Look! I Did a Thing!

I don't mean to brag or anything, but it's not just anyone who can claim to have constructed a patio enclosure using nothing but leftover cloth diaper supplies.


The idea is just that I have this covered back patio that, due to the house having been rather haphazardly added onto a couple of times, is very small and narrow and enclosed on three sides. So rather than haul all the plants inside every time there's a threatened freeze, and drag them back out every day to get some sun, maybe I could just keep them here in the shelter of the porch for the winter. With poorly-insulated, eighty-year-old house on three sides, and a nice sheet of 2 mil plastic on the fourth, I doubt it'll ever get down to freezing back there. If it gets really chilly I could plug in a table lamp.

So today I climbed up on the landlord's insanely wobbly ladder and tacked Rip-N-Grip (like Velcro, but a different brand) hook onto the eaves, and then I stitched 12 feet of RNG loop along the edge of the plastic, et voilà! I have an enclosed porch. Tell me I'm not a genius.

Actually I had very little choice, because the addition of a gigantic, aggressive Christmas tree to the already cramped living room brought things to a fairly desperate pass. I can't line up the plants by the front windows like I did last time.

Could I have a Scrooge moment here, please, and state for the record that I do not like having a Christmas tree? Honestly. I'm so over that shit. They take up huge amounts of space, they shed needles that you're still cleaning out from the corners by the time next year's tree arrives, and the ammonia-laden aroma of pine induces the cats to do things that - well, you should probably keep your Christmas presents somewhere else, if you catch my drift. I think it would be fun just to festoon all the plants with tinsel and tiny Christmas ornaments, no?

No. We have to have, not just a tree, but the biggest, fullest, lushest, most magnificent tree on the lot. It completely blocks out the front windows, and now you can only move about the living room by edging carefully sideways. Well, I don't like it. And I just got this place clean, too.

Oh well, I can always hang out on the back porch with my plants. My plants understand me.

2 mil plastic might not be enough.

Pamper Your Cats

Now that Romeo's blind, I find I tolerate behavior from him that used to be strictly forbidden.

He always loved sleeping on the kitchen table, but I used to speak sharply to him and push him off. Who'd have the heart to do that now? Poor old kitty. We just pet him and croon to him, and when he wants down, and starts teetering uncertainly on the edge of the table, someone will pick him up slowly and place him gently on the floor.

He gets stinky food every morning now. I wait till the other cats aren't around to give it to him. And when Mr. Bingo Kitten gets a bug up his butt, I toss him outside. I figure Romeo has enough problems without Mr. Crazy leaping unexpectedly onto him from across the room.

But the things you have to put up with! This morning, stepping into the shower, I put my foot smack down in the middle of an unexpected puddle next to the tub - ah, unexpected, but not by any means unidentifiable. Romeo got in the habit of having a wee in the middle of the bathmat, I'm sorry to say, before I sighed and gave up on the idea of keeping a bathmat at all. Apparently the spot where the bathmat used to be does just as well.

Last week, Katie left her laundry sitting in the open dryer for several days. Guess what happened to it?

So I sighed again, and wiped up the mess with an old towel, and petted Moe on the head and told him he's a good old kitty. But a friend suggested kitty diapers to me today, and the idea is not without some appeal.

It's not without precedent, either. I used to make and sell cloth diapers online, when Anna was a baby, and I came up with a one-size-fits-all model - to demonstrate the efficacy of which, I took pictures of it on Anna, about 25 pounds at the time, and on Slappy White, about 10.



So I'd just need to dig out my old patterns, find some scraps of fabric, oil and air-blast the sewing machine and snap press, and get to sewing. I might as well get started now. Romeo wants the computer.