood) and the main level of the house is comfortably cool. Walk up the stairs, though, and you get hit with a wall of heat that just envelopes you...... makes you feel like a biscuit that's just been taken out of the oven and wrapped in a napkin to keep warm.

So we opted for the TV room, even though we have a guest cottage here, plus the guest rooms over the barn. I, for one, do not want to sleep in the rooms over the barn, thank you. And even the guest cottage....... not something I wanted to do. I'd rather just stay in our house and make do with the air-conditioned main floor until the second floor gets back to being cool. As I type, we're waiting once again for Gomer, who said he'd be here first thing this morning. It's 8:30 right now, and in my opinion, we're already an hour and a half past "first thing."

Mickey and Sweet Pea have liked us sleeping the TV room these past two nights. I'm sure Mickey has thought we lost our minds when we moved here....... that cat must truly believe that we bought a smaller house that doesn't have bedrooms because he's only been allowed into the TV room, the kitchen, and the breakfast room. (How's that for a run-on sentence, by the way?)

Last night, I slept on the TV room sofa and Mickey was sleeping by my feet and Sweet Pea was curled up with his head on my shoulder. At one point during the night, I felt Sweet Pea jump down from the sofa and he walked over to my husband and brushed himself up against my husband's back.............. and then he jumped up and curled himself against my neck again. Sweet Pea is such a loving cat....... he is just so happy to share his little cat-life with everyone.

So that's where we are today..... in a house that's broiling hot upstairs, nice and cool downstairs, with two happy cats who like us sleeping in 'their' room as long as we keep away from their own personal cat-beds.

Memory Lane in Maryland

There really is such a thing as a BFF (Best Friend Forever).  My husband and I were in Maryland this past week, at the home of my friend V........ we met back in our first year of high school, in 1965.  She was just out of Greek school, I was just out of Catholic school...... and there we were, standing in front of that huge public high school, totally lost.

I don't remember if she said hello to me first, or I said hello to her first, but I think we both realized very quickly that we were like fish out of water in that big public school after our 'sheltered' eight years in the private school system.

V and I hit it off at that first hello, and we were inseparable all during high school.  I spent as much time at her house as I did at my own...... countless sleep-overs at her house, with her mom cooking Greek dishes that I'd never tasted before.  My life-long love of anything Greek began with our friendship and has never wavered.  V and I used to walk to my grandmother's house after classes, and she would taste my grandmother's Italian food...... and my grandmother would make us home-made potato chips after she saw us eating "those things" in the cellophane bags.

After we graduated high school,  V went on to college, I went to work...... then I moved out of state and she moved out of the old neighborhood.  I tried over the years to find her, she was trying to find me. We never managed to re-new that connection, but the memories and the friendship was all there, intact and waiting.

I tried more than a few times to find V on the computer over the years, with no luck.  Over the years, I told my husband about V and our friendship..... we looked for her under her maiden name and couldn't find her.  Other friends in NY didn't know where she had gone, didn't know her married name..... it seemed hopeless and for a while I stopped searching.  My husband managed to find V last year, via Internet searches...  V's daughter C had opened up a Facebook page--- one look at C and I knew she had to be V's daughter.... I sent a letter to "my V," hoping that we had found the right person in Maryland...... V answered back right away... we spoke over the phone, we sent eMails........ everything that we once had was all still there..... we were just a little bit older.

When my husband asked me what I wanted for my 60th birthday back in January, I told him that I wanted a trip to Maryland to see V and her husband and daughter.  And that's what we did last week. One hug from V and it was as if we had never been apart. The magic of a BFF relationship.

V's daughter C is just like our own special friend Miss C............ same personality, same sense of fun and innocense, same everything.  I told V that when she visits us here, I will make sure to have Miss C visiting us at the same time so the two girls can meet--- they're just one year apart in age.

As with every trip, my husband found restaurants recommended on the Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives show, and we all had lunches there inbetween the sight-seeing.  We went to the Inner Harbor in Baltimore and saw the Aquarium.  We saw where Francis Scott Key wrote the words to "The Star Spangled Banner" (the tune was originally a British drinking song!).

