Chicken Teriyaki Bowl #7

via B.L. Ochman’s weblog

Update:  It’s a marketing campaign

I’m the collateral party to a residential rental business.  We live on-site at one of the properties we own (with an attached office).  My husband and his father run the business.  Although I don’t participate in the business in any way, here are some of the things I’d really, really like to say to renters:

Emergencies

An emergency that requires you to contact your landlord immediately consists of one thing:  imminent damage to the property.  Don’t call (or come knocking at the door) at 10:30 at night because your neighbor is noisy - that’s what the cops are for.  Lack of air conditioning, a leaky faucet or the fact that you stuffed a spoon down your garbage disposal (again!!!) can wait until normal office hours.  Really.  And by the way?  Don’t tell us at 5:00 pm on Friday about the air conditioner that has been broken all week.  Guess what?  Repairmen don’t work on weekends!

Rent is due on the first day of the month

Sure, we extend you a grace period up to the 5th, however that doesn’t mean that we are going to answer the door until midnight to take your rent.  You know where we live.  You know our address.  You even have our phone number.  If you can’t pay your rent during regular working hours, call and make an appointment or mail us your rent.

We Aren’t Your Case Worker

We don’t exist to solve your problems for you.  If you get mail for a former tenant, just write “No longer at this address” and put it in the mailbox.  If your cable isn’t working, call the cable company.  If your sister won’t stop harassing you, get a restraining order.

We Aren’t Deaf (Corollary: We Don’t Have to Answer the Door)

If you ring the doorbell twice and no one answers, assume no one is available.  If you need something, we gave you our phone number to call for a reason.  It is also by the door (with out working hours).  It doesn’t matter how long you ring the bell, pound on the door or shout, if no one is in the office the door isn’t going to get answered.  If it is after working hours guess what?  Even though our lights are on, we are closed.  CLOSED.  Go away.  Quietly.

And Finally…

There is NO REASON WHATSOEVER, short of extremely imminent damage to property, to ring our doorbell at 7:00 AM on a Sunday morning.  And let me make this perfectly clear:  the fact that a feral cat just had kittens under your porch IS NOT an emergency for your landlord…though it could quickly become a medical emergency for you if it happens again.

This morning I was moving pretty slow. Did the usual bathroom stuff and then sat on the edge of the bed while I got dressed. As I pulled on my sweatshirt, my cat Roy jumped on the bed and connected with my flailing left arm. The result resembled a Barry Bonds homer - Roy went flying.

Understandably he was upset with me and immediately ran into the living room to lick himself and contemplate my punishment. Petting and cuddles were out of the question - he wasn’t risking another home run hit. I filled up his food dish, which usually would result in purring, but he just sulked at me.

Now he’s sitting in my chair, just staring at me, obviously just waiting for the ideal moment. Thank god the guns are all locked in the safe. The dial is too high for Roy to reach and shooting a gun is impossible difficult without opposible thumbs.

Roy is subtle, though. Hairball in the shoe, pee on the bed, shredding furniture is more his style. I’ve closed all the closet doors for safety. Meanwhile, I’m at Defcon 4 until my punishment is meted out.

Snow

Dictionary.com: Meteorology. a precipitation in the form of ice crystals, mainly of intricately branched, hexagonal form and often agglomerated into snowflakes, formed directly from the freezing of the water vapor in the air.

CTB#7: In December, a scene of gentle white beauty, falling as a mesmerizing veil outside the office window.  In April, a friggin’ pain in the ass.

Hail

Dictionary.com: Showery precipitation in the form of irregular pellets or balls of ice more than ¹/₅ in. (5 mm) in diameter, falling from a cumulonimbus cloud.

CTB#7:  A short-lasting weather phenomenon wherein white ice pellets make a huge racket outside, scares the cat and makes the pavement slicker than snot.  Usually followed up by rain and wind.

Sleet

Dictionary.com: Precipitation consisting of generally transparent frozen or partially frozen raindrops.  A mixture of rain and snow or hail.  A thin icy coating that forms when rain or sleet freezes, as on trees or streets.

CTB#7:  WTF?  Helllloooo up there!  It’s April for chrissakes!  What the hell is it with this flippin’ weather?   We have cherries to worry about you know!

My Brittney Spaniel, Roxy, isn’t a licker.  She’s a nuzzler, able to get between my arm and side no matter how hard I try to keep her away, but she doesn’t lick much.

Roy, my excessively large neutered male cat is another story.  He licks.  First thing in the morning, when my husband lets him in, he jumps on the bed and turns it into an Insta-massager with his purring.  Ignoring him infers permission to turn my legs into a kind of cat body pillow, with Roy draped across them.

He gets out of bed with me and follows me to the bathroom.  Same ritual every morning.  While I peer at myself in the mirror (Do I really look like that?) he wraps his enormous body around my legs in a figure eight, not unlike handcuffs…er…footcuffs.  Then he starts to lick the back of my legs.

It is disturbing on a couple of levels.  I mean, it is uncomfortable; raspy and sharp.  And there’s the species problem: Cats don’t lick.  Cats are supposed to be stand-offish.  Every cat I’ve had would rather have eaten tomatos than shown overt affection.  For Roy, however, licking the backs of my legs isn’t enough.

Once the contact are in, the teeth are scraped, the face is washed and some kind of semi-clean clothing is slung on, I drink coffee and read the internet until I wake up.  Roy takes this opportunity to jump on my desk and, if he can get away with it, lick my face.  For me, this is too much.

I’m not sure if he’s some kind of genetic mutant, maybe a cat crossed with a black lab, or maybe he’s tasting me against the day that his food bowl stays empty despite all of his complaints and he is forced to eat me.  Either way it creeps me out.  Every single morning.

I have a bird condo and four feeders near my office window, so I spend a lot of time looking at the birds.  We get a lot of finches (I know they are finches because they eat the finch food) and some small, round buff/brown with black head ones, along with starlings and some quail that come through.

The small ones are the birds that set up house in the bird condo.  There are 8 apartments each with at least a pair - though it looks like some threesomes may have set up house together.

It is sunny today and the birds are doin’ the thang right on the front perches of their condos.  Out in front of my Brittneys, God and everybody.  The Brittneys are pretty excited; I think they anticipate one falling off where they can catch him.

Meanwhile, a male quail is strutting his stuff for the ladies, who are watching him in kind of semi-circle like he is the Ricky Martin of quail.  Ricky does this bob-bob thing with his wings out, tailfeathers spread and ass wiggling.   I’m not sure what cologne Ricky is wearing, because he has a twin across the road doing the same dance, but no girls are checking him out.

The love fest at the Condos just got broken up by a starling who thinks she can fit through a condo door.  The tenants are all banding together to fight the starling off.

I love making things and learning how things are made.  Right now I am making sourdough baguettes.  They contain:

• Flour (didn’t grind my own, but I have before)
• Water
• Salt
• Starter (leftover from last batch)

The simplicity of it blows me away every time.  Throw the ingredients together, knead, let it bubble up and apply heat and the result is something far different than the ingredients I started with.

Knitting is similar.  Start with fiber - sheep, llama, dog, cotton - spin the fiber into yarn, dye it, knit it and you have transformed it into something completely different.

I suppose this is all a metaphor for life, but right now I’m just blown again by my baguettes.

tags: bread, knitting