Random Ramblings

I went to a friend's house after work and shared some idle chat and some wine. It was a pleasant evening, well spent. We talked about cats and I mentioned a cat I grew up with who had coloring similar to her cat. Foxy was a stray who wandered into the front door one winter day and never left. She had numerous litters of kittens, and some of those kittens remained with us their whole lives. Foxy was a terror though. She weighed no more than 4-5 pounds and was all fur, claws, teeth and purr. I remember one time a big German Shepherd came into our back yard thinking to play with the little kitty. Foxy chased him all the way down our street, yowling in terror the whole way. Somewhere in my box of photos, I have a picture of her face surrounded by blades of grass, looking at me with her piercing green eyes. If I can locate it, I'll scan it one day and put in here on the blog.

When I came home, B had our parking spot, so I parked over by the mailbox and walked in. The temperature was a little cooler (finally) than it had been during the day, and there was distant lightning occasionally adding hints of purple to the dark-blue of the evening sky. As I walked the 500 feet to my building, I took advantage of the time to enjoy the street lamps shining up into the oaks and palms with their Spanish moss dangling down. I remembered how the moss has always reminded me of spooky places and eerie scenes because it has so often been present in ghost stories of the south and various caricatured stories of dire times. It still brings that sense to me, but not as vividly as it used to. As I looked at one palm tree, I took particular notice of a frond that had come loose and fallen into the basket-weave of fronds that grow up the sides of the trunk. It was positioned perfectly horizontally and with the wide flair of it's frond at one end, and the straightness of its stem at the other, it seemed a perfect Floridian semblance of a witch's broom. The witch herself was missing, but I felt she was most likely just lolly-gagging about in some of the nearby Spanish moss.

Another friend of mine has recently discovered some unpleasant extra features within her person. Trying to keep things light, we spoke of it as if it were simply some alien visitor that would soon be leaving. She'll have surgery for it, and everyone is fairly certain that will be the end of it. Jokingly, I told her she would have to take lots of pictures of her hair as soon as possible just in case the alien requires more persuasive measures to be evicted. She laughed and we joked about how she could buy wigs and be a different person every day. She said she'd buy the cheapest, most horrible wigs she could find, just because. And I know she would. And I would laugh myself to tears over every single one.

There was a rocket launch this past Saturday in the early morning before the sun was up. I had intended to wake up and drive over to the little park by the water to watch it. I forgot to set my alarm. I also forgot about my hair appointment until 10:15 when my phone woke me up with a message from Michelle asking if I was still coming. I didn't forget to feed the cats though. You just don't forget something like that unless you're completely oblivious to the constant weaving of rubber-fur-meow creatures in, around, on, around, under, around your feet. I don't think I would have made it out the door alive without feeding them first. As usual, I walked out of the salon with movie-star fabulous hair, which remained until last night when I finally gave in and washed it so I could try to repeat her styling. Yeah, right. I managed a flattened length, with a tiny bit of curl at the bottom. But the curl was cute, and definitely more than I usually do for a regular day at work. Of course, it was pulled back in a clip by the time the day was half over.