Life's a Stitch

If they did, this is what they heard back east on our family reunion vacation for my Mom's 80th birthday:

"I can tell they are sisters because they don't want to share." said
my niece, Ana, observing her mom and I debating sharing entrees at a
restaurant.

Our waitress, when asked how to pronounce the name of the town we were visiting (Havre de Grace, Maryland) said, "Hav-ah-da-Grace, say it fast and don't try and fancy it up."

Said to me by my very wise husband when I was debating the purchase
of an extravagant camera, "What are you going to save the money for, an
extravagant coffin? The camera is on its way.

A week after my arrival, my cousin, for whom I've been house-sitting, called to warn me about the neighbours's
dog, Opal, and her love of stealing shoes from the front porch. Too
late. Caught in the act one night, in a very dark photo, but you get the
idea:

At Vulcan's Rest Fibers in Chesapeake City, MD, I said, "I don't really need any more yarn." I limited it to a one skein purchase:

Feza Nirvana: $9.00, 100% bamboo, 250 yards, enough for Knitting Pure and Simple's Little Girl Shrug.

 Last post was all words, this one all pictures. Put the two together and it's one long complete post:

The house of my  dreams:

The dock/beach area:

The cats:

The storm:

  How'd I do, is it what you pictured in the last post?

A  bit of summer reading for you. House sitting for my cousin, 3500 miles from home, I am unable to upload pictures. A good writer doesn't need to rely on illustrations, I've been told. That is precisely why I've chosen blogging as my writing medium. More expressive than social networking without the requirement of talent. Throw in a couple of pictures and voila! Point made.

Uh-oh, no pictures available, you will have to rely upon my writing plus your imagination to complete the story. When I get back home I'll post the photos and you can see how close we were. What fun, she thinks nervously. Here goes:

My practical nature does not permit me the conjuring up of things frivolous, the perfect car, ideal vacation spot or an ever current wardrobe. But if it did, this would be the house of my dreams. Circular driveway, two and a half stories of floor to ceiling windows, panoramic outside orientation, groomed garden, mini orchard, deciduous woods (oh how I miss the deciduous woods of my childhood), peek-a-boo water view, a little beach a seven minute walk away. Primary coloured birds straight out of Disney, bright blue, yellow and red, feasting from feeders on the deck. They warble in Disney voices "Cheer-up cheer-up cheer-up, sing-a-song sing-a-song sing-a-song, tweet tweet." If I want, there are Broadway and movie soundtracks playing 24/7 on channel 426 out of 500, emanating from the magic box attached to the 52" TV.

The neighbourhood appears a tad this side of Stepford without the wives, or else they were programmed to go to work. On my daily fifty minute walk I've seen only three people, all on riding mowers, plus one dog. I imagine the neighbours in their air conditioned comfort, peering from behind the curtains at the crazy Canadian cousin attempting to exceed her daily requirement of 10,000 steps.

This particular dream house contains two cats, not generally my dream pet, but each day brings us closer. Mango, is an old feral cat, abandoned on the streets of Puerto Rico at the age of seven days,  hand nursed to maturity by the only person in the world he trusts, my cousin.  He's skinny, striped and has held me hostage in the bedroom, sitting in the doorway baring his teeth and reaching out to scratch my passing shin. Still I speak lovingly to this cat as my cousin would. I use his first language to the best of my abilities translated to "Ay, Mangocito, you are the only cat in my life." I don't care what the other one thinks, she loves me no matter what, especially when I'm eating tuna.

She is Emmy, fat and mostly black. She looks as if she was held around the chest, under her front legs, and dipped into white paint. Back legs all the way in, belly and front paws bleached by a shallow dunk. Emmy is content to graze all day and makes regular requests of me for affection.

It is humid here with a capital H. It's as though I'm walking through a fog of heat, breathing under water, parting seas of dragon flies with my cat scratched legs. I feel it like steam in a pressure cooker with a plugged vent. Something's got to give and I have a feeling it's going to be messy.

