"Wintry Mix:" May Contain Raccoons

In Syracuse, where my parents live, they get snow. They get a fair amount of snow. When they are done getting snow, they get some more snow. Then the weather rolls up its sleeves, flexes its elbows, and gets down to some serious snowing. Upstate New York is like that.

Here in Texas, we get something called "wintry mix." It's kind of like trail mix, only not as tasty. It's made of fairly unpleasant ingredients, like snow, freezing rain, sleet, and bewildered Texas drivers.*

Adverse weather events mean emergency operations and extra hours in the office, unfortunately, though it would be much more pleasant to stay home, huddle under the covers, and warm myself with cats and possibly the odd raccoon (though Dave hasn't come banging on the locked cat door for many a night now). So, because I have committed to a car-free lifestyle, my boyfriend will come and pick up Anna and me in his Jeep Liberty and drive us to school and work.

It's easy to commit to a car-free lifestyle when you have someone who will drive you anywhere you want.

Like happy hour, for which it will hopefully be warm enough on Friday. We should go to Deep Eddy Cabaret, because it may be our last chance. Deep Eddy Cabaret is one of those grand Austin traditions of which I don't have much experience - I think I've even been to the Poodle Dog Lounge more often. Trophy's was another; I went two, or maybe three times with my sister Margie, when she had a friend working the bar who would give us free Lone Stars. Even though it's just about half a mile from my house, I hadn't seen Trophy's since they started working it over, so was a little shocked to see it looking lit up and shiny a couple of nights ago, with red and white striped awnings. Awnings! It makes me sad to think of all the displaced cockroaches - probably hanging out with Dave behind the dumpster, licking a scant sustenance out of discarded Lone Star bottles.

Deep Eddy, though, is the last place I ever got carded. It was a few years ago - I might even have been on the right side of 40 - but still, being asked for ID was enough to get me all tingly. I handed the bartender my license. He squinted at it in the low light of the bar.

"Hold on, let me get my glasses," he said. "I can't see for shit."

An experience like that is well worth braving a little wintry mix.


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*From California

This Is My Brain off Coffee

Hey, do you ever wonder if your cat is actually a highly sophisticated robot spy device?

Then again, I don’t know if you would really call Slappy White “highly sophisticated.” Also, robots probably smell better. Still, you kind of have to wonder. Why does he always insist on being in the bathroom while I take a shower? It makes me a little uncomfortable, but I have to make sure I let him in before I start, or he’ll scratch all the paint off the door. Then he jumps up onto the sink and watches me intently through the curtain. Afterwards as I’m putting in my contacts and brushing my teeth, he sometimes reaches out a paw, sinks his claws into my towel, and tries to pull it off. Why would a cat do this?

Or perhaps he was a dirty old man in his last life, and just retains some of those tendencies. This theory has good and bad points. On the plus side, this would be consistent with much of his other behavior. And it’s always nice to believe that death is not the end. On the minus side, what if you had to come back as a dung beetle, or a marketing executive?

Whereas if Slappy were a remote-controlled spy robot, that could also explain the purposeful bustling noises coming from underneath the bathroom floor every morning, which I’ve been attributing to Dave the raccoon.

I’ve seen Dave down there, or at least I’ve seen him go in. One evening as I was pulling into my driveway after a visit to Grady and Margie’s, I noticed one of the cats lumbering, in typical, disdainfully leisurely fashion, out of the way. But then I realized what I was seeing was much too big to be a cat. As he neared the house and my headlights shone full on him, Dave turned and gave me a reproachful glance, then pulled the crawlspace hatch open, with his little raccoon hand, and went inside.

You couldn’t pay me enough to crawl into there. But then, I think Dave is counting on that.

So when I take a shower in the morning, there’s nothing but a quarter inch of cast iron between the soles of my feet and the cold crawlspace air, and Dave – or someone, or something, that sounds very busy down there. What could be going on?!

I think it’s a spy, operating the remote control that makes Slappy White force his way into the bathroom and try to get my towel off. Anything is possible!

Or else Dave is also a robot. I’ve never gotten close enough to smell him.

Critters in the Attic

Actually he's just in the space between the ceiling and the roof in the utility room, which was a later addition to the house. I've walked around outside trying to spot an opening in the eaves, but can't see one large enough to admit Dave. Nonetheless, he's definitely up there.

You can hear him scrabbling about, directly above me as I fold laundry out of the dryer. Bingo's perched next to me on the washing machine, staring crazily at the ceiling, his ears and tail twitching. He doesn't know it's Dave making all those tantalizing noises. Dave would kick his ass.

