Dandelyon's Worlds

Sorry I haven't been around much. My daughter's cat has been sick (but is better). But when he sniffed the much-loved canned cat food, walked off, and hid under something in the basement, I decided I needed to take him to the vet.

So, I figured I might as well take that no-longer-quite-feral kitten that we had brought into the house when it got so cold (figuring we should get it used to being indoors before sending it among strangers).

I figured on taking it to a shelter; I shouldn't have more cats with my allergies, but the critter insisted on climbing into my lap and purring and purring and petting my face ever so gently with its paws--and my allergies weren't going into overdrive. I fell in love. And it seemed the kitten had too--it followed me around and talked to me and insisted on me holding it while I was trying to write at the computer. And it could sit in my arms for a couple of hours, inches from my nose, and not set off my allergies. So I could enjoy the purring, and the petting, and the playing.

So I needed to take the older cat to the vet, but it was snowing; well, living in Milwaukee makes one rather blase about snow.

But the snow led to me dropping the case in the vet's parking lot, and it popped open. It shouldn't have popped open. But the scared kitten ran off into the snow. The snow was falling fast and the lot was being plowed. Whatever tracks the kitten left were immediately obliterated.

The vet watched the older cat, in the other cat carrier, until the doc was ready, letting me wander around outside calling the kitten.

This was Thursday, and I have been driving back to that neighborhood wander around in the snow calling it, hoping it will hear me and be hungry enough or lonely enough to venture from wherever it's been hiding.

Foodie Friend wants a cape before Halloween, and I have the skills, so we went to a fabric store to buy a pattern and fabric. I've made capes and robes before without patterns, but a pattern means he got to approve the look ahead of time and it should go relatively quickly, which, with autumn things to do and several short stories to finish and NaNoWriMo coming up, is a good thing.

And I determined his computer, though it's newer than mine, also does not have any form of SD slot, which I need to empty the micro-card that is now in my phone full of pictures. Hopefully the laptop that my kid's Dad got her will be able to let me transfer the photos to a USB drive.

I also got a submission into a contest on time (assuming I did the conversion for time zones correctly) and did other writerly correspondence and work.

And I fed and petted the feral kittens who still need homes. Today both purred at me.

We also got the first significant load of leaves on the roses, though naturally, just as we got outside it started to rain. Not much, thankfully, but still, there was wetness.

Tomorrow, there shall be Fireborn in this journal. Poor Orchid!

And tomorrow, I shall look at the sparkly dragon story to make sure the character's voices each work, and are consistent, and there are no eggregious typos or grammos, and whether I need to fix anything else to make the story hang together right.

And I shall finish cleaning herbs off the dining room table, wash it, and lay pattern pieces on cloth. And gulp big-time, like I always do when cutting into whole cloth, and then cut. Pin. Maybe even sew. I'm so casual about most sewing things; why do I always feel daunted when faced with whole sheets of brand-new cloth?

But I'm not getting it. I'll be lucky to get enough warm sunny days to ripen some more of my tomatoes. So this week I've been going out every day to harvest some of the herbs, and today I decided that six of the nine remaining cabbages won't ever make it to harvestable size outside, so I repotted them!

I also repotted the cayenne pepper plant, which has 7 or 8 full-size, but green, peppers, and the habanero pepper plant which never did anything much. Those two I hope to overwinter inside and put them outside in the spring, if Tulku (the black cat, who is half-blind) doesn't eat all their leaves off. (I used to have these cool ornamental and edible purple peppers, but they only survived at work, away from that cat.)

I'm now considering window space and the woefully small bell pepper plants, too.

Sadly, there's nothing I can do for the tomatoes but either cover them or pick the tomatoes green.  Sure, they will mostly ripen inside, but they don't taste the same as tomatoes that ripen in the sun on the vine.

I also can't do anything about the nice tiny baby squashes on the vine -- they're a whole inch long right now.  They're probably technically edible, just as the flowers are, but I'd rather get some nice ripe squashes!

In the middle of this,the two feral kittens and feral momcat I've been taming in the yard came over to investigate what I was doing, and, of course, to remind me that they're hungry.

The cutest stuff they did, of course, I didn't manage to capture on film.  But still, here's a photo for you, showing some of the repotted veggies and the curious kitties. 

If anybody in the Chicago or Milwaukee area wants a cat or two, you know where to find me!  I'd far rather give them to welcoming homes than a shelter, but the cold weather is coming fast. 

