News of note...

There was an item on our local television news about a wild animal park that is running an elephant car wash. Literally. Their elephants will wash your car. They don't guarantee results, but it sure looked like a lot of fun.

And another story about the poor folks in Spokane (in the far east part of the state of Washington) who have to drive east into Idaho in order to buy dishwasher detergent. It seems that the state has enacted a new law - being phased in starting with Spokane County but coming soon to all parts of Washington state - that bans phosphates from detergents. And the 'green' detergents (the non-phosphate alternatives) currently on the market do not, in fact, actually clean dishes. Evidently it is difficult to get phosphates out of water in the water treatment plants, hence the ban. But it is even more difficult to get grease and food off of dishes without phoshpates in detergents. It might be interesting for our little community, which has a 'state of the art' water treatment facility so sophisticated that it seems to justify our water bill being literally 10 times more than we have ever paid anywhere for water - all in 'fees.' Hmmmmm. I bet it won't matter. High costs AND dirty dishes too. Now that's progress for you.

Another news story on the internet this week was about a parrot who managed to attract a babysitter's attention to the fact that a baby was choking - by yelling "Mama, Baby" over and over, flapping his wings and generally kicking up a fuss until 'Mama' came around to do the Heimlich maneuver. (My son's fiance's parrot is not particularly popular with my son. I wondered if this heartwarming story would help the relationship.)

Another 'feature' from the internet this week was a recipe for a 3-minute (start to finish) chocolate cake that you mix up in a coffee cup and 'bake' in the microwave. I, of course, tried it. Good flavor but odd texture, on account of the volume of a whole egg matched to only a few tablespoons of sugar, flour and cocoa etc. Also I think my microwave was too strong and it 'baked' too long. I threw the recipe away because, when it comes down to it, I really don't need to be only 3 minutes away from a piece of chocolate cake.

Back to the TV 'news,' one of our favorite ads on TV is the one for ProActive acne medication - the part in which the guy says "I put it on at night, and in the morning... you don't have acne." (He puts it on and then we don't have acne?) We think this is marvelous - and hope he keeps using it because, goodness knows, we don't want to have acne in the morning.

Isn't it nice to be informed?

Frik, on Daylight Savings Time

It appears that Frik strongly disagrees with Daylight Savings Time. He seems to feel that daylight is better spent than saved – in productive activity such as, taking an example completely at random, that which involves Opening Cans and Feeding The Cat. So this morning we had quite a time.

Act 1: The very first light of day. Surely such an event is best celebrated by having everyone get up to serve breakfast. (Frik can’t do it for himself. No thumbs.) Many loud cat-comments were made to that effect (probably, though who can really tell?) but no one responded to them adequately. Frik had to step up the action. Louder howling. More door banging. (He has a trick about using his paws to slap at the edge of the bathroom vanity cabinet, which then bounces open and shut, making lots of noise. Noise that surely will prompt someone to “get up and open those cans!”) We just yelled at him. And tried to go back to sleep.

Act 2: “OK, if that didn’t get you – this will…” Frik can barf up a hairball when the situation really calls for it. This is often a good strategy because, of course, hairball spew usually results in instant, on-the-feet action, which could reasonably be expected to also subsequently result in ‘while you are up, why don’t we just have some breakfast?’ Frik doesn’t just do hairballs in one spot and be done, mind you – oh, no. A good hairball calls for at least 3 different spots of spew. So tired were we, however, that we ignored this too. (We are not morning people.) We didn’t get up.

Act 3: Rattle things. Now, Mark has clutter on the floor by his side of the bed. (I don’t know why this otherwise reasonable man has to have little piles of books and bullets and pens in a messy 'nest' in the corner of the room by the bed, but there you have it – he does.) And, (as Frik knows) books and bags-of-bullets and pens can all be rattled to make just enough sound to wake the sleeping. Amazingly, at this point Mark DID jump out of bed – to chase Frik away with the ‘canned air’ that makes a cat-frightening sound and is usually quite effective as a deterrent. (Though not this time, of course, but it was worth a try.) Unfortunately for Frik, Mark went right back to bed. "Unbelievable! Would it have pained him to open a can? How much trouble can that be for someone with thumbs?"

Act 4: Walk around on the bed, purring madly. Everyone loves purring – and everyone loves to have a cat in their lap – and doesn’t all that ‘love’ make you want to eat? ("Oh – was that your head I stepped on?") A gentle shove knocked Frik off the bed. We knocked him off, back he came. Off and back; off and back. But we kept trying to go back to sleep.

Act 5: Time for more hairball action. (I kid you not.) 3 more spew sites. This time we had to get up to clean them up. But even at that, it was only, maybe, 5:30 AM – nowhere near time to get up. So we went back to bed. Frik couldn’t believe it!

