Life of Pye

I don't want to seem like a careless pet owner, or rather, a person owned by cats, but I shamefully admit that my sweet Pyewacket, the cute little zombie kitty we picked up in November, is not a 'she' as I had previously believed, but a 'he'. How could I go almost three months not knowing my kitten had testicles? My only defense is that that's not the end I snuggle with much. I prefer the end with eyes. So, as it goes, whilst Pye was bouncing about in the back strip (not technically a back yard because the 'back yard' is literally four feet, ten inches wide and runs the entire length of the back of the house, approximately 30 or so feet -- so back strip it is) I noticed somethings back there under his tail. Yes, those somethings, and upon closer inspection, the somethings turned out to be exactly what I thought they were. Pye is prime for plucking, so a call to the vet is in order. My son asked, "So now that we know Pye is a boy kitty, what are we going to call him?"

"Pye." I answered.

"How can we still call him Pye? Isn't Pye a girl's name?"

"I wasn't aware Pye was gender specific. It's like Stacy or Kelly or Jean/Gene."

"Naw," my son said, "Pye's a girl name."

"How do you know? How many Pyewackets have you known in your life?" I asked him.

"None. Just this one."

"Then Pye it is." I said to his retreating back.

"I still think Pye is a girl name." After a moment of silence, I hear him shout down the stairwell, "We should call him Thor."

Pye is currently bounding around in the trimmings of an overgrown honeysuckle bush that runs the length of the back strip fence. It's being trimmed so we can begin to pretty up the strip, plantings and pavers and a wee table and chair, perhaps a string of twinkie lights for summer sitting under the stars.

I've got a working to do, a candle vigil. You know how there are people in your life whose lives always seem to be in chaos? There's always drama and strife and you wonder why the hell does he/she keep doing this crap? It always seems the most desperate who do this, and desperation is a sad, sad thing to witness, especially in someone you love, someone who you know is so much smarter and better than they are behaving. Even when you tell them, "You're better than this. You're smarter than this. Stop torturing yourself," and they say, "Yes, I know. I don't know what's wrong with me," then they twirl off to the next futile adventure that ends in another chaotic mess of emotion and heartbreak and pain. The problem is (I'm simplifying here) that when you're young, you look for that missing piece and you search it out in others, that piece that you think will make you feel whole and good and 'normal', but the truth is, and we learn this when we get older (too bad it's usually much, much older), that the piece is in us all along. We need to find ourselves. Of course, as I said, this is over simplifying the case here, as other issues are involved -- drugs, alcohol, abuse, mental illness -- far too complicated for this armchair psychologist to work through. So anyway, the working is to calm things down. To give the person for whom I'm doing the working the chance at clarity, if just for a moment, the chance to try to figure it out before the chaos ensues once more.



I wrote about that cocoa resinoid yesterday -- and what lovely stuff that is -- but today I'm going to write about a different oil from the gifted stash of aromatics, a big bottle simply labeled 'MANE' with the handwritten words 'Essence Romarin Tunisie', which translated is: Tunisian Rosemary. I have nearly a liter of this oil, and the scent of it is fabulous -- I mean, if you love rosemary, as I do. It reminds me of the soap shop in Columbia, California. My first exposure to natural handmade soap was in Columbia back in the early 90's. And the first bars of natural handmade soap I used were rosemary and lavender. This rosemary smells like that long, lost Columbia Soap Works rosemary -- fresh and herbaceous, astringent and clean, it digs in deep and really wakes you up with notes of pine and lemon, and hints of camphor. I have enough here to make several batches of rosemary soap. I'm thinking big hefty bars of rosemary soap with a splash of patchouli should do the trick. Then maybe another batch of fat bars with rosemary and spike lavender. Spring may prove to be the season of soap around here.


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