being a jerk is a good thing...

[the following is about my cat Philly. i started writing it a week and a half ago when she was very ill, and i am finishing it when she is no longer with us.]

this is Philly (Ophelia), the ball of grey fluff i usually refer to as Baby Bear.

she has been very ill for several weeks, and i have accepted the likelihood that this may be the end for her. 

she was part of a litter that had been abandoned by their mother, and only two of the kittens were alive when the animator's parents found them. one of their cats was nursing kittens at the time, and she welcomed the two orphans as her own. 

Baby Bear was tiny and underdeveloped right from the beginning. the animator's parents tend to let their cats come and go as they wish, and she would have only gotten lost in that shuffle. knowing that she would require extra special care (and the many trips to the vet that would entail), we figured she might have a better chance with us.

 plus... not gonna lie... i took one look at that ball of fluff, and i was in love. 

so, just like that, she became our cat. and, seeing how attached she was to her adopted mom, we decided not to split them up. so, Titty (Titania)—aka Mama Kitty, the curmudgeony calico—came to live with us as Baby Bear's plus-one.

we figured at the time that we would do our best to keep Philly comfortable for however long she might end up living. 

that was nine years ago.

they would eventually be joined by Cordy (Cordelia), the Little One who destroys things...

and just like that, our furry duo became a trio.

but Philly would always retain the title of "Baby Bear", because she always acted like one. she would also earn the title of "the Jerk"... for much the same reason. 

i should point out that this cat was a tiny, little thing when we first got her. the vet made a point of warning us from the start that she was always going to be small, and she was. in adulthood, Philly weighed about four and a half pounds on her heaviest days. do not be fooled by all that fur. she was almost non-existent. 

and, oh... the knots and tangles! 

despite all that tinyness—or, perhaps, because of it—she was the biggest bully you could ever imagine, and her bullying behavior was always about the same thing. food. 

she did not like being kept waiting for her morning meal. if you took too long dividing the contents of a can between the three bowls, you would be hurried along by a few sharp nips to the back of the calves. i am convinced that cat had the sharpest teeth in existence. likewise, if we were taking too long to get out of bed, she would... uhm... motivate us by standing on our heads and nipping at the tip of our noses. her bites never did any real damage. they were just annoying enough to encourage you to hurry along. 

no exaggeration... i will spend the rest of my life sleeping with the covers pulled up over my head thanks to years of being traumatized by that ridiculous little cat. 

so cute. so cruel. 

worst part was, she demanded her morning meal at sunrise, and she would wake us in advance to make sure that it was not late. you know that part of the Summer where the sun comes up at like quarter to five every morning? well, she would usually start waking us at around four-fifteen. 

i really miss that ridiculous cat.

the other two cats were also subjected to her bullying tactics. she would shove them around, and literally pull the food out from under their faces. she was such a jerk, the other two would just walk away some days and let her have her fill before coming back to clear up whatever scraps she left behind.

the animator would give them their bowls and let them sort it out, but i always felt compelled to stand there and play cafeteria lunch lady so that the other two could have a chance to eat their meal in peace.

me: i don't understand why they let themselves get pushed around by this little runt. they each weigh more than twice as much as her. they can just give her a good smack and put her in her place.

him: easier to just ignore her and let her think she's the boss.

me: that only encourages her to keep on being such a jerk.   

and she did. she defended that title right up to her last days, even as we were monitoring her every move to see how she was doing.

me: oh! she seems to be eating.

him: she's eating?

me: yeh. and she just shoved Cordy out of the way to get to that bowl.

him: she did?

me: yeh. oh... and now she's doing that thing where she grabs the edge of the bowl, and pulls it away from under Titty's face, so i guess she plans to eat from that one too. 

him: even on the edge of death, she's still a jerk.

me: pretty much. at least we know she's feeling good enough today to be eating. 

there are some situations in life where being a jerk is a good thing, and this was one of them. 

she had been sick quite a few times over the years, and we usually took this return to jerkish form as a sign of improvement. however, the situation was far worse this time around, and a couple days later, she was gone. 

