Missing Bob and other notes

Grief, whether for cats or people or what have you, comes in waves. I saw the above picture of Bob with Ernie’s hand on him and it hurt a little as much as I loved it. We miss him. I still refer to Hattie as “the cats.”

It’s been a bit of a rough week and it leaves me brain-tired so I’ll just leave you with a few random pictures. I AM greatly enjoying the rain and rumbling thunder. ❤️

I’ve had some lousy gluten-free pasta but I’ve had this package of Barilla gluten-free spaghetti sitting in the pantry for a while. I sliced some zucchini and sautéed it in olive oil. I heated up a few gluten-free meatballs (I’ve never bought frozen meatballs but I was so tickled when I saw they were gluten-free that I couldn’t resist) and cooked the pasta. I added some pasta water, some sage leaves and a bit of butter to the zucchini to make a sauce. We tossed it all together and added some parmesan. It was pretty damn good.

The other night when Ernie was too dozy to deal with anything that had a plot and I had mistakenly taken a whole gummy rather than a half, we ended up mesmerized while watching this Waylon Jennings show. Lots to unpack, the fact that the only female is Jessi Colter, the terrible quality of the production (perhaps all shows in 1980-whatever were like that) and just thinking about how old these guys are now or how young they were then.

I love cabbage. I love sausage. V’ron had brought us some gorgeous sausage from Milwaukee when she was last down. This was the last of it. I found this recipe on the NYT and it had 4 stars and 500+ comments. Had to be great, right? Eh. I’d do it again with a few changes. Keep the cabbage in bigger chunks, cook it a little less. Maybe a little mustard vinaigrette on top of it? They suggest serving it with crusty bread and mustard and that would probably have solved a lot of my issues. I’ll give it another go however as it was so damn easy. I’m TRYING to get dinner on the table a little earlier as Ernie’s appetite is so-so lately and the later it is, the less likely he is to eat much.

There’s no way to make this meal look pretty. We just had sliced tomatoes on the side.

Hattie with her stress banana. Interestingly enough, Hattie seems to enjoy being an only cat. She spent a few days wandering and crying but has settled in. Ernie continues to lure her over to the Ernie side but I’m ok with that. The little girls understand.

One of my favorite books of all time. The wear distresses me but I’m also proud of it. I’ve spent many an hour with this book. I have a post started about Lowell Inness and Dorothy Lee Jones. I’ll finish it one of these days.