day 21
April 17, 2012
Yup, still taking pictures of my breakfast and posting them on my tumblr page. If y’all thought twitter was killing your desire to write on your weblog, my advice is to stay away from tumblr.
Quinoa salad left over from last night’s supper: quinoa, radishes, red pepper, sweet onion, shredded Brussels sprouts, and the best balsamic vinaigrette I’ve ever made; I walked away from the vinegar on the stove and cooked it a bit longer than usual, and whisked the olive oil in more slowly, and when I poured it on the salad it was as thick as blackstrap and felt like making candy.
Watercress (so pretty!), shredded raw Brussels sprouts, thinly sliced kohlrabi, romaine lettuce.
I don’t know why Kevin is so interested, it’s not like he’d eat a single thing in this bowl. He just wants to wreak havoc with anything that belongs to me. I can’t believe I ever described this cat as “very chill“. We clearly didn’t know each other well AT ALL.
Posted by jodi on April 17, 2012 at 9.08am
first shots with the fisheye
February 20, 2012
Peter gave me this camera for my birthday in December 2010 and the first two rolls of film have finally made it through the scanner. Here are the first two pictures shot with it pretty much as soon as it came out of the box:
Jesus and Pookio, all got up in their birthday finery. Fuji S400 film.
Our sweet Cleo, in her birthday finery also. Fuji S400 film. You can see in both of these that the placement of the internal flash in relation to the lens is a bit of a problem with this camera, the very large lens casting its obtrusive shadow over everything. Next time this camera is used indoors it’ll be with an external flash.
A few more shots from later on in the spring:
Discarded mattress in our alley. Fuji S400 film.
Michael Snow’s geese at the Eaton Centre in Toronto. Same film roll as above.
And from Pennsic, a couple of shots on Lomography Redscale 400 film:
House Redhair gate, sheet wall and pheons;
And that familiar Cooper’s Lake treeline.
Posted by jodi on February 20, 2012 at 9.57am
not living up to expectations
February 2, 2012
The internet called, apparently we here at jodi’s weblog are not fulfilling our quotas on cat pictures. So here is more Kevin.
My goal in life has always been to become the town eccentric, and up until recently I thought there was still lots of time to work towards that goal. But thinking back on the town eccentrics I have known, I’m starting to realize that those people weren’t as old as I thought they were. I met weird old recluse Pete Z as a teenager (when he was in his early 60s, I’m guessing) but my cousins had known him all their lives, and my mother knew him as the town weirdo when she was a kid, at which time he must have been quite young. Here’s a picture of me and my cousins and Pete, taken in around 1989:
On the left are my cousins Patti and Chris, old Pete in the middle, then me (in the hat; oh! that hat! and I had stuck a flower on it that day because I was A TOTAL HIPPIE) and my brother Dave in the Anthrax hat. Pete is holding the page from the Weekly World News that told the story of the guy who farts fire (photo taken with 110 film, probably Kodak because I don’t think you could get Fuji film at the grocery store in our town; Kodak Ektralite camera).
Just for fun here is another photo from that day, of Pete’s old tractor behind his place:
Taken with Ilford HP5 35mm film and who knows what camera. Please excuse the quality, it’s a scan of a crummy test print which I guess I never got around to printing any better. I wish I still had a print of the one I took of the old Dodge car that he had parked on his side lawn, full to the roof with cut firewood.
Mrs W, the weirdo lady who lived on my street growing up, is still alive, still living in the same house, and her daughter was only in her late teens when I was a kid listening to old Mrs W’s stories in the mid 1970s, which means that when we thought Mrs W was probably at least a hundred years old she was probably only 40. AND I’M 40 NOW, YOU GUYS. I’d better get cracking! So: this year is the year that all of the plastic animals and dinosaurs I’ve been collecting will finally get installed in the front garden; that will be a good start, I think, especially now that we’ve discovered Kevin has feline leukemia. Since this means I can only have the one cat for a while, I’ll have to work harder at being extra weird in other areas. Inspired by Pete Z and my old neighbour lady Mrs W, I’m going to try working on my storytelling skills to compensate for non-crazy-cat-ladyness.
Things Mrs W told me include:
-that the birds were plotting against her. Proof: they repeatedly pooped on her drying laundry, sometimes twice in a day (I did see the poop on the laundry one time so maybe the birds really did have a plot going on);
-that someone had poisoned her dogs (Pepper and I forget the other one’s name but at any rate, nobody poisoned them and next time I saw her, there were the dogs, fine as anything);
-that when her husband died he fell in the living room and one of the rabbit ears on the television went into his eye socket and pierced his brain (my mom says he died of a heart attack at home, but who knows, the falling on the rabbit ears part could still be true);
-a horrible story about some people setting fire to a cat in a barrel that I think was actually not a delusional old lady story but an actual true story she heard on the news.