The little black and white purrs for me now, though I still mostly have to bribe her with food to pick her up.  The little grey is more skittish, but I can pick him up and pet him too--though he then looks at me like he's totally baffled by why I'd do such a thing.  The only time I got a bit of purr out of him was the first really cold night, which was also very windy, and I think he liked the fact that I was warm.

So, I've harvested the chocolate mint (which really took off this year), and the oregano, the marjoram, some of the wintergreen and spearmint, and some of the sage.  Sage will survive several light frosts, but it was shading the purple ruffles basil flowers, and I want them to hurry up and seed; these plants are the direct descendants of the first plant I bought for this garden, and I'd like to continue the line.  I still have to get the peppermint and the thyme, and the second spot of wintergreen.  And I'm probably forgetting something.

But fall isn't just a meteorological fiction, it's definitely here.  The rose hips are ripening, the lillies of the valley have seeded (and the ones in direct sun are turning interesting colors), and the weatherman was talking about snowflakes being possible this weekend.  Sigh. 

The hopeful roses--the bright red leaves in the rose hips picture and the top one are actually new growth on the roses.  Some of the bushes' new growth is always red.  Where was I--oh, yeah, the hopeful roses will lose that pretty new growth very soon.  Too bad the summer didn't prompt those new leaves in July!

And, of course, I have the sale to cheer me, and other stories and poems out making the rounds.

And more to write!  (-:

And when there's more of these on the ground, I have all my roses to mulch!

The garden is suddenly in motion; the pea plants finally have peas, the spinach is not only tall enough to eat, but I'm cutting off the tops to keep it from bolting, tomatoes are blooming, roses are blooming, and the lillies are starting to bloom.




I didn't get a picture of the chive flowers; they are now going to seed. However, the red clover is blooming, and seeding.



I keep seeing the tiger swallowtails; I'm hoping they're putting seeds in my rowan or mulberry trees. They like the direct sunlight, however, so it's hard to catch them with my cell phone camera, which amazes me by not needing its flash indoors, but sometimes sun is too much for it. Today, however, was great for pictures, and I took a number of them. This is a tiny butterfly, pale blue or pale lavender; I couldn't get a picture of it with wings open, unfortunately.



And city or no, we have bees. Tiny sweat bees, big bumblebees, and I've even seen a honeybee in the yard. This is the least blurry picture I got of one of today's bumblebees:



So, what's happening in your yards and gardens?

It's supposed to be summer. Really. It IS June, after all.

School is out, and today went to the Track Banquet to see my kid get a minor letter. Her school won a double-triple-crown at sectionals, meaning they took the trophies in both boys and girls for long distance, short distance, and other events (jumps, shot put, and discus). So, though my daughter didn't qualify to run in the sectionals (nor did she expect to, she enjoys running, but this is her first year doing it), that was still pretty cool.

My dentist tells me I have very deep roots, and he's glad he was doing a root canal instead of extracting my tooth. And I can go back in two weeks so he can be sure the infection cleared up. And I spent two days after feeling lousy, I think from swallowing too much of the ansthetic--but if I've been fighting an infection for quite a while, that could account for why I've been feeling tired and draggy even while off work.

My realtor still can't reach the guy who was initially so excited about buying my house. Which is made doubly frustrating by the fact that I do NOT want to buy more oil for this house if we might sell it, which feeds right back into my frustration about the weather.

The interviewer who promised to call me Friday to set up a second interview didn't, and the fact that she said, just before seeing me off at the elevator, not to panic if she didn't call until Monday still leaves me on tenterhooks.

Pulling old (and often-oxidized) carpet staples from stairs is tedious and awkward and uncomfortable, and more of them than I like break just above the level of the wood, high enough to snag cat hair and other dirt, but too low to grab and pull out, so they have to be pounded in with the nail sink. But the stairs are looking better. I'm about half done.

We had tulips and dandelions and wood violets and lilacs. Now we have roses budding, irises, indigo, and snowball spirea blooming. The seedlings I started inside were killed by a late frost, so I ended up buying seedlings. Those are doing fine, as are the peas and spinach, but peas and spinach are a spring crop. An early spring crop. And it is summer, right?

Yesterday, I went off to another agency interview, to get into their system.  I left early, since my part of Milwaukee was drenched in snow--it was all lake-effect, so a few miles away from Lake Michigan there was no snow.  But there was more than a foot at the airport, and about half that at my house.  It was partly cloudy, and most of the time as I drove, I drove through bright sunshine, and most of that sunny time I also drove through flurries of huge, pretty snowflakes, drifting down from the sky. 