The Grand Finale: We had a free-for-all. Maddie got rattled and started running around the house. “Howling” figured prominently. Mark got up and chased Frik around with the canned air again. Frik threw up again. Maddie ran under the bed and Mark stepped on her tail. Frik wailed. Maddie did too. Mark… not so much wailing, as such, but he did have a few things to say.

But there was really no hope for sleeping any longer. So Mark got up and fed the little buggers. After he went in to take a shower, Frik threw up again. So much for breakfast.

Well, lookey there

It is raining out so I didn't really take the time to make sure I had a good picture, but hey - lookey there - I do believe it is peony shoots!

We've been fussing all winter about whether our peonies will survive - did we not set them high enough when we planted them? Why didn't they grow at all last summer after they flowered? Were they supposed to disappear entirely in winter? (You'd think I'd have Googled the growing habits of peonies and gotten some answers, with all this fussing, but sometimes a good Fuss is worth hanging on to.)

And see - all the fussing was worth it. We virtually WILLED them back into existence.

I have a feeling this is a bad political analogy.

From my 'in' box

I needed to delete some messages from my email account because it is just too big and too slow. This gave me a great chance to review some of this valuable stuff:

An email from my friend at work with pictures of a deer being rescued at sea. No information about what the poor thing was doing (besides swimming her heart out) at sea in the first place. Heartwarming nevertheless.

A reminder that I need to update my subscription to my anti-virus software. Then another one, and another one. Then a note that, not to worry, they updated it themselves since they just happened to have my credit card information in their files. Then a thank you for, you know, updating my software, and finally another note about the importance of anti-virus software in the fight against spam email...

A gi-normous file of music downloads from the 60s from someone in my high school class that is clogging up the works entirely and which, I'd be embarrassed to reveal, I really don't know how to download and listen to anyway. (Even if I did recognize any of the music, which I doubt.)

An E-Card" showing me a flower bouquet that someone sent.

An advertisement from our favorite fish house reminding me that Friday Fish is going on through Lent and just look at the scallops they have in - fresh!

An email from a friend with the most darling pictures of her granddaughter that you ever hope to see - that I keep going back to even though I probably never will, actually, see her in person.

Another spam email that someone thought I just shouldn't miss, showing a man with a cat's behind tattooed onto his belly with the 'base of the tail' (shall we say) just fitting into his bellybutton. (You might be a redneck if...?)

A timely email from Safeway telling me that all the stuff I just bought at full price on Tuesday is now on sale.

... Fun stuff. No wonder there is never anything interesting in the actual mailbox out on the street.

Rainy Day

It's raining. On a Saturday! After a whole week of beautiful sunshine interrupted occasionally by just-as-beautiful snow storms it manages to rain and be dreary on the weekend. It figures.

Not to worry though. I can make good use of a rainy day, by spending it at home being lazy.

I've mostly spent this rainy day looking through old magazines so that I can pare down the piles that reside in various baskets in the house. Mark, on the other hand, is flipping through channels between the basketball tournaments and funny movies. I have the fire on, and popcorn to munch, and a cat on my lap. You'd think that would be a relaxing and benign way to spend an afternoon. But even being lazy has its costs:

1. Of course I had to make blueberry muffins after finding a recipe in an old Better Homes and Gardens magazine - yum! (That probably wouldn't have happened except that I also have been doing spring cleaning and cleaned out the freezer the other day and found some frozen blueberries from last summer that really needed using...)
2. An old Sunset magazine had a wonderful pictorial on Lake Quinault Lodge in Olympic National Park so, yes, I did, in fact, call right away to make reservations for the 4th of July weekend. (It is one of the beautiful lodges of the National Park system and I didn't know it existed - and is right near our favorite but rather inaccessible Ruby Beach. What a great find!)
3. Naturally I dashed off to the internet (who wouldn't?) and ordered the DVD of a Little Rascals movie that Mark found on TV that was just wonderful - sent it to my mother who I hope will enjoy it too.
4. I found a great idea for making place cards for a dinner party - using big Hershey bars and rewrapping them in your own printed wraparound paper - in a Martha Stewart magazine - which I had to cut out and then figure out where I could store such a great idea and actually find it again, creating more of the 'debris' that this task (of going through old magazines) was supposed to be eliminating. Oh well. I just hope I remember this great idea next year when my son is getting married and there might actually BE an occasion for place cards...
5. Thanks to nearly ALL of the magazines, I added extensively to my wish list for plants in the back yard - reprising the old romantics like peony and bleeding heart and hollyhocks, and adding agapanthus and daylillies and on and on. (Mark groans...)
6. Back to the computer and internet after another article in Sunset, I ordered a bee house to attract Mason Bees to our garden.. because bees are declining.
7. I also learned (from Sunset magazine as well - that subscription really pays for itself) that cinnamon can lower blood sugar and bad cholesterol and can be significantly helpful in inflammatory disease like arthritis. Darn. I should have made snickerdoodles instead of blueberry muffins!

Oh well. Good thing we decided to stay home today. Better for the economy.