My husband found the most beautiful vintage carousel in Echo Park...... just breathtakingly beautiful, and so wonderfully restored.... surely the prettiest vintage carousel we've seen.  We all drove into Washington DC for one day to see The National Zoo....... big disappointment.  They're remodeling much of the zoo, and it truly needs updating because the glass enclosures for the small mammals are just so very sad and old.  After seeing the San Diego Zoo last month, any other zoo is going to pale in comparison, I guess.

As much as we saw in Baltimore, the highlight of the trip was just seeing V and meeting her family.....  had we done nothing but sit in her kitchen and talk, it would have been a wonderful trip. We promised to keep in touch (which we've been doing anyway since we found one another last year)........ and V is hoping to be able to visit us here in Texas when it's possible.  Both V and her husband work full-time, plus V is very active in her church...... and her daughter C is getting herself set up at college....... so I know her schedule is more complicated than mine.

But the main thing is that we have re-connected..... the friendship that was so special and so strong years ago is still there....... we've gotten older, we've matured....... but we're still the same two girls that couldn't talk enough, couldn't share enough, couldn't laugh enough when we were together.

Sometimes life just gets in the way...... and that's what happened with us....... but as I was looking for her, she was looking for me...... and only my husband's sense of computer-saavy was able to get us hooked up to one another again.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote something to this effect:  "There is nothing so good as the hand of an old friend."    Henry knew what he was talking about.

One whole year...

It has now been a little over a year since my friend Fran passed away.  Her granddaughter is about to celebrate her first birthday... this beautiful baby girl that Fran never did get to see.  I'm hoping beyond all hope that Fran is an angel sitting on that baby's shoulder, watching her smile and play, and hearing her first words.

When we went to NY last summer to see Fran's family, I gave my gold baby bracelet to Fran's son, to give to his little girl when she was old enough to wear it.  I had kept that bracelet for just the right baby, and Fran's granddaughter was indeed the perfect little baby for that slim band of gold.  Fran's son sends me photos of the baby from time to time...... I can see that she's such a happy little girl, and with each set of pictures, she's growing into that great big smile of hers.  Fran has missed so very much, but I'm hoping she's missing nothing at all.

I think of Fran all the time...... she was such a constant in my life for so many years..... all those memories just don't go away.    I still think that the irony of Fran's illness was just so ridiculous..... her voice was taken away before the cancer took her away, and Fran's voice was the most radiant part of her.  I missed hearing her voice long before I had to learn how to miss her.

When Fran's grandbaby was born, I mailed cute little baby outfits to her son and daughter-in-law. All of those little onesie-things are so adorable, you just can't resist buying a bunch of them for newborn babies.  Then I remembered conversations and eMails with Fran..... she wanted to make sure her grandchild would love books, love to read..... and Fran was planning to start collecting books for the baby.   So that's what I've been doing.... finding baby books filled with colorful pictures...... short little stories that babies would like to hear.  I sent them up for the baby's first birthday, and I've got more in the closet waiting for Halloween and Christmas.

Fran's legacy is her family..... a husband, a brother, two wonderful sons, and now this precious little grandbaby girl.  And friends who loved and respected her so much that hardly a day goes by that she isn't in their thoughts.

All things feathered...

I'm finding out that I miss the chickens.  I don't miss the cleaning-up of the coop, but I miss seeing them walking around the yard.  I especially miss Scarlett, who would come to the back door and sit there waiting for me to bring her some vegetable scraps or bits of bread.... and then at the end of the day as the sun was setting, Scarlett would plop herself down by my feet so I could carry her Royal Hen-ness to the coop.

Scarlett was the last tragedy in the coop.... bitten by the snake because she wouldn't give up her egg. Even in chickens, the mother instinct sometimes rules over common sense.  If Scarlett had been smart enough to realize that she was sitting on a fake egg, would she have protected that egg till her last breath the way she did?  And even if it had been a real egg... without a rooster, the eggs from our hens were never destined to be baby chicks.

