Her skills with cutting and designing with glass have improved wildly from her first window which was, of course, a cat. Retirement and studio space have allowed her to keep making whatever she wants. Sadly, I am running out of window space to hang her creations.
(No, she does not sell them. She does not think people would buy them based on what she would need to charge for time and labor. I think she’s wrong.)
After years of seeing metro park posts about skunk cabbage, one of the first spring wildflowers,I finally got to see some live and in person.
The ones that ABBF and I found were partially submerged in a swampy area. Their glorious lime and dark purple fashion choices were still vibrant and I could see the funky inner spadix.
Apparently skunk cabbage creates its own heat which helps it bloom in cold weather and can also entice bugs looking for a cozy hideaway. The putrid skunk smell also pulls in the bugs, and was the other reason I wanted to see one.
The swampy area was accessible via a boardwalk, and unfortunately, all of the skunk cabbages were at least a foot away from the boardwalk. Makes sniffin’ hard.
So I made a choice that is probably along the lines of why the National Park Service has to put up signs stating to not to pet the fluffy buffalos. I asked ABBF to hold my hat and glasses, laid down on the boardwalk, gripped the edge, and stuck my nose in a skunk cabbage. ABBF did not take a picture because he was convinced that he would have to rescue me. However my sweet yoga energy saved me from face planting into the few inches of swamp water and muck. (Actually my ass end is the far heavier end and it was firmly planted on the boardwalk.)
Unfortunately, I did not get that sweet, sweet, putrid skunk stank just musty water and rotting leaves. Some online sources suggested that you have to bruise the leaves to get the stink, but my stronger suspicion is that the water was blocking the smell.
Homie finally got his tattoo back in September. I mean I got a tattoo of him. He doesn’t have the attention span to sit for dinner much less a tattoo.
At the end of the other cats’ session, Sam offered to make appointment time to include little Homie. (Check out her work on Instagram at samjlittle) Because Sam creates fun crystal based flash and Homer uses every water bowl in the house as a scrying mirror, we decided to represent his mystical third eye with a crystal arrangement.
He turned out so handsome. Given his love of post shower hugs and bathroom snuggles, I thought getting him to pose in there would be easiest.
However in true Homer fashion, he declined to take direction. This is as good as it got.
The truth is that my work, life, energy balance is completely disintegrated like pumpkin ass juice. A completely new curriculum full of content I’ve never taught makes every class period a surprise, and every down moment a struggle to survive. Navigating being part of a “grown up” couple is also a time management minefield, albeit one that I’m happy to tromp through. Plus I’m pretty sure the cats are sucking the life force out of me while I sleep.
So in the first week of October, I bought one pumpkin. Homie’s first punkin. Ahhhh.
A week later, I lovingly gazed into the pumpkin abyss at the garden center, trying to imagine what I could transform them into. The bin of gourds that look like an underwater scene of starfish and octopi also lured me in. I acquired more pumpkins certain that I would find time. I did not.
Finally, I opted to gut them outside on my potting bench, dump the innards in the garden-everyone had a snack- then I would surely find a school night that week when I could carve, having completed the hard part. I did not.
Four days later, I had my ideal ratio of time and energy. I put on a scary movie, and relocated all my pumpkins and tools to the living room for a meditative carve. The first pumpkin I opened the lid on was liquid inside. Like an M&M, the only thing holding it together was its thin orange “candy” shell. That one went to the garden immediately. I proceeded cautiously with the remaining 3. They were not as far gone, but had many soft spots where my finger could have poked through as easily as a knife. These pumpkins could no longer support any elaborate designs, so I went basic.
Feeling witchy, I engaged 3 of 5 difficult cats in a photo shoot where the vision did not line up with the reality. At one point, I was swarmed by treat seeking felines.
The pumpkins spent the night in the garage where they immediately grew mold. They all more or less collapsed within a few days in the garden. The game camera showed that squirrels, skunks, possums, and raccoons all passed by to appreciate them.
I was going to dig up my potatoes last weekend, but time management and temperatures in the 90’s dissuaded me. Technically the potatoes are not go be harvested until the first frost kills the plants, but heat had already toasted them. My delay was apparently noted as I discovered a freshly excavated potato in the top of one of the pots midweek.
Thanks, squirrelfriend.
Tonight the weather chilled out enough -high 70s- to set up for farming.
Between my rubber gardening gloves and my tarp, I feel a little like I’ve set a Dexter– esque kill spot.
I plant the seed potatoes then fill the top of each pot with flowers. That means all the dirt needs to go back in, because I replace any surviving flowers and add a mum for fall. The purple potatoes were happening midway down the pot. However several of the red potatoes were just under the surface layer of dirt and stretched on down.
