C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 146

Well, the newly cut peonies went on a shelf above kitteh reach…

…seems peonies, which we just cut for the first time today, are poisonous to cats. Ditto, roots of iris (no cat would be that desperate), and lupines (seeds). Roses are ok. Don't take your cut flowers for granted, if you have a kitteh who loves to drink water out of vases. Everybody's ok. But it is worth googling cut flowers for effects on cats and dogs, who will get water in the darndest places.

 

owie, owie, owie—never had foreign matter get stuck under a lens…

Must've been something off the hawthorn tree, or the like. Pain, omg, pain. I managed to get the lens off, and have both lenses soaking in cleaner, but I am, this evening, glasses-only. Owie! We have this fancy hydrogen-peroxide cleaner that mutates to H2O overnight, but short term is hydrogen peroxide, and you can't do a washoff with that. Jane couldn't find her open bottle of plain saline, so we opened a new one and rinsed, and hopefully got whatever it was off, but owie!

I was out cleaning filters, the most thankless, nasty sort of gunk involved, just green sludge, one of the less lovely pond products, but I don't think that was to blame. Had to be the hawthorn, which sheds like crazy.  Owie, I'm telling you! Pounds of pond sludge, pants soaked, shoes soaked, hands filthy, and the lens—owie! I didn' t touch it. Major effort of will to get the hands washed and that thing delicately removed. Mmmm! Owie!

The first warm day of the year…

Finally, sunlight; and a little warm-up. I felt it yesterday evening; and it's not quite nippy this morning. After breakfast we went walking in the garden, and it was very nice. We've missed our breakfasts in the garden this year.

We believe Eu-shu's little berserker episode yesterday and for several days prior was the male equivalent of PMS: he's about that stage when things start going on that make him kind of wired for sound: biting us, attacking Ysabel over and over and over, climbing on things, scratching things for the first time, running like mad and doing everything but chewing the carpet.  [Kitty physiology is developmentally a little different from other mammals, and you may google up the differences, but say there is probably a reason male lion cubs are thrown out of the pride at a certain stage, and it has to do with the sanity of other pride members.] Then after several days of being mad as a March hare, he settled down and slept most of yesterday evening, was nice, obedient, and only got on the telly cabinet 3 times, and is mild as milk and relaxed today. Not only that, he stayed with Jane last night and did not come to my room to attack Ysabel. So we think we are over that—for a bit—and we are going to–ahem!—consult with the vet.

Father's Day…with respects to all good fathers.

Jane and I, having no one to call on this day, went out to our favorite pub and lifted a glass to the two men who made us what we are…faults and all: they were remarkable individuals. Jane's dad grew up on a ranch, my dad grew up on rural streets, on his own, except for an uncle and aunt. And they developed character and grit, both—were much on the out of doors. Jane's dad was about horses and flying in the aviation pioneer sense…my dad was about hiking and fishing and wild country, and both of them were good carpenters when they needed to be, and taught us the skills. They'd have liked each other. We cherish happy memories on such a day.

Everyone who has a father in reach of a phone call, as ours no longer are, take advantage of the chance if you possibly can.

We went out and planted a hydrangea…one hydrangea.

Doing this took major work, in a cold rain: Jane knows what she's doing on planting things. I usually handle destruction, but settled for making some plant frames we ordered actually work. They're a clever idea, a scrollwork shell to provide trellis for vines over the downspouts from the gutter. The problem is, they were designed to be screwed to the wall and we have brick. So I Rube-Goldberged a wire connection for each section and got 2 of them done. Jane, meanwhile, was cold, tired, and wet, and we planted the hydrangea, which had taken the total revision of a bed, manure, compost, mulch and weedcloth (but it looks good)—leaving several other plants for Another Day, because we were both tired, wet, and cold. Jane says it's a sample of gardening on the Wet Side of the Cascades. It's hard to get me to say I'm tired of cold weather, but it's so cold the koi won't move about…it's not just the eagle, which we haven't seen since the bridge framework went across. There's just no warmth to be had, and the nights are in the 40′s or low 40′s. Koi aren't very active until 58 degrees, and we aren't always hitting that as a high.

Brrr. I admit it. Brr.

Remember that Closed Circle has some (a limited supply of) actual hardbound and paperbound physical books

You buy these the regular way but tell me how you'd like them signed, and be sure to give your shipping addy, because of course I have to mail them to you. There is a postage charge: sorry. It's that physical-book thing.

There is of course no charge for autographing an actual book. That's an old tradition in our field and I maintain it.

