Housesitting for KitaKat, journal

Because I was kitty sitting, I missed last Wednesdays, writing segment, I was too distracted, and besides, my pen was out of ink, and somehow, procrastination was my best friend. I thought that I would get back to it, but no. New house, new things to see. Oh look, shiny.

I also thought I would do all this scanning on memorabilia, so I hauled boxes of memorabilia down to Fremont with me. Nope. I didn’t have the focus. But I did read, or, rather, I tried to read a letter from Rosalind Sharpe Wall which mentioned the Cherry Foundation, dated 1986 and she had suggested that that I apply for money. And of course I never did.

Rosalind also mentioned that she was still working on her book that I helped to edit when she lived in Petaluma. It’s called Pioneers of of the Big Sur Coast, so that makes it a valuable letter to decipher as archival material, not that it said very much.

I expected to get back to my writing prompts next day, but it didn’t happen. What makes moving to a new location so distracting to the point of exhaustion? Here I am sleeping indoors these days. I’m not cold there’s central heating. I lack for nothing. I even have a kitty to pet.

Here’s the thing, for the first time in months, I’ve been sleeping indoors every night. Something I’m not used to. While I was sleeping outside during the fall, I was battling record cold temperatures. One night it got down to the high teens, all that cold sapped a lot of energy from me. As Sinead said, you’re in a warm dry place. enjoy it. True. So I caught up on a massive backlog of sleep deprivation that I didn’t know I had.

So housesitting turned into a staycation. I had trouble being too warm at night as 73° was way out of my comfort zone after sleeping outside for months. I turned it down to a chilly 68° and felt much better for it. When the rains finally came, I slept with the windows open, it was cozy, and KitaKat was fascinated by the sound of the falling rain.

I don’t particularly like Andrew’s condo, I am not a fan of suburbia. But it does have all the modern conveniences, so life was pretty easy. I could cook, I could go to the bathroom, I can brush my teeth, I could take a shower—all those amenities that I did without while sleeping outside in my grandmother’s garden.

I was supposed to leave this place on Monday but Andrew was delayed by a blizzard and all the flights were canceled—he was stuck back east. Detroit and no place to go. So I’ll leave today. This is the second time I’ve packed up everything to leave, only to stay. I am not very good and hurry up and wait. I’m ready to leave, there’s so much to do before the close of the year.

I was supposed to spend some time over the holidays with Sinead and I have been collecting food for our Christmas dinner but she came down with Covid. So I spent the holiday alone, just like Thanksgiving. Not really. For my birthday, which was on Thanksgiving, and I turned the big 70, Sinead and I were kitty-sitting in Oakland. It was very low-key, no turkey was involved. Because Sinead wasn’t there, I didn’t cook any of the food that I brought so I tossed a lot of it. There is only so much one can eat.

Sinead said Autumn and John both came down with Covid as well, but he is in denial and refused to test. She wondered if she caught it from him versus at work. This is her second round. This is one time where my sleeping in the summer gazebo really paid off. I still haven’t caught Covid that I know of. I so rarely even go in the house in Forest Knolls. Aside from the fact that it’s a pigsty, that I I escaped exposure to Covid to boot, with all that outdoor air, I felt very Victorian.

I’ve been feeding the poor doe every few days during her recovery. It is interesting to see what she likes and what she doesn’t like. No cruciferous vegetables, but yes, to rose petals and two rose leaves. She likes greens and some lettuces but she doesn’t like rocket, or arugula. I got her a salt lick. She has no idea what to do with squash. Brussels sprouts are off the list.

She is slowly improving and has learned to hobble on three legs, which is a good thing as her damaged hind leg will probably never be of use. Bucky stands guard while she eats. He is a very chivalrous buck.

Also on her no food list it are zucchini, and carrots, but when’s the last time you actually saw a deer eating a carrot? I don’t think deer have any molars to eat root vegetables like carrots. Apples and other fruit were OK but I never realized how selective they are about what they will eat.

Despite what you may think, they are not chowhounds. She probably is wondering why her food supply dries up and then reappears. I am pretty certain that both the doe and Bucky know that I am feeding them. It’s metaphorical because he doesn’t eat anything I prepare for her.

It took her a while to figure out that the rolled oats were edible. Ditto that with corn and the chicken scratch that I got her. The sparrows, however, have gone completely nuts over this new food source. The towhee has moved in with me into the tent and all those crumbs on the floor are hers. Or so she says in her one-note song. Weirdly I am missing the deer and wonder how they are doing.

I have not been writing about dailiness in a long time, just creative writing. There is something soothing about nattering on about nothing much. Arguably, I am just killing time before my Wednesday writing Zoom class to begin.

12/27/22, Fremont, California