By out, I mean out of the house and into another building, preferably. I don’t enjoy the outdoors at all. We did some home improvement stuff last weekend, and going outside during the day was… oogy. Let me tell you what sunny daytime is like for me. The happy little sunbeams get all over me and dance and sing and eat lollipops on my eyeballs. The bugs divebomb me because my pale skin is a light source even brighter than the sun. Then the wasps must smell me, because they eventually show up, too. Anything that flies slowly by is going to make me back up and shriek a little until I can figure out what it is, and anyone and anything in my path of escape will get bumped into or stepped on. Luckily, my hunny thinks that’s funny instead of incredibly annoying. Hey, I have managed to live 34 years and not get stung by anything. Well, except that one time… Nobody could figure out what happened, at first. I was standing in the middle of the living room at my grandparents’ house, and suddenly I screamed and started crying. (I was 8 years old, this didn’t happen last week.) There was instantly a terrible, large white bump on my cheek. And an adorable fat, fuzzy green caterpillar on my shoulder. It might as well have had big shiny eyelashy doe eyes and a halo over its head and said “who, moi?”
We’ve had a cranefly population EXPLOSION here. Some regions get a literal flurry of mayflies… I’m talking about turning the windshield wipers on to see where they’re driving. I can’t say it’s that bad here, but you can’t open the door to the outside without at least two getting inside each time. During the day, they are in the yard, and at night, they’re on the porch. In line with popular belief, cats do have discriminating tastes. Mine won’t eat crickets, waterbugs or spiders… but junebugs, moths, grasshoppers (the bigger the better), and now craneflies, are a delicacy worth chasing down and knocking a few lamps over for. By the by, I happened upon this Etsy listing for a butterfly captured inside of a lightbulb, which is neat, but the description is worth reading. I always wondered why bugs flew in circles under the porch light, and now I know!
Nelson! What a big, wet nose you have! (the better to sniff your doritos with.)
Thanks to all of this rain and warm weather, the birds out in the yard are the fattest I’ve ever seen them. Some bluejays and wrens were outside my bathroom window the other morning, gathering twigs for their nests. I couldn’t believe how plump they all were. Sigh. Perhaps that’s why Nelson ran off this morning and hasn’t returned. As of right now, he’s been gone four hours and I can’t find him, anywhere. My husband was taking his pepper plant outside and Nelson ran out the back door and then paused. He bent over to pick Nelson up, and then he really made a run for it, through a small opening in the fence. Maybe he had enough of Mo stalking him, or enough of Fred hissing at him when he was “only playing”, or enough of us yelling at him to GET DOWN off the kitchen counter. Some people don’t mind their cats prancing around on the food preparation surfaces, but we just can’t get happy about that.
Nelson! What big, green eyes you have! (the better to see the birds with.)
If he doesn’t come home, I’ll sure miss him, but if he’d rather be a scroungy old (neutered) squirrel dragging ragamuffin, fine. He won’t come when I shake his food container. That’s never been a problem before. It’s as if he’s vanished into another dimension. I thought I’d at least spot him across the street or something, rubbing his face on a cement edge or sniffing at a limb, pretending not to notice me. Or maybe out in the yard, lost and scared, or sneaking up to an unsuspecting bird. No such luck.
Miss Mo
When she was just shy of two years old, Mo ran away for two weeks. She didn’t go far, she mostly hung out in the garage behind our house at the time. We couldn’t get to her because the main doors were locked, and there was an attached shed-like thing with a hole in the wall just big enough for her to fit through into the main garage chamber. We’d see her, chase her into the shed thing, and into the hole she’d go. She looked maniacal, like a wild animal. I don’t know what came over her, it was like it wasn’t even Mo. We’d hear her screaming outside in the thunderstorms, not enough sense about her to come in out of the rain. At one point I was actually able to get her and bring her back inside, but she immediately jumped six feet high and out of a small broken window pane the moment I closed the door. She was gone for about another week and a half after that, and how she came back was sort of silly. We accidentally left the back door open, but with the screenless security gate closed and locked, when we went out to dinner. When we returned, we heard a hoarse little quack and found her in the kitchen, very skinny, but still very much alive. We never put food out for her (we were pretty mad at her), so who knows what she ate. She must have had water, or she would have been dead by then. We don’t know if Fred went outside and talked her into coming home, or if she just decided she’d had enough of that kind of fun. She was SO happy to see us, purring and quacking and carrying on, back to her normal self. She hasn’t run off once since then, although she sometimes darts out the front door and into the flower bed in search of greens to chew on. We go to grab her and she’s purring like a motorboat. Cats.
Anyway, the home improvement bent last weekend inspired me to finally paint the pegboard over my bench. I almost went with a deep, claret red, but it would have been too dark and tomato-ey because we didn’t feel like putting primer on. But I’m happy with this light blue – not too blue, and more pleasant than the dull brown for seeing my tools. I think I’ll appreciate it all the more when I get to work on my metals again. Hopefully that’s not too far off.
So, about Etsy… there are a few finishing touches I need to put on this week’s selections, so tomorrow it is. I’m going to have to forget about Nelson long enough to get some work done. Wish me luck, and thanks for reading!
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