Fox and Cinnamon at the Voodoo Museum

Sunday, January 24, 2021

Happy 34, Amon! (January 5, 2021)

Amon with Fox and her scary face and, on the wall, the mask he made in welding class at ACC.

Amon and Fox with a happier face.

Otis returned with Portland mud (January 2, 2021)

Otis took his remote controlled car to Portland. He and Micah and Amon ran it through the mud. Great performance, great drift!

The top was soaked in a bucket of soapy water. Dried mud was poked and rubbed off the chassis for now.

Otis's big reveal (January 2, 2021)

Not all of Otis returned from Portland on January 2nd. Renee gave him a haircut to start 2021. He kept his hoodie up until he, Fox, and I got home from the airport, then ...the reveal!

Otis's new look

Sunday, January 3, 2021

Here's to a happy 2021! (New Year's Eve/New Year's Day)

Amon and Fox came over at 7 p.m. Tom and Amon played Black Jack, then all of us played Spades. We talked about Greenwich Mean Time, spun Tom's old globe to find the International Date Line, then finally used Google to find out the New Year started in the Line Islands, far out in the Pacific.

Counting down! May 2020 disappear forever! The very last thing I learned in 2020: how to set the photo timer on my phone. Thanks, Fox!

Starting 2021 right, with half and half. Amon and Fox are observing carnivore month in January: meat and dairy only.

Mmm! Half and half!

Thursday, December 31, 2020

Waning hours of 2020 (December 31, 2020)

2020 is not going gently into that good night but rather throwing a graupel tantrum at our house. Oh 2020! We will forever remember thee but never miss thee.

Einar still won't stay inside even though we've taken care of him since 2007. He showed up at our house right before we left for Ryder and Brandy's wedding in Las Vegas. So, we do the best we can for him. We wrapped the cat carrier in towels and a shower curtain in hopes he'll stay snug and dry over these coming 35 degree or so nights. Not total protection, but the rain doesn't usually blow from the east, the direction he is facing. The house protects from the north wind.

Meet Joli! (New Year's Eve)

Meet Joli, our newest family member, a twin tail half moon betta fish. Taking care of Fox's betta Valentina while Amon was in Portland reminded me of how much I love having a betta. Fox helped me pick out Joli at PetSmart. His container didn't identify him as male or female, but we think he fits the male description. Just in case, we named him "Joli," the masculine French word for "pretty," which is pronounced the same as "jolie," the feminine word for "pretty." Say it just like "Julie" but with a long o instead of a u.

Famous last words: "We can put Joli on the kitchen table. Zephyr never jumps up there."

"Meow" is cat speak for "A lingerie bag? Really? You think that's gonna keep me away from the fishie?"

"Meow" equals "Just go about your business. I'm only hanging out up here."

Urgent "meow" means "PLEASE let me play with the fishie! PLEASE?"

Merry Christmas from Kappa! (December 25, 2020)

Kappa, unjustly renamed "Creepy Doll" by certain lovable grandchildren, wishes you a Merry Christmas. She even borrowed Zephyr's elf hat to get in the spirit.

Back story: when my Mom was pregnant with me, she entered a raffle for the doll put on by one of the sororities at Louisiana Tech in Ruston, Louisiana, where my Dad was a petroleum engineering student. She won, hence the name Kappa in honor of the sorority. Kappa came with a wardrobe including pajamas and a red satin evening gown. Kappa's clothes stayed with me for decades, move after move. Sadly, I no longer know where her clothes are or what happened to them. I wouldn't have thrown them away....maybe left behind in an attic somewhere???

Anyway, until I was a grown-up, like in my 40s, I thought her name was Capel (rhymes with chapel). That's when Mom told me Kappa's origin story and I learned her real name. Not Creepy Doll, BTW.

Christmas Eve project: beeswax lotion bars (December 24, 2020)

Time to do something with the honeycombs from our June honey harvest, plus a few empty ones we collected later when our bees industriously built combs on the underside of the hive lid, in the way of closing it back after opening it.

I strained the melted wax, filtering out a lot of debris in the cheesecloth.

The yield was almost 6 ounces of beeswax, enough to make six lotion bars. The recipe is so easy! Melt the wax with almond oil, coconut oil, and vitamin E, add essential oil for fragrance, and pour into the molds to cool.

Poured and cooling.

I was expecting a Pinterest fail, but no. The bars are beautiful!

December harvest

Christmas Eve pickings

Almost ripe on Christmas Day.

Saving the big one for Roy. Picked December 28th.

Fresh basil all year long.

Spotted Santa and his backup crew down the street (December 22, 2020)

No red-nosed reindeer to guide Santa through the night, but plenty of red-eyed skele-corns to pull his sleigh.

The Great Conjunction was the Great Disappointment (December 21, 2020)

We combined a beekeeping trip with a chance to see the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn out at Cornerstone, where there's no light pollution.

The shed, the beehive, the Zoomer, the field.

The best time to see the Great Conjunction, NASA said, was about 45 minutes after sunset. Almost time!

Papa walked the fence line. He found a dead buzzard and kept the talons. Ugh! I refused to even look at them.

Ok, here's the very grainy phone photo of the planets. Are those Saturn's rings???

On our way home, we could still see the pinprick in the sky. If you look just to the right of center, almost at the top of the photo, you'll see what we saw. Could this really be it? We were expecting something like the Star of Bethlehem as depicted on Christmas cards, a distant headlight in the sky.

Big Red pays us a visit (December 21, 2020)

Our wandering neighborhood chicken, Big Red, paid us a visit on the Winter Solstice. He (she?) lives at 1207 Alguno and has wandered as far as the next street over before returning to his coop for the night. Our neighborhood also has a wandering pig, Kevin Bacon, that occasionally escapes its home a block over and ambles down our street.

After taking this photo, I scooped Big Red up and gently tossed him over the fence so he could find his way home. Or to another neighbor's house.

Remembering Texas's COVID deaths (December 16, 2020)

A neighbor plants a flag for each Texan who has died from COVID-19. As of December 16, the toll stood at 23,821. As I write this on the last day of December, the Texas toll is at 27,821, with 322 new cases reported yesterday. My high school friend Trish told me, "One of those flags represents somebody I loved."

Dad's hibiscus (December 15, 2020)

I brought Dad's hibiscus in for our first cold snap. We've been blessed with beautiful blooms and memories of how much he loved his garden.

Looking for signs of raccoons on the roof (December 14, 2020)

After hearing scratching noises on the roof, Papa and Otis checked for raccoons. No ring-tailed bandits were in sight, but the telltale signs of their work was there. One or more had torn shingles into pieces to get to the underlying decking, where they'd chewed an 8-10" wide hole.

Another clue that we'd had night visitors was the wads of insulation they'd tossed into the yard. Papa sprayed the insulation with a Tabasco sauce/dish soap mixture, stuffed it back in the holes, and covered the holes with metal flashing. We've not heard from the rascals since.