Boothbay Harbor

Kent and I celebrated his birthday this weekend—a couple of months late, yes, but on purpose. I’d gotten a really good deal on a night’s stay at the Spruce Point Inn which is in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. We couldn’t use it until after Memorial weekend and it had to be used by the end of the season in October. Well if you know anything about New England it’s that the weather tends to be chilly in May and June so we chose to have his birthday present experience this weekend.

We chose well because the weather was perfect. In fact, I got a little too much sun yesterday (forgot my SPF 15 sunblock) while we were on a 90 minute sail boat tour of the harbor. But it was lovely and very relaxing and just the right amount of time and distance away from Boston.

Chloe

I have this regrettable habit of remaking lyrics and then singing the butchered songs aloud. I used to do it to my children and now I do it to my cats. Sometimes I make up really involved lyrics and other times (if it's to the cats) I just substitute "meow" for words. I'm pleased to report that I've passed this tendency on to one of my sons which makes me a very proud mother.

But I digress. The point of today's post is to bring you up to date on Chloe. First, the song (sung to the tune of Me and Mrs. Jones):

Chloe and the bear
They’ve got a thing going on
They both know that it’s wrong
But it’s much too strong to let it go now

You may recall that Chloe is usually found sleeping on the bear. I mean, she loves that thing with a single-mindedness rarely found in cats. I have a lot of pictures of her with her head mooshed in the bear's midsection, or completely covering him or just cuddling him.

Except that Chloe seems to have had a falling out with Mr. Bear. For the last week or so, she’s been sleeping on the cushion next to the bear cushion. We’ve speculated that she just needs her space, or maybe Eddie and Wally were giving her grief about her cross-species obsession. But then again, maybe Mr. Bear got tired of being squished flat. Who knows?

A replacement

And also an early anniversary present. Back story is here. I've looked online for a replacement occasionally over the last couple of years as has Kent with no luck until this week.

Behold the new butter dish:

The original one was turquoise, and we really liked that color a lot. But I also really like this color for two reasons. First, this color was only made between 1951 and 1959 which is also when Kent's mother got her dishes (toward the end of the decade after she got married). And second, we have the teapot, sugar dish and creamer in the same color. I am beyond happy we were able to replace this--and yes, it's most definitely housed back against the wall to keep it safe from Wally's pushy paws.

How does your garden grow?

I think we’re about 2/3 of the way through our growing season here in Boston so I thought I’d give you the garden score. You may recall that my crazy optimist husband planted peppers, lettuce, cilantro and cherry tomatoes along with our usual basil, mint, rosemary and oregano.

Here are the results so far:

Cilantro: fail

The cilantro plant didn’t die but of course we cut the leaves to use in cooking. And they didn’t come back, nor did the seeds he planted do much beyond barely sprouting. This is the third yard and second climate in which we’ve tried and failed to grow cilantro.

Peppers: moderately good results

We have two tiny peppers on the jalepeno plant and one on the pablano chili plant. They aren’t very big but they’re there and I can see us harvesting them sometime in August or maybe September.

Cherry tomatoes: decent results

We have probably a dozen little green tomatoes on the plant plus one that’s actually turning red. This result is the most surprising to me because we really don’t get all that much sun for all that long in the patio.

The rest of the herbs: great as usual

It’s still a mystery to me why we can grow basil like crazy but still struggle with cilantro, but that’s the way it is.

Sew busy

Get it? Yeah, I know, that was pretty lame. But in the last week, I've really gotten a lot of sewing projects done. I made a blouse and a sundress for Alison, a cargo shirt and a pair of shorts for Eliot and a jumper for my great-niece (!) Valentine. Next up are a pair of aprons for friends who just got married and want to cook together the way Kent and I do, a pair of bathrobes for my friend Fiona and her new husband plus a surprise for my BFF, Kerry. She reads this blog so I'm not saying what I'm making neener, neener!

But I couldn't post these pictures until after my son and daughter-in-law left this morning for a vacation; they also read my blog and I didn't want them to see what I'd made Alison for her birthday.

Alison's favorite color is pink, so I chose pink fabrics. The top on the left is barely pink and has the outlines of white daisies all over it. The dress on the right is a pink seersucker sundress. I should have taken a picture of the back of the dress but I forgot.





