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So the neighbor kitten that's getting left out all night was left out all day AND all night, all weekend. It discovered Toby's veranda Saturday morning:
Saturday night he sat on top of the veranda (with Toby in the veranda), looking in as we watched a movie. This is kind of an impossible situation: Toby does not immediately try to attack the kitten, but 1.) we don't have room for two cats in the apartment and 2.) Toby can't have a cat roommate that goes in and out while he remains an inside-only cat. Also, Christopher Kitten* is scaring away all the quail and quail chicks. Some of my neighbors were outside last night and I geared up for a lecture about responsible pet ownership, but it turned out they were the housemates of the girl who "owns" the kitten, not the girl herself. The housemates said that they'd been watching out for Christopher Kitten, too, because owner-girl doesn't let him in a lot because he's "too frisky" (!) and sometimes forgets to feed him (!!). What a despicable woman.So...what happens now? I guess I could be justified in calling CAWS and getting Christopher Kitten fostered, since he does seem to be neglected by his owner. It also sounded like the housemates were looking for a new place to rent and wanted to take Christopher with them, but I don't know if I can count on them. Does any blog reader out there want a kitten?*Yes, I named him. It's a problem.
1. Happy birthday, Marcel Proust, born in 1871 today.2. Complaining about mosquito bites on my face yesterday reminded me of Little House on the Prairie, in which the entire family ends up getting malaria* one summer:In the daytime there were only one or two mosquitoes in the house. But at night, if the wind wasn't blowing hard, mosquitoes came in thick swarms...Pa could not play the fiddle at night because so many mosquitoes bit him...And in the morning Laura's forehead was speckled with mosquito bites. That's actually a pretty terrible chapter, with the whole family sick and Pa passed out on the floor and Jack the bulldog upset and unable to help. Just another reason to be thankful for tonic water and DEET. 3. *In the book, Laura calls it "fever 'n ague." I'll probably never hear that second word used in conversation in my life.
As I said yesterday, I feel as if summer is passing me by. That might be due to the fact that I'm not spending a lot of time on the patio in the evenings, and here's why: 1. Mosquitoes. They are the devil. They are bad this year, after all that rain. I was outside for about half an hour last night and got three bites. Currently, I have three bites just on my FACE. Mosquito fail.2. The neighbor's kitten. This kitten is not the devil; it's the cutest roly-poly tabby who purrs furiously when you pick it up. But the neighbor girl who "owns" it leaves it out at night, starting at about 6:00, and it's either crying at their door, wanting to play with us, or crying at OUR door. Toby does not like this one bit, and neither do I: Who leaves their tiny kitten outside all night without a bed to sleep on*? At least it has food and water, but still--cat ownership FAIL.*I am debating taking the final step towards totally becoming my mother (who always has sheltered strays) and getting that kitten a little cat house with a bed in it. I doubt the neighbor is going to let it sleep inside; we can't steal it to live with us; and I don't think we can say it's a stray and call a rescue shelter. But I can at least make sure it has somewhere to sleep that's not on a concrete patio or in the grass.
I certainly feel as if I'm missing out on everything, and I'm not sure why...maybe because I don't know where June went nor what I did in it? Because I missed the moonflower blooming two nights ago? Because I haven't been to the farmer's market yet? Who knows. At least we have a poem about summer:
Although I watched and waited for it every day,
somehow I missed it, the moment when everything reached
the peak of ripeness. It wasn't at the solstice; that was only
the time of the longest light. It was sometime after that, when
the plants had absorbed all that sun, had taken it into themselves
for food and swelled to the height of fullness. It was in July,
in a dizzy blaze of heat and fog, when on some nights
it was too hot to sleep, and the restaurants set half their tables
on the sidewalks; outside the city, down the coast,
the Milky Way floated overhead, and shooting stars
fell from the sky over the ocean. One day the garden
was almost overwhelmed with fruition:
My sweet peas struggled out of the raised bed onto the mulch
of laurel leaves and bark and pods, their brilliantly colored
sunbonnets of rose and stippled pink, magenta and deep purple
pouring out a perfume that was almost oriental. Black-eyed Susans
stared from the flower borders, the orange cherry tomatoes
were sweet as candy, the corn fattened in its swaths of silk,
hummingbirds spiraled by in pairs, the bees gave up
and decided to live in the lavender. At the market,
surrounded by black plums and rosy plums and sugar prunes
and white-fleshed peaches and nectarines, perfumey melons
and mangos, purple figs in green plastic baskets,
clusters of tiny Champagne grapes and piles of red-black cherries
and apricots freckled and streaked with rose, I felt tears
come into my eyes, absurdly, because I knew
that summer had peaked and was already passing
away. I felt very close then to understanding
the mystery; it seemed to me that I almost knew
what it meant to be alive, as if my life had swelled
to some high moment of response, as if I could
reach out and touch the season, as if I were inside
its body, surrounded by sweet pulp and juice,
shimmering veins and ripened skin.
