Found this great Woody Allen clip on the excellent Door Sixteen blog. I have a friend going through some tough emotional stuff so this one really resonated with me. That and a Yogi tea bag tag that said, “At night don’t count sheep, count your blessings.”
We could probably all do a bit more of this.
Across the board America is feeling the heat. No wonder--2010 is on record for the hottest 6 months ever. At my house its been 85 or more nearly every day for the last two months with heavy humidity to boot, a far cry from last summer when I think New England had maybe 10-15 days of sun between Memorial and Labor Day.
All these crazy hot humid days mean strange storms that roll in and back out. A friend of mine mentioned on his Facebook today that a tornado had touched down on Long Island and just a few days ago three tornadoes touched down in southern Maine. Two weeks ago we had mass flooding in our own town…totally nutso how fast the rain came down. Our neighbors lost everything in their basement and had to rewire its house. Here’s the video:
and here is the water on that same day flooding out Fenway Park:
Global warming? End of the world? Something has Mother Nature all in a tizzy!
Tonight we brought home our new kitty, Nero, a 12 week old ragdoll kitten. OMG he’s more adorable than kittens should be. He seems perfectly at home for the most part. He follows us from room to room, plays happily with his toys and randomly falls asleep when the exploration starts to overwhelm him (even now he’s sleeping on the floor a few feet away from me). I am so much in love with him, even after just a few hours.
He cries when he can’t see us though, which is sweet but hopefully he’ll grow out of it sooner than later. We’re the new litter mates I think, so he wants to make sure he knows where we are. When we ate dinner on the back patio he cried and cried until we got a chair
so he could sit on it and look out the back screen door at us.
He’s too little for the porch…he could jump off the balcony before we knew what happened. Plus there are plants back there I’m sure that aren’t good for him.
I hope he uses the box soon. We’ve shown him where it is several times but he seems more curious about the world around him. Haven’t seen him drinking anything yet but he has eaten a bit (we’ve been home for about 3.5 hrs now). We’re confining him to the kitchen
overnight so hopefully he’ll figure it out quickly. Cute, huh?
and some video for added cuteness.
Let’s hope that it doesn’t end up being like Saturday’s torrential downpour. The poor people at the end of our street had no power all weekend and their house is a complete wreck. At one point they had about three feet of water in their front yard. Our house is actually up on high enough ground that we weren’t affected but the houses behind us were very hard hit. One of our neighbors said that they were recently looking at old maps of our neighborhood and it seems that it was once a pond! Now it makes sense why everyone flooded out so badly. Here is footage from the mess. We’ve never seen anything like it in the 8 years we’ve lived here.
Actually, the black car in the photo, that we thought was crazy, turned out to be one of the cars our neighbor with the three feet of water in his front yard owned. He was trying to get it to higher ground. Not sure how the car ended up faring engine-wise but I’ll bet he’ll never get the wet mildew stench out of the car. 
Billie Holiday? Kinks? Kool and the Gang? The Specials? Take your pick of hot hot songs. I imagine they all fit about now if you are anywhere on the Eastern seaboard. They’re reporting that the worst of the heat is supposedly over, but while yesterday was hotter, today is more humid and I’m far more uncomfortable. Fans are awhirl.
On Monday late afternoon, my husband and I heard a massive crackling noise outside the front of our house. We look out and the telephone/electric pole in front of our house had snapped a wire from the overload, with the ends of the wires on fire and a live wire down in the middle of our street. We called and the fire trucks and cops came in and watched the wire (although they did NOTHING to stop cars from going near the wire or people walking near it, sigh) until the power company could come and fix it.
Then, last night, on my way to a BBQ for my Italian class, we came to the street where the party was held and sure enough, another wire down in that neighborhood and three fire trucks and two cops watching the wire (Cambridge has more people needing overtime pay than my town apparently). A woman came over to us as we were getting out of the car and wanted to know if we wanted an update on what was happening--she was clearly the neighborhood busybody, informant, gossip. She was in heaven, letting everyone know what was happening. Cracked me up.
Our town actually left a voicemail yesterday as well, telling people that they were on the verge of an overload and that we should limit electricity during the day and to not run air conditioners until after 8PM at night.
So what to do sans air conditioner? We take our tips from the Italians, who are used to it being rather molto caldo in l’estate:
Other ideas? I’m open to suggestions!