After giving our last two chickens to neighbor G, I told him not to tell me anything other than "Your chickens are living happily ever after."  I thought of going up there one day this week, to see if either PittyPat or Audrey would recognize me, but then what's the point of that.  I hope they're living happily.....

The barn swallows....... we must have four or five generations in nests around our porch now.  The baby birds fly out of the nest when they're ready for independence, but they don't fly off into the sunset.  They just seem to fly around the yard, getting used to the trees and the bushes and the water fountain out in the front yard...... and then they return to the back porch with endless daubs of mud to build their own home-tweet-home.  And then they lay eggs..... and they hatch....... and then fledge..... and another generation joins the party.

The cow birds....... that's what JS calls those white egret-y birds that are out in the fields, whether you have cows or not. (We don't.)  But we do have hay, which has recently been mowed down and is now being gathered up into huge bales. The cow birds are feasting on crickets and grasshoppers and beetles and heaven-only-knows-what-else that lives out there in the tall grass.  The cow birds (the country's equivalent of the coastal seagulls) fly into the middle of the pastures to capture as many insects as they can, then they fly over to the pond to get a drink of water and search for minnows. (Their own version of surf-and-turf, I guess.)

The parakeets...... we haven't seen so much as a feather, or heard so much as a chirp in weeks now. Definitely gone, gone, gone.  I'm hoping that Houdini and BlueBell are still together, making a nest somewhere and possibly laying eggs and hatching them.   I had visions of one or both of them finding their way back to the yard and perching in a tree, chirping to get my attention so they'd get back into the cage and back into the house. Not going to happen...... and even if they did come back, it would seem a bit cruel now to re-cage them after they've had a taste of the sky.  My parakeet days are over.... I've already put the large cage into the shop with a price tag on it. Ditto for the book on raising parakeets.

As for the squirrel who opened up their cage when they were out on the porch...... we tried to catch him, but he was smarter than we were.  Even a good smear of peanut butter didn't get that squirrel to get into that catch/release trap.  My husband would have relocated the squirrel over to the Lake, but it seems the squirrel likes ranch life better than waterfront living.

No more chickens, even though I miss them.  The cats have been enjoying the coop..... Sweet Pea climbs to the top of the ladder and looks out over the field............ Mickey sits on his little wicker table and seems perfectly content.  With all the cat furniture in there, you would never know it had ever been a chicken coop, until you look over at the nesting boxes....... which the cats now use for napping.  The cats are happy--- they have a screen porch, of sorts.

Life goes on, with or without fresh eggs.

Never say never.

No. I do not have another cat. However, my cousin F does. Almost. It's inevitable, at this point.  The stray cat (approx. 9-month-old kitten, to be exact) has now gotten to the point that she runs to F when she goes outside with the cat food dish, meowing for all she's worth.  Both F and I think that someone dumped the cat there because it's new to the neighborhood, and my cousin already knows all the 'regulars.'

At first, we thought it was another feral cat, content to be outside running wild, with a stop or two along the way outside by the tree where F leaves cat food so they don't starve out there. But this little kitty made friendly gestures right away, followed F to her door, and even walked inside her apartment for a look-see.  F already has a cat--- Mousey...... who was a stray that she adopted a year ago. Or has it been two years already now? I forget...... but Mousey happened along the same way..... this tiny black kitten with a sweet disposition, who clearly wasn't meant to be an outside cat.

And as we all say..... all of us cat-people....... we don't want any more cats.  But somehow that just never works.  We don't go out looking for cats... they come out looking for us.  So now, it looks like the stray kitten up there by F's apartment will soon have a nice comfy home, out of the heat and the cold, away from cars, and the only glitch in the cat-ointment will be making friends with F's established cat Mousey.

F has decided to call the new cat Gypsy.  She asked me to come up with a middle name--- only because down here in the south, middle names are expected, and (in my opinion) a must for dogs and cats.  When you put your hands on your hips and look your dog or cat in the eye and say "Did you do this?!"--- those words sound more powerful when you can attach a first and middle name at the end of that question.

