Sometimes...

There just isn't a title to be had.

I keep thinking of this salad-plate sized magnolia blossom I saw a week ago: an unfurled alabaster fist nestled against the black-green gloss of leaves. It flung itself open to perfume the humid cloak of air and now lies, brown and broken, at the base of the tree.

I also keep thinking of that poor emergency response driver(s) who ran over one of the young women ejected from the Asiana plane. This is all there in my head: the screaming smoke chaos. Burning bleeding foam. The adrenaline; can't get there fast enough; have to help; on overdrive. The terror, the horror.
And the sadness that in our society there is no grace for accidents; that someone must pay, in spite of payment not bringing anyone back. Just so fucking tragic.
Seriously, bless their hearts, every single one. And I mean that in the nice way.

Been missing both my parents lately. Not in a sobbing sad kind of way, more in a niggling feel-like-I'm-forgetting-something kind of way. Sigh.

Here's what I made today:

Gluten free (also low carb), pizza, succotash salad, low carb muffins

Saw this at the library Friday afternoon. Even the sidewalk looks washed out hot.

Grass shadows

There's a cat hair in my wine. But of course. That's really all I got today. Have a good week y'all.

Mystery Solved... Part II

So my poor little Blanche had a clogged "moon" roof drain. (when did the sun roof morph into the moon roof? and why?) The Mobile Leak Service guy (who knew?!) came to my workplace and fixed her for $150. Took him longer to print the invoice than it did to unclog the drain.

The high water mark was at 3".

She still has water in the carpet - I am SO excited about that - and what I really should be doing is blotting all that up, but I'm not.
Fate tempter - that's me. There's a bucket of this in the back floorboard:

While we're on the subject of roofs on cars - I'm against them 100%. 

Came with the car; I never use the stupid thing. Reason #1 - albino scalp. Reason #2 - bugs. It's probably been open ten times in ten years. And then only in winter.

Laws, the rain. It's not raining at this moment, but pretty sure it's fixin' to. 

Last Sunday, Chapel Hill had over 5" in a matter of hours - on top of all the rain we've had already. Durham had flooding too, but didn't seem as hard hit as Chapel Hill. 

You can see pictures here: https://crowdmap.com/map/chapelhillflood. Here's the Trader Joe's parking lot, about two miles from my house:

Photo credit - W.H.

A friend said my blog is always about food and something else, shopping maybe, or was it cleaning? So here's the food portion of this post: Ate at The Palace International last night. That place is so good. 

Also good, Trader Joe's Reduced Guilt Chunky Guacamole; like it with their vegetable tray - jicama, snap peas, carrots, and tomatoes. I like jicama, don't see it too often on the right coast though. Okay, that's all the food for this post.

My bird totem is a raven, land totem is the grizzly bear, my water totem is the orca. 

This documentary (opening in the UK first) about Tilikum looks horrifyingly good/sad. I cried watching the trailer:

http://blackfishmovie.com/

I am not a fan of circuses. Sea World, and other places like it, are circuses for sea animals. I've been to Sea World (about a million years ago), and yes, we went to the orca performances. I would not go now. Even then it made me a bit sad. 

We didn't know then how they capture the baby orcas, separate them from their pod, keep them in the equivalent of a bathtub while their pod swims around calling to them. It is heartbreaking. 

My fantasy is joining the Sea Shepherd and kicking ass for whales. 

Well, guess I'll get a shower and get this party started. 

Fourth of July quote: "Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious." -- Oscar Wilde

One Mystery Solved, Another to Worry About

A friend heard about something called sun allergy on Doctor Radio, so off we went to Google it (what did we do before Google?!).
After seeing plenty of pictures of rashes that looked like mine (and worse!), I am fairly confident it was the most common variety, Polymorphous light eruption.

They lord, I am turning into a bubble girl! Good thing I am part vampire already.

Sigh.

In other news, my poor little car Blanche is having her own mystery issue.
After Tropical Storm Andrea dropped monsoon style rains on us a couple of weeks ago, the floorboard in the back on the driver's side was sopping wet. Huh.

I figured I hadn't closed the back door all the way after putting something in the back seat, but nothing else was wet - not the seat, the inside of the door, the roof. So that didn't make any sense. I went to Bunky's (car wash) and they wet vac-ed the water up. And fiddle dee dee.

As an aside, the weather has been crazy wet this year. The forecast is hot + thunderstorms - in the words of Buzz Lightyear - to infinity and beyond.

Fast forward to yesterday morning and there was a serious puddle - as in inches - of water in the floorboard.
I'm taking her to the auto repair tomorrow and letting them have their way with her.

Sigh.

Did a little baking today (that is NOT like me). Low-carb-ish muffins. I used agave nectar instead of fake sweetener and added blueberries and raspberries. Made per the original recipe, they would have only 1.5 carbs each; the way I made them, approximately 8 carbs each. For perspective, a blueberry muffin from Panera Bread has 58 carbs.

I'm going to go worry about how much it's going to cost to fix Blanche now.
And it's raining.
I mean seriously raining. Like flash flood warning raining.
Sigh.

What The...?