Here's the camp shirt and shorts I made for Eliot. You probably can't see the buttons on the shirt very well but they are made of coconut and have a little design carved in them. Matching plaids isn't my strong point but I did pretty well with the shirt, so overall I'm pleased.









My oldest niece, Beth, had wanted to paint the baby's room an intense pink which is why I picked out this corduroy. I know people tend to give newborn and infant size clothing as gifts--talking three and six month sizes--and also go overboard with girl clothes. So I made a bigger size and think Valentine should be able to wear this in the winter, maybe even right around Valentine's Day in honor of her name. I looked for a heart applique to put on the dress but had no luck. They were either too small or the wrong color. So she gets a pink daisy.

Imaginary friends?

Last night Kent and I got to meet up with Jeanne and her family at Logan—they had a long layover between flights so we took advantage of the time to hang out for a bit. I did bring my camera and I did remember to have Kent take pictures but they all turned out horrible; they were either blurry or else both Jeanne and I looked like we had what she calls indigestion faces. You'll have to take my word for it that despite no photographic evidence, Kent and I had a great time.

I hadn’t seen Jeanne since Moby Dick was a minnow and of course Kent had never met her. We had fun exchanging text messages about who was imaginary while they collected their bags and went through Customs. My favorite line was from Jeanne’s daughter who said they were indeed real and we’d know it by their unicorns.

Anyway, I'm glad for selfish reasons that she's back. I've missed her blog entries.

It's a cat's life

We joke that no one can be stressed watching Eddie sleep. He doesn't mess around, he gets good and comfy and fully commits to the endeavor.

This is a favorite sleeping place for Eddie. He likes Kent's lap because it's bigger than mine and he's a big cat. I took this picture with the camera almost on Kent's right shoulder looking down at Eddie; that's Kent's right arm you see on the right side going from top to bottom.

Multipurpose

Kent’s working on the Strobist Boot Camp—every couple of weeks, David Hobby posts a new assignment along with the deadline for submission. So today Kent set up his photography studio in our home.







At the same time, I have a deadline for mailing some things to Alison and Eliot before they leave for vacation, so I had some sewing to do. In this next picture, I’ve turned around 180 degrees and now you can see where I cut out my patterns.

Finally Wally is “helping” me in the bedroom by snoozing on the box of fabric. The cabinet you see in the background is my sewing cabinet.







All in all, this was a very busy day for both of us.

Too hot to handle

It's 8:34 PM and still 96F in Boston. I'd write a real post but I've melted and I can't get up.

Send ice.

My sewing tips

My friend Sabrina is in the process of learning to sew and recently took a sewing class. I was dismayed though by how little she was taught at that “course”—I put it in quotes because honestly from what she’s said, all they did was stitch pre-cut squares together. Maybe it was a get-to-know-your-sewing-machine class? Anyway, Sabrina, if I’ve got it wrong, let me know in the comments.

This week I’ve made a dress and a top for Alison and while working on them, I kept thinking of things I’d tell Sabrina if she lived near me. So here are some of the things I’ve learned while sewing (mostly from painful experience). I’m pretty sure others who read this blog also sew, and I’m hoping you’ll chime in with tips of your own.

• Wash and dry your fabric before you do anything else (unless it’s dry clean only, duh).
• Iron it too.
• Iron your pattern pieces. Wrinkled pattern pieces lead to bad cutting which leads to tears when sewing. 
• Lay out all the pieces and pin them before you cut anything. Trust me on this, it’s just no fun to learn you don’t actually have enough fabric even though you thought you did.
• Check to see if your fabric has a nap and then make sure all pieces have the nap going the proper way.
• Know your sewing limitations and if you’re going to go beyond that, at least use inexpensive material. I know I am awful at linings so I avoid patterns that have more than a lined bodice because I will mess it up, get frustrated and pitch the whole thing. With patterns costing $18.95 a pop and most materials running $5 and up a yard, that adds up to real money.
• This one is personal preference: When you are sewing, trim off the thread ends when you’ve finished a seam. After I’ve finished a project, the last thing I want to do is to go back and cut all those suckers off then.
• Press your seams in the direction your pattern directions say to (toward the bodice or toward the shoulder, etc).
• If you don’t want to look ghetto gross, don’t use Stitch Witchery. It’s super easy to hem something properly with thread and needle.
• Know when you’ve done enough for the day and then stop. Otherwise you can make fatal mistakes.
• If your fabric looks the same on both sides, then make sure you mark the inside/outside of each pattern piece. I used a pink seersucker fabric for Alison’s dress and it looks the same on both sides. I didn’t mark inside/outside so yesterday I got to take out the side seams and hem from the skirt of the dress, flip them over and sew them all again. This tip leads directly to the next one which I learned when I used to cross stitch.
• If you make a mistake, take it apart and do it over. Odd gaps, gathers that shouldn't be there, stitches that catch extra material are things you will always see and so will everyone else. Just take it apart and do it over.
• Do mark the little arrows or double arrows on your pieces. When you are pinning seams later, you’ll be very glad you did that. These days, I cut a tiny single or double slash into the fabric instead of the triangles I used to cut.

