The living room floor, 75% improved!

This photo isn't the best, but don't worry—there are better ones to come. On Saturday, Mom brought over her heavy-duty floor scrubber machine that she's had since 1982, and that weighs about 30 pounds, and set it to work on the beautiful but neglected living room floor that we uncovered in early January. We still have some more work to do, but a couple hours with the machine, warm water, and Murphy's Oil Soap worked wonders! And yes, I followed behind Mom with a mop, a bucket of warm, clean water, and a stack of old towels. Happily, a lot of the spots on the floor are 40-year-old dried textured-ceiling plastern and they came up surprisingly easily. The tougher spots of plaster (and a few splotches of 40-year-old green paint, as well) will come off easily when we hit them with a floor sander and a fine-grit belt. Hooray for hidden gems in the Happy Kitten Cottage!

This kitteh helps his Mama grade papers

When I'm grading papers, Clark is always helpful. He keeps me warm in the recliner (which I've covered in old bed sheets to cut down on the amount of cat fur that somehow gets woven into the upholstery), and purrs steadily to calm my nerves after I grade an especially heinous essay or twothreetwelve. Seems like I've done nothing but grade, grade, grade the last couple of weeks, what with students turning in essay drafts and finished essays. But Spring Break begins the week of March 7, and my goal is to be completely done with every student's essay by then. Naturally, I'll once again be grading like mad this week—but it'll be well worth not having any papers to worry about during my time off.

Heralds of spring

While winter has been much colder than usual here in Small Town, the past week or so has brought us very pleasant and spring-like weather—highs around 70 degrees, sunny days, and nighttime temps well above freezing. Of course, it IS going to get cold again pretty soon, because Mother Nature doesn't care what people think a groundhog predicated about an early spring...and that's generally how things go here in the Deep South along the border of USDA zones 7 and 8. But these daffodils sure do enjoy the balmy weather, and have burst out of the ground in my side yard over the last ten days or so.

My sister gave me the bulbs almost ten years ago as a birthday gift. While we have an obscenely long growing season here, the trade-off is that not everything grows well in our early and brief (some would say non-existent) spring, and the incredibly hot, humid summer that actually lasts through mid-October (as it did in 2010). Pixie asked me what I'd like for my birthday that year, and I replied that plants would be a good choice—I could look out the window into the yard at whatever plant she sent me and see a reminder of my best friend in the whole world who also happens to be my sibling. So Pixie sent a big box of daffodil bulbs, called "The Works, Southern-Style" from White Flower Farm. The daffodil varieties in the mix tend to perform better in the South's hot, humid summers and short, mild winters . And here they are! Almost a decade later, the bulbs Pixie gave me are still going strong. Once they finish blooming, I plan to dig them up, divide them, and then replant them to ensure that they'll keep multiplying and blooming for many more years to come.

Friday Kittehs: 2/25/11

Sorry about the lateness on this Friday Kittehs post—and on posting in general this week. This has been an insanely busy last few days of teaching, grading essays, helping students revise their next essays, writing letters of recommendation, AND rehearsing and shooting scenes for my small role in a student film. (I play a college professor. A real stretch, I know.) So! Where was I? Oh, right. On to this Friday Kittehs picture. Any expression on Joy's little face is cute, but when I snapped this photo, she really turned on the cute. If we were to express it in math terms, we might write it as... [(Extra squinty-eyed adorableness + bent ear) x crocheted Mom blanket] - irritation from ornery Beignet = KITTEH WIN!

Chicken Monday: 2/21/11

Leroy keeps one creepy dinosaur eye on Bella as she (ahem) "patrols" the outside of the chicken yard. The fence is probably there more to protect her from him than the other way around—when Bella managed to sneak into the chickens' territory a couple months ago, she realized that Leroy is six inches taller than she is, and has spurs above his fierce claws. When I came outdoors and saw that my smaller dog had found her way into the pen, I was amazed to see her sitting right up next to the fence, tail somewhat down yet wagging furiously, and nervously licking her nose as if to say, "Mamaaaa! Hurry up and get me out of here!"

