Tomatoes

We have ripe strawberries in the garden.
The tomatoes are starting to turn red.
The cat has shed 438 lbs of fur.
My apples are covered in plastic bags (to thwart apple maggots).
Summer is definitely here.

We're living on fruit and the occasional vegetable
in an effort to reduce fatness.

But summer requires ice cream.

The battle begins.

All the news that's print to be fit

something's going on on the older sister side, but nobody's told us!
Houston is underwater but nobody's told us!
The last uncle, Uncle Pee Wee died, and the priest was really old and
funny accidentally, and we got weirded out by the vets bar at the reception afterwards, so we took the starving kids and nieces out too lunch at a normal restaurant,
and ogled each other and ate too much.

the boy and his wife are moving to Seattle. Pray for us, Argentina!!!!

NOthing

the msdwelf is recovering nicely.
the peas are peeing.
the tomatoes are peeing.
the exotic lettuces are peeing.
I have enclosed most of the apples in
newspaper plastic bags in an effort to
reduce apple maggot maggotism.

We shall see.
The black vampire tomatoes are blooming.
This is very exciting.
I'm not growing garlic, will chives be effective?

Potato experiment

The peach tree is very sad this year. It has a disease.
So I put some antiweed cloth down underneath it,
and heaved a bunch of dirt and peat moss on it,
and threw in some potatoes.
Tomorrow for the third time, I shall heap
more earthiness upon them.

Will they really grow potatoes this year?
Out there unrestrained by rows.
What is truly amazing is that the cat or
the racoons haven't dug into them.

But what happens if I end up with peachatoes?

Potatoes with a pit.

Burundi Quilting Project

David Niyonzima arrived from Burundi. Since Ms. Dwelf was splotchily in capacitated, I picked him up at the airport and drove his very tired person to his crash place at the Haydens.

Sunday night we had a fund raising dessert buffet to raise money so
Ms. Dwelf can return to Burundi and continue teaching abused women
a trade, quilting. $3000! raised.

Totally awesome. Now she needs to get some grants!

Everyone is very very very excited. It's stuff like this
that helps stabilize Africa.

She, Ms. Dwelf, has also raized $2000 to help build an
entire building and supplies for a community in
east Congo (still a dangerous place).


When she was there she asked how much. They said $2000
for an entire structure, school and extra rooms. plus
all the accoutrments.

I get all teary eyed thinking about it. $2000 is nothing to Americans.
It's easy to help the world, even if it's just money.
But someone has to organize it.

Saint Ms. Dwelf. hmmm, may have to work on that.

Fun with itches

Mrs. Dwelf started getting itchy spots and puffinesses.
"Aronia berries in the juice!" she cried.
But a google of aronia and allergies produced nothing,
in fact aronia is highly recommended for allergic reactive people.

So I google mangoes. Mangoes, many people are allergic.
Went to the doctor, got Benadryl and drink lots of fluids.
We removed the mangoes but
days passed. But not too many.


Itchy itchy and puffy eyes and lips (free collagen injections!).
Splotches.

Monday morning, she calls the consulting nurse who says,
"Get your splotchy ass in here."


She goes to see Dr. KATO! Now we're talking! KATO!

Patricia Kato. Ah, Ms. Dwelf is Patricia. Now we're really talking.

Time passes. I read my book. Finally I'm called in.

Dr. Kato is 1) a babe, 2) really good.
What's the cause? Don't know but could be the blood pressure med, so stop that immediately and check your pressure frequently. Come in if it goes over 150/90.


Prednisone, steroid, should see results in 5 hours.
Ratgutsadine, does something with histamines and acid reflux.
Pifflegooberosine, antihistamine.
AND an EpiPen, just in case.
The doc says, if the throat swelling was new in the last 24 hours, I'd be very concerned, but since it's been around for a few days, eh, not to worry.

But we'll send you home with the epipen just in case.


So at least I ran through the test procedure for using this!
Someone else did not!


Six hours later, her face is almost normal.
She's complaining about new splotches, obviously a newbie to allergies. Sweety, it takes a couple days to flush your system and let the new drugs acclimate.


Meanwhile the last of her uncles is on his death bed, all the sons have come to Tacoma. Uncle Peewee from Alabama is quite a character. He should have smoked less, but still he made it to a pretty good old age.

All the aunties are still alive.

Life goes on.

Waiting for the Bogeyman

In my yout' I was ascared of the dark.
All the cliche, closets (although I sometimes
sat in them for hours) were creepy at night.
Mirrors were very scary, especially at night.
Well, I grew out of most of that.

I thought I now knew what was real,
and what wasn't ephemeral ectoplasms sneaking
into to my shorts, crawling in my bed,
waiting round the corner.