Things the neighbour kids said about Mrs W:
-that when she was her daughter G’s age (so, around 18? at that time) she was very pretty just like her daughter and also she had an identical twin sister and the two of them left a dance with some unsavoury men and Mrs W was weirded out and wanted to go home but her sister didn’t and so Mrs W went home alone and her sister got murdered that night. Totally untrue and also probably inextricably linked to a town culture of slut-shaming Mrs W’s daughter G, who took a lot of flack for driving around on her motorcycle in a two piece bathing suit;
-that her dogs had in fact been poisoned, and died, and she had gone out and gotten two identical dogs and given them the same names as their predecessors and then forgotten the poisoning had ever happened.
Things Pete Z told me include:
-that a spoonful of blackstrap molasses every day will keep you from ever getting bunged up (this is true and I believe it and I will tell all the neighbour kids about it too);
-that if you kids wanna get bunged up, just you eat them prunes off that tree over there;
-that the walking trees from South America were moving north at a rate of a mile a year and were already halfway through Mexico and heading straight for Ontario;
-that antique dealers and the C.I.A. were in some kind of cahoots bent on getting their hands on all of his valuable stuff (the part about the dealers is undoubtedly true, his whole place was full of stuff that would have been pretty valuable then and even more so now). Also detailed accounts of how he had run several of them off his property, one who even had the gall to walk straight into his house without invitation and don’t you kids go trying that or else;
-killer bees will kill you and they have a blood lust fueled by killing;
-about a man who farted fire and he kept burning holes through his trousers and had already set his bed on fire in the night a couple of times (this one he showed us, clipped from the Weekly World News, probably also the source for the one about the walking trees).
Posted by jodi on February 2, 2012 at 10.23am
meet kevin!
January 10, 2012
Kevin would like you all to know that he is very happy to be here. He hadn’t even been here five minutes and he was totally comfortable, getting into stuff, flopping around looking for belly rubs, cleaning himself. . . the only reason it took a whole 5 minutes is because the first 4 were spent in the bathroom with me getting all of the poop washed off him from pooping all over himself in the car (early in the trip, and in switching the towels I got covered in it myself and then he pretty much immediately peed on the new towel anyway and it was fairly miserable but even then he took it mostly in stride) (except for being lifted out of the car on the side of the highway, he hated that). Also while I had him on the floor in a strange new place with a wet rag scrubbing at his fur and poop everywhere and all this right after a scary car ride with strange people, he was purring like crazy as if this was the funnest thing ever. Weirdo.
Kevin likes snuggles, belly rubs, food, tripping people, jumping on the counter, jumping on the table, and especially jumping up onto the piano keys. I’ve now got a whole collection of plastic animals lined up along the keys to prevent him from climbing over from the window seat. Because I hate fun. According to Kevin. He makes up for all of his annoying badassery with enthusiastic cuddling, though, so I think we’re going to keep him.
You guys, I am SO HAPPY to have a cat again.
Posted by jodi on January 10, 2012 at 11.14pm
incentive
December 27, 2011
This kitty showed up at my dad’s farmhouse a few days ago, looking for a sucker to take him in. (It’s well known in the cat community in the area that my dad is that sucker, and I’m convinced that homeless cats on the move have left hobo markings all around the property to let others know, suckers live here. warm fireplace ahoy. plenty of kibble.) BUT the other cats don’t like him so he needs a new home. He’s very chill, incredibly loving and cuddly, likes to be picked up, likes belly rubs. . . basically he likes all the things that I like. We are very compatible, I think.
We have a home repair job we need to do in our house before we can invite any new cats to live with us. It’s a job I could do in a few days if I put my mind to it, but it will be a lot of work. Now the pressure is on.
There is still one more farm neighbour my dad hasn’t spoken to, who might own this cat. If she doesn’t, and if I can get the work done in the basement in time and if Dad and Sherry don’t find him another home before I’m ready, and if, and if, and if. . . then this kitty could be mine.
Posted by jodi on December 27, 2011 at 10.01am
rest
June 9, 2011
Peacefully. Our beloved Cleo.