we got to spend a lot more time with her than anyone (even the vet) thought would be the case. despite being the smaller of the two that survived from her litter, she outlived the other one by several years, and she was in good health for most of that time, although it felt like an uphill battle at times. we were not even sure if her eyes were functioning properly for the first year or so, and it was an ongoing struggle to keep them (and the rest of her) in working condition in the years to follow. i cannot begin to recount all the gels, pills, ointments, and other vet-prescribed concoctions we have had to administer over the years... or the sideshow of getting her to take them. 

to the casual observer, it might seem ridiculous to have two adults tag-team-restraining a four-pound cat, but this one was a jerk who liked to bite. 

there has been a sad note hanging over our home this past week, and her absence is pronouncedly evident. she was always in the way, always inviting herself into the midst of anything i tried to do. 

she spent so much time hanging around me, i came to think of her as my personal shadow kitty. i still find myself walking gingerly around our home, expecting her to be lurking somewhere near my feet, constantly positioning herself right where i am about to step.

despite being the tiniest biggest jerk on the planet, she is sorely missed. 

she was a great companion to Mama Kitty...

and a wonderful playmate and co-conspirator in mischief to the Little One. 

she made an art out of photobombing...

and she embraced that stereotype about cats loving boxes as her personal mission in life. i used to think that this box craze was something that all cats did, but she was the only one of the four i have lived with to date who took that particular task quite so seriously. 

and it was not just boxes. turns out a basket of freshly-washed laundry is the perfect spot for a bit of bird-watching. 

who needs plants in a gro-bag when you can fill that space with adorable furry goodness, right?

most of all, Philly loved being held and snuggled and treated like the Baby Bear she never stopped being. she will be missed very much. 

Jultember still officially sucks...

Jultember has come to an end, and boy am i happy to see it go. 

with a couple days left to go in the month, i was bitten on the ankle (at like two in the morning) by a "false widow" spider. it looked like someone stuffed a golf ball under my skin, and i spent the better part of an hour contemplating if the electric hand saw was strong enough to remove my foot from the rest of my body. boy, was i in serious pain! stupid imposter spider!

then, with mere hours left to go, my (former) favorite cat...

sent my second favorite coffee mug crashing to the floor...

that photo of her has been the background of my laptop for ages. she is seriously adorable... but i am still not happy with her right now. so, while i know that there is actually important negative stuff happening in the world, in my absurd, pointless little corner... Jultember still officially sucks!

other than the occasional burst of animal-induced absurdity, life continues to be pretty calm in these parts. i had all of these grand plans of things i intended to do once Summer started. now, we are the end of Jultember—and with it, the end of the Summer—and i still cannot figure out where any of that time went. 

i had a birthday at some point during the Summer, which we celebrated in our usual super-low-key fashion. mostly, it was an excuse to eat something special. this time around, it featured an almost one-and-a-half kilogram (roughly three 'murican pounds) tomahawk steak. you can keep your soft-as-butter fillet. i am all about the rib eye, and this beast is rib eye squared. 

we cooked it sous vide at 49°C/120°F (very rare), then crusted it up on a super-hot grill, by which time it was perfectly medium rare. it may not look like it, but trust me when i say this was a lot of meat for two people to eat. that is a huge serving platter in the first photo, not a plate. the animator was adding bits of the leftovers to bowls of ramen for days. 

and, speaking of the grill... i had to downsize this year's balcony garden project as he decided that we were in desperate need of a bigger barbecue. luckily, i could not muster the enthusiasm to buy many plants this year, so we ended up with a few herbs and some flowers to appease the bees. [we are hanging on to the propane tank from the old grill to appease his man genes' refusal to get rid of things.]  

oh... and we added some new flooring to the balcony... which is barely visible under the tangle of leaves. i seriously love having my own mini jungle out here.  

my culinary mojo is still feeling very meh, but i do occasionally get the urge for something interesting... like the Thai curry mussels that took all of about seven minutes to make. this dish featured the "Thai holy trinity" (galangal, kaffir lime, and lemongrass) combined with curry and coconut milk. there are no words to describe the joy i got from eating this meal.

