Pum-Kin in a Tree

There once was a beautiful cat named Pum-Kin. He was mostly orange with white spots on his little face, like backwards sports player eye black. His orange fur was fluffy – so very fluffy – and had white spots accentuating his body in just the right places. He pranced around on white tufts of furry feet and a glance from his lovely visage would cause an average human's heart to melt into butter.

He lived in the back yard of two kindly men who made sure that there was food in a dish for him. While he appreciated the food, he wasn't quite sure that he trusted people enough to actually snuggle with them. Sometimes he'd let one of them scratch his head, because this is the price you have to pay to keep a food supply. But, for the most part he kept himself at arm's length.

One time one of the kindly men put his food on a nice table about two feet from where it usually sat on the back porch. This was very confusing for a pretty cat named Pum-Kin, who wasn't the most intelligent thing ever to walk on four feet. But, he was very pretty. Another time he had to share his food with a skunk named Trevor, because even though he wasn't the brightest star in the galaxy, Pum-Kin knew better than to go to battle with a omnivorous black-and-white New World mammal of the weasel family.

One day, in the middle of Central Texas' excuse for a winter – meaning that the temperatures had recently gotten as far down as 35° before returning to the 50's – Pum-Kin decided to climb a tree. He wasn't quite sure why; there is just a need inside every cat to be on top of something they see. You may have noticed this tendency in your own cats, especially if you've left a piece of paper laying about. It's just something that cats have to do, a mysterious call of nature. So, one afternoon, after having seen this strange short tree for years, he finally decided that food wasn't going to be served any time soon so he may as well have a climb. This didn't go so well for poor little Pum-Kin. He got stuck and tangled and didn't quite know what to do with himself. Fortunately, one of the kindly men wandered by. Unfortunately, the kindly man had a camera.

Poor Pum-Kin

Perhaps now you understand why pretty little Pum-Kin is reluctant to trust humans, even kindly ones with food.

Autumn 2017

Autumn is in the air. It was this morning, anyway. This is Central Texas and the temperature is still in the 80's – if not the 90's – during the day. But, we can pretend. I lift my head and try to get a whiff of that technicality in the air, the one that says that the autumnal equinox has already passed and it's time for the leaves to change colors, the temperature to drop and the nights to grow spooky. I can almost taste the nostalgia. It is October.

Being that it is under 100° I felt compelled to be outside today. I love front porches and I live in a house that has one. Oddly, I never use it. (Actually, for reasons I can't comprehend, the front door is nailed shut, which speaks volumes for why I don't use it. But, we're gonna let that go before we start a fight.) So, this afternoon I dragged the two rocking chairs and glass-top patio table to the driveway and swept the wooden floor and tried to get the cobwebs down from the walls and ceiling. There was one wasp nest that I didn't want to disturb, (and I didn't want to get sidetracked by getting rid of it.) I then turned my attention to the much-neglected rocking chairs. 

They are nice chairs – made from wood and painted white. There have been a couple of storms that blew rain and dirt on them, though, so only the residents of this household were aware that they were actually white. To most people they were a dull brown. I had more success cleaning the one that was further away from the northeast side of the porch. The storms that came tended to blow the dirty rain from that side, as wind blew across the dirt driveway/parking area. As I was cleaning I saw a spider and before I could catch myself he had been washed off the chair. What if that was my father trying to visit? Sorry Dad. 

After all that I poured lime-flavored Topo Chico over ice and sat on the newly cleaned chair on the sort-of cleaned porch with only a few mosquitoes and a tiny wasp nest that I hadn't disturbed so I felt comfortable that they weren't angry at me. Tired. I'm probably still anemic; that much activity should not have made me as dizzy as it did. However, let's lose about 30 pounds and see if we don't feel better. I hope I do; I'm running out of possible reasons for the anemia.

As I recovered I sat thinking. I thought about what I would like to do with the shrubs, how to trim them to make the house look better and keep from blocking the view from the porch. It was hot, but a breeze came by every once in a while and felt very nice. I got up to refill my Topo Chico and saw Dad again on the door. This time I just said, "Hi Dad" and kept going. I didn't knock the spider off.

The family across the street was cleaning a building in their back yard. I know this because the woman was "directing" activity the entire time I sat outside. She was yelling almost nonstop about every conceivable thing – related to cleaning or otherwise. Next door to them a Mexican man rode up on his bicycle and leaned it against a tree near the house. After a few minutes another man rode up and they sat together on that porch, chatting quietly. 

This is the small town I live in. This is what I call home. I'm not really used to it. I need to take tips from my friend, Tamara, who is a yoga master at keeping things tidy and de-cluttered. For the most part it's easier to take a nap and forget about it, but I could learn to love being home so much more if I spent a few minutes a day keeping things up. That's a lot of work, though. I need a nap just thinking about it.

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Glass for refreshing beverage next to my ever-present notebook. And pen. On the Front Porch.

Anniversary of the Bastrop Wildfire

Today marks the anniversary of the beginning of the Bastrop Wildfires. It was Labor Day that year that I first heard about the fires; they were just fires then. One in Pflugerville, one in Bastrop, and a handful of others. The winds had picked up and caused the fires to spread; and they contributed to the fires themselves. The official report was that trees hit power lines and the winds blew the sparks, causing at least one of the fires that later converged into the Bastrop Wildfire Complex. Central Texas was in the height of the drought at that time, leaving so much dead grass, trees and brush. Wind + sparks + dry brush = wildfire. The Bastrop wildfire ultimately burned 34,000 acres, including the Lost Pines Forest and Bastrop State Park, over 1600 homes and 40 commercial buildings.

