short stories 10

a few fun facts

I looked at my stats today via StatCounter and out of 171 visits to my blog via search engines in the last three days, 79 had the words 'sex', 'nude', or 'naked' in the query. 40 had the word 'rain' leaving only 52 for things like bird, flower, turtle, juke box. Only 4 queries used the word 'glass'. And then there were these...

'dog's uterus thicken walls'

'sunsets stars earth's soda milk betters shop pets'

'ancient hieroglyphics of star beings with dog-like ears'

Unsurprisingly, a great many of the queries for 'sex' come from the repressive muslim middle east and asia but good ole America and Europe has it's aficionados too. And because I get so many hits from muslim countries, the Department Of Homeland Security has checked in a time or two as well.

That I could do without, especially considering they are not averse to whisking you away in the middle of the night never to be heard from again and if the republican front runners get their way, talking about sex and nudity, having sex and engaging in nudity will be enough to justify it.

embracing the machine

I love getting up in the morning to a clean kitchen but I hate doing dishes at night especially because we eat dinner late.

I never had a built-in dishwasher until we moved to the country house. Our city house is very old and the counters are not high enough for a built in dishwasher unless we tear out the bottom cabinets and counter and completely rebuild them and that's just not gonna happen. When the kids were dish doing age we opted for one on wheels that you hooked up to the faucet. With four in the family it got filled up every night. When it died, however, we didn't replace it because it took up valuable real estate in our already too small kitchen.

Now the kids are grown and there is just the two of us out here in the country house. A whole day's worth of dishes, though, is not enough to fill the dishwasher so, as a general rule, I have not used it.

Until recently.

I've decided to embrace the machine.

I still won't run it until it's full and since we still have just a minimum of pots and pans, sometimes what we have for dinner depends on what's clean. Hee hee. Not really. I'll wash the needed pan.

truth in advertising

We had some Spinach and Artichoke Hummus for lunch the other day. Later, looking at the ingredients list: chickpeas, water, soybean/canola oil, tahini, red & green bell peppers, spinach, cucumber, salt, garlic, onion, artichoke, citric acid, natural flavors, lemon juice, seasonings & spices, potassium sorbate.

Artichoke, the last 'food' ingredient coming even after 'salt' and yet that's what they advertised on the label.

resident wren

The little loud mouth was back again the other day, going all around the shop, on and poking in everything, screeching out it's alarm call the whole time. It visited the old nest again, about the only time it was quiet. It didn't seem particularly upset by my attempts to photograph it and at one point it got quite close to me, maybe 5'. I wonder if it's the wren baby from last spring?

If I want to know where the cat is in the morning or evening all I need do is follow the sound of the wren taking it's job seriously keeping vigil, letting all birdkind know there is a cat on the premises.

tree hopping

That crazy fucker that flies the crop duster has been buzzing the neighborhood this week. He's been spraying something on the agricultural field across the road and when he gets to the end he pulls up and banks around right over our house for another pass over the field.

He has to fly very low over the field when he releases whatever it is he's releasing so that it goes on the field and not have the wind dissipate it. In the past he has flown over the houses at a higher altitude but this past week I swear he's brushing the treetops and skimming the houses, very loud and kinda scary to see that little plane coming right at us.

This morning he was at it again only this time he was spraying perpendicular to the road and flying right at the tree line along the road, pulling up and banking around over the 13 acre field behind us.

We stay inside when he is out doing his spraying and it is the only part of living in an agricultural community that I don't like.