So what tips do you have for Sabrina? Heck, what tips do you have for me?

Insecure?

Cats aren't human but they do have moods. For whatever reason, all three are unusually anxious because Kent is gone this week. They squabble over who gets the favored box, my lap, and lounging rights on my desk. Even Chloe gets into the mix.

Last night Eddie got to my desk first but that didn't stop Wally. He got up there and as you can see, there's not enough room for two cats. Eddie groomed Wally for a while in a futile attempt to annoy Wally into leaving. But in the end, Eddie was the one who left.

Every day

Is nap day to a cat.

He sleeps like this a lot; it's the same pose as the picture at the top of my blog. I took that picture three years ago.

He's a little fatter, don't you think?

It’s Saturday!

And tonight is Friday night.

Right now every day is Saturday and every night is Friday night.

So far this unemployment thing feels like a fantastic do very little kind of vacation. I’m sure along about August when I realize that it’s still Saturday and tonight’s still Friday night, I’ll get twitchy but right now it feels pretty damn good.

I’d planned to start prepping my fabric and patterns for the projects I want to get done this week. But one thing I know very well about myself—my best, most productive time of the day is first thing in the morning. And this morning I chose to spend it with Kent before he headed out for a week-long trip. So I’m just now all dressed and ready to face the day at the decadent hour of 10:30. Sewing will have to wait because fiddle dee dee, tomorrow is another day. And guess what? It will be Saturday.

When the dog bites

Things I like:

• My feet have tan lines from my flip flops.
• I’m still on the same half a tank of gas from the middle of June.
• Kent’s making veggie pizza for lunch.
• The strawberries are really good this year.
• I found a recipe for cooking dried beans in my Crock Pot.
• Our cheap mattress from Ikea is super comfortable, the best bed I've ever owned.
• Watching Eddie snooze in the box cracks me up.

Things I don’t like:

• I’m tired of having nightmares about my last job.
• Patterns for sewing are almost $20 a pop. That's crazy.
• Upstairs neighbors (or guests) poured a drink over the side of the balcony—the sound of the water scared me (flashed back to the first flood) plus hello? We live down here.
• Road construction on I-93 makes getting to Costco more painful than it’s worth. So we didn't go today.
•  Eddie makes a huge mess when he eats the cardboard box. I think he's a badger cat.

Misc cat stuff

Eddie has found a new box for his snoozing comfort. We speculate that this box is just enough bigger, with higher sides to make a fat cat feel secure. The paper sticking straight up is part of the packing materials that came with the box; there are more layers under him which he rearranges from time to time. Notice, too, the orange mouse to the left of the box. He's been enthralled with that particular mouse for about a week.




Chloe continues her unnatural obsession with the brown bear. I managed to snag a picture of her as she is most days, although at least here her little face isn’t smashed in the bear’s crotch. Yes, that’s what she usually does.







Wally remains the high strung enigma he’s always been. Kent bought a huge quantity of Velcro ties (75 I believe) and we are going through them at an alarming rate as Wally bats them under appliances, furniture and otherwise disposes of them as fast as he possibly can. Then he comes back to the file cabinet between our desks, paws at it (because that's where we store the Velcros) and cries piteously until we either fish out the ones under things or get him a new one.

It’s like fudge and caramel

They’re not the same.

