Category Archives: Diary

Buried Treasure

As I was cleaning up today, I found, in the bottom of one of my armoires, a box of Bourbon Cremes.

Finding cookies in a wardrobe is an odd occurrence, I grant you, but it’s directly related to my act of hoarding them away from the light fingers of my ever-munchy husband. My mother gave me this box, and I was determined that every single one of these biscuits was to be mine, mine, mine.

Three-quarters of them were indeed blissfully mine. Then I forgot about them.

It was like finding buried treasure. I brought them out, opened the box, nibbled one. A slight staleness, but when they’re glorious Bourbon Cremes, what’s a breath of stale? The cream filling was still soft and light, and hadn’t hardened in the least.

There’s four left. I’m going to ration them out this afternoon when I eventually flop down on a chesterfield to read, once I’m done with my sewing.

Evidently, I’ll have to pick up another box or so while I’m down visiting my parents at Thanksgiving. This time, I’ll put them in a tin when I hide them, so they don’t grow stale.

Life In The Bathtub

Ever have one of those days? One of those weeks? The kind where everything gets your back up, and you feel like you’re the only sane person in the world, and why can’t eveyone just understand what you’re getting at? You feel like every step you take is against a hurricane-force wind, uphill, through a crowd of people standing with their eyes closed and their fingers in their ears as you try, through gritted teeth and bright smile, to communicate?

Oh, yeah. Often.

Kate, babe, I’m with you. You have my sympathy.

If we could only direct our lives from the bathtub. With a stack of good books, a cup of tea or a glass of wine (depending on the hour of the day), good music nearby. As an extra treat, a nice box of chocolates close by, but not too close so the warmth of the stress-bleeding bath melts them, or so that you don’t eat them too fast. (Can you tell I’ve managed to get this down to a science?)

Baths, however, in my world, no longer give me the relaxation I need. It’s odd, but somewhere over the past ten years or so I’ve been on my own, a bath has lost its charm. It used to be that when I was upset, I’d go into the bathroom, run a bath, add bubbles, oils, the whole nine yards. Book. Candles. Music. Cat. (No, not in the bath, next to the bath, and I didn’t put her there. She just likes to curl up next to the warm bathtub. Okay, and swish her tail around in the warm water. And play with bubbles.)

I’d sink in, and sigh. And just like that, I’d melt, and everything would be bearable.

Now, though, I’m just as tense in the tub as I am out of the tub. It’s really frustrating. You start the routine, get in, close your eyes, expect the warmth and the gentle aromas to start working, and you end up staring at the ceiling after half an hour, wondering why you’re not all soft and floaty.

It’s a relatively recent development, within the last four or five years, I’d say. Eight baths out of ten, I get next to no soft floaty relaxation.

I don’t think the quality of bath has decreased, which means it must be me. Am I too stressed for a bath to relax me? Is it living with someone? Do I need new towels?

Baths shouldn’t be work. Baths should be mindless comfort. Baths should not stress me because they are not relaxing me.

I think I’ll go play my cello. (Yeah, right. Like that will relax me.)

Feline Challenges

Oh dear. Cat trouble all around, it seems.

Pursuant to the loss of the elderly Sir Grey, my mother has decided to reserve another Maine Coon kitten. Her reasoning, which I fully agree with, is that no animal as social as a Maine Coon should be solitary, and they had reserved him months ago expecting the little guy to have a dog and a cat to romp with. An empty house is unfair. So, Mum has decided to go ahead and reserve a silver Maine Coon from the same breeder, despite my father’s waffling (and if he finds out via my blog, I do apologise, but you had at least two days to tell him, Mum). This one’s ETA is December, so Seamus will only have three months on his own. (Yes, three months; when did it get to be three months to the end of the year?)

On top of that, Scarlet has e-mailed to inform me that the feral cat who produced the litter of kittens we’ve been nursing tested positive for feline immunodeficiency virus, which means that it might have been passed to the kittens in utero or via the mother’s milk. There�s no way to tell until they’re tested after four months old, since they can still possess a sort of trace phantom FIV from contact with the mother until that age. The main problem is that an FIV positive cat can’t be in contact with an FIV negative cat, or the virus can be passed along.

This is a problem, of course, since Scarlet was hoping to have all these cats gone to good homes as soon as possible, so she could have her office back to normal. If we can’t mix these cats with her other non-FIV household cats — well, you see the problem. It also means that she has to keep the kittens till they’re four months old and tested to ascertain their FIV status, because it would be irresponsible to pass a potentially FIV-positive cat along to a household with non-FIV cats.

There are irresponsible people out there, of course. We are not members of that particular demographic. So these cats will stay at home for two extra months, and once we’ve found out whether they’re FIV positive or negative, we’ll be able to place them properly.

Oh dear, indeed.

And Lo, The Water Fell

Woke up this morning to a dark, dark sky.

“Maybe it will rain,” I said.

“Maybe,” said my husband. “But I doubt it.”

“Maybe it will rain so you can come home and we can run about downtown this afternoon, assuming the bank unfreezes my account,” I said.

“No,” my husband said morosely. “It’s just going to play with our minds.”

He left for work. I watched the sky for a bit. It really was much too dark to just be overcast.

It raineth. Oh, ye of little faith.

The Dance Of One Who Does Not Care

Good gods.

We have a Friday the thirteenth this week.

This will be the first Friday the thirteenth I have not been called at work by CJAD to be interviewed on the radio. (I used to really disappoint radio hosts, since my whole approach was, “You know we’re just normal people who revere nature and believe in a deity concept that embodies male and female energy, right?”) I will not be speaking on the origins of the superstition, or superstition in general. or what it means to a witch, or the Pagan community in general

This is the dance of someone who doesn’t care.

La la la!