I like the purposeful sound of Dave's movements. I can just imagine him following the same Sunday morning routine I'm going about myself: putting away raccoon dishes, folding raccoon laundry, having a nice cup of raccoon coffee, casually glancing over the Raccoon Yahoo! headlines, perhaps checking up on his friends' raccoon blogs to see what everybody's up to this weekend. Of course, this would mean he's stealing our wi-fi; but what do you expect? He is a raccoon.

I've gotten kind of attached to Dave. I hope he's warm enough up there.

Dwelling in Harmony with Nature

While I was at Robbie's earlier, he showed me a cute little religious tract some friendly neighborhood Jehovah's Witnesses had left on his door. You've seen these, right? The front is headed "Life in a Peaceful New World" and bears an idyllic scene of humans, mingling in interracial harmony in a beautiful natural setting. A mother and daughter are gathering berries and feeding some to a happy grizzly bear as a deer looks on. On the back of the pamphlet, a young couple with a toddler are petting a reclining lion. Everyone is smiling. I did note that, though there are black people and Hispanic people and white people all apparently living together in this ideal world, none of the couples are actually mixed-race. Or gay. But no matter: it's an earthly paradise!

I don't know how well some ecosystems would fare in God's New World, though:

The whole earth will eventually be brought to a gardenlike paradise state. The Bible says: "The wilderness and the waterless region will exult, and the desert plain will be joyful and blossom as the saffron. . . . For in the wilderness waters will have burst out, and torrents in the desert plain. And the heat-parched ground will have become as a reedy pool, and the thirsty ground as springs of water." - Isaiah 35:1,6,7.

I suppose desert life can evolve to adapt to its new surroundings. Oh, wait...

In time, God's Kingdom will even restore the peaceful relations that existed in the garden of Eden between animals, and between animals and humans. The Bible says, "The wolf will actuallly reside for a while with the male lamb, and with the kid the leopard itself will lie down, and the calf and the maned young lion and the well-fed animal all together; and a mere little boy will be leader over them."-Isaiah 11:6-9; Hosea 2:18.

Lions love tofu! On the other hand, I note that Jehovah's Witnesses are apparently not vegetarians.

When you look at the scene on this tract, what feelings do you have? Does not your heart yearn for the peace, happiness, and properity seen there?

Whatever. I'm already dwelling in perfect harmony with nature.

Housesitting

Margie is housesitting at her ex-boyfriend's place.

It is, oh my God, y'all, SO totally cool. It's on Holly Street, and is an art-house do-over of one of the modest little 1920s bungalows there, all of two minutes away from downtown. Some dense shrubbery conceals most of the front, so all you can see is a glimpse of a small, ordinary house with a nice front porch. Margie leads me through the front yard, past the facade, when I arrive, through an attractive garden at the side of the property.

The original house is on a gigantic lot, easily a full acre or more. It's been divided into a duplex, front and back, with a common laundry room and bathroom between. Behind is another two-story structure - Margie's ex's place, a loft apartment with stained concrete and mosaic floors and a Mediterranean, mirror-tiled stairway leading to the second story balcony. A fountain plays outside.

Across the courtyard from this and the original house is the building housing the common kitchen, with an immense covered patio at the back. The faint gas smell and lofty ceilings inside remind me of the coop where I lived in college. Renters take turns maintaining the yard, cooking, and cleaning, and their cats and dogs have free play of the property, none seeming to mind each other; though Margie's ex's dog has a few loudly vocal altercations with either some raccoons in the woods, or perhaps a familly of laryngitic banshees. It's hard to tell.

Behind that is a yard with a fireplace, lawn chairs, and cement-block benches. Further back still is what Margie tells me is a "guest trailer," plus another small building serving as a communal restroom, and a further area, screened off by bamboo, with some more structures where she tells me other people live, so we don't venture there. Another building in the back houses a garage and studio space. I can't see it very well in the dark.

Margie and I talk about anything and everything, It leads around eventually to Mom, and how I dream about her frequently and about how in my dreams I always know she is dead, and even talk to her about this, yet never really seem to resolve anything. Margie says she dreams about Mom every single night, but often they are fighting. By the end of this part of the conversation we are both in tears.

We talk about men, and about life, and about all the other things that generally plague human beings (specificailly women) on this planet. We look at some pictures of David Bowie. We hug. Margie is the closest person to me on the face of this earth.

Let's have a party before her ex comes home!