Alien Barbecue

Third post in as many months, such a huge difference from the old days when I had to contain myself to keep from writing two in a day, and that was because I didn’t want to be one of THOSE bloggers who blogged every time they went to the bathroom. But this? My own little pace? Infrequent is an understatement.

I could have lived a thousand lifetimes between now and the last time I posted.

Instead, I had an uncle pass away of cancer. I got to see him the day before it happened; he lived his last days at a hospice with a beautiful view of San Diego. Gorgeous. It was practically on top of the world, surrounded by lovely, peaceful parks and great architecture. The only bad thing about the place is that those who could benefit most from such heaven-like surroundings really can’t appreciate it because either they’re there for palliative care, or they’re there for their loved one who doesn’t have long to live. My uncle was there for less than a week, and he was surrounded by all of his sisters through a lot of that time.

These sisters, my mother included, are all descended from that young farmer from New York who became a soldier in the Spanish-American war and started a family in the Philippines, the man with the dark blue eyes, dark brown hair, and ruddy skin, according to the military records I found online. My mother’s family all have brown eyes, but of them all, my uncle had the lightest eyes — a strange shade of golden amber, real tawny. He probably resembled that young farmer the most.

I wanted to tell my uncle about his grandfather’s family tree, and I wanted to tell him what else I discovered in that tree since I last posted about it. I thought it might give him some peace to know. There’s a saying I heard somewhere, about how you’ll live a longer, better, more peaceful life if at least once you visit where you came from. My words are all wrong, of course, but the meaning is there. So I thought it would be kind of neat to give that to my uncle in his last days, but he was already too far gone by then.

But here’s what I found out:

My great grandfather’s mother was descended from a Revolutionary War colonel. I had finally figured out her maiden name and consequently discovered that her family branch is recorded in old genealogy books, two of which I’ve hunted and bought. Beavers is the surname, and I was amused to find out that some of those Beavers (distant cousins) went on to marry Pickles — at least two or three of them did, actually. Beavers and Pickles … hmm. The name Lanning and Hart also came up in my family tree, and they, too, were early settlers.

The colonel’s name was Joseph Beavers, and the word is that he was Scotch-Irish. Other people in the family, those who married the colonel’s descendants, probably came from England and Germany. I’m such a brown little girl, I’m tickled pink to think I have a tiny bit of Irish in me, let alone, Scotch, English, or German. That would explain why I have cousins with blue, gray, or hazel eyes, light skin, and bridges on their noses. There’s a Philippine creation myth that implies Filipinos’ noses were made with mud, and that’s why they’re flat, brown, and squishy.

But anyway, besides all of that, I’ve been working, playing catch-up — always playing catch-up. March is my month to really get caught up, though, as I’ll be traveling again in April. I’m hoping nothing else comes up besides taxes and work before then.

That way, I may be able to post a little more frequently.

Aren’t we just flying? Two posts this year already, whee!

The trip to Maryland was fine, and in hindsight, timed perfectly. We missed their snowiest winter of all, and so I sit here in California, typing, while our friends there are completely snowed in. The funny thing is, we went there so H.E. could show me the worst about living in Maryland, so that I could see that it really isn’t all that bad — his way of selling me the idea of getting a house in a state with actual seasons. They’d had a bit of snow there before we arrived, and some of it still hadn’t melted in a few piles here and there, and I thought, “OK. He’s right. Not bad!” Then this extreme weather happens, and all I see in the news today is ice cold snow piled many feet high! Temperatures in the teens! And now I can’t get warm, when I’m not even there.

While we were there, our cat sitter text messaged H.E. one day and asked, “By the way, did you know Sox was a boy?”

A what?!

OK, background story. We got Sox from one of H.E.’s friends, who owns a menagerie of cats and dogs. The guy and his wife, their lives are just completely overrun by animals, and they love it. They’d finally managed to bring in a neighborhood cat who’d had a litter of kittens twice before, and they ended up getting the cat fixed and nursing the kittens. Around that time, we were looking to get a second cat anyway because Cat is so old, H.E.’s afraid that if she goes while there is no backup cat, I’ll be completely inconsolable. His only requirement was that the new cat be female, to lessen the complications bound to spring up with bringing two strange cats together.