My suggestions to F were Gypsy Girl or Gypsy Rose.  We used to call our dog Gracie Girl...... and sometimes my husband called her Gracie Boo.  In effect, Gracie had two distinct middle names.  But let's not get started talking about dogs here.  Now that the chicken coop is being used as a screened-in porch for Mickey and Sweet Pea, my husband has already said "Now we have a porch for a puppy."  Let's not get started. We don't want another dog. We don't want another cat.

But that's the same thing that my cousin F has been saying...... and look at what we're doing now--- trying to come up with a middle name for Gypsy.  Give me a blessed break.

The Kitty-Coopacabana.

Out with the chickens.... in with the cats.  After my husband power-washed the inside of the chicken coop, I thought maybe it would make a good 'screened-in porch' for Mickey and Sweet Pea.  I don't want them running around outside anymore..... Sweet Pea isn't a smart outside cat, and Mickey goes exploring too far away from the house (Marco Polo Mickey).

The chicken coop has a concrete floor, two walls of wood and two walls of chain-link fencing, plus a tin roof.  Not to mention the extra layers of chain-link and chicken wire all over the fenced-in parts.  We have big painted letters in there over the roosting bars which spell out "Coopacabana...." my salute to Barry Manilow.  I had told my husband a few years ago that if we ever got a rooster, I would name him Manilow. (We never got a rooster, and the hens were perfectly happy without one.)

I fixed up the inside of the coop with some of the cat-furniture... little chairs, a wicker table, a full-size wicker chair with a broken leg (perfectly fine for cat-naps as long as you're a cat), plus their toys and a small carpet, and their soft pillows. Food and water dishes, on top of the wicker table so they're not on the floor to attract ants........ and the Coopacabana looked like a fine place for Mickey and Sweet Pea to have a cat's-eye view of the yard but not be able to get into mischief out on the property.  We also left the tall wooden ladder in there, so the cats could climb on that like the chickens used to do, and I put a litter box in the corner. All the comforts of home.

I used the carrying crate to bring them out to the coop..... one at a time.... and within minutes, both cats were on the ladder, on top of the roosting bars, and peeking into the nesting boxes (which I had softened up with old towels).  Success!  I now have a safe screen-porch for the cats......  and both Mickey and Sweet Pea seemed to love it.  I kept checking them throughout the day--- no meowing, no howling, no whining....... and when I went to take them back into the house because I thought it was getting to be too hot out there, neither one of them wanted to leave their "room with a view."

Sweet Pea and Mickey were inside the coop looking out, Gatsby was on the outside looking in.  I can't let Gatsby in there--- he would eat all of the food in a heartbeat..... plus he has the run of the whole property anyway.  Gatsby is a seasoned outside cat, unlike the other two.

The neighbors thought I was a little nuts when they saw how I decorated the inside of the coop for the chickens.......... when they see how I've fixed up the coop for the cats, they will definitely be thinking that I've been out in the sun much too long.  But it's working... for now.  Mickey and Sweet Pea get to be 'outside' but are still safe, and it gives them a break from the house.

Cats.  No more cats.  No more cats.  No more cats.  And no more chickens.  And no more dogs.  Not even a goldfish. I am done, done, done, done with housepets.  I keep repeating all of that so it will stick..........

The chicken honeymoon is over.

As of tomorrow morning, our last two chickens, PittyPat and Audrey, will be part of another coop.... down the road at neighbor G's property.  During our walk this morning, we were talking to G & L and G mentioned that he was going to get more chickens.  Without hesitating a minute, I told him that he could have my last two hens if he wanted them.  Being that one of them is named after my husband's mother, though, I told G to give me time to ask my husband is that was okay with him first.

My husband was surprised that I wanted to give up the chickens, but he said that he wasn't attached to them, didn't take care of them, and to just do what I wanted.  I called G and told him that he could pick up the chickens tomorrow morning. I won't let them out of the coop till G gets here tomorrow. I didn't want PittyPat and Audrey to get stressed out by having to be chased around the yard today, so first thing tomorrow morning after our walk seemed like the best way to do this.