Then I read the latest Frothing at the Mouse.

Brrrrrrrrrr, where's my night light???????

Today I am a prime number

That is all.

Ponzi

My wife's Italian and Denmarkist, Denmarkian, Denmarkite?
Turns out this Italian Ponzi dude back in the 1910s came up with
this scheme to use the uneven exchange rates with foreign
countries to make money. Sounds good on paper, but like
pyramid schemes, it eventually has to collapse.


A woman in our church was touting her enormous 38%
secure return on her house equity investment, but was coy
about telling us who she was dealing with.


Usually some in her position should be trying to get other
people to buy in, but maybe she's new to this and thinks
she's got a deal nobody else knows about.


Sunday she happened to mention the 'company.'

Oops, a quick internet check and scam bam thank you ma'am.

She's not the type you can talk out of something. She's always
finding new things, new products, hasn't really pressed selling
them to people, but when her house gets absorbed by the beast,
what choice will she have?


Meanwhile some of us have enough sense to realize we
can make a killing on the online poker venue.

All those naive people playing against sneaky devils like me.
Already I've sucked them in, -138% on my 'investment', so now
they think I'm weak and desperate!

Muhahahahahaha, fullhouse! Dorks over Dumbsh*ts.

Please feed my cat until I can make bail. Thanks.

If you have children, don't

So the boy, son number 1, who smashed his finger experimenting
at work which caused him to get fired and almost lost
the end of his finger because it was so squashed and who's
wife also seems to break body parts occasionally, called up
to find out what was going on this weekend, and that
they might come down if they could steal enough gas, and
oh by the way the same hand just got tore open again.


Trying to start a lawnmower and the cord snapped and came
back and whacked his hand. Big slash.


These kids are either accident prone or prone to accidents.
You will not find me being a passenger in their car.

All about bird bath soup

The dainties should not read this.

Yesterday the birdbath was clean. The weather was 69 and lovely.
This morning, light rain, then the sun came out.
I tipped the cat over and proceeded to drag
the weedeater, kicking and screaming to the back 40.
Time hack some blackberries.

Hack we did.

Then I said, I should hack around the birdbath
so's that the grass isn't too high and the little
birdies can see the cat coming.

Whack whack whack, EWWWWW!

The birdbath contained:

partial bird, probably baby robin
another larger bone, probably not bird
(I haven't removed them yet, I'm getting up
the stomach for it).
The temperature is not Houston, but still
68 and enough to make soup out of it after
a long afternoon.

I can't just toss it into the bushes,
the cat might try and eat it.

Culprits:

not the cat
not the possums
not the raccoons, they would have tipped the
bird bath over

This leaves the crows.
They have already destroyed the bushtit nest,
and are very aggressive in the yard,
definitely have a nest in the area.

Even the most ferocious beast in North America,
BARGELLO, descended from Asiatic Lions,
killer of all, is challenged by an adult crow.

I just hope my tombstone doesn't read:

He never sent cards on anybody's birthday
Is it any wonder the crows drowned him in the bird bath?

Of mouses and moles

Planted my dahlias in a raised bed. I watered them.
The water went down this hole. Lots of water went down the hole.

Half a lake went down the hole. Take that mole from hell.

The cat's not doing his job.

So I dumped a bunch of cayenne pepper down the hole! Watered some more to get it down in there, then dumped some more at the top.


Then the cat, Gello, brought us a live little mouse to play with on the back deck on Sunday. What a sweet guy.

We close all doors, keep your toy outside please!

Ten minutes later the fatal, "SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!"

Mouse poppers. Gello gets really weird after a kill, like he's totally spaced on caffeine or something. It must be a real rush.

Today it will be 85 degrees in Seattle. That's ridiculous.
The cat will not be hunting, when it gets this hot, he collapses, as do we.

Battery Man

So I took my beater car into the Volvo place for some surgery and to have three very hard to open doors fixed.

Since I never have riders except on the rare occasion I took the Dwelfess to work,
it wasn't until that time that I noticed I now have only two functioning doors.
Driver's side front works, that I would have noticed right away, but the passenger side front is totally dead, won't open from the inside or outside. Driver's side rear only opens from the outside (so I can abduct people now).

Old car needs lots of work which I need to parse out over many many months because I'm not that rich, so I've been waiting for the opportunity to take it back in and bitch mightly about the doors (for which I supplied the parts! you can get all kinds of car parts on the internet).

But one day my car battery died. It's Sunday. Les Schwab isn't open. Nobody's open. I must have my car. Went to AwSchucks and bought a lovely battery from a dyslexic cashier. Spent 1.5 hours trying to get the old one out. Corrosion and an impossible angle to try and remove screw holding it in. Could not find my special tools. No time to go to the hardware store. So OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW,
and lots of WD-40, and very very slowly it started to turn.

