The Great Rearrange Continues

Since we're still without houseguests or most of our true neighbors (there are still PLENTY of summer people), we are continuing with our housekeeping chores. We took up all the carpet tiles in the living room, cycled out the grungiest and cycled in the cleanest, and sent two boxes of the dead back to the factory for recycling. In preparation for fall, if it ever comes, the Screen Queen came and repaired three of our screens, including the one into which Squeak had put a cat-sized hole. S moved on to the former laundry room (now the cat room), and attempted to at last put things where they might be useful and/or out of the way: this zone was where we stuffed things we didn't have a place for a year ago when we moved in and ever since we've been stuffing and stuffing.

Squeak, btw, has so far evaded the clutches of the jasmine, but she had a nasty set-to with a mean feral cat. We think that constant anxiety about letting her guard down with this beast on the prowl has made our poor kitten eschew the outdoor bathroom and return to her box. Oh, if only she had better aim! Part of the reorganization included moving the litter out of the specially-designed-for-it cupboard and away from the woodwork...

Mahjonng with Julie and Susan at Julie's condo was a major milestone: each of them seems to have become much less tentative and more imaginative in her play, and each of them won more than once. When the neighbors and the Canadians return this winter, we'll be ready to seriously rock and roll! Julie cooked up a feast: pork roast, green beans, yams, applesauce. We brought a bottle of wine and Suz brought brownies--scrumzo!

And Sunday's trip to the Bingo Castle yielded some nice surprises: S won a bingo and a half; E won a partial bingo; and S uncovered one of the $500 prizes on The Bingo Board. However, the Lotto tickets S bought at what looked to be the height of her streak have not yet netted us 23 million dollars. Which is why S has attempted to breathe new life into her greasiest t-shirts by tie-dying them a color that will hide some of the salsa and wine.

In an effort not to return to the amazingly crowded grocery store, where the checkout lines sometimes trail all the way back to the dairy section, we've been cooking down the larder at home. Most adventurous, perhaps, was S whomping up homemade ricotta; tastiest was E's batch of tomato sauce which has so far graced eggplant parmesan, stuffed peppers, cannelloni (homemade pasta, stuffed with the aforementioned ricotta), a quick noodle dinner--and is destined for tonight's fried eggplant. Which it might be time to macerate! Later, all.