And that’s how I felt about The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie. Sadly I couldn’t even get through the first three stories.

I took a Native American literature class when I was an undergraduate and absolutely loved the course, the stories, the glimpses into a culture right here in the US but so very different from anything I knew. You'd think I would have known something about Native American culture because the Haskell Indian Nations University is in Lawrence, Kansas, which is also where the University of Kansas is. But I knew nothing so the entire course was eye opening and fascinating.

Even 20 years later, I'll never forget Luci Tapahonso’s guest lecture, and I really liked Scott Momaday’s book House Made of Dawn. So I was prepared to enjoy this book.

Here’s the best analogy I can come up with. I love pumpkin pie and I could eat it every day. But I dislike sweet potato pie; in fact I downright hate the stuff. But it looks like pumpkin pie and I’ve been fooled a few times by the similarity . . . until I take a bite. Blech.

That’s how this book was for me.

Do you see what I see?

The window in our bedroom is tiny and looks out into the window well. We’ve painted the concrete walls white so that we get as much light as possible into our room. That window is the only window that actually gets direct sunlight so it’s a very important window in our house.

The cats have been obsessed with looking out that window, which baffles us both. There’s nothing to see except for white gravel (the better to reflect light), a cool hunk of green glass Kent’s mother got us, a couple of tiny, scraggly weeds and the concrete wall. We speculated that maybe they were looking up through the iron grate—which is also covered by a screen—to see birds and squirrels.

Yesterday I looked over Wally’s shoulder to see what he was staring at because he wasn’t looking up, he was looking out. This is what I finally noticed:

Do you see it? At first I thought it was a real mouse corpse until I noticed the tag. Then I realized it was one of our toy mice (this one is from Kent's mother, I believe). But the bigger mystery is how it got out there. We open the window for fresh air, of course, but we don’t open the screen. So last night we amused ourselves by making up stories about how that mouse got out there.

My story involved the Cat Nanny and also explains why Eddie turned against her so violently. In my account, she opened the window, tossed a toy out there and then made Eddie go out. Naturally enough, this indoor-only kitty freaked out, attacked her and the poor abandoned mouse was left to his fate.

Other options include cats transporting themselves through solid objects by way of that alternate universe they seem to favor, but that seems a little far-fetched. Or maybe Wally figured out how to open the screen despite having no opposable thumbs, tossed the mouse out and then closed everything up again.

You’re so vain

Kent is a really good photographer, but don’t take my word for it. Go check out his pictures on Facebook here and here.

But that puts me in a weird position because he takes my picture pretty often and I end up liking some of them a lot. So does that make me vain because I like my own pictures?

Here’s one he took last week in Bosham that I like. Part of the reason I like it so much is that it’s atypical of me because my hair’s blown off my face.

Do you feel weird when you like pictures of yourself? Or am I just a freak (Kent, don't answer that)?

A roll call

Chloe is turning into an old lady cat. I’m not exactly sure of her age; when I adopted her from the animal rescue in October, 2001, they thought she was one or two years old. I always leaned toward the younger age because she behaved so much like a kitten. But she’s slowing down now. She’s more tentative when she jumps up on my lap and lately she’s been crying at me when I’m sitting at my desk. I think it’s because she wants up on my lap but her joints hurt. It’s hard to know since cats can’t exactly say where they hurt.

That got me thinking about all the cats that have been in my life and I realized I’ve never had one die of old age before. In fact, only two have died while in my care. The rest who are gone are gone because we moved and it wasn’t possible to take them with us or we found them a home better suited to them. So here’s my roll call of kitties and what happened to them:

Tom: tuxedo cat my first husband and I got in Germany. He was a very rambunctious kitten and loved to zoom around the apartment. If you were in the way, he just bounced off you. When I got pregnant, we realized a baby and that particular cat weren't the best match. We found him a home without children.

Jessie: female tiger from a friend, also in Germany and the best cat ever. Jordan was a toddler then and he’d grab her fur in a babyish attempt to pet her and she just didn’t care. She never laid a claw on him. We found her a new home before we left Germany.

Stratocat: mixed breed male in Columbus from the animal shelter. He peed on the carpet so back he went. I had one toddler struggling with toilet training and one baby in diapers. That was enough bodily waste for me to deal with.