But it's about Beethoven, so it's OK:"It was on this day in 1812 that Ludwig van Beethoven wrote two famous love letters to an unknown woman. Beethoven wrote the letters from the Czech resort town of Teplitz, which his physician had recommended for his health, and there he became friends with the poet Goethe. And over the course of two days, he wrote three letters to a mysterious woman who has come to be known as "the Immortal Beloved."Today's Almanac post also includes the full text of all three letters, the last one of which is so sad:Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves. And yet my life in V is now a wretched life — Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men — At my age I need a steady, quiet life — can that be so in our connection? Be calm — love me — today — yesterday — what tearful longings for you — you — you — my life — my all — farewell. Oh continue to love me — never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved. ever thine ever mine ever ours He was already mostly deaf at this point. Poor Beethoven.
1. I was in a month-long cooking rut in June, where just the thought of coming up with something for dinner made me want to tear my hair out. Usually the ruts don't last more than a week--they can't; I'm the cook in the house--so fortunately M.F.K. Fisher has saved us from more takeout and frozen things: I found a new book of her collected short fiction at the library. Last night, we had souffles.2. I have today off for the Fourth so we're going to go to Lagoon. I haven't been there since I was twelve. This will either be really fun or a huge mistake, like going miniature golfing in my early twenties and being the only one there who could drive.3. "Someone Famous Has Died":
I'm making myself read new books this summer, not just re-reading The Hobbit and Dune and other things on my shelf. I started with Crossing to Safety, in which I noticed uncomfortable similarities between the bossy wife and myself, and found this quote. [Set up: It's about two couples. One of the couples is rich and has this fancy old touring car, a Marmon.]:Looking in under the propped hood, I could see that the engine was not twelve in line, as I had always half believed, but a V-16. It would have pulled a fire truck. At every stroke a stream of gasoline as thick as my finger must be pulsing through the carburetor. She panted at us in the whiskey-and-emphysema whisper of an Edith Wharton dowager. "Dollar-dollar-dollar-dollar-dollar," the Marmon said.That quote is probably the funniest part of the book, which deals with polio, thwarted ambition, stomach cancer, etc., but I do recommend it. I think it's something I'll have to revisit in the future. Because re-reading is really where it's at.
So Mr. Isbell's parents became chicken owners this spring, and the chickens are now big enough to wander their back garden freely. This is all kinds of cute:
They're really soft--even their feet--and have so much personality. They take sun baths and stick their leg out like Toby!
Obviously, I do not eat chicken. I do eat eggs, but I make sure they're at least cage free, if not Certified Humane. (I'm really looking forward to eggs from these girls!) But after seeing these chickens up close, I'm now hyper-aware of the eggs from unhappy factory farmed chickens used in things like mayonnaise and ice cream. So Mr. Isbell and I are exploring the strange new world of Vegannaise and Soy Dream.It's a good thing his parents don't have a pet cow: I'd never buy shoes again.
I finished the pajamas that match my robe on Friday and have been sleeping in them ever since, which is why they look slept in:
These (and the robe, too) were fun projects--my machine makes putting on piping really slick and I'm happy with how everything turned out.Piping detail and darker photo that is closer to the real color:
I feel very put together in the mornings now, which is always a good thing. I'm already planning a winter version.
It's the birthday of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the dashing French pilot who wrote Night Flight and
Wind, Sand, and Stars--and wrote and illustrated The Little Prince. He was shot down on a reconaissance flight over the Mediterranean in WWII.Here's the most famous quote from The Little Prince:
Translated as, "It is only with the heart that one sees rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."
1. Transformers 2 started out pretty good for a mindless action movie, but by the second hour it became clear that when Michael Bay had to choose between paying the writers to finish the script and adding more explosions, he chose the explosions. 2. Poor Michael Jackson. In the first gossip going around at work yesterday, one of my bosses asked, "What happened? Did one of his monkeys kill him?"3. Here's a J.D. Salinger quote to ponder, from "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" in Nine Stories:The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy is a liquid.
We're going to see Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen tonight, and while I don't have high expectations of it, just yesterday I found a priceless review by Roger Ebert that makes me think it's going to be pretty bad:"If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.""The music of hell"? Roger Ebert, you are a treasure. I will think of your review tonight in the theater and probably laugh in inappropriate moments.
And speaking of movies: This site is genius. Genius! Why has no one thought of this before?
"Enjoy the sunshine today."
Saturday night he sat on top of the veranda (with Toby in the veranda), looking in as we watched a movie. 
