a love letter

we lost our bubba (aka Reuben) yesterday.

a sloppy faced day.

today just

Remembering my friend.

dog slobbered microfiber, he'd grown too big for a lap dog

He's smiling because I was holding a tennis ball.

our love to you, boy.

turtles

i brake for turtles.

i also brake for pinecones

cause at a glance they

can look like turtles.

- Kat Lee

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. --Psalms

I found myself spending a beautiful Sunday afternoon at a kids party for the baby's soccer. Kid parties are usually Food hell, and the putrid smell of hot dogs and cheetos makes me a tad bit ill. Drinks in wee plastic barrels is flavors like Orange, Red, and Blue.
A few of the mom's were discussing how awesome the cupcakes were; it was,
"Oh! These cupcakes are so good!"
"The white cake with that fluffy icing, Yum!" My oldest and I looked at eachother. Should we dare? I mean, we usually don't like cupcakes. (Don't get me wrong, I like the 'idea' of cupcakes; the cute little emblems in pink, sometimes on clothing with glitter or confetti-like sprinkles. Cupcakes are cute. I just am not sure if they're meant to be eaten. Maybe in carrot cake form, but I don't know.)
But we'd eaten this mildly gross burrito we'd purchased from a white van on the side of the soccer field, and were feeling unsatisfied and left with a bad taste that needed a comb over. We decided, yes, we should try these much praised cupcakes.
Dyed neon green and black. And halfway into them, we were sticky, and one woman said, watch your fingers, they stain. And they did. Our fingers, lips and teeth...black.
And last night, in lieu of supper, I decided to just have a nice glass of wine. I felt sick from the random contents of my stomach. I don't recommend buying burritos from a van or black cupcakes, this is my knowledge that I pass on to you today. (Though I do think it's in your best interest to have your mouth all covered in black dye in public, people too often go years without a humbling or 'Dork' moment).
But today Food Karma kept Steven's work delivery from showing up, and he had to drive an hour to pick up supplies...
right near The Curry Pot. :D
Today I'm thankful for fresh mint chutney and a wedge of nan. Dal. Makini.
Getting to steal my sweet man from his too busy job.

I'm thankful for all sorts of things.

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seeded

refusal of that which others have made of us.

--Jean-Paul Sartre

Not really going to blog today, just saw this wee quote & wanted to share it.
Beacause Monsieur Sartre is right, you know; You aren't what people think of you, or only capable of someone's very low expectations. Do your best to be shockingly good today :).

Crazy morning indeed.
I wanted to weigh myself this morning before I ate breakfast, so I stripped down. Two weeks of not running and eating complete junk, and I weighed less than ever. Nice, because I'd been beating myself up over throwing the Chicken in a Biscuit crackers in the buggy. Seriously, I know better. But I loved them as a kid and forgot what they tasted like, so there I was. I'm going to practice restraint even though they make me lick my fingers from the chickeny buttery salty taste. Not everyone likes the same things. :P
Anyway, I had weighed in, but hadn't eaten breakfast. I eat the same breakfast everyday- Nature's Path pumpkin seed granola with almond milk. If I feel adventurous, I go hemp seed granola. I tell Steven the almond milk is better because is doesn't have all that mucus and it's healthier, but he then reminds me that I eat yogurt, which is dairy, so it cancels it out. Either way, I eat it everyday same time-ish. But I hadn't showered yesterday & I reeked, so I didn't want to get dressed before I showered. I threw my t-shirt on and decided to go pour my cereal. Today I discovered that I cannot eat breakfast without pants on. I am all for airing out, but apparently that's just a little too odd for me. I had to set the bowl down and find some underpants before I could enjoy my breakfast.
Women and their weight, huh?
This is the first year I've been watching the Biggest Loser. I love it, they've really changed some of these folks. Look at Sam- he's downright hot. He may be 20-30 pounds away from having his own calendar. & While we're talking hot- I secretly imagine that Bob & Jillian are getting it on when I watch the show. While I would never buy a celebrity porn dvd, any porn dvd, that one I would buy. Bob, with that lispy kindness but tattooed scruff (please don't comment that Bob is gay. If he is, I don't care. That possibly makes it even better), and Jillian with her crazy aggression- seriously, if you watch the show with a little imagination, you can make it much better ;). I'm so bad. Terrible.
But you never know.
I showered, got dressed, put my shoes on, then went to shake the towel off my head. Looking in the mirror at my wet hair, I didn't remember if I washed my hair or not. Did I? So I deattached the shower cord and washed my hair with my head hanging over the tub. At worst, I washed it twice. I find it's the things I may have just done or heard that I forget the easiest. Ha ha ha!~ My brain is a work of art, but also a work in progress. (Did that come from me? I guess I'm gaining faith in myself these days...)
We went to see How to Train Your Dragon 3-d last night. The movie was way better than the previews let on- too darn cute. And I guess it's fitting as I was mentioning mythical creatures yesterday and my discovery of the first ever unicorn fossil.
I'm starting to feel sad for you if this is your first visit to The Kat Lee Reader. Sad but grateful you're here. Probably an innocent bystander, googling Granola & weight loss.
& you get me instead :). I wish you a bright & shiny day! yours truly

One with Nature

I walked to the mailbox, Soleil D'Or in hand (the latest of my collection-I collect roses if you're new here). I set Soleil atop her future home, glanced in the mailbox and at the emptied trashcan, and decided 'later.' The mailbox contained some medical bills (which insurance companies have claimed they need 'more information' before payment- this is just for the day I went for tonsilitis...argh) and the trashcan? It needed to air out a bit.

I ran for my life, frightened and out of breath, but not sure if I could risk stopping. Maybe he was bluffing? I slowed and turned my head. Thud-Donk! That's supposed to be the sound a possum long dead makes when someone running after you throws it and it hits the ground.
thud-donk.

"You have to get that thing out of the pond," I told him.
"I don't want to. I don't even want to see it. I wish you girls would've got it out while I was at work." (I bet!) I walked him down the trail and pointed. He'd brought a big plastic bag and some gloves. The beast had been there a few days, bulging eyes, fly ridden, patches of hair off in clumps. He started to raise it by the tail.
"I'm going to need you to hold the bag open while I put this in there."
"No, no, I can't do that. I don't want to be that close."
"You have to," he tells me. I say that we should just think about it, and that I have to go in for something. Maybe somebody else wants to hold the bag? Knowing my Steven, there's a chance he'd see humour in grazing my arm with it's sticky possum body whilest I am holding the bag. I opt out.

"No you don't!" and as I start to walk away, he tells me he's going to throw it on me, so I run. I run, and I can hear him running behind me. Surely he wouldn't? I run, then out of breath, I look back to see it fly close.

Thud-donk. You're lucky I didn't try to get you with it, he tells me. It was so tight it would've splattered across your back. The can could stay at the end of the road, as well as the bills. For today.

I was loading rocks to move under the fig tree & found a fossil (I guess).




I forfeited throwing in the wagon, staring at the thing. Porous and round, I imagined it a femur of some sort of long ago animal, and stuck it in my pocket. Maybe a cow bone, but maybe something exotic and undiscovered. Because there's no hurt in having an imagination, maybe a unicorn. I think if you discover a new species you get to name it. So above is the first photo of the remains of a unicorn, the Katleecorn. Or um, Katleecornysaurus. Of course, I can't prove it, but you can't prove it's not. I welcome you to try, but til then, Katleecornysaurus.

On Facebook recently I saw friends join a group called Unicorns are real, they're just fat and slow and we call them rhinocerous. Funny. I imagine that mythical creatures were once real. Dinosaurs were real, so maybe dragons were once real. Who knows.


I also passed this grass stuff -
I don't know what it's called; it grows everywhere. My mother told me when she was a girl, my grandmother Georgette told her to eat the little leaves when she was thirsty on long walks. So it grows in France as well. We all eat it as we walk past, and it tastes like the sour peel of a green apple. Yum.


How did you get here?

Hmm. So next month the roses will be blooming & you can expect I'll be posting garden photos. I can't wait, though it's may seem like an occasion where I should have a separate blog. I collect roses, and at times, I feel I'm contributing in some weird way to the continuation of their dwindling species. I grow no Hybrid Teas (okay, one- Senegal) because I find them ugly, and no knockouts, because they are 'mall roses' and belong only in public areas or in stepford wives effortless yards. Okay, I find them ugly too. Don't get angry if you happen to grow one of these. Some folks don't know any better. But the mass sales and marketing of Knock Out roses puts some great vintage roses at risk of becoming scarce. Roses that have been around for hundreds of years, that honestly can out perform any knock out and do it with throwback style are harder to find. Nurseries are going out of business, and the ones that are doing well are selling you more and more bad stereotypical roses- in some cases how can you not hate roses?
But there are treasures, and I am humbled to serve them in any way I can.
If you'd like more information on roses, try HelpMeFind.com, click the roses tab.
Also, stay tuned for some photos of favorites, coming soon.
I hope your day is blissfully cool & peaceful. :)

Retrospect - 4/8/2006

I haven't done a retrospect in awhile, and since there's tons of crap festering in a drawer, I thought I'd dig through and see if I could find something from this time of year. Here's 4/8/06.

Hi again!
I'm back! Feeling great, too! It's not quite time for chips and salsa yet, but getting there. The wisdom teeth thing wasn't too bad, the drive there was probably the worst part.
So anyway, I went through my hope chest yesterday. It had been a few years, and some of the things I have held on to for far too long made it out for good...others didn't.
There are obvious things you'd find; my high school diploma along with the little beanie hat that you wear on your graduation, stories and drawings from the girls, special awards they've gotten at school. A few things I made when I was ten years old. Some antique French picture frames, bought at a flea market in France. A pottery porcupine I bought near Alsace, France. My husband says it's an ashtray, I say candy dish.
"It might hold two or three pieces of candy," he tells me. There's the chipped snow white plaque that my namesake, Gracie, painted for me. It doesn't really go with my decor, but one day I'll find a spot for it. At the bottom, a new car brochure for a 1988 Honda Prelude...along with a pristine licence plate reading 'I Love my Prelude.' Funny that I hold it so fondly- I never owned that prelude. Even so, it's not something I could break free of yet. I set it back inside.
I have a little ceramic teapot, where instead of a spout, it has these giant red lips, and a Marilyn Monroe type mole. I also have the matching cups. I think my mother bought this for me when I was eight or nine years old because I thought it was funny. I sat in the floor and emptied the pot. Inside, some eighth grade junk. A few notes from friends I lost touch with, a poem I wrote for a boy named Roger, who never loved me back.
(It's funny, over a decade later, Roger ended up working with me for about a week, and we laughed about what luck he'd had. At fifteen or so, he just quit going to school, was in and out of school, married to a woman old enough to be his mother, and living in a park full of singlewides from the seventies.
"It's your fault," I was brave enough to say, "It's because you didn't love me. I put a hex on you!"
"Take it off! Please!" he said.
"Well, to take it off, you're going to have to bring me a live rooster," I said. We jokingly agreed he would. Unfortunately, his car broke down before he could get it to me, and with no ride, he lost his job. There I sat with my back to the old trunk yesterday morning, folding back the notebook paper with Roger's poem scralled in my sloppy cursive. I hope he's doing alright.)
Inside was also a note from a Secret Admirer. It said something like, 'I want you, I need you, I can't live without you! Love, Your Secret Admirer.' Chances are, it was some sort of joke, but since I can't be sure, I fold it and stick it back with the others. I find a tiny clear box beneath all the other stuff and give it a little shake.
Fingernail clippings. I don't open the box. Some are kind of long, and on some, remnants of polish. Was I going to glue them back on? Am I that strange? Certainly not. But am I strange for putting them back inside and keeping them? Does revealing this to you make me strange? Hmmm. I'm going to say it's not so strange, for now.
There's a huge vintage quilt, silk with a giant peacock embroidered in different colors in the center. I bought it years ago on Ebay; it's an old Asian thing, and I typically like old Asian things. Steven wasn't so crazy about it, so it makes about 1/3 of the trunk.
Some newspaper clippings. A couple old books. I read somewhere that people used to go to libraries to get high off the old books; there is actually some type of paper mold that makes that smell and gives people a high. I like the smell of old books, and they go straight to my face. I hold it back, because after reading that, it gives me a curious pause. I bring it close again and inhale deeply. It that gorgeous smell of musty books is such because it gets people off,

What better than a book high?

My own writings, you know, the gypsies...who knows when I'll be done with it and who'd buy it then?- are going good, but I don't type at the computer anymore. I do better freehand, then typing it in later. I don't really have anything interesting to tell you this week; having my wisdom teeth out is the biggest event lately. Oh, I'm going to Office Depot later to buy some boxes. That may be uneventful, you never know.
I hope every one of you are doing swell! My love, my love my love to you all~