Thoughts for the day . . .

"Remember that as a teenager you are at the last stage of your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you."
-- Fran Lebowitz

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute."
-- Josh Billings

The mind of a cat . . .

We are still trying to figure out how to handle the stray cats that have adopted us but do not want us to pat them, thank you very much. We are treated like a fast food cafe. The cat we are interested in keeping shows up at four in the morning and yowls to let us know he is hungry now. We can't hear his complaints from our bedroom and my son is always up by then and ignore the cat. You can see what we have been calling the cat Howl.

There is another cat with an interesting personality. For the last week, we thought it had extremely short legs because it would scuttle from the bushes to the food bowl and back again. My daughter calls him Stubby. In the evening, Stubby will suddenly pop just his head out from the bushes and then scamper across the walkway to the other side and then suddenly pop his head around from that side. Eventually, he will creep over to the food bowl and have a snack. He is brownish with long, fluffy fur, and white paws. You can imagine how funny he looks when he crawls along and you just see the white slipper feet. The other day, however, my daughter saw this tall, pretty, furry cat come up towards the house. She didn't recognize Stubby until he saw her and went back into his caterpillar mode.

This morning, I peeked out the window to see what the cat forecast was for today. I didn't see anyone in the box we put out for them. I didn't see a cat investigating the empty food bowls. I glanced down and was startled to see Stuffy sitting there and staring up at the window! I don't know how long he had been sitting there but at least he doesn't howl!

Back to Basics . . .

Every day that I put the laundry in the washer, I say a little prayer of thanksgiving that I don't have to go down to the river and pound the wash on a rock to get it clean. I must have forgotten to do so, yesterday! My son had loaded the washer and I was working in the kitchen. Suddenly, there is a NOISE that sounded like either a train or airplane plowing into the house. I raced out to the garage and the washer was tilted and doing a 'dance' and was the source of the awful commotion. I threw myself on the wiggling washer and turned it off. My son and I decided that, perhaps, the towels had bunched up on one side and threw it off balance. We removed half the laundry, rearranged the towels, and tried again. Five minutes later, the train/plane returned. I needed to find a rock by the river to wash the clothes! This is particularly difficult in California as the Santa Ana River hasn't know sufficient water for decades.

Since my husband's job only offers sick leave and not 'sick washing machine' leave, I have some handwashing of laundry to do today. Given the age of the washer the the fact that the repair could well exceed the actual value of our ancient friend, we have to go shopping this weekend in hopes of finding a sale.

In the meantime, besides wringing out wash by hand, I should embroider one of those old-fashioned samplers with a prayer of thanks for the convenience of a washing machine and hang it over the next washing machine to grace my garage. I'm learning . . . never take anything for granted!

A lot of bishops need to take heed of this . . .

“If a bishop experiences the fatherhood within his own vocation and office, he will not only demand what Christ calls from all of us, but live that call himself.”

— Archbishop Charles Chaput on the need for a bishop to take a firm stand against abuse for the good of his flock.

The local 'critics' agree, TinTin is a good movie!

With college starting for just about everyone in our group next week, a friend treated my son and three of her six to the movies today. They saw TinTin and said it was a very good movie and worth going to see. They were the only three in the theater for most of the movie so enjoyed not having to worry about too much laughter or talking about the movie. It gave me a couple of hours to browse at the fabric store and purchase a couple of needed but boring items required for my projects.

I treated everyone to a late lunch out after the movie. Even with the lure of ice cream sundaes, they were too full to take me up on the offer. There is a great ice cream parlor in the area and their ice cream desserts are way too big and elaborate to consume after a normal lunch. We are thinking of going before the end of the week and make that our 'main' meal of the day! Hey, they put nuts on the topping. Nuts are healthy, right? And whipped cream is a dairy product. Oh, and don't forget that chocolate has antioxidents in it!

I'm going with a quick chicken and pasta meal since I've been out of the house most of the day. Pasta with a cheesy broth and chunks of grilled chicken sounds pretty good. I'm glad I bothered to learn to cook in my early years because it save a lot of wear and tear on hungry tempers and the budget these days!

Cooler weather and overcast a good part of the day so we still hold hope that we have some winter before spring takes over.

Gave up following the primaries this week. It is sort of like football to me . . . You wait until they clear the pile of players, figure out the score, and go to the polls.

Humorous but, sadly, all too true . . .

THE NEW ANT and the Grasshopper, Two Versions:

The ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER

This one is a little different....

Two Different Versions ...

Two Different Morals

OLD VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE OLD STORY:

Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house

and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving..

CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper

next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not EasyBeing Green...'

Occupy the Anthill stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the SEIU group singing, We shall overcome.

Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper's sake, while he damns the ants.

President Obama condems the ant and blames President Bush 43, President Bush 41, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight..

Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government GreenCzar and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.

The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.

MORAL OF THE STORY:

Be careful how you vote in 2012.

　

Juicy Chicken!

As most of you discover, chicken is usually the least expensive meat on the market. When I have a busy day, I usually end up putting the chicke in the oven with wedges of potato and go about my other chores. This is a handy way to cope with dinner on a crazy day but the chicken doesn't always come out juicy and tender. I'm not saying it is bad but I don't like to settle for just okay.

Yesterday, I put the chicken pieces in a sturdy plastic bag and poured in the juice of two lemons and 1/4 cup soy sauce. I sealed it shut and put it in the refrigerator. During the day, I would flip over the bag to insure the marinade was reaching all the chicken.

For dinner preparations, I drained the chicken and patted off the excess marinade. I tossed each piece in seasoned flour and placed on a parchment paper lined baking pan. I also scrubbed and quartered some potatoes for the baking pan only I rubbed them with a bit of olive oil and then into the same seasoned flour. The fat from the chicken would crisp the flour coating whereas the potatoes didn't have that advantage. I baked it all at 350 degrees for about an hour but this depends on the size of your chicken pieces.

I was amazed at how tender and juicy the chicken turned out. My children actually ate it down to the bone and the visiting kittens didn't mind the scraps. What greater praise, right? :-)