Or, you could just make your own slip and slide…we’re not lucky enough to have so much space!
But not that kind of baby. Instead we’re preparing the house for an adorable gattino! We’re going to name him Nero.
He wasn’t very old when these photos were taken…a little over five weeks which is too early to take from his mother. We are picking him up the week of the 12th and I can’t wait! He’s a Ragdoll, which are really docile, floppy cats (will go limp in your arms when you pick them up) and they lack the dense undercoat which means less matting and shedding. Plus Joe isn’t allergic to cats like that, whereas he has a really hard time with domestic short and longhairs that have the undercoat. We think that Romeo may have been part Ragdoll…the temperament is similiar and Romeo’s coat was gorgeous without much help from us. Plus they’re very friendly cats that love people, they’re lazy and like to be with you wherever you are.
And no, we know that he probably won’t be anything like Romeo. I’m not looking to replace him. But we wanted a cat with similar temperament and better possibilities of Joe not being allergic. The woman we’re getting the cat from has a husband who is allergic to cats and has no problem with these cats. And when we went to see him Joe was fine the whole time, even holding the cat. Thank god because when I saw how adorable this little kitty was I knew there was no way I could walk out of that house without knowing he was going to come home with me at some point!
As for the name, Nero… I’m writing a book about ancient Rome so am drawn to many of the old names. Now, I realize that Nero was a bit over-the-top and did some really awful things, but I’m not one who thinks that our little kitty will live up to his name. Since my book is about an ancient Roman gourmand and Nero was the emperor thought to have eaten the last bit of silphium, it’s a bit more fitting. And besides, nero is Italian for black, so the fact that our kitten is white lends some hipster irony to our choice.
I can’t wait to get him. The house is so quiet without a cat. I’ve lived the majority of my life with a pet and having such emptiness here is so unsettling. But not for long…we’re kitten-proofing (cords, breakables, etc.) and ready to welcome little Nero into a home full of love!
but I won’t be burning canyons for you.
However, the plan is to be blogging more. WordPress 3.0 allows for networked blogs so I’ve pulled them all together and have the best of intentions to keep the blogs up and running. After all, I am forever preaching the power of blogs and yet here I am, spotty in my own updates.
I was really struck by how my posts have changed over the last ten years. I’ve had a website since 1994 and been blogging since 1999. I was in such a different place in my life back then. I only have archives since 2000, shortly after I met my husband. I was so free in a way that I don’t feel now. Is it wisdom? Age? I understand more now about how my words can affect everything about me--is that all it is? Maybe. But I think in general, I don’t let my hair down quite as much as I might have back then. Or if I do, I’m less likely to blog about it.
Facebook also wasn’t in the picture. I find that I spend more time connecting with friends and family on Facebook now whereas I used to use my blog to do so. Facebook is, for me, a very personal network, so if you are thinking of looking me up and adding me, know that you’ll probably have an ignore on the invite. I like to actually KNOW the people in my Facebook network.
At any rate, I have been:
We’re also so smitten with Italy that we’re attempting to make cherry ratafia for the fall--possibly for xmas presents. There are a million recipes for it and I spent some time translating many of them to figure out some sort of possibility for our blend. Basically I mashed a bunch of recipes together. Our batch contains vodka, cherries, red wine, coriander, cinnamon, vanilla and cloves. It will sit in the sun for 8 weeks then in the dark for another 2-3 months. But we’re pretty sure it’s not going to be like the Ratafia DiMeo that we had (and yes we bought a bottle!) at Ferrara in Trastevere. If we could get it in the States we would just buy it instead of attempting to make it. But ahh we love a challengeMore to come soon!
Coca-Cola is about to light the rocket beneath a project that may, with luck, slightly reinvent the brand for the 21st Century: It’s ready to take its amazing Freestyle drinks makers mainstream, with 104 user-controlled flavors.
Dang, wonder if they give you some sort of possibility chart or something? What do I want? Banana coke? Raspberry root beer? Bubblegum sprite?
My best friend, my closest confidante. He was with me through separation, divorce, job loss, accidents, heartbreak, love, marriage–you name it, he was there. He knew when I was happy or sad. He loved me completely, unconditionally. He was an intimate part of our daily rituals. Walking through each room hurts now because his presence is gone. His little voice is missing. I had thought I would have a few more years with him but he was ripped away in the space of a couple hours. The world has so much less color without him.