it has also been a bit of a struggle to keep the crafting mojo going, but i did manage to finish a few things (some of which i will discuss in more detail at a later date, as they require their own posts). and, yes... i will be keeping this mug many miles away from a certain ridiculous cat. 

i (finally) finished up that green sweater from the last post... and the post before that. the pattern is Langeline by Ditte Lerche. it is a free pattern (in English, German, and Danish) on Ravelry and on the Filcolana website. i liked the look of the eyelet section at the top, so i kept it going for the whole thing. this was knit from the top-down, making it perfect for when you have a limited amount of yarn (or if you want to knit until it is all used up to avoid leftovers). 

i usually avoid knitting things the same color as the pattern sample, but i am (still) trying to add some life to my greyscale wardrobe, so i dyed some yarn in the brightest green i could produce. i also spun that yarn... sorta... but we can talk about that some other time. 

as per usual, a few changes were made along the way. most notably, i made the neckline slightly larger (it is wider than it looks in the photo, trust me)...

shortened the sleeves... 

and i used the eyelets allover because it was more interesting to knit than a plain stockinette fabric. did i mention that it is a superfine merino and cashmere blend that is soft and snuggly enough for an allergic-to-all-the-things cupcake like me to wear? yum!

all that green must have gotten to me, because i pulled some more fiber out of my stash, and dyed that green too. i will probably talk more about this yarn when i get i around to using it... eventually.

and for a change, i dyed up some yarns in three very similar shades of turquoise-blue. if you look closely, you will note the different construction of the three yarns, two of which were sorta-spun by me. i have a garment's worth of each one, so that is three more future projects to get around to... eventually. 

the absolute best part of the summer, however, had to be the addition of a new toy to my crafting library. i officially own a knitting machine.

but, wait... it gets worse. 

i actually now own THREE knitting machines. no joking. the animator really knows how to deliver on a birthday gift. they will likely be the subject of my next post... eventually.  

so, now i have even more ways to keep myself occupied in the middle of the night. seriously... would you rather be laying in bed at two in the morning, waiting to be stung by a stupid spider seeking vengeance for his comrade that you slaughtered the night before, or sat on an uncomfortable chair staring at something like this? 

exactly!

since eleven half-posts ago....

if you are wondering just how many times during the past few months i started to compose a post, only to abandon it halfway through the process, the answer to that question is eleven. hopefully this one will not end up being not-quite-lucky number twelve. i may eventually get around to finishing one (or more) of those drafts, but for now they will continue to exist as what my people in the knitting world refer to as WIPs, because what i clearly need right now is even more works-in-progress to ignore. speaking of which...

it was my intention to have that stupid-bright-green sweater from last time completed when i got around to composing my next post, but i have barely touched that thing since eleven half-posts ago. my interest/attention was drawn elsewhere, and i decided to go with that flow. my crafting energy has been (mostly) focused on spinning and dyeing yarn, because the thirty storage cubes full of yarn i already have is clearly not enough to get me through the apocalypse. makes perfect sense, no?

we have also been eating lots of super-yummy food, which is always a wonderful and scary thing. i lost my zeal for cooking earlier in the year, so this has been something of a reunion with a long-lost friend. 

i had lunch today followed by a mid-afternoon scoop of rum & raisin ice cream... which i made completely from scratch! feel free to applaud. i totally deserve it. 

i should point out that rum is a major commodity in the economy of most of the Caribbean, and wherever the diaspora may take us, we always regard our rum as a near-sacred ingredient... which is my attempt at justifying what may be the booziest rum & raisin ice cream in recorded history. 

no exaggeration, i soaked the raisins in rum for about three days before getting started, then i tossed in an extra glug—for good measure—before adding the raisins to the contents of the ice cream maker.

the chief danger with using a large amount of alcohol in ice cream is that it lowers the freezing point (meaning that it requires more coldness for the ice cream to become solid). use too much booze, and you can easily end up with a mixture that insists on acting like a milk shake. 

my rum & raisin ice cream, however, is well-behaved. it has a lovely, silky texture that borders on sheer perfection. if you squint a bit you can see tiny specks of ground cinnamon in the mix. so ridiculously tasty!

