June's cat

I like the expression on this kitty's face--a bit skeptical but still curious.

We came, we saw

And we did not much of anything, which was the plan.

We splurged (and I do mean splurged) on a suite and then got an upgrade because Kent’s earned status with Starwood. When I say upgrade, well that’s sort of an understatement. The place was bigger than our house. You can get to a link of the floor plan here (click the photo in the link, I think it's the fourth picture).

Here’s a photo of the living room from this morning:

And here’s the Miami skyline from last night—the thunderstorm clouds were lit up in a very interesting way and I was pleasantly surprised the photo turned out as well as it did.

And here’s a sunrise photo from this morning looking off our balcony.

Now we’re back in Kansas with more storms on the way (we had lots of storms last week and tornado warnings and flood warnings and well let’s just say I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a wicked witch flying around somewhere last week). But boy that was a nice break from reality.

Abattoir of ants

Or go, go spiders—but not too much

We’ve been in this house just over three years and for three years, we’ve endured invasions of ants in May and June. I do not know why they want to come during the lovely summer months. I’d think there would be more suitable food and water outside, but no. In they come.

And so for three summers—soon to be four—we’ve put down ant hotels and cardboard squares with small dots of Tero on them (but those have to go someplace the cats can’t reach as it’s quite deadly).

It's like nasty sprinkles

This year, we have an unexpected ally as you can see in this photo. That window is on the right side of our fireplace and those black specks on the sill are dead ants. Dead and desiccated, I might add. There’s a spider in the second photo, although I’m not sure you can see him (her?).  Clearly this has been a year of feasting for the spider.

The spider is the bigger blob
in the sort of channel in our
wood paneling. See it?

I also don’t understand why spiders come into the house this time of year.

In addition to the one in the photo, yesterday morning there was a fairly large specimen in the shower with me. Normally they stay put and I give them the evil eye and agree that if they don’t move, I won’t kill them. This one, sadly, felt the need to crawl all over the shower caddy. So I used the attachment on our shower head and washed him right on down the drain.

Goodbye spider!

I blinked and it's almost June

Life has been a blur lately, so much so that I was startled to realize I haven’t posted in two weeks. I’ve written a lot of posts in my head but haven’t had a hot minute to toss those thoughts onto paper, let alone post here.

See the hole by the step?

Our yard is out of control. We did get some annuals planted—and also realized something’s made a home under our porch. I suspect ground squirrels, the ones that look like chipmunks, or maybe regular mice. I doubt it’s bunnies, but honestly the amount I know about bunnies is miniscule.

Welcome to the jungle

And the back yard? Is nothing but a jungle. We’ve had so much rain that even if we had a spare moment, it’s too muddy to get out there and do anything. We’ve actually debated trying to hire someone to come in to pull weeds but we’re too busy to even make those calls or ask for recommendations. Kent did get out last weekend and pull weeds until our yard waste bin was full (I worked both Saturday and Sunday). We’re going to try the same approach tomorrow; it was dry today and will be tomorrow too, so now’s the time.






We also planted our herbs and Kent being the wild, crazy optimist, included cilantro. And it's growing!!

I made a quick trip to Chicago to see one of the vendors my company uses—out on Wednesday and back on Thursday. That made me realize how much I miss traveling for work (I know I sound crazy but I do).

Kent’s birthday is this Wednesday, and I have a work dinner that night. Then Friday we fly to Miami for a couple of days of unplug time. I was hoping it would be gloriously sunny but so far the forecast isn’t bringing much joy. Jordan’s joining us—before inviting him, I did warn him we plan on being beach/pool slugs and doing not much of anything besides reading (City of Mirrors comes out on May 24, it’s the third book in a series by Justin Cronin and I am not kidding when I say I have been anticipating this for nearly a year, since I finished the second book). He was still interested in coming so that’s pretty cool.

What have you been doing?

My dad's pretty smart

When my folks were here a couple of weeks ago, my dad talked quite a bit about water. He’s always been interested in water and water policy, and has always said that the good health we enjoy here in the US can be tied to our water supply getting cleaned up. In 2003 when SARS first made the news (remember SARS?), he said then that he’d bet real money that the spread of SARS would end up being traced to contaminated water in Hong Kong. He was right.

As you might remember from your college science classes, our planet is pretty much a closed system (opens as a PDF). The various components we have are what we’ve got to work with, and that includes water. I’ve always been puzzled how it is that some places run out of water when the amount of water stays roughly the same.

But when Dad was here a couple of weeks ago, he pointed out what happens when people drink from a bottle—whether it’s water or soda or juice—and don’t finish the bottle. What do you do? You put the cap back on, right? And toss the bottle with the remaining water or liquid trapped inside. So that water is effectively removed from our system. Multiply that by a bazillion people around the world who drink bottled drinks and you can see how our closed system might be losing water.

I knew my dad was a smart cookie but I have to say that simple comment about capping bottles* opened my eyes.


I started thinking about the vegetable waste we’ve been tossing in the trash—that vegetable waste is full of moisture and we haven’t been letting it get back into the system. We don’t put it down the disposal because our kitchen sink plumbing has a severe hairpin turn under the floor of our basement, and we’ve clogged the snot out of that pipe with predictably disgusting results. So we’ve been tossing carrot peels, strawberry tops, and all the rest of that kind of stuff in the trash.

Ready for the compost bin

So a day or so after my folks returned home, I started carting those bits of vegetable matter out to the closest of the three compost bins in our backyard. Now I will say, the previous owner did a lot of gardening and she clearly used those compost bins (and took the compost with her when she moved). We, on the other hand, have done nothing with them. I’m not sure we’ll do anything with the resulting compost except think of it as a buffet for the bunnies and squirrels in our yard. But at least this way, that moisture from the vegetable rubbish will be back in our closed system.


*The water bottle in the photo is probably four years old. I refill it every night and use it to fill up the cat fountain.

May's cat

Here's the gorgeous May cat photo!

No guts, no glory

I decided that I should go ahead and sew something up this weekend, even though I didn’t lose my job. I struggle sometimes in finding the time to do creative things like sewing, especially if I’m not 100% positive I’ll get a wearable item out of the time and money I spend on it.

In this case, I was inspired by another sewing blogger who wrote about yet another blogger who suggested that using up fabric already purchased is a Very Good Thing. I’ve got, well not a lot but enough fabric that I could make a fair number of items without having to go to the store. And I’ve got plenty of patterns on hand.

Then Friday night Kent and I were at Nordstrom’s Rack and I found an Eileen Fisher dress that I liked but it didn’t really work on me (I am short waisted so sometimes dresses hit me at the wrong place on my hips). As with so many of Eileen Fisher clothing, the lines were long and elegant with a minimum of embellishment; it was a tank dress but was fluid enough to also feel like a column dress. I’ve had some lovely black with white polka dot silky knit for a few years now and thought I could probably create my own version of the Eileen dress.

But that meant winging it for this dress because I started with this pattern. It's intended for for woven fabrics, not knits. But I thought  hoped I could make it work anyway and I liked the overall lines of the dress.

The pattern calls for a zipper, which I didn’t include. The knit has enough give that it wasn’t necessary. I also didn’t include the ties in the front; instead, I used elastic stitched from the wrong side to create a tiny bit of gather under the bust. I didn’t gather it a lot because I want the dress to flow and was also concerned that it would look a bit like a maternity dress if I did.

Here’s the finished product—the photo doesn’t capture the fluid drape of the dress and in fact I think it looks a bit sad sack. But it doesn’t in real life.