It wasn't just Bastrop, though they were hit the hardest by far. Steiner Ranch, a subdivision in West Austin, was evacuated due to fires. At my job in west Austin we could smell the burning in the air, but couldn't tell if it was Bastrop (east of Austin) or Steiner Ranch or any of the other fires that had popped up around town. Anywhere there was brush there was likely to be fire. My brother was living in Australia at the time and I was watching his house. I got a shocked text message at 3 in the morning, "Steiner Ranch is burning?!" It was about 10 miles from each of our homes. 

I remember several things. I remember putting cat carriers by the front door for easy evacuation. I remember keeping a suitcase in the trunk of my car in case my condo burned down. I remember finding a website that tied in with the Austin Fire Department and spending large chunks of time monitoring that. We all wondered if the next big fire was going to be our home. I thought about leaving my condo and staying with Barry in Elgin, but there was no guarantee that his place was safer than mine. (He actually has more brush, so his house was probably in greater danger.) Several animal shelters, such as Austin Pets Alive, mobilized to evacuate the animals from the Bastrop animal shelter. (I volunteered to foster cats, but they didn't end up using me.) Here in Elgin (in Bastrop County), Barry let some people park a camper on his property while they waited to see if their home in Bastrop survived.

Meanwhile, Bastrop burned and burned. It was over a month before they were able to contain it. One problem was that so many of the resources that we might have borrowed from the State of Texas and other neighbors were being used for other wildfires. An obvious problem was the incredibly dry grass and dead trees and brush due to the drought. And, then wind wouldn't stop. The Colorado River might have been a natural barrier for a fire, except that the wind blew sparks and ashes across, allowing the wildfire to jump the river. 

Ironically, it seems that Tropical Storm Lee was at least part of the cause for the winds, though we didn't receive rain from it. My brother and his husband live in New Jersey and they were being flooded and blown away by Hurricane Irene. That storm hit around August 28th, a week before our fires began. I would watch in dismay for the next few years as our drought continued and as they were time and again flooded by storms such has Hurricane Sandy the following year. (If we can build a pipeline for oil from Canada to Texas, why can't we build one for excess water from the Northeast to Texas?!)

Today, the Bastrop County Long-Term Recovery Project has organized an event to commemorate the fires, offering a place for people to come and feel safe and to remember – remember the people who acted to keep them safe, remember the people who lost everything, remember and discuss where they were when it happened and to be able to come together to see how far they've come in recovery. It was a surreal experience that none of us will soon forget.

Rainy Morning

March 10, 2012

With it raining outside this morning I sat on my porch and drank my first cup of coffee. I thought of many things, not the least of which is how much I love rain. I should have been born in a rainforest. My family has ended up in Central and South-Central Texas and it's not exactly a desert, but we've been in a drought the last few years. Xeriscape is the prevalent landscaping scheme. The music of rain falling is something that is unfamiliar to us during the summer lately. But, it's almost spring and the rain makes the grass very green, what little grass there is here. It was cool and quiet and my cats were out there with me, but staying under the cover with me rather than exploring. The air had a crisp quality, very refreshing.

It makes me think of a Psalm that I love, Psalm 63.

O God, you are my God, for you I long;
for you my soul is thirsting.
My body pines for you
like a dry, weary land without water.

I'm a little sad at how much I can relate to those words. My poor earth is so dry. When we first moved from Amarillo I remember thinking that this must be Eden, or something along those lines. Compared with the stark, flat landscape of the Panhandle of Texas I suppose it does still seem like a paradise. But, I wait for this drought to pass and for us not to suffer the reality of the lack of water.


It's still a little chilly for me (it's 46 degrees outside right now) so I came back inside and had my second cup in front of the computer. I have a desk lamp and one of my cats is sleeping under it. The cats must love me, because even if they're upset with me they generally want to be in whatever room I'm in. They're so much in the habit of sleeping on my desk that I put a placemat on it under the lamp. They have totally ruined those placemats with their hair anyway, so I'm using them for their benefit now. (It's not nice to find hair on your fork when sitting at the table, and that's pretty much how it goes with these placemats now. I've decided that it's not worth the time to try to get the hair out.)

I perused facebook and gmail and other social-related sites. It was still raining outside so I decided that I should have some appropriate music. This led me to create a playlist for rain. I call it Songs for Rain. Here's what I came up with. I played with the order a little bit and I think this works best with what I have so far.

Title Artist Me Van a Matar Julieta Venegas Rainy Days and Mondays The Carpenters Set Fire To The Rain Adele Lluvia De Primavera Raúl Di Blasio Ravel: Jeux d'eau Lympany Bachata Rosa Juan Luis Guerra Blackbird Sarah McLachlan Maldita Primavera Yuri Burbujas De Amor Juan Luis Guerra Send Me On Me Way Rusted Root - Cavatina Raúl Di Blasio

This is music that I already have, and have imported into iTunes. I have many more cd's that I need to load. I'm not going to work on that project at this time. I'll just take notes if I decide that another song deserves to be in this playlist and then rip that cd onto my computer. I always have a small notebook for notes with me, so it won't matter where I come across the idea. (I just love Moleskine notebooks. I got mine at Barnes & Noble. I have one side opening and one that flips from the top so you can move the page up as you're writing on the bottom of the page.)

Let me know what you think. Give me ideas that I could add.

Thanks.