the animator was less excited about the end product. as i have probably noted (countless times) in the past, he is not a fan of the taste of most forms of alcohol, and this stuff is definitely not shy about its alcohol content. he enjoys boozy eggnog between December and January, then he spends the rest of the year making faces if i offer him anything that contains a noticeable amount of alcohol... like when i asked him to taste the ice cream for a second time.  

me: you want to try it again?
him: i don't know. it was pretty strong the first time. 
me: it's been sitting in the freezer for a couple days now, so the rum has had a chance to equalize and mellow a bit. those pockets of raisins should taste less intensely boozy than when you tried it right out of the ice cream maker.

so he took another taste... and he made a face that i know all too well. 

him: it tastes very good, but it's still way too strong for me. use a lot less rum next time, then i can have some.

then i just looked at him with as much pity as i could muster on such short notice. 

me: you poor thing!

i should note that this sudden urge to make ice cream came about after i went digging around in the fridge one day, looking for some random thing at the back of a shelf, when i discovered that we had three cartons of eggs... in a household of two people who only occasionally eat eggs. so, i did the breakfast-for-dinner thing a couple-few times before deciding that i never want to see another egg (i was too lazy to get myself a larger plate from the cupboard). 

i used up the last of my precious reserved duck fat in what has to be my tastiest attempt to date at making a French classic, cassoulet... which is just a posh-sounding term for a stew of white beans and whatever bits of meat you happen to have hanging around. 

purists would probably insist that a proper cassoulet absolutely must contain duck confit. i keep promising myself to make a truly authentic cassoulet one of these days. however, i was not about to venture out mid-pandemic in search of a duck (which you can also find already-confited in most supermarkets around here), so i had to make do with the last of the fat from a duck we roasted a few months before. if you have never eaten food cooked in duck fat, you have not lived. and, yes... i have officially been living among the French for way too long. 

in addition to the duck fat, this cassoulet also contained a few sausages, whole cherry tomatoes, chunks of butternut squash, and speck (which is a prosciutto-like smoked pork belly that shows up a lot in the Croatian food the animator has introduced me to). the combination of the starch from the beans and the gelatin from the speck gives a rich, velvety texture to the sauce in this stew. this was a seriously enjoyable meal. 

there was also a bit of culinary disaster involving a dish of chicken and potatoes in what was supposed to be a rich, herby cream sauce. it tasted great, but the texture of the sauce was all wrong. 

this is a dish that he usually makes, but i decided to give it a try this time around. turns out, he forgot to tell me one critical step, which he remembered after i had just finished screwing it up... for the second time... that week.

him: i can go to the store and get more stuff if you want to make it again soon. you know what went wrong, so it'll be perfect next time. 
me: i already stopped caring, because i am never making this dish ever again. 

i used a couple eggs from our surplus in the production of this wonderous thing. 

the was the latest variation of my go-to upside-down cake. the fruit changes with the season, and the sponge cake is very forgiving, making for an ideal template for improvisation. 

this cake is especially easy if you use an ovenproof skillet. it begins with brown sugar melted with butter, this will become the sticky topping on the cake.

i had some bananas hanging around, so i decided to use that as the fruit.  

next came the batter, which i put together in a separate bowl while waiting for the sugar to melt. i use about half of the sugar that was called for in the original recipe, as there is plenty of sweetness in the gooey fruit topping. i included a bit of freshly grated ginger and lemon zest in the batter this time around, and i poured it right over the banana pieces. 

then into the oven it went...

i used a darker brown sugar this time around (because that is what i had, because... pandemic) , and i was nervous that it might be burnt on account of how dark the caramelized sugar was around the edges. [random aside: that bit of red is an oven mitt slipped over the handle of the super-hot skillet while it sat for a bit after coming out of the oven, because i do not want to lose the skin from the middle of my palm by accidentally grabbing a hot pan handle... again. true story.]

ten minutes later, and it was time to flip if out of the pan. tada!

it may look a bit overdone, but it was perfect. 

