Lazy on a Saturday

When Husband is out of town I lose all desire to leave the house. Not out of misery at being a bachelor girl for the weekend. I do get to spend time alone here during the week. But there's something special about having a weekend alone. Don't get me wrong, I miss him big time. (But I'm loving his coverage of the Monterey Jazz Festival. Check it out at Jazz Observer.)

I'm watching movies he would have no desire to see. Taking lot, hot baths. Eating junk food. Having a great time. Sure I can do all this while he's here, but there's an illicit pleasure in doing it while he's gone. Like I'm doing something wrong.

Cipher (The World's Most Amazing Cat, Screw You if You Don't Agree tm) misses him more than me. When Husband is gone she follows me around like "I let one of you out of my sight, I'm not letting the other one leave." She's currently sleeping on his side of the bed. And last night, at her usual play time, she brought me her favorite toy. It's a stick with little crinkly bits on it. The problem is she only wants to play with Husband. Apparently I don't do it right. I did my best, but she gave me a pityingly patient look that said "you loser" and would not bite. Then she did the cat equivalent of looking at her watch to figure out when Husband was going to be home. I find it amusing that I spend most of my week playing with cats who can't get enough of my attention yet my own cat refuses to play with me.

So while Husband is gone Cipher will have to put up with a second-rate player. And I'm indulging in an orgy of the British show Top Gear. I'm going to have popcorn for dinner. Cipher will have tuna (her favorite). And Husband will have a full day and night of amazing music.

Kitten update

It's been a while since I've updated you about things at the nursery.

We're in quarantine due to a possible positive test for feline leukemia and ringworm. The second leukemia test was negative, which is a good thing, but we're still keeping an eye out. Luckily the litter in question is thriving. Getting fat and happy and playing like crazy.

Because of the quarantine there are no litters in or out, so we've got the same full house we've had for the past two weeks. Everybody is doing great. Some should have been moved to adoption last week so they're huge and far more active than a little cage can hold. Their close to breaking out and we have to be extra careful about securing the cages because they can break out.

We're coming to the end of the season. Last year the nursery closed the first week in October. We'll probably shut down once this quarantine is over and the litters are moved to foster or adoption. And we've already broken our record for kittens. Last year we had 62. This year we had 86.

I'm going to miss the nursery when it shuts down. I'll go back to doing cats four days a week, but there's nothing like working with the kittens.

Next year we'll be in the shelter's new building with a separate nursery for the kittens, not just a small out-building. We'll be able to have more kennels and can save more kittens. I can't wait.

Husband, if you're reading this, thank you for making it possible for me to do what I love.

Stupid f$#&@^g design
After 30+ hours I finally got some sleep (thank you Ambien)!.

Now, here's my crankypants rant for the day.

How hard is it to design a clock radio? My old faithful one died, mostly due to a certain cat (who shall remain nameless) knocking it off the nightstand in a repeated attempt to get fed at 3 am.

So I bought a new one. All I wanted was a clock radio. You chose a station, you set the time, the alarm goes on and off.

Well this one does all that. But it does it badly.

My biggest complaint is that the alarm on/off button is directly behind the volume knob. What idiot puts the most used feature on a product directly behind the least used feature? How often do you change the volume of your clock radio? How often do you turn it on and off? Plus the volume is controlled my a wheel so unless you reach around it, you're liable to turn the volume up to mach 2 in your sleepy stupor. And if you aren't careful while turning the alarm on at night, you might accidentally hit the wheel and turn the volume down to nothing so that you don't wake up.

Don't people think any more? This seems to be to be completely illogical. It's just annoying enough that, after about a month, I'm on the lookout for a new clock radio.

A Night Off From the Airwaves
I'm not on the radio tonight. I've been awake for something like 30 hours now and probably shouldn't get behind the wheel of a car. So I'm going to take an Ambien and sleep for the evening.

Yay!

Things that are right with the world today...

It's the first full Sunday of the NFL season. Go Niners!

Yesterday the coolest in-laws on the planet (mine!) participated in the pro-Islamic demonstration in NYC. I am so proud of them for being on the side of tolerance, education, and kindness.

