Guess Who Is Who

Can you guess who is who? Remember Kelevra is the girl, Squeeker the boy.



Kelevra is the smart one. She tries to turn on the water, flush the toilet, and open doors.



Squeeker, he gets lost in the bathroom, the closet, and plays fetch.



So who is who?

 I know I have not posted pictures of the kittens in a while. They are getting bigger, and have very distinctive personalities.

SS$$cat

My cat's love to go behind the TV stand, I think they are looking for monsters. Last weekend they went back there and stepped on my surge protector, now my game console will not connect to anything wireless. As the console is how I watch Ne+flix I had to go out and get wired controllers again. A real bummer. Last night they were back there again. I went out a got a SS$$cat.

Most of the time if I need to get the cats off of something I just use a water bottle. I am not going to squirt water on my power cords, so I did a little research. The S$$cat is a motion sensor compressed air can that when the cats get close to it will hiss and shoot out a blast of air. It works quite well.

The first time it went off Kelevra shot out from behind the stand as if her tail were on fire. Then Squeeker went back there hehe, I watched him bolt behind the couch. Kelevra has not gone back. Squeeker had to try again, I watched as he did the sneak and tried to creep behind the stand. There was a blast. He jumped straight up in the air and three feet back.

The website says that this can be used to keep them off counters, out of rooms that they are not wanted in etc. The price is a bet hefty but when comparing to replacing a game system it is worth the price.

Poetry Month

This month is poetry month so I thought that I would put up some quotes, little snatches of poetry that I love. I am going to link up one of my favorite poems ever to here as well.

Some light hearted poetry.

I think that I shall never see

A billboard lovely as a tree.

Indeed, unless the billboards fall

I shall never see a tree at all.

                                Ogden Nash

And today the great Yertle, that Marvelous he

Is King of the Mud. That is all he can see.

                                     Theodor Geisel

Not drunk is he, who from the floor

Can rise alone, and still drink more;

But drunk is he, who prostrate lies,

With out the power to drink or rise.

                      Thomas Love Peacock

This is one of my favorite poems it is not light in anyway. The subject is dark, but the flow and the story line is amazing. This is from The Goblin Market by Christina Rosetti.

She Cried, "Laura," up the garden,

"Did you miss me?

Come and kiss me.

Never mind my bruises,

Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices

From the Cad Goddeu from the Llyfr Taliesin. I have read this one over and over sill never getting tired of the language or the flow.

I was in many forms

before I was set free

I was a narrow blood-spotted sword

I believed, when I was formed

I was teardrops in the air

I was a star-woven star

I have people tell me that I am strange for reading and enjoying poetry but I think they are missing so much. I hope that this post will get some others to read and explore poetry.

Green Chile Stew

Over at A Butch In The Kitchen, she had posted a recipe for White Turkey Chili that looks so yummy. I posted in a comment that I had made Green Chili Stew and she wanted my recipe so here it is.

Green Chile Stew

4 pounds chicken

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1 teaspoon dried marjoram

1 tablespoon dried basil

4 ounces Hatch green chile peppers,roasted chopped

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

5 carrots, chopped

5 stalks celery, chopped

1 (14.5 ounce) can stewed tomatoes (optional)

3 potatoes, peeled and cubed

corn starch
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1.Put the chicken in a large pot over medium heat and add water to cover.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium low and simmer until chicken is done. Remove the chicken from the pot and allow it to cool.  Chop the chicken meat into bite-size pieces.

2.Return the chicken to the pot and add the green chile peppers, spices, onion, garlic, carrots, celery, tomatoes and potatoes. Simmer for 30 minutes, or until the potatoes and carrots are tender (or pressure cook for 10 minutes). In a separate small bowl, mix the some corn starch with some water and add to the soup, stirring well to thicken stew. Raise heat, bring just to a boil and remove from heat. Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve.

If Hatch green chilies are hard to find where you are Trader Joe's sells them canned in 4oz cans. Also the flavor of the stew changes if another pepper is used. Hatch is a very unique pepper from New Mexico. I was lucky enough that last year a local store had a supply of fresh Hatch come in, I spent about $40 on pepper. Then spent two days roasting and freezing them. I think I need to  make green chile hamburgers.

