QUIPS AND QUOTES AND THIS AND THAT

A little of this and a little of that gleaned from conversations and such the last six months.

1.  "T-minus Merlot"

2.  I finally put the down comforter on the bed last night and along with the new pillow top mattress it felt like I was going to sleep in the middle of a marshmallow.  November 2012

3.  I don't text.  I just found out today that K is text speak for an answer to a question.  Imagine that, having to shorten OK.

 4.  MUSIC     By Sandy Abold
                       A cacophony of discordant noise.
                       Oh, please no.
                       Please, yes, please
                       Sound so sweet to ease my soul

5.  "Generally...by the time you are Real..most of your hair has been loved off..and your eyes don't see as well and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.  But these things don't matter at all..because once you are Real you can't be ugly..except to people who don't understand."   The Velveteen Rabbit

6.  "FELONIOUS STUPIDITY" - don't remember where I saw this this fall but loved it.  I wish it were my original thought.

7.  Border collies are THE smartest dogs.  I saw a test once on a TV show where they put a blanket over  a dog to see how long it would take it to find it's way out.  This was a test for intelligence.  The border collie was out immediately.  The poor basset hound never did find it's way out and had to be rescued.

8.  Too old for make up sex.  Oh dear!

FEEDING CATS

     Pumpkin has dinner with us every night.  I always take a little bit of whatever we're having and cut it up real small and put it in a saucer on the floor between me and Rod.  Pumpkin loves spaghetti with meat sauce and I always use whole wheat pasta as once the sauce is on it you can't tell it's good for you.  I think it tastes better.  He also likes steak and chicken chopped up real small because cats don't really bite and chew they tear and shred with their teeth and tongue.  Pumpkin always expects his tribute.  His regular diet is a half a can of wet cat food in the morning and in the evening  He's my only inside the house cat.

     Other than Pumpkin you all know we have five other cats I've described before.  Miss Mosby who lives on top of the water heater in the garage.  Her daughter Silver who lives outside in an old old 1980's Mercury that once belonged to my Mother-In-Law.  The driver side window is down just low enough she climbs in from the roof and has good shelter and is where she moved when she left her mother and had her one and only litter of kittens.  Spot and Skye are Silver's kittens and my big boys and live in the garage.  Skye likes to go in the attic and takes care of any varmints that might try to take up residence.  He also likes to go on the roof.  Spot is huge!!  Not fat.  HUGE!  Rod says he probably weighs fifteen pounds.  Rod's taught him to "high five".  Ruffles is our little refugee that showed up winter before last running with raccoons.  He was so little we figure when he was "abandoned" by whoever dumped him in the country the raccoons found him and nursed him with their own.  He decided he liked it here with us and Spot and Skye acted like old uncles.  Every winter there's a new stray and I haven't named this one yet (Lord, please, I don't want to be the cat lady).  We'll see what happens but I don't want him to bugger my other cats and so far he's keeping his distance.

     Okay, for feeding, this goes for the morning feed and the evening feed.  Everyone gets dry food but Pumpkin who has difficulty digesting it.  Spot, Skye, and Ruffles all my good big boys get dry food in an aluminum pie tin with five dollops of  wet food on top from the half can.  Miss Mosby and Silver get a little Pyrex bowl of dry food each with a dollop of wet on their's too.  Now that the new cat has shown up he gets the same as Mosby and Silver.

     The dollop is getting smaller and smaller but everyone gets a taste and it's their favorite and always eaten first.  That can of wet food goes a long way.  I've started thinking it's like the Bible Story of  Jesus's sermon on the mount where he feeds the multitude with three fishes.  I think maybe there has been Divine intervention.
    

Rod has taught  Spot to high five and shake hands.

   

       

UNIDENTIFIED

     In the late 1960's my Mom, Grandmother, and baby sister Kim experienced an unusual event.  I know it was after 1967 because my daughter had been born but don't exactly remember the year.  My baby sister who had been born in 1960 was under ten years old so I think it may have been 1967/1969.  It happened in the evening at my Grandmother's house on Popes Head Road in Fairfax County, Virginia.

Fifty years ago there was more than fifty acres of fallow field behind the house.

     I need to first give you the layout of the house.  It was situated on a small hill and a big curve in the road on Popes Head Road and had a driveway that came down and curved around the house and exited out on the other side of the curve.  If a car pulled into the driveway in the evening the car lights would shine in the picture window and shine through the living room into the dining room.  The dining room also had a big window with the back porch on the other side of it and looked down at the driveway behind the house where everyone parked, the end of the yard, and onto a fallow field that had been a cornfield in the 1950's.  Everyone who knew our family knew we parked behind the house and always used the back door which opened into the kitchen.  We never used the front door only to go out and sit on the front porch or go in the front yard.

     On the evening in question a light came through the picture window and my family thought someone had pulled into the driveway.  When no one came to the back door they looked out the dining room window and saw the backyard and field lit from above.  In the air was "something" they described as rotating lights hovering over the field.  At first they thought it might be a helicopter but IT MADE NO NOISE a point that alarmed them.  They did not go out on the porch only watched from the dining room window.  It hovered there for moments then sped off with whirling lights going around and around on the dish shaped edges of whatever it was.

     Mom was not the type to get hysterical or have an hysterical response to things as she was very level headed.  She told me about this incident when she returned to California the next week as she had been visiting Grandmother in Virginia.  She also told me that it was reported that the Vienna or Falls Church police (I can't remember now which she said and Mom passed  in 1998) chased something in the sky that night.  This they had heard on the nightly news.  She never talked about the incident after that and never brought it up at parties or family gatherings.  Grandmother and Kim never talked about it either.  Recently I asked Kim who is thirteen years younger than me what her memory is and she says she's not sure now what she heard or what she saw or what she was told as she was young and declined to discuss it.

 I accepted Mom's story and never questioned it and only discussed it with a very few people because it does sound crazy.  UFOS.  I suppose the part about the police following something in the night sky back then could be researched.  I tried doing a Google search but only the 1950 something Washington DC  UFO event seems to be recorded.  I'll always wonder.