All told it was a mighty harvest for my two pots. Ideally I’d love to add some sweet potatoes or blue/purple potatoes that are purple all the way through next year.
I have what I consider my bird and bug arm and my cat arm. Both also mix in lots of flowers. It was a while on the deciding, but I finally found a local tattoo artist whose pet portraits appealed to me. It turned out that I had actually bought a piece of her cat art at the Amazing Cat Show one year. I patiently “stalked” her Insta, (@samjlittle), loving her colors and imagery. Finally her books opened and I submitted my kitty proposal.
Sam loves animals and I could not have been happier with her work, personality, and women owned studio full of art, plants, taxidermy and crystals. She did the line work in April then colored in kitties in August. Both were long sessions, but the chatter in a tattoo parlor is better than a beauty salon any day.
Fresh from the needle.
I was thrilled. Sam was happy. Somewhere MomBert was disappointed (Hi, Mom). But what of the portrayed felines? The toughest, sweetest baby critics in the land?
I started with The Wigglebothum. She’d go easy on me.
She seemed a little confused, like this was giving her a lot to process. She’d get back to me. Maybe.
Next I approached Birdie multiple times. Time and time again, she was mortally offended. Clearly this was no representation of her! What was I trying to pull?!
Miles was mostly like “Hey, you’re hugging me and I get to sit on the counter. I’m just going to purr. Treats? Maybe? Yea?”
Visiting Key West and specifically the Hemingway House and its 6-toed cats has been on my to-do list for several years. Thanks to some impulsive planning, I landed there in mid-October surrounded by feral roosters, invasive iguanas, Adventure Buddy, and OG Adventure Buddy. It turns out that AB and OGAB really like each other-I have a type, I guess. Fortunately they were mostly on board with my game plan of grabbing as many 6-toed cats as possible, stuffing them in a carry-on and heading home.
The Hemingway House
We started our Hemingway Day at Blue Heaven for their breakfast special: bacon, tomato, and lobster omelets. It’s a beautiful tree and rooster filled courtyard with an atmosphere that suggests you could sip Bloody Marys there all day while listening to live music. We went back the next day as well. It also turns out that Blue Heaven used to be the location of the bordello that Hemingway’s wife Pauline donated his regulation sized boxing ring to so she could build Key West’s first in-ground pool while he was off presumably cheating on her with soon to be wife number 3. Let’s be real. If Ernie was alive today, he would be so cancelled by everyone. But he really liked cats so….
Blue Heaven
During our tour we learned that his first 6-toed cat was named Snow White and that Hemingway just let her go do her thing which led to more 6-toed cats. All the cats on the property have the genetic potential to pass on the 6-toed gene whether they are displaying the trait or not.
Snow White with some Hemingway offspring.
Hemingway enjoyed naming his cats after celebrities and contemporaries as a joke. The museum has continued in that tradition which is why I got to pet Daisy Buchanan! During our tour of the house, our guide referred to the bed in the master bedroom as “Billy’s bed” because that is the name of the cat who sleeps there so frequently that he has made a cat-sized indentation. However during our tour, Daisy Buchanan was using the cat dent; she was not there crying over the most beautiful shirts (Chapter 5, people.) However, she was really over me taking selfies. The stars aligned for sure! It was Gatsby time in English 11, so I was extra excited to see her; and I absolutely showed them photos of Daisy when I got back to school. They were as impressed as she was.
Daisy Buchanan cannot be bothered.
Our guide also chose that stop to mention that since the house is a protected historical site, the cats are registered and protected by the federal government. She said that more people would show up to look for a missing cat than if she went missing. There went my cat-napping plans. Had my plans moved forward, I absolutely would have gone for some of the recently released juveniles. Most of the adult cats ignored visitors, and begrudgingly accepted pets and attention. However the new kids were all about exploring, playing, and making friends.
They had been recently given free reign after getting acclimated in the cat kennel which is a replica of Hemingway’s house.
During the gardens part of the tour, we learned that the fountain in the garden was made from a urinal trough that Hemingway carted home from the original Sloppy Joe’s location when it moved. He just wanted his cats to have a nice spot to drink. Love his yard art aesthetic! His fashion editor wife was not a fan and added the tile work and giant urn to hide the urinal-ness of it all.
Since getting sloppy at Sloppy Joe’s was a Hemingway way of life, we were also told that he used the Key West lighthouse, a block over from his home, as beacon to stumble back to the house. We ventured up the lighthouse’s narrow spiral staircase and out on to the platform the next day. I did not die, but might have had concerns.
At Sloppy Joe’s on Duval.As seen on a tree on Duval Street. “Hemingway pissed here.”
I’m not sure if we saw, petted, and photographed all 59 cats, but between the three of us we tried our darnedest. We even witnessed a potential cat versus iguana showdown in a tree. The cat seemed very intrigued, but the iguana made moves to exit the situation.
My crowning glory and final act as a Hemingway Home visitor was to poop in his pool house. I absolutely texted my English department about it: “You guys! Guess what I’m doing!” As I sat there contemplating what a really good breakfast, coffee, and Bloody Mary will do to my internal system, I had to happily note that the toilet paper comes with claw marks.
I always seem to go this. I carved too soon once again. I’m possibly motivated by the fear of missing the good pumpkins – I have opened some rotten ones before- or maybe it’s the time and creative labor factor. It did take me too nights this time.
Spider was carved on October 8. Cat and Flock of Seagulls followed the next night.
The pumpkins were promptly moved outside and I set up the game camera to see who stopped by. Turns out everyone likes pumpkins! A raccoon, skunk, groundhog, the squirrels, of course, and a possum. The possum came by every night.
So far Cat seems to be fairing the best as it had the most structure left. Spider has turned into a votive holder and Flock of Seagulls has collapsed. I’ll light them all though for Halloween.
This is my very unwieldy hashtag for alerting friends and family who recently breathed my air that I popped hot. While I did not pee on the COVID test, the timing and intense scrutiny of lines appearing very much reminded me of the typical pregnancy test trope from television shows and movies. My results were absolutely clear; I had COVID, but no buns in the oven because that means I’d have to have the sex with somebody.
The OG Adventure Buddy called to check on me from her part of the country. She is an “expert” on having COVID because her small child insists on being Patient Zero all the damned time. He loves licking walls and hugging people. Great kid.
Her priceless question was: “You all have weird COVID tests. Why does it also tell you if you’re pregnant or not?”
She is so much smarter than this question implies, but she left me wondering how many other people had a mini heart attack before getting the joke. This might explain the extensive pause in response when I sent it to my neighbor. Interior male knee jerk panic: “Why is she telling me she’s not pregnant? Fuck!” I was just trying to give him some context for if he found me passed out in the yard. Bringing the recycling bin back to the garage was exhausting! (Also there is zero reason that he would need to be concerned. The only truly hot neighbor was the sex offender down the block, but he’s in jail now. Side note to the side note: this is also a joke. The pee drinker was not hot.)
My roommates have not exactly been helpful as they still expect to be fed. I cannot figure out how to feed myself, but they eventually bully food out of me. Birdie is so excited that the sheets are exposed and we are staying in bed almost all day! I’ve shown her the CDC article about how COVID can pass from humans to cats, but she wants to roll the dice.
Miles literally wants to taste the COVID on my skin. Bleh! He’s a licker.
Everyone wants to know where I got it like it’s a hot sale item. Maybe it’s because despite two years of daily contact with workers and students, I’ve avoided it. After a few months lull, we did see increases in cases this spring at school. Maybe it was during goodbyes to seniors and graduation. That’s a lot of hugging. Possibly at the staff get together after graduation and the last day of school. Could have been at the “my first day of summer” funeral the next day which, given my familial knowledge and geography, would have been jam packed with gun toting, MAGA loving, anti-vaxxers cause COVID ain’t real.
Thankfully I’m vaccinated and boosted, so being fully magnetized has kept this mild, like a bit of flu heading into a sinus infection. I tested positive on Tuesday morning when I woke up at 6 am without an alarm and my body was like “WE ARE UP AND WE ARE NOT OKAY!” I’m glad I tested as I was supposed to meet and work with people that day. Tuesday was all about the fever, sore throat, joint pain, hot baths, and frequently laying down. Today the fever is gone, but the snot has solidly landed in my sinuses. Unfortunately, my symptoms might have been manifesting as early as Sunday with a sore throat that I attributed to allergies and breathing in the “wet cigarette and old church lady perfume” smell of a packed funeral parlor on Saturday. Monday was hot and I spent most of the day gardening so that explained away the continued sore throat, joint pain, and what I realize now was probably a fever (dumb ass) since I could not seem to cool down.
So for the next three hopefully fever free days, I’ll be blowing my nose and sippin’ on Thera Flu from 2020 because that was the last time needed it.
The danger of saying, “Wouldn’t it be fun if …” to me is that occasionally I will act on the idea which is what happened over breakfast on a visit to MomBert’s. We were most likely looking at an issue of Birds & Blooms when MomBert suggested that it would be fun to see a large group of migrating Sandhill Cranes. I knew that the biggest group gathered in Nebraska which was not a reasonable trip for us. However within a 5 hour drive, groups of cranes stopped over on their way to Florida at the Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area in Indiana. The DNR’s website posted yearly counts of the cranes which tended to peak in the thousands at mid to late November.
