Floof

In the midst of our Hurricane of Doom preparations, I've managed to take some cute pictures of the cats. Who's surprised?

Sophie spends a lot of time on the little chair throne next to me in the living room. When she's not in my lap, I mean.

 

These pictures of Augustine were actually taken on two different days. He loves the printer box now that it's been toppled onto its side. Sophie won't go near the thing, though. She prefers it upright.

Our cats are kind of weird.

I put two more wide but short boxes down side-by-side in the living room, and the cats are beside themselves with happiness. Sophie will nap in one for a few hours, stand up, streeeetch, hop into the other, curl up, and nap for a few hours. Repeat this until dinner time. After dinner she moves to the bed. Hard life!

It's especially hard when Augustine has the audacity to claim the other box, forcing Sophie to try to salvage her ruined napping cycle by (gasp!) finding another comfy spot. (Not the printer box in the bedroom, though! It's on its side, not upright! Horror of horrors.)

I finally took some pictures of the little . . . shed-like thing that perches on the roof of the apartment complex directly behind our house. It's visible from our bathroom and one of our bedroom windows. I've been fascinated by it since we moved in; it looks like some deserted shed, but clearly is just the stairwell up onto the roof. Its door (which has paint visibly peeling off of it) never fully closes or locks, so on windy days it swings open and bumps closed.

It made me think of Skellig, to be honest. If I climbed onto the roof and poked my head in the broken door, there'd be an ancient man with wings lying under piles of junk who'd hint that I should run down to Haruki East and pick up a maki roll special. Or something.

The shed-thing is creepy, but I kind of love it.

More Photos of Apology!

Lots of photos for you!

The Starbucks down the street closes early, but leaves its patio furniture out all night. When we're I'm really antsy to get out, I drag Andrew down there with me.

Here's Warwick City Park, the gorgeous arboretum-like place with the long walking/biking trails.

 

That's the slim beginning of the cove you can see through the trees, below.

Last Saturday I went to Colt State Park, which is about a 40 minute drive away and absolutely gorgeous. The day was slightly blue when I arrived, but the clouds took over pretty quickly. Nonetheless, lots of photos were taken. Below, I'm standing on the sidewalk along the "seawall" that separates the park from Narragansett Bay. Took this picture with my back to the water, obviously. Those itty-bitty little white spots you see at the base of the trees are picnickers. Those trees are so incredibly tall.

Somewhere off in the distance was a bell on a buoy. As the waves rocked it, you could hear it ringing even on the seawall. So peaceful.

All of the seabirds I saw were white--and then suddenly, off in the distance, I saw a small black dragon spreading its wings at the bay. Of course it was a bird, not a dragon, but my first thought was in fact there are dragons in Rhode Island with very wide eyes and all kinds of joy going on inside. If you click on the picture below, you'll see why I thought that. I took a dozen photos of this guy. He was preening his wings occasionally, but mostly just holding them open and facing the water. It made me want to write.

And then there's this bit of the park, facing Mill Gut (pond?). I swear I wasn't pretending to be touring Pemberley. You need to click on these to see them large, too.

I took two videos of this scene, but I didn't pan slowly enough. I'll retake them the next time I get over there! Which will definitely be soon. So pretty.

Trees

I know it's silly. I've been telling myself it's silly for a while, now.

Remember the video I posted of the apartment a few weeks ago? Remember seeing an enormous maple from the bathroom window, and from one of the bedroom windows? I kind of got attached to that tree. Whenever I looked out of either of those windows--or whenever I walked under it on my way to the car--I'd imagine what it'd look like in the upcoming season. Being so far away from everything that I'm used to, it was really comforting to imagine that this gorgeous tree would be here with me for the next several years. I imagined what it looked like as a sapling, too, and how it got progressively bigger. I made up a bunch of stories about the people who had also looked at it, or walked under it, or played around it. I'd sit in the little chair next to the bedroom window, or lean against the bathroom sink, and watch it, and fantasize, and feel wonderful about life.

Over the last two weeks there has been a lot of noisy construction going on in the neighborhood, usually starting around 8:30 am. So when a very, very loud machine woke me up last week, I just covered my head and went back to sleep. And then when I left the apartment to run errands that evening, I saw that they had cut down the tree.

I'll admit, I've cried off and on about it since then. That's the silly part. I don't have any friends here, and the way I'd envisioned that tree being here was steadying and comforting and uplifting the way a friend is. There's now this hideous empty space behind the house where the tree was.

(This is also annoying because it blocked my view of the apartment building caddy-corner to ours. Now I can see it, and the people who live there can see me when I stand at the windows. Which isn't often, anymore.)

Ugh. This last week has been hard.

But Andrew, Augustine, and Sophie have been as wonderful as ever. =)

We finally have our new drivers licenses, license plates, inspection sticker, etc. The plates are white with a soft blue ocean wave cresting across it--the kind of wave that a kid draws, like one big C rolling into the next. Across the bottom it reads The Ocean State. The drivers licenses are mostly blue, with an ocean cliff scene in the bottom corner.

I wandered around a new park last Saturday, and took a lot of pictures. I'll resize them and post them tomorrow. Or maybe later tonight!