Tigger: tuxedo cat my former mother-in-law gave me after my unsuccessful attempts to get a feral kitten from under her porch in Muncie. Tigger was only six weeks when we got him and he was a fantastic cat, loved to be held and didn’t mind when the boys were inadvertently rough with him. He died at six from a heart defect and broke all our hearts.

Daniel Stripped Tiger: tiger cat, also in Columbus with the thickest tail you ever saw—seriously it was like a raccoon tail. He was shy, very, very shy and we weren’t the best house for him. Before we moved from Columbus to Lawrence, KS, we found him another home because at the time we had three cats and that’s just a lot of cats to move.

Mags: female whiney calico cat we took for a friend who could not have pets in her home. I kept her out of guilt, that is the only reason because that cat was needy, whiney and clingy. She was also a great hunter and brought us all kinds of dead and almost dead presents. I gave her to my best friend at the time, where she lived until about 20 years of age.

Henry: another tuxedo cat we got in Lawrence after Mags was gone and Tigger had died. He got passed around a lot, from us to my ex and his wife, to me, to a friend and I don’t know where he ended up. Mostly he was mellow. He wasn't really a lap cat but he would always sit right by me.

Ernie: the biggest cat I've ever owned. He was another all black cat with huge green eyes and he looked like a panther. He weighed 25 pounds and was the most affectionate cat. He liked to put his paws on either shoulder and stick his face on mine and purr. I had to move to a place that didn't allow pets so I gave him to a family with two kids. They loved him but unfortunately, as often happens with male cats, he developed kidney issues and died about a year later and broke all their hearts.

Chloe: I adopted her in Kansas City and she’s still here although slowing down.

Sammie: super sweet black kitten I adopted at seven months in spite of Kent’s reservations. His exact words to me about getting a second cat: It’s YOUR cat, Charlie Brown. Of course that guaranteed that Sammie bonded with Kent. He died from feline infectious peritonitis at 14 months and broke both our hearts.

Wally and Eddie: crazy litter mate boys, one butterscotch (Wally) and one gray tiger (Eddie) but with the exact same markings and body language. They refuse to let Chloe sleep her life away. Honestly I think she’s in better shape today than she was before we got them because they force her to be active.

So there you have it, all the cats I’ve had as an adult and where they are now.

Yum, yum

Kent is the true Indian/Thai cook in our house—it’s kind of funny that a pale, red-headed man born in Arkansas would be so good at cooking curries and stuff but he really is. However I’m no slouch myself and after our trip to England where we were both less than diligent about healthy eating, I decided to make some food that at least gives a nod to India even if it’s not all that authentic.

I have an old curry-glazed recipe from my mother that I’ve altered so it’s lower in fat; for last night I didn’t want much meat so I used one boneless, skinless chicken thigh diced into pieces and quickly sautéed, a cup of cooked brown rice with one tablespoon each of a good, hot curry powder and honey. The heat from the cooked rice and the bits of chicken help the honey thin out so it coats all the rice really well.

Then for side dishes, I found this recipe online. It’s AMAZING is all I can say—even Kent, who doesn’t really like carrots—loved it and wanted more. I didn’t put in the peanuts (didn’t have any and also that’s calories we didn’t need) but everything else was the same. I used a microplane to shred the carrots which was labor-intensive but I think the texture is better than with a food processor. If you make it, be aware that it's most definitely spicy so if you don't like it hot, dial down the cayenne.

And I made a cucumber salad with yogurt and mint which was also fantastic. These were easy, cheap and healthy dishes and really hit the spot last night.

Tonight I’m making chili-dusted black beans with avocado. I think tomorrow night will be some sort of Italian pasta salad and then later this week I’ll use up the rest of the rice and make a stir fry.

Hungry yet?

And one more post for the day

Kent took this picture with the not great camera and I think it turned out really well. That's Elise with me, she lives in the same building as Fiona which is how we all met. Plus she's got a cat and now uses the Cat Nanny when she's out of town.



The reception music was actually kind of dated, all 80s and 90s but not even cool 80s and 90s. In fact it was so bad at one point that a couple of us started rapping nursery rhymes to the beat of whatever song was on, which was an improvement. It also cracked us all up. What can I say, I am easily amused.

It would take a miracle

Behold the power of my crazy optimist husband.