After Scarlett was killed by the snake a couple of weeks ago, I decided that raising chickens just wasn't for me. Both of the Rhode Island Reds that we had (Scarlett and Dolly) were extremely friendly, very personable hens..... they followed me around the yard, came running when I called them, and wanted to be picked up just about every day and carried to the coop in the evening.

All the other chickens have been just that--- chickens. Not pets.  Losing Dolly to the hawks, and Scarlett to the snake........ it was just too much chicken-drama for me. So before anything else happens out there in the coop, with the wildlife that comes by to prey on the hens, I decided to just let someone else have them. We will just go back to buying eggs at the store, or at the Farmers' Market.

G's coop is larger than ours...... he has ten other chickens there, with plans to get at least ten more.  I told Audrey and PittyPat tonight that they will take a little drive tomorrow and when they get out of G's truck, they will have lots of new friends.  They just looked at me and blinked those yellow eyes of theirs.  

As for me:   Free at last...... free at last.  No more running home to make sure the coop is locked up before dark...... no more tip-toeing into the coop checking for eggs and snakes at the same time.  My husband will power-wash the coop.... I will take all the chicken-stuff out of that space, and I'm betting that Gatsby (our outside cat) will make the coop his home away from home.

Gatsby has already tried to take up residence in there--- tonight when I was in the coop saying my farewells, Gatsby was making himself comfy on the little wicker table that I keep in there for the hens. The chickens would fly up on that table, then fly up to the roosting bar at night.  Gatsby was stretched out there tonight as if he were on a mountain top, looking over his kingdom.

Well, as of tomorrow, the coop kingdom is all Gatsby's.  I have to remember to tell G to NOT tell me if anything happens to either PittyPat or Audrey after they are on his property.  I don't want to hear about hawks or snakes or foxes.  All I want to know from G is that those two chickens are living happily ever feathered-after in their new coop.

Princess Butterscotch Puppy

No, we do not have a puppy. But our neighbor G does..... and she's been trying to find a home for it. G already has two dogs, both of which are older and not interested in a young pup in 'their' house.  G found the puppy two weeks ago.... on the side of the road, abandoned by some fool who thinks a puppy can survive on its own. My belief is that if one puppy has been abandoned, then the same blasted fool has abandoned others also.

G rescued the puppy, and has been determined to find a good home for it.  The puppy is the color of a butterscotch candy, which is why I've been calling her Princess Butterscotch.  We see G and the puppy when we go walking in the mornings, and the puppy has been walking most of the way on her own four little feet, unless either JS or I have scooped her up and carried her in our arms for a bit.  I keep telling G that she's making the puppy walk too long a distance, but she's trying to exercise the puppy enough so when it gets back into her house it won't want to play with her two older dogs. Puppy energy knows no bounds.

Yesterday when we walked, JS was thinking of taking the puppy into Houston for an overnight stay with her sister.... ah, yes..... the puppy-mama syndrome might be kicking into high gear.  Honestly, how can you take a puppy and keep it overnight and then not want to keep it for good.......  Which is exactly why we haven't offered to bring the puppy over here for an extended visit.

G came by here with the puppy shortly after she found it....... she figured that both my husband and I would like how the puppy looked on our porch, and maybe, just maybe, we would tell her that we'd take the puppy.  Not this puppy-mama, thank you very much.  I've done my puppy time with Gracie...... and neither my husband nor I want a dog right now. If ever.  As my husband says: We've already had the best dog, so why would we want another dog?

But... Princess Butterscotch Puppy is awfully cute..... and no matter how much she's bonding now with G, she will also bond with whoever finally adopts her.  She's young enough to get used to a new owner, and G hasn't really given her a name yet, so the puppy won't be confused when her new owner gives her a real name.  G was calling her Miss Bones when she first found her, because she was literally just skin and bones those first few days. But after eating regular meals and getting daily exercise, the puppy is looking very Princess-Puppy-ish these days.

G says that Princess Butterscotch Puppy is too long a name for a 'country pup.'   Fine.  We'll shorten her name to Butterscotch and let it be just that.  Not "we" as in my husband and I......... just the proverbial we for now.

We (my husband and I) do not, do not, do NOT want a puppy.  Been there, done that, all puppy-ed out.