Tomorrow we're going to go to the public library and get cards--and a giant cookbook for my rice cooker. I can't wait to make real food! We tried to go to the library this afternoon, but just after we pulled out of the neighborhood the rear view mirror fell off the windshield. (The day after we got the car inspected. Good timing, at least!) So we spent the entire afternoon trying to--and finally, successfully--reattach the mirror.

I really, really miss having a piano around. Even my electric piano. My fingers itch.

My next post will be more cheerful, I promise! Until then, have some cute cats. Please please view these pictures at their full size; it's worth it. =)

(Also, I keep the original sizes for all these pictures. And the original sizes are huge. If anyone--Mom--wants a giant kitty photo, just let me know!)

Berry Bushes

Andrew and I drove to Warwick late this morning to explore the City Park--which despite its baseball diamonds and playgrounds is much more like an arboretum than anything else. It's a small peninsula shaped like a manatee's face (that downward-pointing bulbous nose that also brings to mind a young male elephant seal, you know?) framed by narrow coves and gazing southward toward Greenwich Bay. The flat tip of its nose is a slim beach, accessible by an equally slim road or--as Andrew and I found--the walking trail.

Well, it's really a walking/biking trail, paved and with a white stripe painted down its center. Bikes to the right, pedestrians to the left. One way. Of course half of the (two dozen or so) people we encountered had completely ignored all this, and were walking on whatever side they liked in whatever direction they liked.

It was a three mile walk, and the path was never straight and flat for more than a few steps at a time; it's all low hills and twists and dips. The trees were incredibly green and tall enough to give me a cramp in my neck (because I apparently like to look up at the tops of the trees more than at the not-straight-and-level path I'm walking, like an idiot. Miraculous I didn't pitch over into the bushes at least once).

Through the trees you can gradually see one of the coves widen from streams into real bodies of water, complete with very loud birds and very quiet sailboats. It was gorgeous.

After about two miles, I noticed that some of the bushes we passed were sporting some kind of berry--I think raspberries, though I didn't want to taste them to find out. Just in case.

Another hundred yards along I heard a very cautious crash, crash coming quite close to us on the other side of a very tall and thick wall of bushes--including raspberry(?) bushes. The signs at the beginning of the trail warned us that we're sharing the peninsula with deer, coyotes, and pheasants, and I was determined that we'd see all three of them today. So of course when I heard what had to be something large and four-legged coming toward us, I had to get a look. Except I couldn't. Because of the giant wall of raspberry bush. And whatever thorny bush it was sharing space with. We spent a good five minutes trying to find a hole in the wall to look through, and although we did see a number of cute little birds moving expertly through the thorns, we couldn't figure out what big thing was moving around back there.

So naturally I started imagining all kinds of wonderful nonsense, mostly about mythical creatures and magic and walls between worlds made of raspberry bushes and thorns.

I can't wait to get back there.

Abusing Sophie

A very shaky and poorly-lit video for you:



Clearly she (wrongly) believes that naptime is sacred.

Also, the river that I posted pictures of yesterday is the Woonasquatucket river, which is pronounced rather like One-ah-sqwa-tuck-it, but said very quickly.

India Point Park

Andrew and I toured approximately one hundred yards of India Point Park today, and those hundred yards were lovely--green grass, green trees, sea-scented air, and water that was the same color as the sky (that is, silver). As soon as I got out of the car I was nearly overwhelmed with joy: the place smelled exactly like Galveston. (Seven years later and I'm still homesick for Galveston. Not to say I don't miss the Austin area, too!)

It's there on the map. To get from the park to our place, just take Gano north until it runs into our street; by car it takes just two minutes or so. Assuming you don't encounter more than one person who accidentally tries to go down a one-way street the wrong way, then proceeds to back up into the intersection at a terrible angle as you're trying to go through it.

That's a sign describing the history of India Point Park. Click on it to be able to read it!

And now a video, because that's probably a bit more interesting than pictures.



And now pictures in case the video doesn't work!

Bent tree trunks!

Are those the corpses of more trees? Or a destroyed dock? They're in an almost perfect wedge formation, but not evenly spaced. There is another outcropping of wood further down the coast a few hundred yards.

I love that mill/factory on the other side of the river over there; it's giant and pretty, but I have no idea what it does. Never seen smoke coming out of those three smoke stacks. The double-arches directly to its left is a the giant I-195 bridge over the canal, located on the bottom left/center of the Google map. I'm not sure why, but I love that bridge as much as I love the factory thing next to it.

We plan to go back and really explore the park. Can't wait!

By the way, a house on our block has the most gorgeous flowers growing along their fence, including tons of lilies. Even a stargazer lily! The stargazer died yesterday, before I could remember to get over there with my camera; these are wilting, but still quite beautiful. I love walking by that house.

By the way, Massachusetts welcomes visitors with images of a very plump turkey. Because that's just what Massachusetts does. I guess.

Handsome Dude

We spent about two hours at the DMV today, getting our new licenses set up. Unfortunately, this photo was taken at dinner afterwards, and won't be appearing on Andrew's new driver's license. Oh well.