Friday Kittehs: 2/18/11

Y yu taek meh 2 teh v-e-t, Mama? I iz gud kitteh! Nawt mai fawlt I duzn't haz teefies no moar. Iz mai fweet feyce. Long-suffering and sweet, Hobo Kitty is a very good girl at the vet's office. She goes to visit Dr. Bill once a month to check on the inflamed tissue on her gums, and usually gets a long-acting antibiotic injection along with a hefty dose of kitty steroids to help fight the inflammation. What she has is kind of like "Gingivitis Gone Wild," rotting her teeth and causing painful growths all the way down into her throat; Dr. Bill says that he's seen a dozen other cats with the same thing, as have other vets he knows. Researchers don't yet know what causes it, but are hard at work trying to figure it out; it could be bacterial, viral, or auto-immune.

Tricks our minds play on us

Driving to work Monday morning, I saw lying on the side of the road what I thought was a long-haired mini Dachshund, dressed in a little Christmas-themed sweater. My heart absolutely broke as I zoomed past in my car, and I swore that on my way home that afternoon, I would pull over and move the poor, dead little thing off the road so it wouldn't get mashed and scattered about by the tires of the passing cars and trucks.

It was late afternoon before I drove back past the spot on my way home. I stopped the car on the side of the road, about 75 feet from the pitiful little carcass—that was the nearest safe place to park on this curvy, hilly two-lane back road—and walked back to where I had seen it just that morning. The knot in my stomach grew with each step I took toward the scene. I finally walked right up on it to find...

...two beautiful dolls and a child's necklace in a ceramic gift box. They were strewn along the length of the ditch with many other items, some evidently household garbage and others looking more like discarded clothing or pieces of children's toys.

Funny what our minds will convince us that our eyes are seeing.

In the meantime, I gently picked up the dolls and necklace and put them in the car. It was such a shame to leave them lonely and abandoned by the side of the highway.

Valentine Chicken Monday: 2/14/11

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! Hope this has been a pleasant day for you. I just about forgot it was February 14 until I got in the car to head home from work. Oops! Anyhow, the chickens are doing just fine, and still laying an egg or two a day. I don't know whether Henrietta has stopped laying eggs for good (she's a couple years old now), but once the two pullets get settled down, there will probably be around three dozen eggs a week here at the Happy Kitten Cottage. This is the door to the chicken coop in the HKC back yard; it's nearly dark here, and the light shines out into the yard around the little shed where my feathered friends sleep, eat, lay eggs, and take shelter from the weather. Brrrrrrk!

Friday Kittehs: 2/11/11

Joy's and Clark's gray tabby stripes form an interesting pattern against the giraffe-print bedspread.

Mother Nature says, "Stay home!"

Naturally, though, this dusting of snow and ice didn't stick on local roads—hell, it's not even sticking to the driveway in this picture. And that, of course, means that Division II University is open today. Again: dammit. Driving to work this morning, I paid close attention to all the yards and pastures and trees with their light coating of snow, and I couldn't help smiling. It was all so beautiful, and so unusual for our area. I wondered what it must be like to live where winter snows are the norm, they happen so often—places where it has to snow a LOT for life to screech to a sudden halt. Here in Small Town, Georgia, and many other places in the Deep South, snow is Mother Nature's way of saying, "Stay home. Pay attention to the outdoors. Get your priorities straight." She, in fact, is the constant here...not us silly little humans and our silly little activities. She'll be here, still raining and shining and snowing, when we are long gone.

Wishing like a little kid

The first day of Spring Semester (January 10) was cancelled, thank heavens, due to the snow and ice storm that knocked much of the Southeast on its rear end for nearly two weeks. The Weather Channel's website (which is where I got the radar map above) has been saying for nearly a week that we might have yet another winter weather event, and so the local forecast has been warning us about snow, ice, and sleet for nearly a week now. But I'm not too encouraged by the way it looks right now. Even though we're north of the city-to-city-to-city line above which there's supposed to be significant snow accumulation, it looks as if it's mostly turning to rain by the time the precipitation finally gets to Small Town. Dammit.