This morning I woke to rain. Breakfast time and not a cat to be found. That should have been my first clue. Outside I hear whipping winds followed by the stillness of dead silence. Then the deluge. Thunder, lightning,  humidity erupting around us. "Here kitties, kitties, don't be afraid."  10:00 am, darker than night, we lost the power. Two cats and me in the living room, me with my camera in hand in case of funnel clouds. Too dark to knit. I hear gentle thuds in the bedroom, water dripping twenty feet above through the track lighting, onto the floor. I changed the sound to plinks with a strategically placed soup pot. 

Looking out the bathroom window, a surprise. Cousin's lot had suddenly become waterfront. And the garage was a rapidly filling indoor swimming pool. I worry about the cats' inability to access their litter boxes and little door to freedom. At that point the electricity decides to come back on and I fear fried felines.

With the aid of a portable phone, I'm given instructions on how to deal with the rising tide. In case of electrocution I say a perfect Act of Contrition and call my husband. "Wait," he says, "don't go into the water. Take pictures first for their insurance claim." Ah, such a romantic. 

Hammer, screw driver and broomstick in hand, wading into a foot and a half of rainwater, I unplug the driveway drain, the source of the drama. With further guidance from the cousin-in-law,  and deep breaths, I lit the garage propane heater, blasting it on high for the entire day.  I wish you could have heard the conversation between the two of us, both in panic mode. He instructs me to look for the wall heater to the left of the door. I go through the door, turn around and search the wall immediately to the left of the doorway. He meant go through the doorway and look at the wall on the left side of the garage. A comedy of errors.  The visual was even funnier, me wearing rubber soled shoes just in case.

This is getting long. Maybe I should have broken it up into two posts.

I come back into the house, two cats awaiting my return. "Oh sweet kitties, let's celebrate with some treats." I hold out my hand to Emmy. She gobbles them up. Mango's turn. "Here Mangocito, have some Whiskas Temptations, sweet boy." Hisssss, he says, teeth bared as he bats my hand away. For God's sake, Mango, we've survived a natural disaster together. My best cat parenting and social worker skills have failed.

"Li," says my husband, back home over the phone, in his voice of reality, "it's a cat. That's how they are."

Although appearing dramatic at times:

it doesn't seem to coincide with the correct day of the week a la Sandy's Saturday Sky.

I live in the Pacific Northwest, with its long stretches of greeny grey mizzle; mist, fog and drizzle, with sporadic sunbreaks. We do get more than our fair share of rainbows, but generally the climate doesn't fit with my sky watching inclinations. In BC we average five thunderstorm days per year.

When I lived
in Omaha, where the average was 50 per year, my younger and far less wise self, upon hearing the tornado
sirens, would head right up to the roof of my apartment building, camera
and 200mm lens in hand. I frequently dreamt at night of photographing a
tornado. Thankfully my dream never came true.

This weekend however, our sky put on quite the show, changing colour every half hour, illuminated with three kinds of lightning. I've heard many refer to it as the storm of their lifetime. Right outside my window through the pouring rain – yellow, orange, pink and blue – it was better than any fireworks:

Oh, if I could knit the colours of that sky!

The next morning our sky was still noisy but blue. I could hear a helicopter outside our bedroom window while feeling the wind of its rotors. I thought it was a rescue on the mountain behind us, a regular summer  weekend event. A lost hiker or a hang glider who tempted fate, like these before yesterday's storm, riding wild currents, serenaded by thunder:

It was the RCMP chopper, delivering power poles and installation supplies for the local hydro lines:

You can't see it in the photo taken with my little camera, but there were three bald eagles soaring above the helicopter, undisturbed by the noise and change in air currents.

My sky, it's not too bad.

We got a good dinnertime chuckle this week. Our provincial socialized medical system is moving toward systemwide computerized record keeping. A physician has access to EVERYTHING. X-rays, lab results, reports from other doctors, prescriptions filled… you name it, anything health related is going to appear. It could be very helpful, especially in an emergency, BUT, part of my organization's work is in legal advocacy and we're quite concerned with privacy issues. 

