Ambergris

Woke up chilly, rainy day.  Snuggled in with the cats, knowing I had no place to be and nothing to do except feed critters today.  This is kind of nice, once in a while.

When my house burned, I was out of it for eleven months, if I recall correctly.  Such madness.  I keep wondering if things would have gone differently with the husband and his drinking, and with the boys and their problems, but for all that.  That's why I said to get a lawyer first off.  The insurance companies exist for reasons other than helping you.

From a friend on Facebook

The lard in the gringo-oriented supermarket is the same as I bought in the US, but what I buy in the market is rendered off the pig and is simply the same lidded cup the natural yogurt comes in and is labeled butter of pork.  I think I will hold it separate, or refrigerate my mix.  

Room temperature reaches well into the seventies on sunny afternoons, due to the metal roof.  I keep it in the low seventies when I'm home by opening windows.

I have shortening and buttermilk powder on the shopping list for my next trip to the city, but shortening has a question mark on it.

Here, they use lard, so the few cans of shortening you see have a good layer of dust on them--not what I want to see when I I don't have my reading glasses on and have to use a magnifying glass to look for dates.

Has anyone made this up using lard?  How long is lard shelf stable?  

I have black eyed peas on the stove, my first try at dried peas at this elevation (6000 feet).  I'm using a traditional clay pot I bought from a women's pottery co-op northwest of here.   Don't plan to start the cornbread for a good long while, but they already smell good.  They soaked all day yesterday and all night.

Sigh.  The cats continue their pattern of one disappearing when the other turns up.  For a couple of days, the little cat was staying in the barn, in a stall where we'd piled all the boxes from the move.  Problem is, she's not come out for food or to get pettings for three days now, as far as I can tell.  I've been leaving a door open for her, and a window open for her, when I'm home in the daylight, but the house is shut up tight when I'm not home and most of the time after dark.  Which has been most of the past three days.  I saw her through the screen window of the barn day before yesterday, but I have been in that stall in and out all morning (five hours) and neither seen nor smelled any sign of her.  I have opened cans of food today and yesterday, with no response.  She's not that interested in canned food, but she does like to lick the fluid off it, and she is a pig for affection. 

I know she doesn't like being shut up in the house, but I really just don's see how she would choose to become a full-time barn cat instead.

Can also eat trombocino green as summer squash.  You can do that with most winter squash, but trombocino is bred for it.  

Exercise day.  Made coffee, did a minimal online Spanish lesson, began packing bag for trip to Vilcabamba today, realized I hadn't seen my little wallet with my cards since the Amazon trip, and went searching for it.  Long/short, did not find it.  Housekeeper who was giving me a ride to Vilca arrived and helped look--nothing. 

Got to Vilca a little late but things slowed down there and used cash for my breakfast, for a new purse, and for more printer paper.  PM and I split up, with her spending the bulk of the day keeping company with a gentleman who just lost his wife and is planning her service while I shopped and then went to her house to crash until my exercise class (also at her house). 

Figured out half an hour before class that I had left my exercise class bag at the house, so I texted the instructor in time for her to bring hers. 

After class visited more with PM, who is not doing well, came home, had supper, and found my wallet the second place I looked.

My old cat needed two tries to jump up onto the couch next to me.  This bore home that he might be quite old.  I don't know how old he was when I got him, but he's been with me 13 years now.

I bought a new laser printer (good for text printing) on Thursday, and today I put it to work.  I printed out a pile of lines, notes, and ideas for poems, along with some unfinished drafts and a bare handful of finished or sort of finished poems.  Right now I have 22 sort of finished poems and a couple of notes for the next two I can start on.

In short, this was a productive day.

I kind of worry more about an overdue baby than one that's a week or so under the magic 40  weeks.  Not that 41 weeks is really any different than 40.  

Last suitcase is packed and laid open on the floor.  Contents need some minor rearranging.

Bathroom has been scrubbed.  Kitchen is getting terminal scrub-down now.

Armoire, cupboards, drawers are all empty.  Pantry and shelves are down to what they had when I arrived.

