Janice Williams Loves Austin

My friend Jenni gave me sweet props today in her blog, which flatters me to no end. I love her words and her photos and her creative abilities when it comes to gardens, crafts, food, and friendships. I often read her blog and think, “I was going to write about that!” or “I should write about that.” I’m waiting until some time passes to when I write about it, it won’t like I’m stealing the idea.

So I’m writing tonight because someone like me. That is my primary motivation for most of the things I do, I think. I wish I could say I was driven by an inner desire to achieve. Or even money, for heaven’s sake, but more often than not, as long as someone is telling me they like what I do, I’ll keep doing it.

So this update is not going to be cohesive, but it will be an update. What is going on today?

Right this minute I have a sweet kitten in my life. Flaco is almost 4 months old now and growing so fast, but he’s still a kitten. The minute I sit at my desk he is in my lap, purring, and looking for “Mama.” I don’t have what a mama would have, but he insists on nursing on my shirt front or pajama bottoms or whatever the case may be, looking for what a mama could give him. He was a little bottle baby, abandoned practically at birth, so he never knew a mama, or not for very long anyway, but his instincts are there.

I got a new phone today. I am anything but an “early adopter” when it comes to technology. I only got my first smart phone about 18 months ago. But it has not been a phone that has made me happy (it never tells me I’m doing a good job) so today I took advantage of my upgrade and got a new Samsung Galaxy SIII, the newest and best, I hear. So far I’ve made phone calls and sent texts with it so I’m happy with that part. And, lo and behold, I can text on that touch screen. When Mark got his first iPhone I couldn’t, for the life of me, hit the right keys. This one is very perceptive and you can even just drag your finger around the keyboard, it doesn’t even have to be touched. New innovations. So I am an early adopter for the first time and I truly believe I will have the newest and best cell phone in America until probably Monday when something new will hit the stores. Now that all smart phones look alike, no one knows how revolutionary right now.

Another big focus of the day is the MOLD in the air. If there is something in the air in Austin, I am bound to be allergic to it. Cedar, ragweed, elm, oak, grass, and mold are my nemisises (… nemasisae? I’m trying to remember my Latin plurals, but I can’t with a head full of snot). I had been watching the mold get higher and higher and didn’t know if rain downpours would clean the air, like it does for the tree and grass pollens, or make it worse because it is, after all, mold. It is definitely the latter. I watched Jim Spencer’s KXAN weather this evening and his lead story was the VERY HIGH mold count at 27000+ particles per square meter… the highest reading he has every seen in the last 20 years or so. More rain tonight and possibly tomorrow and then the molds will probably grow even harder and faster for a week or more, so I am anticipating lots of breathing through my mouth and sore throat and sneezing as if I were one of the seven dwarves.

I am VERY happy for the rain, though. Do not get me wrong on that. Monday evening, a downpour that I got caught in, Tuesday another, today another and I was out in this one, too, and more on the way. It is a rare July to get this much rain and I’m happy for it.

Another issue of the day is that I have “the zaps.” If you’ve ever had them, you know what they are. Tiny electrical jolts coming from the brain and coursing through the neurological system of the body. It comes from changing from one medication to another. I guess technically it is just from going off the first one, but I was hoping the zaps would be minimal since I’m going on another, but we’ll have to wait and see. This has been two days of zaps, with them getting particularly bad today. It’s not just the jolt, it is also the briefest moment of discombobulation, like when the elevator starts or stops too fast. As for the electricity, I can state for certain that it IS electricity from my childhood experiments.

When I was a kid, we had cows in our pastures and Daddy had an electric fence up around the pasture to keep the cows in. It had a box the size of a car battery that hung on the wall in the barn and two glowing spheres of red would flash on and off as it sent out the powerful jolts of electricity. With each one it made an ominous clicking sound to remind you that this was dangerous stuff. But it was also a fun adventure to line up, about five in a row, hold hands, and then have the person on one end touch the ground while the person on the other end touched the fence. A click later and we broke that chain with a yowl and a giggle and then we’d do it again, sometimes changing places. The people on the ends really got a jolt, while the person in the middle only had the mildest bit of electricity coursing through them. Ah, good times. Now I don’t want you to think my father was irresponsible in letting us do this. Though, now that I think about it, did he tell us how to do it in the first place? Whatever, there were many times that he would warn us that he currently had the fence on a higher power and we shouldn’t be touching it at all because it was dangerous. We heeded his word and didn’t have our fun if we’d been warned.

And I am also becoming involved in a bit of radio again and that is next on my list of To-Do’s tonight. I have been on the afternoon show of a radio station north of Dallas for the last several years. Or at least my voice is there. I have pre-recorded a lot of things and they are just plugged into the program so a voice is saying hello as people listen and go about their day. My friend Steve, the owner, wants me to do new ones each day and be current and topical. There isn’t a lot of work involved, but it is the thinking about WHAT to say that stymies from time to time. In “real” radio where you are under the gun because the clock is ticking, you have breaks that are boring or lame or you don’t say anything except the name of the song because that’s as much time as you had to prepare (or you were in the traffic office visiting with your friend Ann, which was usually the case with me). When it is prerecorded, you don’t have that luxury. If it sounds lame, you record it again. Currently, we are just trying it out to see if I want to do this every day. I’ll try to remember to keep you posted.

Flaco just let out a big sigh. He has quit purring and is sound asleep now while my legs fall asleep from being on tip toes so he doesn’t fall off my lap. He probably wants me to get my tasks done so we can adjourn to someplace more comfortable.

Now go read all of Jenni’s old blog posts and great recipes and crafty things and go listen to the artists she promotes, too. And maybe I’ll get back on the writing horse because of her.