Stick new battery in, zoom!
My right hand was unusable, howsomever, for two days. Cramped.

Two days later, radio, lights, fan, but no turnover. Took the bus to work. Nobody threw up on me. Took the bus home, I'm sure those teenagers were looking to rough me up if I got off at the wrong stop (little do they know I am Tai Won On master).

Cleaned the terminals, put them back on really tight, and voila!

So what's the big deal? Anybody could do that?
Well, I'm not very tool oriented.
My dear dwelfess has said, "If you come anywhere near our house with a hammer or saw in your hand, I'll kill you."
I can use them. I just can't use them as intended.

My greenhouse stands, for example, stuck together by duct tape, much like this sentence, and now also by screws, which after 50 years I discovered you can use an electric drill to screw screws in, AND OUT!!!!!! WOO!!!!, about 4,000 times faster than by hand.

It's amazing.

Honey is so much more pleasant than bee poo

I haven't eaten honey in a long time.

Garden vs. the cat

Way behind this year, but slowly getting seedlings and seeds into the ground.
The cat, like all cats, would like to lay on top of them.
I think seeds and seedlings produce heat which attracts the cat.

Also, globally cooling can be affected anytime I even think
about planting my tomatoes.
Cold air is attracted by tomato repots.

Our cat does not dig a lot in the garden.
I think he's pooping in the business building garage next door.
You go, cat!

If the cat lays on the garden, he also provides heat
which helps the seedlings sprout.

It's a fine line between cat and cat nip.

Garden goo

I am waaaaay behind in the garden.
The tomato seedlings in the greenhouse
snap at me to put them outside. No chance until next weekend.
They hate me.
The potatoes should be in the ground.
They live in some peat moss, cringing,
knowing the cat will eventually come and dig them up.

Meanwhile, I can not believe my little baby sister and
her frothmister, were not arrested in any of those
countries they visited.

Payola, I guess.

$50 bets

We had a great time at the ocean. Warm, sunny, gale force winds.

Our room looked directly out onto the bay where there were lots
of birds for us birdwatchers.
We had dinner at the historic Tokeland Hotel. Tokeland is at
the end of nowhere. It was a fine meal indeed. The wine was a little pricey.

We went to Bottle Bay, a superb birding site and got insulted by a
German accented wrinkled woman who's spent too much time in the sun.
"You saw the Red Knots, didn't you? There are 4 or 5 of them. You've
got to be keen to see them. Did you see them? You really do need to be keen."
in this snotty voice. We hate birders.
Mrs Dwelf knows a Red Knot when she sees one. We watched the several hundred
bird peep-a-thon for 30 minutes, there were no Red Knots there.


We had pizza at Dugan's in Ocean Shores which is sort of a high priced
white trash town living on tourist bucks during the summer. We haven't
had a purchased pizza in a loooooong time. It was tolerable but just
too much of everything. We like the simple life.

We stopped at Bay City Sausage at the edge of Grayland and bought
as much variable sausage as we could fit in our cooler: andouille,
swedish potato, turkey cranberry, and much more.


So after all is said and done, the froth and her frothman, and
the dwelf and his dwelfess spent time at or on the ocean
and all is well.

No major laws were broken. It was a good week.


Oh, the $50 bets! That'll have to wait for another time.

Taxes win

Death put up a good fight, but taxes won again.
I thought we would owe money, but after I read
instructions for paying the IRS money --
put your home phone and SS number on your check --
I thought, "Over my dead body! Can you say
identity theft?"

Death perked right up for a second there.
But the internet beckoned and I found a tax
prep package that seemed cheap and adequate.

After a couple time through it to get rid
of my double entries, it kept telling me
we would get money back. And it was right!
I made a booboo and it caught it.

So I hit the SUBMIT button and it looks
like we'll get enough back that we can
buy food on this weekend's trip to the ocean.
I hate long weekends at the beach where
we have to live off slugs, snails,
mussels and seaweed.

Since the baby sis is sailing around on the water,
and we'll be at the ocean, I should be able
to channel her vibes easily just by sticking my toe
in the so-cold-even-witches-don't-stick-their-
tits-in-it water. The oceanic mindmeld, or toemeld.

Well, excuse me now, I have to post obscenities
on the Frothing Mistress's's site. I know, I know,
I'm not really good at the summabitchin stuff,
but then I don't live in Hellwater, Texas either.

Cruising

Since the baby sis is out cruising,
I'll be spending all my energy
keeping her blog disgusting.

Nobody reads this but her anyway.

You all suck.

What's so Good about Good Friday?

Well?


I'm waiting.




Still waiting.




It's blustery and cold today.




hmmmmmmm, hummy hummy hummy.