the fruit keeps the sponge layer moist, and the ginger and lemon zest is a delicious counterpoint to the caramelized banana. and, it happens to be totally wheat-free, so i can eat as much as i want without resorting to a week of taking antihistamines. best of all, that is two less eggs cluttering up my refrigerator. 

the cosmic algorithm has shifted...

i am multiple days deep into what is turning out to be one of the greatest sub-migraines in recorded history. for now, i am trying (but mostly failing) to avoid anything that might cause me the slightest measure of additional stress... which is not as easy as it sounds. 

me: i want to bring my computer out here [pointing at my favorite sofa], but the light [pointing at the wall of windows] is doing that thing where it feels like i am being stabbed in the back of my eyeballs. 
him: just close the drapes.
me: that almost makes sense.

so, i did. then i started wondering aloud about the parts i need to replace the brake system on my loom, which resulted in us walking across the hall to the studio to give it a closer look. a few minutes later, we were back in the living room.

him: why are the drapes closed?
me: i just closed them a few minutes ago.
him: oh... are you coming to sit out here?
me: do you listen to anything i say?
him: open one side so the plants can get some light.
me: if i do that, the light will start doing that eyeball stabby thing again.
him: open it a little bit on the end by the plants.
me: what is more important to you right now... my sanity or the damn plants?
him: just open it.

then i gave him that look that said he better sleep with one eye open. speaking of which...

i know the cosmic algorithm has shifted so that it is no longer socially acceptable to complain about...well... anything. however, it should be noted that i have been feeling a bit overwhelmed of late. i have not slept through a whole night in days for starters, which would probably explain the ever-present sub-migraine. no exaggeration, i found myself sitting in the bathroom in the dark at like four o'clock one morning, surrounded by the three cats. i was trying to figure out where i went wrong in life, while they were mostly concerned that i would not be able to see my way to feed them with all the lights turned off. 

yes. i am surrounded by so much love. 

sleep deprivation aside, it continues to be (mostly) uneventful around these parts. we had a touch of rough weather earlier in the week, which resulted in all the things you can usually expect when you mix high winds with the bitter cold. one of the animator's colleagues lost power when a transformer—the electrical kind, not a robot in disguise—in front her building exploded, melting part of a car that was parked nearby. you know... usual wintery hijinks. 

we were prepared for the power to go out at some point, a not uncommon occurrence in bad weather. so, when it did a day later, we just took it in stride. 

me: what the...?
him: there it goes. power's out.

this sort of thing would probably have been met with a bit of grumbling back in the olden times, but one finds very little to complain about since the shift. so, we threw a couple blankets on the sofa and pulled out the Codenames Duet. that stuff in my jar is just a berry tea bag in water. and, yes, i am using a face mask as a snack container. we are living in crazy times!

we have been stuck at Washington DC for weeks now, which—some may say—is a metaphor for life. 

we have a system for keeping track of who did what in the game. the upside down cards are my clues that he guessed correctly, and vice versa. 

i used some of that time to check out my latest random purchase from a local business that was started by two dads with a beautiful message. 

i was not a fan of Barbie per se when i was growing up, and the dolls were only ever used as models for the tiny clothes i would make when i was learning to sew. i get the feeling that little eight-year old me would have loved this doll. looking at that hair alone makes my whole life make sense. i will definitely have to return to the world of tiny fashion in the near future. 

i also did a bit of knitting during our game. this is the start of a sleeve. 

it is part of one of the two projects i have been working on (for far too long, as i have zero enthusiasm to get them done). for him, there is the iconic cardigan that he has been wanting for years now. this is the bottom section. i have to do some math and redraw a few charts before i can continue working up to the top. good times. 

for me, there is a sweater that is being worked from the top down in a mighty bright green yarn. said yarn was the result of an important life lesson... which i will talk about some other day. 

i tend to blame coming of age when Grunge was at its peak for my decidedly melancholy approach to fashion. still, i am grudgingly coming to terms with the fact that i look fabulous in bright colors. well-played, Mother Nature. 

oh, and i am using a stitch marker on this project that was one of many i made from my frighteningly-large collection of beading supplies... which is yet another thing i need to get back to one of these days. 

'twould seem that i need fewer hobbies... or a few more lifetimes.