A miscellany

Hmm. Maybe it's an omen. I debated over what to call this post, couldn't decide, finally chose "A miscellany" and somehow hit the wrong key and was cheerfully informed that my blog had published. Not quite what I had in mind.
It's a hot, muggy night. My dinner plans cancelled, so Jordan suggested I come eat barbecue and potato salad (left over from Jacob's birthday). When I arrived she met me in the driveway and said, "Didn't you get my message? I asked you to stop for a bucket of chicken. Christian ate the barbecue." We made a salad, which was really good, and had some frozen pasta/chicken/carrot/broccoli thing out of a bag. Since she and I are both trying not to eat pasta, that wasn't a great choice. The worst of it was though that it had 940 mg. of sodium per serving. When we sat down, she sweetly asked, "Want salt with that?" It was okay--the company was better. It's obvious that day care tires Jacob out--he lies in front of the TV and rubs his eyes a lot, rousing himself occasionally to play with a balloon or ask to be pushed on the trike that he has not yet learned to steer let alone peddle.
It's also an animal day. Just now I heard rumbles of thunder, though nothing is forecast--darn! I let Scooby in because thunder scares him. On my way to Jordan's tonight, I left Wynona the cat at the vet so [she, he, it] can have a tooth cleaning. (Wynona was named as a kitten and was nearly grown when the vet said he could tell us why she'd never had kittens--she's a he; now we have big pronoun trouble, and every time I call him he Jordan says, "You know I hate it when you do that!"]. The vet said [he, she, it] could have no food or water after 10 p.m. tonight and I decided he would make my life miserable, so I boarded him overnight. He's 17 or 18, but the vet says cleaning his teeth and curing his gum infection will help a lot. He's been on antibiotics now for almost ten days.He's still lively, eats ravenously, and pees and poops, so I figure he's in pretty good shape. All his lab tests come back borderline. A lot of us should do so well at his age.
My garage apartment is finished and it looks--well, charming. I hope to get in there tomorrow and put things in order--bags of throw pillows and other decorative things are thrown on the bed now, and I'll have to wash linens and make the beds (all eight of them). But the furniture is in place. The futon is good looking--I didn't sit on it, but it looks okay, probably not a comfortable bed but just fine for some kids. The double-bed bunk beds are lovely looking, beautiful wood. Hmmm. I wonder if Maddie will put linen on the top bunk for me. The hardwood floors gleam and the paint is a lovely soft yellow. Mini-blinds are passe, I know, but they're a lot better than the curtains we had. I'll post pictures when I get it back together again.
Our neighborhood is in the midst of a flap. Most of us signed leases for gas drilling on our property--I really didn't want to but if everyone else signed, one house holding out was a joke--they'd drill under my property anyway to get to the adjacent land, so I might as well deposit the signing bonus. Now another gas company is threatening to put a gas drilling site too close to the neighborhood (this is a big deal throughout Fort Worth with the discovery and tapping into the Barnett Shale). The owner of the property says if they neighborhood is successful in blocking the drilling permit, he'll put something really obnoxious on the property, which is unfortunately zoned industrial. Chesapeake, the gas company, is offering to install sound barriers, landscaping, and other neighborhood-enhancing things, so it seems logical to me to negotiate. I've said as much on the e-mail chat line and boy! have I heard from the bullies, who are all for rushing in with hot-headed anger and boasting that no threat will stop them from standing up for their rights. Doesn't seem to me that's the way to get anything done, nor is it the way this neighborhood has accomplished the many things that make it a lovely place to live.
Guess I'll retreat quietly to writing my mystery which is going better and better. I now have four chapters in draft. I want to polish them and then my mentor from graduate school, who taught genre lit for many years, is willing to read them. But tonight I have some ideas about chapter five that I want to get down first. It's fun to be so involved in the story. And then, late, I might let myself read some of the Deborah Crombie mystery. I've read only a few pages, while riding my stationary bike. (stationery bike?)