In the middle of the night Sunday my arms felt vaguely itchy. I woke up yesterday to this:
 

On both arms from t-shirt sleeve length to wrist on both arms. What in the world?!

I did nothing different on Sunday; no new food, detergent, or medication. I did not touch any plants.

The only new thing is the wood floors, but if I was allergic to them (Noooooo!!), wouldn't it be on my feet since that's the only thing touching them?! The vapor paper (under the wood) is silicone and doesn't off gas. The wood is sealed. It was a nail-in floor, so no glue.

Anon CP and I went for a walk after our Atkins breakfast/gossip fest at Whole Foods. It was a little hot (for me); could that have woke up that stupid viral pityriasis rosea? (It's worse with heat) It's pretty much everywhere my t-shirt wasn't.

If so, oh joy. Usually it appears in the fall on my neck. But the cortisone cream I use on my neck made it burn; I washed it off with Dr. Bronner's soap and cool water and it felt better enough for me to sleep. The three benedryl may have helped as well. Heh.



It looks better today, but I feel it just under the surface itchy.

For Pete's sake.

A Couple of Things

Why in the WORLD did I not put hardwood floors in the bedrooms at the same time as the rest of the house?!
Sick of the [most likely] original 1989 carpet (eww), that only served as a place for the cats to puke, I had it priced last year and was shocked that it was almost as much for the two bedrooms/tiny master closet as it was for the rest of the house. The project got back burnered while I saved some money and looked at options.

Bamboo was much cheaper than red oak (rest of the house). A cunning plan began to form... why not put bamboo in the bedrooms? I did an informal survey, would two different woods be too weird? Survey said... no.

I called the guy who priced it last year (who'd agreed to honor his install pricing from last year) and told him my plan. About three days later he called me back. He works at The ReUse Warehouse; along with reclaimed items, they also get surplus materials. A surplus of 5" solid bamboo had come in - for $2 a square foot. I promptly went down and purchased the wood.

Yesterday it went in - twelve hours of two young men hammering and sawing and pounding.

Before (cat puke stain front and center)

 

After

.

I saved almost $900 by waiting and being willing to think outside the box a little.

The cats spent twelve hours in the bathrooms: Finn and Oscar in one, Lillie in the other.

Finn and Oscar occupied themselves by going through the trash:

Idle paws are the Devil's tools...

Lillie escaped a couple of times, she's a fast little bugger. She did this on my chest while I was putting her back in her bathroom:

******************************************************************************

Besides all that excitement, I've been thinking about the Paula Deen debacle. 

Scratch my southern surface and there's a festering wound, squirming with the maggots of shame.  

My father used the N-word. I wish he had never said it or any of the other racial slurs he used; I can't look at a Brazil nut without having what he called it pop into my head unbidden. 

I hate him for it. And for thinking that my being appalled and hurt and shocked was funny.

My mother, being genteel and all, used the word "colored". I remember wondering what color she was talking about. (Could it be sea green (my favorite)?) Many of her family owned slaves and there's a slave cemetery attached to our family cemetery. 

It is an ugly, ugly history. For all the good it does, I am desperately ashamed that my family had a hand in it.

I cannot even begin to articulate how much Ms. Deen's attitude pisses me off; dragging all of us with her back into the past. It makes me tired on a cellular level. Sick and tired. 

Ms. Moon over at Bless Our Hearts said it very well.

Morning Thoughts

I drove to work the usual way and wondered if in five or ten years I live elsewhere, will some other drive remind me of this road, this drive, this morning?

Trees heavy with green press down towards the narrow old road still patterned with wet from the monsoon rain yesterday, this song on the radio:

My breathing slowing to zen at the stop light from the song, the morning's pink newness, the bell tones of a bird call, the big digital clock flashing 7:16 / 67; the woman next to me in the silver BMW slipping backwards from her own zen state.

Father's Day

We were visiting my grandparents in rural Georgia; a chicken hawk, having spied potential dinner in my grandmother's flock of free ranging chickens, was circling the sandy yard high above the pines. My dad got out a shotgun and aimed for the predator. I remember crying, asking him not to shoot it, my three year old self not understanding the whole farm life thing. Of course he shot it anyway and in doing so, he fell off the perfect dad pedestal that day. Weird that I remember that part very clearly.

My father and I look alike:

Same dopey smile. Same long face. Same big ears. My sister and brother got the wild curly hair. 

(his picture was taken about the time he took up smoking - age 12)

We also loved to read. I learned to read in kindergarten and was reading Black Beauty in second grade when everyone else was still working out Dick and Jane. If I asked for a book, I usually got it, (except comic books, he thought they were "noneducational"). We would wander the library for hours, picking out sci-fi, Zane Grey Westerns, and books on exploring Africa. Sometimes he and I would be reading the same three or four books at the same time and woe unto me if I lost his place!

We spent most of the years from 1973 - 1992 semi-estranged. You can chalk all those years up to another thing we had in common - stubbornness. 

But cancer, for all its evil, makes an excellent reconciler.

It's been fifteen years since he's been alive for Father's Day. Not surprisingly, he has, in those fifteen years, climbed back up on the perfect dad pedestal.

Happy Father's Day, Dad. Wish you were here.