The Sunday paper was full of stories from this week's explosion disaster. Lots of generosity and charity. Focusing on how many people are giving of their time and money, how much appreciation shown to first responders, and how the community is pulling together.

Positive updates from the shelter on happy reunions between displaced pets and frantic pet owners. Plus outpourings of kindness from people offering their homes as foster to pets without a home until their owners get back on their feet.

Husband is on the radio today (if he ever gets out of a horrific traffic jam on the freeway!), playing jazz from 1-3.

Had dinner last night with a good friend. Someone I knew in high school that I've recently reconnected with thanks to Facebook. I swear he and Husband were separated at birth. So funny to see how much they have in common.

Cipher (The World's Most Amazing Cat, Screw You if You Don't Agree tm) is sleeping in a sunbeam.

Have I mentioned it's football season?

Oh...my

We were WAY too close that that explosion/fire yesterday. Our town borders San Bruno, where it all happened. From our back yard we could see a huge plume of black smoke and could smell the fire. Sirens going off all over town. People standing in the street to look and wonder.

It's one of those events that makes you realize how lucky you are, and how quickly it can all be taken away.

The Bay Area has mobilized, as it does in times of trial. People lined up to donate food and clothes. Blood banks booked solid. The shelter was busy taking care of displaced animals, injured wildlife, and frantic pet owners. THere had already been a half-dozen tear-filled reunions between pets and people. Sadly, more coming in all day. Our overflow was taken by shelters in neighboring counties. Kennels lined up in hallways and offices. We've moved some of our adoptable animals to other locations so we can keep people's pets in-house. Our amazing volunteers have stepped up to put in extra hours feeding and caring. Others have opened their homes as foster houses.

I hugged Cipher (The World's Most Amazing Cat, Screw You if You Don't Agree tm) a bit tighter today and thought how devastated I'd be if anything happened to her.

As long as I had her and Husband, I'd be OK. But far too many of our friends and neighbors have lost it all.

I can still smell residual smoke in the air. i can tell by my coughing that my allergies and bronchitis (have I mentioned I have bronchitis?) have been affected. There was a light dust of ash this morning. The backyard cats were more skittish than usual.

We watched the news last night until the anchors ran out of things to say. After hours of non-stop coverage of a disaster having some yobbo say "this is obviously a serious situation" is actually darkly funny. My brother is a local fire chief so I knew he was in the thick of things. He and his guys are all fine, thankfully. And thankfully far fewer fatalities than there could have been.

Today was a bit unreal. People were more considerate of each other. Drivers a bit nicer. I noticed more people talking on the streets, comparing notes, checking in. All my shelter friends greeted each other with "everyone you know OK?" and took the time to reassure or commiserate.

That's the only good thing about bad things.

Hug your loves a bit closer for me.

4-Chord Wonders

Catching up on cool things around the Inter webs...

The amazing Axis of Awesome with the Four Chord Song. I'm not cool enough to get all the references, but it is hilarious. (NSFW.)

Death and the Plants

I can't grow anything. Gray hair, yes. Plants, no. If I try, it will die a sad and tragic death.

I have friends (Finny, this means you) who can grow anything. They get the idea "I'd like to own a peach orchard" and trees magically start blooming in their back yards. Perfect rounds of ripe fruit, glistening with dew like in the pages of a Japanese catalog, will hang tantalizingly from the branches. And animated bluebirds will chirp happily and land on her fingers.

I will buy a plant and it will die in the car on the way home.

The only thing I have ever successfully managed to not murder is cactus. Which is strangely appropriate.

We have a couple of wildly phallic cacti in our front yard that I am just childish enough to giggle about when I see them. There are a few on the kitchen counter above the sink. But other than that our indoor greenery consists of a bamboo tree that I tried to prune and turned into a bamboo stalk. And the other plant is something else. No clue what it is. It's been here since the Hoover administration so it's origin is shrouded in the mists of time.

The house we rent comes with a gardener, so we fortunately never have to deal with mowing the lawn or pruning the roses. There are a few bare spots in the dirt which I've tried to fill with various bits of greenery or ground cover only to end up with brown, striggly plants that looks crisp enough to break with an actual "snap."