It was very pretty, watching the snow fall all bright and white and shiny in the sunlight.

The agency was a bureaucrat's dream.  I'd already taken two tests online for them, and e-mailed my resume to them, to shorten the in-office process.  Fill in forms online (essentially, applicants each do the data entry for their database).  Fill in forms, more forms, and still more forms.  Then talk briefly with the nice lady, go over the forms to clarify anything, and then, finally, hear "more" about the part time temporary position they called me about after seeing my resume on Monster.  I put that in quotes, because there really wasn't any more than I'd heard in the first phone call.  Then they decided they wanted another test.  Given the option, and looking at the time, I opted to do the test at home.  I still wanted to go to the bank.

I stopped to pick up girl scout cookies from a prior co-worker, and did my banking.

They didn't send the "ticket" for the test yesterday, so I ended up doing it today, and other job-hunting stuff online. 

I also dug into the old seeds left from past years and started trying for some seedlings.  I'd put together a bin of small pots a couple of days ago, adding dirt and water, partially from a pot of compost and partially from indoor dirt that had gone dry.  I added water and left the dirt to get warm and evenly moist.  Today I looked through my old seeds and planted some, significantly more densely than recommended as some of the seeds will doubtless not sprout.  I have some bush beans (white seeds) from a line of seeds a former co-worker's family brought from Croatia 60+ years ago (from a line the family had maintained for another 40 years before that); some royal burgundy bush beans (I like purple "green beans"), and I also planted some sage, basil, and chamomile.  I wanted to start some tomato plants, but sadly have no leftover tomato seeds.  I also tried some older pea seeds in a separate pot, I haven't had success in the past transplanting pea seedlings, but I've gotten a defter touch since then, if I get enough to transplant any, and if not, the pot is big enough to let them grow indoors.

The other old seed news is that the last of the purple tomato seeds I had, which I planted late last spring, did have a plant that grew, though it started so late and slow that I didn't put it outside.  It not only survived the winter, but is 4' tall in a pot in my kitchen, and putting out flowers.  Now there's a pill bottle next to it, with the Q-tip "bee" carefully protected from kitchen spills and grease; we'll see if we can get some fruit from it.  I remember those tomatoes as being a deep magenta in color, and tasting very good.

Today was warm--almost 60--and windy, the huge piles of snow were melting. If it wasn't so darn wet, I could have turned the compost, or otherwise worked to prepare the garden for spring, but just walking across the lawn caused squishy noises. If I still had a job, I'd have spent my lunch hour out in the park singing, despite the wind, but that didn't seem so inviting in my yard.

The headhunter has no interviews for me, so I did errands, got cat food and paid bills and other not-very-exciting things. Did a little poetry. Got some tax papers with the tax stuff. Finally got Sunday's paper, and read the very sparse want ads.

Since the new moon post, I've made inroads at organizing the attic, gotten the last of this years herbs bagged and labeled, and most of the neglected herbs from last year off their stems and into a bag for the Rangoli (sorted by color), if I can make it back to Sacred Harvest Fest this year; if not, they'll keep until next year, I suppose. (If I don't have a job, I doubt I'll have money to make it, and if I do, I may or may not be able to negotiate vacation time to go. Sigh.) I also got the dining room cleaned up and the furniture moved into a more useful configuration, though it's now covered in old computers and parts and papers that need to be sorted (and some tossed) so I keep what's useful and have all I need to do taxes; I got the sales tax form done (thanks mdlbear for the needed reminder) and started to figure out things like what to do with my poor, depleted 401K, and buy a suit and new shoes (and, ugh, hose), and start to look for someone to trim my hair.

I got rewrites done for all the chapters of Shifter I have so far, and added 1000 words. I looked at some market info for stories. And I've worked to be sure that food gets cooked and leftovers eaten, and am considering what else I can do to be frugal. Unless I get a job real fast, I need to focus on vegetables for the garden this year; I'll need to figure where I can set up flats indoors soon, since I have a lot of old seeds, if some sprout and grow, that is, in itself, a good thing, but if I want any significant amount of food from the garden, I have to know if the seeds are too old in time to buy new ones.

I still feel like I'm drifting, despite my efforts to get things done. Maybe that's inevitable, since a job affects so many things, and right now I can't predict when I'll have one or what I'll find.