 

I do offer autographed bookplates for 2.00 each, postage free, since the price covers my buying and shipping the bookplates. And Jane can sign those too, if you would like a plate in one of her books.

Jane has two (count 'em…2!) new Eu-shu slideshows up!

If you need a kitten fix, she's got it!

The Great Oklahoma Tax Mystery…solved.

Thank goodness for my accountant—who lives there.

This began somewhere prior to the reign of Queen Victoria. Writers' income has always been called royalty. When people began drilling oil wells in this country, in 1859, and people began paying money for what came out of the ground, some genius thought they would call it royalties. Well—nice of them. Now the US tax structure calls that royalty, but does NOT call a writer's income royalties, though that was the original word for it—a source of confusion and bewilderment ever since. I know this. The State of Oklahoma has always known this—at least—its upper echelons do. Thank goodness.

Apparently somebody in the Oklahoma Tax Commission offices thought they had a major case of someone ducking paying Oklahoma tax on oil by not declaring 'royalties' that appeared in old 1099′s in the 'right'  blank for oil income in the income tax forms. Well, the fact that the 'royalties' emanate from New York state should have told them something, for starters. The fact that they're all from book publishers and that the income is (elsewhere on the tax form) accounted for as income from writing should have told them something.

Nope, not from oil at all, at all. But they thought I'd been non-reporting for a long, long time. And now they're going to have to track all the way back through this swamp of paperwork and figure out that, yep, publishers don't produce oil. And the taxes were all paid long, long ago. Sigh. Meanwhile I get 5 offers a day from these various companies that want to lend me money, solve my 'tax problem' for pennies on the dollar, and otherwise settle the matter. Makes you have this dark little thought that if they can get that tax debt down to 10 cents on the dollar, d' you s'pose they could do it retroactively and get me all the tax back that I did pay? Noooooooooo, I don't think so.

 

We live diagonally across from a church…

…which elected us as one of their first Sunday Gardening projects. They pick people with yard projects that seem to need help, and happened to pick us as a) close and b) significantly stalled. They have to pass our unfortunate lawn to get to the church.

Their notion is instead of sitting every Sunday for a sermon, going out into the community one Sunday a month and doing something useful—

Like rescuing us from the project that with Jane sick had just languished. Jane will have pix. These wonderful people, men, women, teens, pregnant women with shovels, and kids from 3 up to Cajeiri's age, all carried rock, laid pathways, did the foundation of the line between our no-lawn and our neighbor's lawn in an intelligent way and a pretty one—and when we were 3 stones short, they went and bought 3 more of these 60 lb diamond blocks. It's a splendid job. The pathways have basalt gravel, which will go hard and settled with the first rain, not allowing weeds ever again, the weeds are gone, the rocks are mostly brought up to the dry streambed, and it is over all gorgeous.

You've listened to our laments for the last couple of weeks: well, today we won the garden lottery, made the acquaintance of some really excellent people, and it's beautiful. The pix will be worth seeing, I assure you. They had no idea when they offered that Jane had been sick and that we were in trouble. So here we are, and we are very happy with our diagonal neighbors!

Found my glasses…a ritual, when we have a crisis…

I lose them. I've done it from childhood. It used to be items of jewelry I'd lose.

As I've gotten glasses-reliant to read—it's the glasses. Medical crisis in the house—absolutely guaranteed I'll lose my glasses. And they'd stay lost until the crisis simmers down.

Although in this instance, I had Shu-shu's help, I am relatively certain.

My wonderful new contacts, the concentric bifocals, enable me to read with a little struggle, but enough, in decent light, for reading things like "Do not open near flame," and "Lethal if swallowed." This is a Good Thing.  They're not enough for editing or for sitting and reading for an hour or more. My astigmatism is practically non-existent at distance and a pita close up, so that's why I need the glasses. And I had a necklace with a little square glasses holder, but the clasp broke; so I went back to hooking them in the collar of my tee-shirt. Which means they'll fall if I don't watch it, particularly when getting out of the car and messing with the seat belt.

So it was a tossup where they'd landed: crushed to powder in a parking lot, lost in a store aisle, etc. But it turned out they were in a place (beside my work chair and slightly further than they're ever set down) that indicate kitten-help.

Finding them saves me some money and (literally) some headaches getting them replaced (days of waiting).

I think I'm making a new rule, that I don't take my Real Glasses out of the house, just the storeboughts without the astigmatism correction.

I've gotten so used to these contacts I'm sitting in my usual spot brushing Ysabel and waiting for my eyes to focus. Things are certainly blurry. Then it dawned on me I took my contacts off to clean last night.

And this morning I have my glasses back.