Not feeling terribly creative, point form will have to do. My week taught me:

• Quinoa in its raw form, spilt in the kitchen, has the ability to jump and hide in every nook and cranny and will most likely be discovered for years forward.
• Quinoa, cooked, spilt in the kitchen, resists wiping up, clutching firmly to it's landing spot.
• Delivering a comfort shawl: a mother's grief never loses its sharp edge. And rightfully so.
• An example of friendship that went above and beyond normal bounds, one sharing a kidney with his buddy, still in his 20's.
• It feels good to frog a stalled project, 350 meters in.
• It's easier to walk 10,000 steps than to walk an hour and forty minutes. Go figure, they're both five miles.
• Dancing Merengue is a good way to accumulate pedometer steps.
• There are few places more beautiful than British Columbia in a good summer.
• Babette is a cute name for an endless project:

Was My Face Red – it was a column about readers' embarrassing moments. The magazine, from way back when, I'm afraid to admit, was called "Calling All Girls." It transitioned into Young Miss and then to YM. So, have you ever done something so stupid that even you yourself had to sit back and laugh?

Carole recently posted about a monument at Gettysburg. There was a bird, a red headed woodpecker, sitting on the head of a statue. I commented that we, too, have a new statue in town that seems to attract birds. The last two times I drove by it, the naked figure of a young woman, there was a crow sitting on her head. This past week I drove by with a co-worker and asked her if she noticed the phenomenon. "That is the statue," she informed me. The bird is part of it. Was my face red 🙂

And as this is a knitting blog, I will show you cousin Lena's recent FO, Helena from Knitty:

Ahhhhh the best of both. First the comfort. Remember when custom made orthopedic shoes meant thick soles, round toes and black leather with ties on the side? Meet today's orthopedic shoes, custom Naot's. My feet are in heaven:

And the food. Old cheesecake: 460 calories, cream cheese and sour cream. New cheesecake:150 calories, low in fat and sugar. Amazing! As soon as I can taste food again I'm going to make my third in three weeks.

Li Can't Believe It's Cheesecake Recipe

2 lbs ricotta
1/4 C milk or half and half
2/3 C sugar (option for low sugar diets: half splenda and half sugar)
1/3 C flour plus a bit more for dusting
2t almond extract
6 eggs (I use high omega eggs)

1. Preheat oven to 325. Line springform pan with baking paper.Grease the paper and dust with flour.
2. In a food processor with steel blade, whiz the ricotta until very smooth, scraping down the sides occasionally.
3. Add milk, sugar, flour and extract and process until combined.
4. Break eggs into a jug and while motor is running, pour slowly down feed tube. Whiz for 40 seconds until smooth and creamy, scraping down sides if needed.
5. Pour into pan and bake until set and golden in colour. It takes at least an hour and a half.
6. Top with fresh fruit or pie filling. May be served warm or cold.

Apologies for the abandonment of my blog. I am one sick puppy. Started with strep and bronchitis and without too many details, the combination of illness and antibiotics are heading south.Can you imagine, feeling too sick to knit? There was plenty of time though, since my last post to enjoy some fun with the guests:

Blogless Marsha's David skoals his first Akvavit at SIL Karen's 4th of July birthday:

On her 67th birthday Karen hiked seven miles with us. Here's the proof:

The neighbours were close by:

Blogless Marsha comforts terrified Gracee during the fireworks. Is that the look of love or what?

Off to have my Lipton chicky noodle for brekky,

Spending time with my sisters-in-law has brought back memories of mother-isms, sayings unique to their mother. I remember her saying "Oh dear, bread and beer if I hadn't have married,I wouldn't be here." Nobody knows the origins of that one, possibly song lyrics, but I've been known to say it now and then.

Their other momism were words that were expressed when things went well for while, like a series of green lights when you're driving. Or a 31 row repeat without forgotten yarn over's. She'd say "You must have been holding your tongue straight."

I was listening to CBC Radio around Mother's Day. The
on-the-street reporter asked, "What words of your mother's do you still
have in your head." If you asked my kids, they'd probably say, "Little children
who know how to read can never be bored."

Or "I want never gets."
Remember that one, Auntie Ellen? You borrowed that one from me and I
used your "Ask one more time and you won't get it." My eldest, at age
four, wanted gum. She asked for it over and over again. Auntie Ellen
used her magic phrase and niece replied, "I want…….(long pause)…a
sail boat." It still cracks us up.

Having company here means good food. No bread and beer for us. Cousin Lena from Denmark was responsible for last night's dinner. There's a salmon fillet under the mushrooms, lime, scallions and dill, along with a yogurt garlic dill sauce, and an avocado salad: