wideeyedfunk

Tag: Miss Tibbit the Useless Little Black Dog

  • Trash picking for winter lettuce.

    It’s more complicated than that title makes it seem. With some in-between formative steps.

    The WideEyedSpouse and I walk the Useless Little Black Dog and the Corgi for several blocks through the neighborhood every evening. This is terrible in the winter, mostly. It is nice in the summer, generally. It is ALWAYS great on trash day.

    Because we live in a neighborhood of historic homes filled with epic volumes of historic junk, someone is always prying something out of the basement or off of the house. I scored a china cabinet that reeked of basement mildew two years ago. It is now my garden tool shack in the garage. Elegant, efficient, free. From Spode to Spades. (I know, right?)

    The trick is to get there quick. Super quick because as I’ve noted before, Buffalo has an active trash picking culture. My amateur attempts are pathetic compared to the experts.

    We moved into this house and set up the garden four summers ago. I’ve been waiting for someone in the neighborhood to replace their generously sized divided light windows for all of that time. I’m going to make a cold frame for winter lettuces. Sure, there have been windows out to the trash, lots of times. They were too small, not divided, broken, or the pickers got to them before me because they were so obviously awesome and worth something to someone. And sure, I can buy greenhouse panels to make a cold frame but why when there’s all this free stuff going out to the trash?

    This was the week my friends. Up on Summit, where the houses are big and the windows are wide, someone tore out their near perfect condition divided light sashes and put them out to the curb in a tidy unbroken stack. Hamish and I approached them first and I chased him away from his obvious intent to pee on the stack. “Cut it out,” I told him, “some of those are ours.” He looked at me like, “that was exactly my point.” The Spouse and Miss Tibbit came up. “What are you doing?” The Spouse asked in his suspicious, high toned query voice. He knew full well what I was doing and wanted nothing to do with it. “Score,” I said, “I’m coming back for these.” I think the Spouse rolled his eyes but if he did he made sure his back was to me a little bit.

    Hamish and I stepped smart for the rest of the walk. We made a veggie lasagna and tossed it in the oven for an hour. I didn’t even care, all I could think about was my windows laying all unprotected on the street. I was heading for the car when I noticed that the grass was sort of really, really long. I mowed it super quick. I yelled down to the basement where the Spouse was doing something with the fitness gear, “I’m going to get my windows!”

    The Pathfinder and I hove to the curb next to the window stack. “Yeah,” I muttered to myself, “but don’t be greedy.” Afraid I wouldn’t listen to myself, I grabbed the first two on the stack and fled.

    My new cold frame lids.
    My new cold frame lids. The white ones. The brown ones I got at a salvage reuse STORE before I understood. Besides, they don’t have windows in them. And they are the garden fence not cold frame parts.

    And there they are. Resting against the garage, the tops of my cold frames. Now. Now I am on the lookout for junky old bookcases to act as the frame of the cold frames. They always show up around this time of year when the college students move in and out. I just have to be patient. And quick.

    The garden today. Notice the grapeless vines, the pear-less trees, the unripe tomatoes. Frederico the Falcon is NOT deterring the pest.
    The garden today. Notice the grapeless vines, the pear-less trees, the unripe tomatoes. Frederico the Falcon on the Pergola is NOT deterring the pests.

  • Sweet Tibbit gets her money’s worth out of a jelly bean.

    Hamish the Corgi and Miss Tibbit can’t stop thinking about jelly beans.

    DogsI’m looking at Sweet Tibbit now and she’s laying on the window seat gazing into the middle distance. She seems vacuous, blank-eyed, awaiting stimulus. I assure you she is thinking about jelly beans.  Hamish is lounged on the sofa, chin propped and contemplative. He is also thinking about jelly beans.

    Because they are dogs, they both like, or rather, don’t dislike, every color jelly bean. I believe that there is a slight preference for pink, red and purple jelly beans over black, orange, and green. It is hard to tell with Hamish because he crunch-gulps so swiftly that the experience is over by the time his Corgi brain has the opportunity to form an opinion.

    Tibbit (2)Sweet Tibbit, she savors a jelly bean. She snuffles the bean with her strangely mobile little black nose.  If it proves acceptable (and it always does but certain colors are approved more quickly), if acceptable Sweet Tibbit takes the bean with her tiny front nibble teeth and pursed lips. It disappears into her maw. Her catfish-like whiskers twitch as she repositions her prize to her molars. This is a mistake Sweet Tibbit makes every time. Really, every time.

    The bean embeds into Miss Tibbit’s molars.

    We all watch Miss Tibbit make rictus faces and chew with great exaggerated jaw movement. Her awkwardly too-big-for-her-mouth tongue flaps around. She pauses and looks at us. Makes a little test chew. Nope, not done. The rictus, chewing, flapping tongue scene starts again.

    Hamish feels an injustice has been perpetrated. He glances from Sweet Tibbit eating her jelly bean to me to the jelly bean bag. His meaning is quite clear. Miss Tibbit’s jelly bean was obviously better than the cheezy little one he got.

    As I reach into the jelly bean bag for another one, Miss Tibbit abruptly stops chewing and looks pointedly at my hand. She is trying to demonstrate that she is ready for another bean.  I hold my hand in the bag for a moment. Tibbit stares. I wait. I can see her lips trying to pull back into a rictus for more chewing. She is forcibly restraining them. I wait. Ricuts, flap, flap flap of the tongue.

    Miss Tibbit gets more out of a single jelly bean than anyone I have ever seen. Sweet Tibbit, so simple, so sweet.

  • Desperate times, moldy (delicious) measures.

    The time comes in every household when there’s nothing to eat. Just now, right this minute, it came to the WideEyedHousehold. The Mini and I splashed home from the Bug Lab and the Dry Cleaner through slush and muck and I was starving. The Mini wasn’t starving, it has a nice, expensive full tank of premium in the belly. I was STARVING.

    As I steered around interdimensional pot holes, I worked my way through the cupboards and fridge in my head. Chips, gone. Cheezits – a stale two or three rattling in the box. Cookies. Nope. Chocolate. Nope. Ice cream. Nope. Nothing. Sure, I was shoving ingredients out of my way (in the cupboards in my head) but there was nothing to eat. It doesn’t have to make sense. When a person is feeling peckish only certain eats will fix it. None of those eats were in my house.

    I got home, hung up the dry cleaning, said hi to the dogs, and hit the fridge. Nothing. I dangled there in the open door. Milk. Eggs. 57 stale bread ends each in their own little bag. A couple of lumps of dryish, greenish cheese. Ketchup, and three kinds of French mustard. Chutney. Jars of bacon fat. Because Grandma D always saved hers and I figured there must be a reason.

    And, oh, a treasure – one lonely English muffin with a thin skim of bluey-pink along the edge.

    Ahhh, yes. From the fridge dregs of rejected bits and things I forgot about I found something to eat. Toasted slightly moldy English muffin, buttered. Topped, while still warm from the toaster mind you, with sweet English cheddar with the green parts scraped off and a dollop of precious green tomato chutney we canned last fall. Crunchy. Sweet. Salty. Greasy. All the (important) food groups represented.

    I’m just swallowing the last bite, well, Miss T and Hamish are actually having the very last bites, and I’m here to tell you – aside from the faint whiff of decay and old fridge, my desperation eats were really good. I want more. I wonder if that rock hard butt end of a sourdough batard would toast well? The dogs and I are going to go check.

  • Splashy blood, a 7-tentacled octopus, and holey plaster on my birthday.

    Two score and some years ago I was born to the WideEyedParents during one of the longest, darkest nights of the year. The event was remarkable only in that I proved to be a girl – although this is a matter for debate. Not whether or not I was (am) a girl, but whether or not it was expected. WideEyedDad says he pretty much expected sons, reasonable considering that girl-children are rare among the WideEyedFunks. WideEyedMom claims she had selected only girl names for use on me.

    The Parents rushed me home for Christmas, where Mom discovered that Dad had left the old, discarded washing machine on The Front Lawn, For Days, At Christmas. Dad advises me not to discuss this further as it remains fresh in Mom’s mind. Inside the house, I imagine that the Older Brothers found my pink self a bitter disappointment. Probably they asked for a race car track, a rocket, or a tape recorder and Santa brought a squally doll instead.

    The WideEyedParents with Younger brother, not too many years after I came along.
    The WideEyedParents with Younger Brother, not too many years after I came along.

    And so, my arrival to this world and the WideEyedFamily was associated with complexities of joy, irritation, and darkling feelings. The trend continues. This year I celebrated the final day of my 40xth year with death, dismemberment, and mild destruction. Followed by a lovely dinner, thoughtful gifts, and simple joie de vivre.

    In the earlier hours of my birthday, I found myself kneeling in carnage, dressed in full rain gear, under the deck. Sprays and splashes of brilliantly oxygenated blood soaked into the limestone block and pooled on cement footings. The WideEyedRat (boy was he ever) had snapped two traps and flailed himself free of both before expiring next to his rat hole. Rain beaded on his dense fur, his tailed stretched entirely out with a tiny curl at the end. He was stiff. Well into rigor mortis. Didn’t fit in the bag. Well the body did but I crawled out from under the deck with a heavy bag that looked like it held a single strange stick.

    Octopus1At lunchtime I arranged myself with pliers and my new dog leash hook. It was an octopus cast of poor alloy and its tentacles were too close together for my liking. Now it is a septopus with a stump. I figured the septopus was still authentic and not just a broken hook. Accidents happen even in the deep, maybe especially in the deep. My catastrophically injured Septie was going on the wall, ideally on a stud. I plugged in the drill.

    I never did find that stud, but I did confirm that the plaster and lathe exists in a near continuous plane under the layers of paint on the back stair wall. Septie dangles from the single drywall anchor that survived insertion.

    Exhausted, I had just turned 40something remember, I retired to the sofa with a glass of decent red wine, Buffy the Vampire slayer reruns, and my long-term (perpetually unfinished) knitting project. The WideEyedSpouse rattled in the kitchen, concocting my birthday dinner. I wondered, is this what life was like for 1970s husbands? Relax with a drink and TV while someone else prepares to feed me? I would have fought harder to keep that if I were them. Miss Tibbit the Useless Little Black Dog sighed and snuggled closer to me and Hamish the Corgi watched me from his chair across the room. I felt loved. Content. And warm against the foul winter rainstorm happening outside.

    Hamish