Teeny tiny tomatoes:

Teeny tiny peppers:

Details, details

Kent and I have been to England more than a few times, both together and separately. But this is the first time we haven’t stayed in the London area; instead we stayed in the village of Bosham (about four miles from Chichester).

The very first cab driver we had asked us if we knew how cities were determined in the UK. We did not, so he told us: in order to be designated a city in the UK, the population must be over 500,000 OR there must be a cathedral. Chichester qualifies as a city because of the cathedral there, while Bosham qualifies on neither point even though it’s got a really beautiful church. Both the village and the city are beautiful, and I am glad we stayed there the entire time we were in England.

Bosham is on a tidal flat area and the high tides flood a couple of the streets twice daily. You can see signs all over the place warning motorists to be aware of when high tide occurs so they don’t get stranded. This link describes a pub right on the water where we had lunch on Thursday.

Our friend's wedding took place in Lavant at St. Mary's, which is also ridiculously picturesque. I hoped for warm, sunny weather for Fiona but alas, it was pretty chilly and damp. We didn't get rain until later in the evening during the reception so only the smokers were affected.

Saturday we were lucky enough to be able to watch our niece, Avalon, at her school's end of term activities. We had a picnic lunch there with my sister, Martha, her husband Nigel and both girls (Eilish is the younger of the two). Then we went to my sister's house for an amazing curry dinner, marred only by Martha cutting her finger on a tin can lid. Fortunately she's up to date on her tetanus shots and once the triage nurse said no stitches were necessary, all was well.

It was a great trip all the way around. Now I'm back to job hunting while being swarmed by needy cats. It's good to be needed.

Home again

Here are some pictures from our ridiculously picturesque hotel:

No good day

I was going to write about Pandora but it’s been a miserably annoying day so I changed my mind.

Don’t you think it would have been professional and appropriate for my previous company to let me know I would need to file for unemployment in New Hampshire, not Massachusetts where I live? Me too, but that’s not what happened.

I spent the morning running around Boston in unusual heat for nothing. To be honest, I’m bummed that it’s NH unemployment and not MA. MA has a better package. I’ve finally got the first round of paperwork filed and I have to file a claim every Sunday. Good thing we get back Sunday evening.

Ironically Chichester’s weather is cool and cloudy right now, while Boston is finally enjoying summer weather.

I think I will have a drink on the plane. Maybe two.

Loose ends

For being newly laid off, I’ve been really busy tying up loose ends.

I got the unofficial not-supposed-to-tell-you-yet-but-that’s-BS word on Wednesday that I was in fact part of the 1/3 headcount reduction at DMT. I never did get the official word from HR but that’s pretty typical of that company. So I worked with my manager, Nick, who is a great guy.

What I found very odd and more than a little naïve on DMT’s part is that they didn’t consider the potential liability issues of laying me off effective close of business Thursday while I still had to finish traveling home on their behalf Friday. That could have been a huge mess. When I pointed that out to the HR woman, she said that if I’d gotten sick or injured, they’d have covered COBRA 100%. Um that’s nice but that’s not the point. COBRA coverage isn’t the same as the health insurance coverage offered to employees. Plus I would have also been filing for workman’s comp and things would not have been so pleasant. Yeah I think they dodged a bullet.

While traveling to HI, I’d left my car in Portsmouth for some car repair (see also Ferals and the damage to my front left fender), and needed to pick it up on Saturday. I told Nick that I’d make just one more trip up there to turn in company property and it had to be Saturday because of my car. At first, the HR woman was not willing to meet me then, so Nick was going to do it. I’m not sure why she changed her mind but she did and I got everything signed and turned in Saturday afternoon. Now I’m a free agent.

I’m still relieved to be done there. I wouldn’t have outright quit without another job lined up, but I’m glad I don’t have to mess with that company any more. It could have been a super environment, and it should have been. Alas for what could have been.

We leave for England tomorrow night to attend the wedding of one of our closest friends in Boston. We will also be able to see my sister and her family on Saturday at the older daughter’s end of term activities. We get home Sunday evening and have a week together before Kent travels again.

For the next job, I won’t look at companies that far away from Boston—well, not unless things get really desperate. I don’t mind the travel; I did mind the commute. It reeked.