So anyway, H.E. visits his friend regularly, and when Sox came up to him and purred on his chest while he was there, he was sold. His friend assured him it was female, and one night H.E. came home with Sox in a box. I fell in love immediately.

Then Sox had the balls to turn into a boy. Literally. Another one of his litter mates, whom they thought at first a boy, then a girl, then again a boy, seems to have gone through the same confusion. As much as H.E.’s friend loves animals, his animal husbandry obviously has tons of room for improvement.

Oh, well. Right?

It’s too early to get Sox fixed; we’ll get it done around March or April. But I wish we had known earlier. We might have named him differently. Not that Sox doesn’t still work; it’s a sexually ambiguous enough name. But we might have gone with Tux for Tuxedo, or even Fred Astaire, to go with his dapper suit. Then again, had we known he was a boy, H.E. might not have ever brought him home. So there’s that. He’s still as sweet as ever (Sox, not H.E., though H.E. has his sweet moments, too), and he sometimes acts more like a puppy than a cat (again, Sox, not H.E., though H.E. is a bit like a puppy dog, too). I still can’t get much knitting done; I have to wait until we put Sox in his room for the night to knit, so that’s very little time.

Speaking of which, I managed to finish my first actual knitting project — a many-shaded red scarf with fringes on the ends. I did it in a very soft and thick yarn that was simply fun to work with, and I wish I’d taken a photo of it before I gave it as a present to the wife of one of H.E.’s friends in Maryland (they took us boating in the Chesapeake Bay when we went to Maryland last September). That’s TWO craft projects I forgot to take pictures of now, the first being the blue, gray, and white baby blanket that I made for my sister’s friend.

Seems I’m taking less and less pictures now. I have to amend that.

In the meantime, I have to get writing. I have a workshop coming up this weekend, and I’ve barely started. If anyone’s interested, I’ll be here:

http://www.creativedirection-workshops.org/

I know it’s been a while since I’ve blogged on a regular basis. This year I have no resolutions to amend that fact. I have to be prepared for a lot of changes this year, so I’m leaving myself open for all kinds of possibilities by not making any promises which I’m not sure I can keep. H.E. has taken up some new work endeavors, and it could mean moving again and more travel. We also have a kitten in the household, and in less than three months she has managed to take over our lives.

The kitten — who is a black and white tuxedo cat that we’ve named Sox — is likely the biggest reason why I haven’t kept up with my old activities. She’s more catlike than Cat, meaning she’ll actually play with keyboards and balls of yarn; so it’s been difficult to work at my computer or at my newfound hobby of knitting. I’ve had to put a lot of that aside. She’s also in a biting phase — practicing her skills in hunting and killing the wild deer, no doubt — so even if I resort to writing or drawing by hand, on actual paper, I’ll find I have to stop abruptly when the movement of the pen suddenly attracts her, or I risk getting mauled by the little tigress in the black morning coat.

Plus, she’ll eat almost anything, so in her third week here, she got really sick — so sick that she stopped eating and drinking altogether, and we had to take her to the vet to get hydrated via a catheter. Turned out that her potassium levels were high, and the vet suspected renal problems; he kept asking us if we had any plants in the house that she may have eaten, but our thumbs are so black that even fake plastic flowers die a horrible death — so no, we couldn’t even look to that as a cause. It took an entire week before she started feeling better again, and we still don’t even know what she could have possibly ingested to make her so ill. Probably she ate her own farts, which — I’ve got to tell you — are kind of deadly. She’s cute as all heck, but she’s got worse gas problems than my late grandmother ever had, which wouldn’t be such a huge problem if she (the kitten, not my grandmother) didn’t love sleeping on my neck and chest so much with her Kim Kardashian cat butt right under my nose.

Let’s not even mention the grief the kitten puts Cat through — the older cat is every day on the verge of a mental breakdown now that there’s another ball of fur with teeth and claws in the house.

So that’s where I’m at right now.

Next week, I’ll be flying back to Maryland for a few days. Next month, I’ll be doing another workshop with Anne Cain, Crocodesigns, and Christine M. Griffin. After that, taxes. Joy, oh, joy!

Here’s to hoping you’re all having a great year so far…