Because I really could use a day at home to catch up on papers—75 essays to grade, 100 drafts to comment on. [sigh]

Mom's handiwork

Have I already posted on this? I can't remember. Let's hope not, anyway. For her Halloween costume, a 1950s-style outfit complete with short little scarf, blouse, and long felt circle skirt, Mom drew up and appliqued this precious kitteh. (It's a "kitty skirt," as opposed to a "poodle skirt.") The kitteh herself is white felt, the bow and adorable NOZE! are pink poly satin left over from my Halloween costume, and the collar is pink grosgrain ribbon and rhinestones. The kitty/bow outline is machine-appliqued, but the sassy little expression on the cat's face is all Mom's work, all by hand.

Chicken Monday: 2/7/11

It was a quarter before midnight, and I was nearly asleep when the chickens started raising hell. They were LOUD, too---not the usual "we heard something go 'bump' in the night" clucking, the kind that settles down within a few minutes, but more along the lines of "holy shit, there's a raccoon/possum/skunk/fox/wolverine/saber-toothed tiger in the coop" clucking. While I haven't seen any of those in the back yard since I added dogs to the Happy Kitten Cottage menagerie, the absence of fierce barking, as well as the urgency in the chickens' clucking, told me I'd better get my muck boots and a flashlight. Once I finally got out to the chicken yard, my trusty broken-off hickory shovel handle firmly in hand, there wasn't a predator to be found. But I was missing one bird. Uh-oh. Into the yard I trudged, brushing past Leroy and Henrietta, who stood docile in the darkness as do all chickens at night, and into the coop....to find the safe but very frightened "missing" chicken. And nearly TWO DOZEN EGGS. I'd assumed that nobody was laying eggs this time of year, least of all the Peeps---I didn't think young birds would start laying during dark, cold months. Was I ever wrong! Evidently, one or both of the Peeps have begun laying, and have been doing so quite steadily for a while now, at least a couple of weeks, and maybe with Henrietta contributing now and then. And the "missing" bird was huddled up in a far corner of the coop, on the floor with eight or ten eggs. Most likely, a raccoon or possum smelled the eggs, figured out they were at ground level, got past the dogs via the back fence, and thought he'd have a late-night snack. So I grabbed up an old feed bowl and brought them ALL in the house...after I gently petted the chicken and set her up on the raised perch/workbench area. She squawked loudly when I picked her up, but settled down once I set her safely near where Henrietta sleeps. In the meantime, would anyone like some eggs?

The formerly disastrous living room

A few months ago, the Colonel painted my living room, changing its drab white walls to this deep magenta pink (Pittsburgh Paints, "Salsa Diane," 234-6). While the color drastically improved the feel of the room, it could do only so much due to the "Hoarders"-type junk that had flowed back in even before the paint was good and dry. Under all the junk was musty, smelly wall-to-to wall carpet that was at least as old as I am; I had planned for years to tear it out and do something (anything!) different, but had put it off again and again for one reason or another. But on a whim one afternoon right after New Year's, Mom and El Seebeno helped me tear out ALL the old, funky, cat-peed-upon carpet to reveal 100-year-old red oak flooring! Yes, it's covered in textured-ceiling plaster, dirt, and paint, full of 40-year-old carpet tacks and heavy-duty staples...but it's gorgeous. It'll look even better after a good sanding and refinishing.

Hobo Kitty is helpful

Hobo Kitty keeps me warm as I grade papers in my recliner in the newly-mostly-clean den. If I'm in the chair, either she or Joy is snuggled up next to me, with the other kitteh usually curled up behind my head on the back of the chair. Grading papers still ranks at the bottom of my Least Favorite Things to Do list, right after "root canal" and "watching paint dry," but having a couple of feline assistants makes it a little less onerous.

The formerly messy den

Joy sits in classic cat pose in the den of the HKC, which until just recently resembled something from "Hoarders," it was so cluttered and filled with junk. Soon a new coat of paint will hide the old paneling and breathe new life into this room that seems to be stuck in the early 1970s.