Now being a thoroughly modern woman, I do have excuses. First off, the neighborhood cats look upon our house as home base so they feel perfectly justified in digging up, peeing on, and generally killing off anything in the yard. That's one of the reasons why I put cactus out front. When I tried planting basil we decided we didn't actually want to use it because there was cat poo all over the planter. The freaky thing is that we've actually seen the cats sleeping in the planters with the cactus. It doesn't seem to bother them.

The other excuse is that we don't actually have soil in our yard. We have concrete. At one point the ground cover in our front yard died completely and it made our yard look like we lived in the sole crack house on the block. So I finally got fed up and decided to replant. I couldn't dig it up. The mix of ancient dirt and natural clay was so rock-hard that I actually had to sit there with a hammer and chisel (no, I am not kidding) and break up clods. Took me fucking forever. Several months, actually. I was never once able to use a shovel, a trowel, or any other normal gardening implement. Nope. Me and stone tools.

Once I got it all broken up I dutifully added fresh soil and fertilizer and various other nutrients before planting the new ground cover. And it's the one and only thing (thankfully) that has ever stuck around. Huzzah! We don't look abandoned! But knowing what's required does not inspire me to do it all round the house. I'm just not that interested.

So hats off to all of you who toil and sweat in the yard and then sit back with the butter running off your chin as you eat your fresh corn. Your hard work deserves all the yummy and beautiful things you grow. But for me, well I don't actually enjoy feeling like I'm on a Georgia chain gang. So I'll just buy my crops and envy you your freshness.

Naming

I've commented before on the oddness of names. They fascinate me. The labels we carry into life. For good or for bad they help define our personalities. The can affect how people perceive us even before we've met them. And yet so many parents seem to think only of the sound and not of the burden a bad name can create.

One of my fellow volunteers just showed me photos of her new granddaughter. Not doing babies I commented non-commitally about the wrinkled pink creature she was oohing over. And, of course, I asked what her name is.

Luella.

Really? It's 2010 and you've named your daughter after Miss Iowa 1934?

Luella has two older brothers. Spencer and Morgan. Typical 21st century Hollywood-wannabe "cool" name. They'll fit right in with all the Madisons and Codys in their school. And given their names, you'd think Luella would have ended up as Brittany or Shea. But no, she's a Luella.

Now those of you who know me will be surprised I didn't immediately blurt out "god lord, why?" when I heard the name. Luckily, I didn't have to. As soon as grandma told me her name she instantly added "horrible, isn't it?" Well, yeah. I gotta be honest. I think it's horrible. No offense to any Luellas out there. But really, in today's society, it's a name that doesn't need to be given to anyone.

I asked grandma if Luella was a family name. She said no, with a laugh. And she says she and her husband honestly expect her daughter and son-in-law to either change it or start calling her by her middle name.

Which is, matching with Spencer and Morgan, Clio.

Radio, Radio

If it's Tuesday it must be radio night.

Join me from 6-9 pm (Pacific) on KZSU for At the Cafe Bohemian. Not sure what I'm going to play tonight. I might do a "women of the world" focus.

Art and Whine

Every Labor Day weekend our town hosts an Art & Wine Festival. It's huge. One of the largest in the Bay Area. And, oh joy!, it's about three blocks from where we live.

We celebrate this occasion by staying as far away as possible from downtown. We go without food because getting to the grocery store would be a nightmare. We plan our away trips with care as we know there will be no parking in front of our house when we get back. And even though we are three whole blocks from fun central, we get groups of loud drunk people walking in front of our house and freaking out the cats.

All the neighborhood feral cats have been hiding in the relative sanctuary of our back yard all weekend. It looks like a cat apocalypse out there. Bodies everywhere. (Peacefully sleeping, of course, not dead.) But at least a half dozen of them sprawled like the Battle of Gettysburg on the concrete, under the bushes, by the chairs. There are a few in the front yard, but the sidewalks are too full of people with too much wine in them and too little taste. People carrying handmade wicker bird cages and ugly ceramic flower pots. People wearing hand-painted baseball caps with dandelions on them. People eating funnel cakes and sporting farmer's tans.

Luckily it's over. It's only a two day event and tomorrow our street will go back to being relatively quiet. There will be far fewer people in an alcoholic stupor parking in our driveway. But the neighborhood cats will still be here. Just less freaked out.

Scenes from Silver Creek: The Silver Creek Series

As mentioned earlier, not much happened in Silver Creek in the summertime. A high school musical. Band concerts at the park. Fireworks. But the big social event of the season was the Garcia vs. Fire Department softball game.

It started when I was in 4th grade. Mr. Garcia, who owned a local insurance business was best friends with Chief Nettles, who was then chief of the fire department. After years of mini golf games, pub trivia nights, and one memorable donkey baseball event they decided on full on softball.

If you were a friend or relation of the Garcia family, you were a Garcia Giant. If you were an employee or family member of the Silver Creek Fire Department, you were a Hydrant.

Since Jessie Garcia was one of my dearest friends, I was always on the Garcia team and was considered something of a secret weapon. You see, don’t tell anyone, but I could hit anything you threw at me. Fast balls. Sliders. Curves. Didn’t matter, I’d smack ‘em out. I could be counted on for at least a single and usually a double or triple every at bat..

That was the good news. The bad was that I couldn’t field to save my life. I’d see a ball coming at me and all I could focus on was the word “Spaulding” coming ever closer to my forehead. Twice games were stopped while the EMTs (on the Fire Dept Team) checked me our for possible concussions. Once asking me who was president. When I refused to say “Reagan” he passed me as being OK. After twice being bonked out of left field they took me out of the game, debated the merit of the designated hitter, and put me in from time to time.

After a hotly contested game there were hot dogs and lemonade, beer and bratworst, and lots of lying on who played better.

To this day I still swear you can read “Spaulding” on the top of my head . Husband says it isn’t obvious if I comb my hair right.

Meeker

There's a kat named Meeker that isn't in the adoption area. He's in the feral room, having only recently been caught in a busy office park area. Meeker isn't at all happy to be inside. He's an outdoor cat and lets you know it. Chances are he might go back there,, as there's a volunteer with a horse barn in use of a mouser. Meeker might suit very well. But until then he's got to learn some basic people skills, like "do not maim the nice volunteers."

Meeker (what an inappropriate name!) should be approached with a whip and a chair. As it is, I do pull out my leather gloves when dealing with him. We just need to get him used to people. He'll never be a lap cat, and that's OK. But he can't keep jumping with claws out at anyone within walking distance. While cleaning the cage of the cat below him, Meeker calmly lifted a paw out and slammed it down upon my unsuspecting head. Blood ensued.

This is not a house cat in the making. This is a cat that wants to be on the hunt. And as soon as the vets finish treating his broken foot and worms, he'll be healthy enough to go "home." And this wooded barn area with lots of squirrels and nobody trying to play "here kitty, kitty" with him seems like the perfect solution.

But until then, Meeker is a mean old Tom who has earned my wariness. And caused me two band-aids.

Burning up the Airwaves
Back tonight, by popular demand (OK, my Husband asking if me I was doing my show tonight) it's the return of At the Cafe Bohemian. Tune in from 6-9 pm (Pacific) via the wonders of the internet,

Photo of the day: A Bit of Zen

From one of our local Japanese gardens. Out for a beautiful day with my Husband.

Photo of the day: Dr. Locke's Hands

From an ancient edition of Time magazine.

Musica

Often when making small talk with people you've just met the subject of music comes up. Which means the invariable question of "what kind of music do you listen to?" or the alternative "who are your favorite artists?"

Being a world music DJ means that my favorite artists are those that most people outside of the US have never even heard of.

"Such as?" you ask. Well, such as Sanseverino a French singer/songwriter/guitarist influenced by Django Reinhardt but with a modern pop/jazz sound. Great fun and delicious music. Henri Dikongue from Cameroon. Acoustic guitar and warm, light, sweet vocals. Lesser known than most international African artists, but so wonderful. Omara Portuondo best known for her vocals with the Buena Vista Social club. This Cuban singer is probably in her 70s by now but that only makes her style more sophisticated and her voice richer.

Of those three, Omara Portuondo is probably the best known, simply because of her BVSC work. Within their own countries, the other two are well known and extremely popular.

The problem is that when I talk about the music I love, I get the impression that people think I'm a snob. I'm not. And I'm certainly not throwing out potentially obscure names to seem "in the know." It's just that I like music that you're not going to hear when you turn on the radio.

But, for the record, my favorite US artist of the past decade is Garth Brooks. So yes, I do like some popular artists. But honestly, I'd prefer to listen to Paris Combo. (Or Ken Hirai. Or Robert Mirabal. Or Tarras. Or....)

Photo of the day: Cream

This is Cream of the crime fighting duo of Cream and Coco. She may look innocent and sweet but don't let that fool you. She's nothing but trouble.

People in the Heat

They do weird things. They lose all concern with how they look. With the exception of high school kids who insist on wearing wool ski caps (!) because they look hip. Yeah, shorts and a sweaty face is so hot.

Everyone else, though, doesn't care. Women who wouldn't dream of usually being seen in shorts put them on, damn the strerch marks, and go to the grocery store. Unfortunately we're required at the shelter to wear long pants and closed toe shoes so no shorts and flip-flops for me. I look positively Muslim in my jeans and heavy cotton volunteer t-shirt. Everyone else out today had tank tops and cargo shorts. Old ladies in muu-muus. Old guys in Bermuda shorts. Wonderfully ugly hula shirts.

See the other side effect of not being used to living in this heat is not having the wardrobe for it. I own exactly one pair of shorts and they don't fit. I'll wear them inside, but not outside. And since I have a dress code where I "work" I'm dressing today exactly the way I did last winter. (OK, minus the sweatshirt.) But the rest of the Bay Area looks really, really funny.

I've seen more flabby white legs today than I can count. I've seen clothing that hasn't been out of the closet in five years. Tank tops featuring bands that broke up a decade ago. Shorts that don't fit the wearer because they last time they wore them they were 15 pounds lighter. (The wearer, not the shorts.)

At the moment I'm wearing light PJ bottoms and one of Husband's t-shirts. It's 86 in here but is supposed to cool down tonight and be much cooler tomorrow. But I'll be wearing tomorrow what I wore today. Volunteering is a great way to not worry about what you're going to wear...

Can We Get Just a Little Sympathy?

The Bay Area is sweltering under a heat wave and nobody feels sorry for us.

My Facebook friends are all posting statuses like "we're melting" or "I can't sleep, it's 90 at 1 am." And our friends in the hotter climes are chiming in with things like "try it with 90% humidity" or "welcome to our world." Here's the thing, if you live in Arizona or Florida you expect this heat. You're prepared for it. We're not. Yes, you regularly have temps into the triple digits. But it's been like that for two months and you lived there knowing that. Here it's different. Our climate changes daily. On Saturday morning it was so chilly that our heater (which we keep set at 65) went off. Last night at 2 am it was 90 in our house.

When you live next to the San Francisco Bay you don't expect it to be 101 degrees. Our house doesn't have air conditioning. We have three fans. The kitten nursery doesn't have AC. It has two fans. It was so hot we actually had to "condemn" the nursery and move the kittens into a cooler spot. Yesterday it was 98 in the nursery, too hot for struggling kittens.

Friends who live in Orlando were laughing at us for feeling the heat. But they go from their air conditioned house to their air conditioned car to their air conditioned businesses. Most of us our here don't have AC in our houses. Who needs it when you're only going to run it for 10 days a year? Well we do. At least for those 10 days. People around here are all exhausted because nobody's slept in three days. Those of us who don't have the luxury of AC where we work are getting headache and heat stroke. We're sweating, cranky, and making sure we don't get dehydrated. I've consumed so much water the past three days that I'm practically floating.

Cipher (The World's Most Amazing Cat, Screw You if You Don't Agree tm) has managed to extend herself into the largest land mass possible to take most advantage of her proximity to the quietest fan. It's quite impressive, really. In the winter she can curl herself into a tiny ball to conserve heat. In the summer she extends herself out into about two cat lengths. It's like feline origami.

It's a bit cooler today, but not by much. Currently it's 84 in the house. Tomorrow, according to the SF paper, will be 20 degrees cooler. 20 degrees! That's how unusual this heat is.

So yes, it's hotter where you are. It'll be hotter next week. You'll be sweating for another month. But gee, can we get just a little sympathy please?