J-E-A-L-O-U-S

Sweet fancy Moses! My parents bought a teardrop trailer, only my #1 most-desired thing on the planet. And it's apparently not a gift! I don't know what they're thinking; it's so clearly meant to be mine it isn't even funny, ha ha, no I am not laughing.

I arrived in California today to pick up Mom's suspiciously-un-towbar-equipped VW Beetle to drive back across America to Tennessee. Imagine how much motel money I would save if I could bring back the teardrop trailer as well! But no, they're having none of it; they have some big idea that they're going to camp in it when they drive back next week. I KNOW! Rude!

More about this unforeseen development later, when I can speak without hissing.

At Long Last...Tile.

A miraculous weekend, where a fabulous tile guy showed up on a Saturday and tiled our backsplash and actually showed back up on Sunday to grout it. I almost fell over at his conscientiousness (I spelled that without looking it up, by the way). And the kitchen is a little miracle now. Only the floor left to go...

We also had some undermount lights hard-wired, though one of them electrocutes me when I touch it so I think the electrician has to come back. I mean...I like a jolt in the morning, but I prefer to get it from a little Bailey's in my coffee.

It's Hot Where I Live

So a hiking update. It's been crazy hot and I admit I have missed a couple of weekends but Sunday I was determined to do something so Sister Meg and I hiked on part of the Nashville greenways system. An easy two and a half flat miles but ohmigod it was so crazy hot I thought I was going to kill myself and all the people around me. My friend Carol says when marathoners are thirsty they lick the roofs of their mouths. Well I tried it and it did most definitely not give me the pause that refreshes. Anyway, we hiked up to the fancy new pedestrian bridge over the Cumberland river that connects the middle of nowhere to the area slightly to the east of the middle of nowhere. It's a nice multi-million dollar bridge and here is a picture of Sister Meg standing on it. Wearing the world's nuttiest hiking costume. That is not a skirt; they're like plaza pants shortened to gaucho length.

My Tattoo's Not Fading, But My Memory Is

Yeah, I don't know what it means. I can't remember. I've had it for almost twenty years and I have a vague memory of my ex-roommate Allison's ex-boyfriend having a similar tattoo and while he was a perfectly nice guy, I'm not sure I would have just outright copied him, so it must have had some Deeper Other Meaning which is now lost to the annals of time. I know there's a snake in a circle - an ouroboros - and there's a fish and what used to be flames (I think yellow fades first) that now look more like a flower. Hmmm, it's a puzzlement.

I still love it though, and it's easy to hide. I have some friends who've known me for over a decade who say "when did you get that?" when I get particularly hand-flappy, which I guess happens pretty often. It also comes up at drive-through windows pretty often with people asking "gosh, did that hurt?" I usually respond "like a motherfucker." Because that much I do remember...

Also, I have no idea why my knuckle looks so swollen. I mean, it is a little swollen from where I smacked it on a hard surface by accident but this scan exaggerates it. I look like I have an alien hand.

Sonker Mania

So, I think I had gone over a week without turning on the oven until July 4th, and even then it was only to make a sonker. "A sonker?" you ask. Mmm hmmm, sonker. Mom says "zonker" with a z, but all the research I turned up has it with an s. It's an odd thing, like a puffy fruit cobbler, specific to western North Carolina, and even there to just a small area - there's even a Sonker Festival (yes, I'm going). If you look at the blackboard picture, you can see the recipe (though the list on the upper left is not part of the recipe...as far as I can recall, a sonker does not require the inclusion of any Miller High Life; also, there is no grapefruit juice involved. The blackboard is Complicated). We used blackberries. Mom said on the phone "now this is Ellen Church's recipe, so if you don't like it you can just blame her." One of the recipe instructions - according to Ellen Church - was "DON'T RUIN IT BY STIRRING IT!" But! There was no reason to take it up with Ellen Church because it was delicious. Of course, it had a stick of butter in it so I don't know how it couldn't be.

The rest of the menu was grilled: corn and chicken. Oh, and watermelon salad. It looked like a magazine photo when it was all put on the platter together. I try to keep food porn off this blog, but I couldn't resist. With the CSA basket starting to overflow now, you're pretty much looking at the menu for the rest of the summer. Poor me.

A Shaved Cat and Something That Scares Me

Absolutely nothing of interest happened this whole livelong week, so now this blog is officially like every other blog on the internet, posting pictures of cats. I went on a pretty difficult five-mile hike with my friend Carol and sort of hurt my foot a little bit. I went to a Slow Food hot dog thing where they were selling crazy artisan hot dogs. I had my cat shaved.



Then I saw this truck. It's been parked in this space for a few days and has tickets on the windshield. I am secretly hoping all the bodies of the Word Championship Barbershop Quartet singers are stacked up in the back, because almost nothing scares me quite as much as a barbershop quartet. And I just found out this very minute that the International Headquarters for that stuff is just feet from my office! What if I run into one of them on the street? Good thing the Supreme Court says I can use a handgun in self-defense. Which I will totally do if I hear any unsolicited four-part harmony.