Kimochi Warui

"Kimochi warui" is a Japanese phrase. The literal translation is "bad feeling". Kimochi means feeling, sensation or mood. Warui means bad or inferior. It is much more than that, though. It includes "creepy feeling", "feeling oogy inside", etc.

Kind of like Morgan Freeman dating his granddaughter.

Or the movie "Spanking the Monkey".

You know, anything that makes you say "eeewwwww".

But like a bad car accident, sometimes you just have to take a second look to make sure what you are seeing is really as bad as you think it is. And usually, it is.

After many years of lamenting cracked, dry heels no matter how much I pumiced and slathered on heel cream I discovered this nifty little gadget. In less than 15 minutes I had smooth, excellent heels. I have been enjoying them and the increased lifespan of pantyhose for the last few months.

For some reason I opened up the little gadget (you would have to eventually I suppose) and the heel shavings inside looked just like grated parmesan cheese. It was oddly fascinating in a way that made me want to vomit.

Rick opined that it looked like sauerkraut but the bits weren't long and stringy.

So I cleaned it all out and put it in the long plastic bag the newspaper came in and stuck it in the bathroom trash can.

Later I had to take another look. It looked like a little bird's nest made out of coconut. For just a moment I wanted to take it out and save it and make something with it. The possibilities were endless. I could add toenail clippings, hair from the shower...

But wait. No. That would put me in the company of people I would rather not be associated with.

You get the idea.

Take the garbage out!

So I did.

True Confessions

Our dog licks the plates in the dishwasher.

Our cats have caught mice in our house.

Sometimes things in the refrigerator are there so long we don't know what they are anymore.

Laundry has been known to be forgotten in the washing machine only to be found smelling rather sour and needing to be washed again. And then sometimes again.

My date lets the dog kiss him on the mouth, occasionally with surprise tongue bonus.

I like to have cold vegetable soup from the can for breakfast.

Irresistible Nectar

Our beautiful weeping cherry tree in front of our house died suddenly last month. My date and I cut it down because I wanted to save it and use it inside an 8 foot diameter outdoor aviary for the squirrels. I had grand plans to make them the habitat of their dreams until reality set in.

For one, the aviary I wanted to get for them was close to $4,000. That is our family medical deductible which has already been met with my recent surgery. (Now we have to pay 20% of the remaining endless bills...). Second, it would have been so large it would obscure the view from our very open back of the house. And third, it could only go outside so that meant I could only watch them if I wanted to be outside. In the summer I do not like to be bitten by bugs so I prefer the protection of our screen porch.

So my plans were scaled down. The squirrels have a five foot indoor aviary that we will put on the screen porch. It arrived yesterday and when my date e-mailed me most solicitously to see how I was doing I told him I unloaded it from the truck myself and put it together. It weighs 450 pounds. He had to ask me if I was kidding.

The tree was carefully placed into a very heavy Christmas tree holder by my sisters and me prior to the flesh cutting. It is absolutely gorgeous. After I came home from the hospital we went to the local Wild Birds Unlimited store and got all kinds of great things to hang in the tree. (What was I thinking???? I should have been lying on the couch!)

We bought a small chickadee feeder, a peanut feeder and a suet/bark butter feeder for the woodpeckers, a Nyger thistle seed feeder for the finches and I had a small bird house (actually poor Amelia's previous house, filled pitifully with straw and dried potato peels when I cleaned it out) and two hummingbird feeders. I added a fake nest purchased from a craft store to one of the top branches and filled it with regular bird seed for the bigger birds. We set up the tree and I moved several of the planters of lantana and the passion flower vine nearby. This morning my date moved the bird bath under it as well.

It has been innundated with greedy hummingbirds, tufted titmice, chickadees, finches, baby cardinals and sparrows but surprisingly, no squirrels. (Maybe it is the five predators keeping watch from the porch and the windows...) At night I bring in the feeders to prevent masked bandits from eating the food and leaving nasty gifts like the one they left my older sister near her computer mouse pad.

The hummingbirds show up at dawn and dive bomb my head as I hang their sugar water feeders up. They like for it to stay up until well after dark and if I try to take it down early they dive bomb my head then, too. They like to sit on the branches of the tree which makes for great watching with binoculars. They cannot resist that homemade nectar.

Neither can my date, apparently.

This morning yet another glass of Miralax-tainted pink lemonade was sitting on the counter. I watched as he approached it and reached for it... and then jerked his hand back as if he had been burned. He exclaimed, "Close call!" and allowed as he had almost partaken of that irresistible nectar.

At least he did not dive bomb my head although I think he would have been bombing something else if he had actually done what he had intended to do. I guess raccoons aren't the only ones you have to watch out for getting into what is not theirs!

View from the "Hospice Recliner" July 30, 2010

Disorder in the House

Today we went to a graduation party for the son of some of our friends. The wife is model-pretty, her husband is a hunk, they have wonderful children and their house is stunning and immaculate.

We came home afterwards and my date went out by the pool to smoke a cigar and drink a beer. After a nap I got up to take inventory of the disaster our house had become in the three short days since it had been cleaned (by someone else).

Starting in the kitchen I found a loaf of moldy bread, three days of newspapers, stacks of mail, various and sundry dirty dishes, a dried dwarf African frog that had escaped from the tank and discovered water was indeed essential for survival, and a parade of ants from the bouquet of peonies to the cricket cage.

The trash wasn't smelling too fresh, either.

In the refrigerator the Catsip container was lying on its side, the spilled milk cementing the bottom of the cardboard box of (rancid) strawberry pie to the glass shelf, raw chicken juice pooling below a supposedly sealed pouch with a chicken breast in it and a container of shaved ham that had dried up to resemble the muscles in the exhibit "Bodies".

A cat was lying on the table, licking his nether regions.

The family room was relatively unscathed save for several piles of library books and the ads sorted out of the Sunday newspaper, an empty tea mug with some dried lemon seeds stuck in the bottom of it and about thirty cat toys strewn about the floor.

The bedroom. Never mind. You get the picture.

So I took another nap, read a book and... went outside to help my date put the solar blanket on the pool. Later on I cleaned up the kitchen and scooped the cat box.

I think I will probably go to heaven for doing all that.

Wait, what's that you say, Mr. Jesus?

(There's not enough room, it's already filled with people who keep their houses clean.)

Oh well.