Book One Once Upon a Time Challenge

For the Once Upon a Time Challenge Honey and I have picked out a book for each of us to read that the other has read before, but will not re-read for the challenge. I picked for her The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper.

For me she picked The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. I tried to read this book when I was a teenager and I could not get past the first few chapters. At that time I did not understand why I could not read the book. Then when the movie came out on DVD I watched it to see what all of the fuss was about. Needless to say I liked the Narnia move better.  This time around as Honey so liked the book I thought I would give it a try and finish it.

I picked the book up on Friday from the library and as it has only 351 pages in it I thought I would have it finished by Saturday night. Not so, it took me almost 4 hours to read 75 pages. I kept having to put the book down and walk away. It was not that it was badly written, or that the plot was not moving along. This book just made me uneasy. Reading it was like going to a concert and all but one of the instruments are in accord with each other. It felt as if something were just a bit out of tune or step with the rest of the book.

We are both going to read A Game of Thrones by George R.R Martin. Honey has already started this one so it is next on my list to read.

T.V or not T.V

When I was a little girl the T.V. was always on in the house. My mother watched soaps like it was a religion. I remember coming home from school to a house where if there was a T.V in a room it was on, even if no one was in the room. As the years progressed T.V viewing changed it went from bad soaps to worse talk show T.V. Mom watched them all, the ones that she missed she would ask others if they had watched. With the advent of the VCR that changed. She recorded the shows that she thought she would miss, and then watch them late at night or on the weekends.

At the time I moved out I was so sick of the thing that I did not have one for a few years. Then when I did buy one it was a small 13inch. My son and I would rent movies and watch what we wanted when we wanted. My mother hear about this and started taping shows and sending them to us to watch. Out of an eight hour tape there might have been one show on there that interested one of us.

When mom got sick and moved in with us we got cable, because she whined about how quiet my place was. It was a total waste of money. I paid $60+ a month and if I got to watch something that I might find interesting it was because she was not in the house. If she were not home when I got there I would turn on the radio, she would then turn the T.V on over the radio when she got home.

I do remember we got into an argument about what I watched. With my work I do not want to see "reality" crap. I deal enough with it on the job, give me a movie where giant pigs eat people, or frogs attack, or swarms of grasshoppers eat cars. Dragons, knights, anything not real unless it is a documentary on a historical figure.

When she left, cable went with her. I was never so happy to get rid of something. I now just have Netflix and love it. I watch what I want when I want. My patients ask who I want to win on a particular show, I get some strange looks when I tell them I don't own a T.V. and have no idea what they are talking about. Many of them look at  me like I have three heads, they cannot imagine a life without the constant bombardment of noise. I do not miss commercials, who won/did/did not do with who. I love the peace that I have, the ability to work on my cross stitching, reading, or going out. So for me the answer is not T.V

Once Upon a Time V

My Honey and I have decided that together we are going to do the Once Upon a Time Challenge. This will be my first year doing it and it looks like a ball. The Challenge is by Stainless Steel Droppings. The rules are with the link for those interested. Honey and I have decided to do Quest the First that is to read five books that fit within the Once Upon a Time criteria. That is reading books that fall into on of the four genres folklore, fairy tale, mythology or fantasy or a combination of any of them. We do not have all of out books picked out but what we are going to do is read four books together. The fifth book will be one that the other picks out and has previously read.

So I have picked out for Honey to read The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. She has never read Susan Cooper and I do love the Dark is Rising books. For our first read together book we are going to be reading A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. I have heard that someone is making this series of books into a TV show or a bunch of TV movies. I can't wait to get started on this reading.

I do know that I usually post Library Loot on the weekend however, I have not finished all of the books that I currently have checked out, and nothing that I have put on hold has come in yet. So I am going to be starting A Game of Thrones after I get it from the bookstore, and finishing up the Library Loot that I have on my to be read stack.

As we come up with or finish reading books for the Once Upon a Time challenge. I will put the badge art work in that post.