Soon, although I'm not eligible to receive unemployment until after the severance pay and accrued sick and vacation days run out, I need to apply with them, so they can do their part of things and I get the first check in a timely fashion.  And there are doubtless still people I have to notify of the address change...

But all that must wait until tomorrow.  I've already got a to-do list, so it's time to hop into the tub and then the bed.

So, I'm in the middle of the second of The Sharing Knife books, but I drag myself out of the drama to take my kid to the cell-phone store to replace her phone, which has stopped charging unless you hold the charger in just right.  Which she did this morning, long enough to talk in astonishment with her good friend about her friend's high-school-style drama (involving the friend's boyfriend and his best friend, and being seen at a mall, but not the one she said she'd be at, if the snippets I caught while I was calling the cops)--ah, I got ahead of myself.  The charging of the phone was supposed to be for transferring the memory to a new phone, so I dragged myself out of my good book and we went out into the cold to hurry off to the store and stopped in dismay.

Someone broke the driver's window on my car last night or this morning.  So I sent her in for a bag to clear glass into and called the cops.  And went in for plastic and tape.  And called the insurance company.  And we went to the store, finding that the first bit of plastic really wasn't large enough, but at least the store isn't that far.  And I find that the soonest I can get the window fixed is Monday, messing with plans for shopping and getting together with people.

And I have been wanting to replace my own phone, as the ear-bug function and speaker function are both working poorly.   So, we get there and can set her up with a new phone, but I can save $100 by waiting six days to replace mine.  So I still have the same frustrating old phone, at least until Friday.   And I have to pay for a new window for the car, since they expect the cost to be under the deductible.  And I don't get to go sell young fish, to get store credit to get new filters, that store is far too far away in this weather without a window.  

And now I wish I'd decided to splurge and go to GAFilk--it probably would have cost about as much as the new car window, and then I'd still have the car window.  It certainly would have been a heck of a lot more fun as a way to spoil this month's budget--and I haven't even gotten to pay for my expensive asthma meds yet (the new year's huge deductible for that is now in effect too, though with no guarantee that if I start paying this one I won't have to start paying another soon, seeing as how the old insurance plan has dropped Aurora (ALL of the Aurora hospitals and clinics and doctors in the area...hmm, that probably means the Aurora pharmacies too, sigh, which means I'll most likely need a new pharmacy to spend my deductible at), and so the firm is looking into possibly switching health insurance carriers, depending on what kind of quotes they get as to premiums...)

Perhaps I should go bury my head in my book again!  There's no snow in there, at least not in this chapter...

Belatedly, I get around to the last new moon post of the year. I suppose I should count it a goal met that I’ve posted for each new and full moon, though not always on time. And I’ve gotten some writing done, and some music, and some art, and some work on my house, though I would have liked to get a lot more done on all of the above.

It was a wonder to drive into Chicago on Christmas Eve, and to drive for what felt like the first time in months (tho I know it wasn’t that long) on dry pavement, no snow or sleet or ice to slow down the driving—and no construction besides! It was also delightful to return to Milwaukee (after watching the small lake in my Aunt’s Chicago-city backyard advance way too close to the house, and recede again the next day—it’s a very good thing they didn’t have nearly as much snow as we had in Milwaukee before they had their post-Christmas thaw and pea-soup fog) and find that in their zeal to get the storm sewers open for Milwaukee’s less drastic thaw, the city had plowed the alley, so I could get to my parking space without getting stuck first. (I have not removed the two shovels, cat sand, and salt from the car, however. It seems to me that doing so would be like washing the car in spring.)

I guess I’ll think about plans for the new year later. I’m out of lunch hour, and this post is late already.

Blessed Be, everyone!

Here's hoping all our finances grow as the length of the days grows, without too much symbolic dead-of-winter in there.

Solstice had too much cold and too much snow outside, but sufficient warmth and good food inside.  Insufficient preparations for the upcoming family holiday gathering at my Aunt's house, but I'll get by.  Here's hoping that tonight I can find the stuff I bought for her and put away in a safe place!!!!  And here's hoping that the snow doesn't too badly mess with my travel plans.

Oh, and my daughter felt bad that my office holiday party was canceled due to the bad economy, and made us a wonderful dinner before escaping from the cold snows of Milwaukee to the cold snows of Chicago.  But Cousins who are out of school too outrank Moms who work.