We planned for the weekend of November 12-13. As we got closer to the date, the crane count did not look promising. The site indicated that flooded fields had caused the cranes to spread out, impacting the count. An additional article suggested that warming temperatures caused the birds “to procrastinate” in their migration. Thanks, climate change. Regardless, we had a hotel room, I had a personal day scheduled, and the adventure was on.
We started off in sunlight (sounds like the opening line to a weird novel), but entered an alternate universe of gloom, rain, and eventually sleet about two hours from Jasper-Pulaski. The goal was to get to the viewing area an hour before sunset when the cranes returned to the field for the night, drive almost another hour to the closest hotel I could book, and rinse repeat the process in reverse at sunrise. The drive was tedious highways and eventually confusing country roads that made us question the wisdom of the GPS.
Crossing a time zone yards away from our destination made the car panic, and made us have a conversation about what sunset timing might mean. The time space continuum means little in the middle of a field.
The middle of a field also means the lack of a “formal” bathroom. When I researched the area, information had indicated there were porta johns in the parking lot. However we were in the parking lot with nary a pottie in sight. I headed for the trees, got paranoid, and doubled back to basically mark the front tire of my car. IT’S MY CAR NOW! (For future adventurers, the porta johns are beside the tower in the parking lot with handicapped spaces. It’s only a short walk on a path through the trees.)
We could hear the cranes and were starting to see small groupings flying our way, so we did our best to bundle up and hustle to the viewing tower. In anticipation of the birds being far away, I had borrowed a camera with a long lense from the photo teacher at school. I also had my regular camera, binoculars, and my phone. It was a bit much, but this was our opportunity. We thought we were prepared.
When we left that morning, we were aware that it was November and that it might be chilly. However we had not fully realized the level of “chilly” we’d be facing. It was cold and windy on the ground, but standing on the viewing platform about a story up intensified everything immediately. The was nothing to block the wind other than turning our backs to it which meant turning our backs to the birds. While I had practiced with the larger camera and manipulating the settings, I lost feeling in my fingers quickly and had to hope for the best.
You’ll want to turn on the sound for the videos in order to hear the cranes calling as they come in, but you’ll also be able to hear the fierce wind and the ice ticking off of everything. You may also hear the resident “bird guy.” I’ve encountered “bird people” at home. They terribly friendly and want to tell you all that they know and have experienced. It is at once useful and overbearing. He told tales of seeing the field full of cranes up to the platform some years, and explained their schedule to the people around him. I tried to listen over the wind as I took photos and attempted to get feeling back into my fingers.
I love the symmetry of their landing.
You can also hear MomBert whisper, “Look way back there” as small flock after flock came in from where they had foraged throughout the day. The small groups that we had seen coming in while in the parking lot, became more consistent as sunset closed in. We were physically frozen and maybe a little miserable, but emotionally in awe of the birds.
The birds kept coming in in the increasing levels of snow and darkness. By the time we got back to the car, we had to clear all the windows. (Also despite, a myriad of open spaces, someone had parked right beside us and most likely stomped in my pee puddle. They are mine now as well.)
The next morning we got up way too early to make the 45 minute drive back to the viewing tower before sunrise. Once we got away from the town and hotel, it was pitch black except for an ominous pink glow on the clouds ahead of us. The glow turned out to be some manner of factory or greenhouse whose lights were reflecting on the low cloud cover. Every driver I passed flashed their lights at me which must be a rural Indiana code for something because I swear I was not driving at them with my brights on.
We crossed the time zone to confuse my car one more time and then hit the parking lot. Having learned from yesterday’s frozen adventure, we suited up with extra layers by pulling our flannel pjs over our other pants. Work with what you’ve got. In the dim light of dawn, we could hear the cranes rallying.
This photo says, “TOO EARLY! TOO COLD!” Roughly 6:28 a.m. depending on which time zone my phone noted.
I had assumed that the cranes would start breaking off from the group to start their days, or that there would be some tangible warning before they departed. However one moment I was messing with the camera, and in the next moment they collectively spread their wings in a wall of slivery gray feathers and took off together.
This is my panicked photo of that moment.
We gasped. It was an astounding coordinated movement. The entire flock began circling the field and edging over the viewing tower area as they worked towards new locations for the day. I was desperately trying to take video with one hand and shoot photos with another. It was probably best for my self esteem that the first people we had seen that morning emerged heading towards the tower just as the flock was heading out. They missed my poor juggling act.
In the space of 30 minutes, we were done and ready to search for a hot breakfast and roads back home. MomBert lamented the lack of a gift shop in the area for at least a crane magnet or sticker, and I reminded her that I had peed in a parking lot so we probably just needed to accept the experience.
possumscatsthingsgnawingatme 