Contents of fridge and freezer were boxed up and shipped out.  And hopefully inserted in new fridge at other end.

Cushion covers have been cleaned and are in laundry hamper so they won't collect cat hairs before tomorrow.

The row of plants that had to come up have gone north to the mountain.  Sod has been laid and watered.

There is, of course, a layer of cat-food all over the living room floor from where I tripped over the food bowl.  The bag has been packed up and shipped off, so this has to be picked up and put back in the bowl.

Tomorrow I get to put both cats in one cat carrier, and additionally put a harness and leash on the big cat who knows how to get out of the cat carrier.  Won't that be fun?

Sunday I get to negotiate how much it will cost me.  The maximum I might be on the hook for is $1000, meaning loss of $500 in sunk cost and an additional $500.  But I might avoid paying the additional $500 and get a refund of the sunk $500.  Or it might be a wash.  

Sigh...I'm the one breaking a lease so I can keep my chickens when the landlord changed his mind...

That's a lot easier to do here. 

Rained yesterday, badly needed rain.  Raining today.  I hope to get some housecleaning done that was not done on the normal day.  Maybe some packing of the pottery pieces in sheets and things.

What positive proof?  He has lied before.  He has been fired before.  He has disrespected you before.  He continues to lie.  He continues to disrespect you.  He is a lying liar who lies.  

He is wearing you down and trying to make you proud/grateful for scattered crumbs of basic human decency.  Why give him more time in which to bully you?  

He could in many states be prosecuted for elder abuse, financial and emotional.  He is grooming you to accept increasing abuse.  Where will that end? 

If you let him stay until then, something will happen and it will be September 15, then October 7 or 19 or something.  You know this song, and the next verse is same as the first.

First the hair rose up on my arms and my head tickled and went cool, and the cats took off. 

Then there was a click to my left with a flash.

Then there was a big flash and a KBLAM.

Then there was a chemical-metal smell.

The cats are still freaked, now mashed against me.

So am I.

PM called.  She felt/smelled it from her house, and the puppy is hiding in the shower. 

Come daylight, we need to hunt for burn marks to see where the lightning struck, exactly.

I had one big tomato that had green fruit bigger than golf balls and a lot of flowers, but the main trunk was twisted/split near the base (which didn't faze it) and then snapped off about three feet from the dirt line.  It kept chugging on.  Now it's been shipped off and I'm worrying more over it than over all my fruiting trees and flowers and other tomatoes and everything else combined.  Isn't that silly?

I grew a couple of tea camellias and was not favorably impressed.  In zone 8, you could do better with yaupon.

(I thought I had posted this before.  I don't know what happened to that.)

CTRL

According to quora, the failure rate is 20% in the coast guard boot camp.

Also tell your insurance company IMMEDIATELY that you gave them notice ahead of time that you would not be able to be there due to the scheduling.  Insurance generally does not cover no-show fees.

I grew a couple of these, but wasn't favorably impressed.  

In Zone 8, your better bet is yaupon.

I had those shelves.  They are absolutely worth it.  Even after mine got moved to the porch and mistreated horribly, they held up and looked good for year after year.

My financial planner only has my US phone numbers, so can't get hold of me any more.  Which is good, since our goals don't really mesh.  (He was assigned to me.)

I have a guy coming either today or tomorrow, I'm not sure which, to do yard work.  Preparing to move, I need these big planting pots pushed over to the verandah walk, the grassless spots under them patched with turf I bought the other day, and the grass all over the yard neatly cut.  He's coming as soon as he finishes "a little job" with someone else, so I have no idea what time to expect him.  It might be a long two days of waiting.  Luckily, I have a lot of things I can putter around doing:  Spanish lessons on the computer, other stuff on the computer, preliminary packing, salting down more key limes, etc.

I never tried to prune my kumquat down to size, but they are closely related to citrus, which responds very well to being hard-pruned to keep it a manageable size.  My guess is you could keep it to bush size, four or so feet tall and about two feet wide, if you wanted to.

Edit:  ha! I say never, but I might have at some time and I could just not be remembering it right now.  You know how time and memory go.