Posted by jodi on June 9, 2011 at 8.25pm
cleo, winding down
May 30, 2011
Our beloved Cleo has had a rough time of it, medically, the last little while. When we came home from our Georgia vacation in February, we found her in a crisis situation, listless and not eating, lying around with a glazed, miserable expression. The diagnosis was kidney failure, and with a new diet, renal care medicine and subcutaneous fluid injections (which we administer at home) she bounced back to her normal self in less than two weeks (after some very scary days where I had to hold her constantly to try and get her body temperature up and at times it seemed she was barely breathing). She gained a pound on the new regimen and began once again exhibiting her remarkable prowess at the “bite me” game.
Over the May Two Four weekend, I noticed her back legs, which have been stiffening for well over a year now, were giving out on her occasionally, causing her to slide to the floor while walking and then wobble like a drunkard after picking herself up. This time it’s arthritis in her spine, which is only going to get worse over time (her kidneys, on the other hand, are behaving like total rock stars). So she got a cortisone shot to manage any pain, and off we went home again to give her all the love and anything else she asks for and wait for her to give us The Sign.
She’s still getting around okay, just with a slightly smaller range (the photo above was taken through the dining room window screen while she slept on the concrete pad below; normally she’d be halfway across the yard sleeping atop the graves of her predecessors, or at the way back lying on the sun-warmed giant sheet of metal we’re too lazy to take to the dump). For a 20 year old cat she’s remarkably feisty, and while she’s still mostly happy (if somewhat frustrated with the mobility trouble) and taking pleasure in life we’re just going to enjoy her last days and help her up and down the stairs when we need to.
When I watch her drag herself away from her food dish where she’s been half-crouching, half-lying down to eat, Cleo reminds me a bit of this:
(Andrew Wyeth: Christina’s World, tempera on panel, 1948)
Posted by jodi on May 30, 2011 at 5.08pm
up early and very alert
May 19, 2011
Cleo’s all wound up from a night of teenager slumber party madness.
Posted by jodi on May 19, 2011 at 5.51am
it’s a fact.
December 4, 2010
Everybody loves a sleeping kitty.
Posted by jodi on December 4, 2010 at 7.02am
old susie
October 12, 2010
In the spring of 1992 my dad moved to a rickety old falling-down farmhouse (so falling-down, in fact, that after he moved out the house was given over to the local fire department for training practice, as it wasn’t fit for occupancy). There was an old orange cat already living on the property, sixteen years old and never domesticated according to the farmer across the road, the son of the falling-down house’s original occupants. The neighbour said “I castrated that cat myself!” (along with the hogs), and “you’ll never get near that cat” (is it any wonder?). To which my dad replied, “well, I was petting that cat this morning”, because my dad is: a) kind of a smartarse and b) some kind of magic man when it comes to the kitties. In fact my dad is a bona fide crazy cat lady who, since befriending Old Susie, has had anywhere from seven to fourteen cats living with him at any given time (it’s nine right now, I think).
By the first winter Old Susie, the wild cat who had fended for himself for sixteen years, was curling up on a corner of the couch just like a regular house cat, albeit one who was all solid muscle and sharp claws who would slash at your arm if you dared to stop petting. When my dad moved to a new farm the following year, he brought Susie along.
Susie, spring 1994. Shot with the Brownie Hawkeye and Ilford HP-5 Plus film.
This and another (even worse) shot on the same roll are the only pictures of Susie. That little cross-shaped piece of stone by the porch stoop is a broken piece of grave marker that my cousin Chris and I dug out of a rock pile in a creek running behind the site of an old church that used to stand on Highway 4 near my hometown. The dilapidated church had been taken over by Franciscan monks who were fixing it up and living there and I remember when I was in high school we’d occasionally see them in town in their brown cassocks and then there was some kind of conflict with the diocese and the monks left and the church was torn down. I later left that stone in the backyard of a house in London to mark the grave of a kitten that died. You see how easy that is, just dig out the old photos and instantly you turn into an old person with a semicoherent string of boring old tangential stories? It’s like Tony Soprano said: remember-whens are the lowest form of conversation.
I found these negatives, processed but never printed, rolled up and squashed flat with duct tape goo on them, shoved into an old pickled egg jar along with hundreds of cowrie shells salvaged from old shell necklaces, scraps of woven trim that I got from the fire sale after the big fire at Exeter Public School and later used on my first piece of SCA garb, some old guitar strings, a bag of silver jump rings, a bottle of Spotone and a large spool of linen bookbinding thread. It’s a wonder there were still pictures to be found on them at all.
Posted by jodi on October 12, 2010 at 10.55am
