Kitchen Costuming

Flies are some of the most disgusting pests I can think of in the insect world.  Although in some cultures, the presence of a fly can be a sign of good luck.   I had been dodging flies outside since the end of May, but I hadn’t seen any good luck come my way in my effort to refinance my house.  Actually it was just the opposite.  Since St. Patrick’s Day, I had been working with my local bank loan officer to get my monthly home payments reduced.  Considering the state of the economy, the banks, and the real estate market, it was amazing anyone at the bank was even talking to me.  Without going into a lot of detail, let’s just say that there were a few set-backs in getting this thing moving. Finally after many delays, a title company officer came to my house to have papers signed.  Unfortunately, she left me with the impression that there was still an “if” about the loan closing.  Geez God, just send me a sign already, I thought.

Two days later, I noticed a couple of my indoor cats hovering around the back end of the arcadia door. I shooed the cats away to see about ten flies flitting around on the inside of the glass door.  I grabbed the can of insect spray and blasted them.  The cats had now found something else to grab their attention in the nearby window.  As I pulled the blinds away, there were several more flies.  What is going on here?  Where are all these flies coming from?  There were lots of flies outside, but how are they getting into the house?  With this many flies in the house, I would think I would have seen one buzz by me.

When my son, Todd, came home later that day, I told him the creepy story of the flies before I went to lie down.  My head never hit the pillow when I heard, “Hey Mom, come here and see this!” As I rounded the corner, I could see my son over by the arcadia door.  I couldn’t believe my eyes!  There were about twenty more flies crawling on the glass.  As the last fly succumbed to the insect spray, I cautiously moved towards the living room window.  The wooden shutters were closed with a couple of slats open.  A scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds crept into my mind as I slowly opened the shutters.  I slammed the shutters closed and ran for the bug spray.  When the toxic fumes cleared, I had annihilated over thirty flies just in the living room.  We estimated the body count was somewhere around sixty plus altogether.

So are flies lucky?  Well obviously not for them, but the next day I received the papers in the mail telling me the loan that I had tried for over fours years to refinance was now paid in full.  Somehow through all the goofs and delays, I managed a five percent interest rate.  My monthly mortgage payment has almost been cut in half.  Along with the papers was a big check I wasn’t expecting.  A week later, I got another big check from the escrow account.  Where did all the flies come from?  We never found out and they never came back.  Be careful when you ask God for a sign, you just might get one (or sixty).

Update 5/5/09:  The fledglings seemed to have successfully flown the coop!

Hot, sweltering weather is the norm here in Glendale, AZ.  I just can’t wait! Oh yeah, I guess I don’t have to because it was already 102 degrees last week. 

Well I know I should be making costumes, but before it gets excruciatingly hot and sweaty around here, I need to get my patio cleaned off. Besides, I can always sew with the air conditioning cranked downed to 80 degrees (recommended temperature, more like 75 degrees for me).

I am working on a few posts, but need to get some things together first.  In the meantime, I am on Starling fledgling watch as I wait for the new babies to emerge from the tree only to be chased to their deaths by the three cats that live outdoors.  Hopefully, I will get there as the birds emerge before the cats get them in their sights.

In my attempt to get more content on this blog, I decided to create a new category that barely had anything to do with costuming or props.  It is not that I don’t like sharing those things with my readers, but there is a lot that goes into some of these blogs making them of almost epic proportion. It can take days or even weeks of preparation to even write something (Why have a blog if it isn’t updated frequently?).  And of course, I know my audience (of two) is just sitting on the edge of their seats waiting to see what I come up with next.

Okay, so I thought about this all day yesterday (even as I was mowing the lawn). What would be a good title for this category?  I wanted this to be like a daily journal where I could exercise my creative writing skills and basically be about nothing in particular.  The thought that I latched onto for most of the day was to call the category “Kitty Litter.” Sounds strange, I know, but when you live in a household with 8-9 cats, thoughts of kitty litter never quite leave your mind (or your feet, the bed… or anywhere else).  Anyway, my reasoning was a little skewed, but it was so perfect that this is where I could deposit all of the “crap” that didn’t quite fit into Kitchen Costuming.  The rest of the day was spent on trying to come up with a cute acronym for CRAP. As my mind worked overtime with things like “Cookster’s Ranting Against Passivity” or “Central Repository About Props,” I gave myself a massive headache (of course, that could have been from the huge dust bowl I funneled into the air mowing the lawn earlier). At one point, I considered doing a blog like the new “Daily Wag” on Martha Stewart’s website written by her two French Bulldogs.  I have lots of cats that would love to get in on the action and let their voices be heard.  But then I remembered how opinionated they all were.  I can see them fighting over who gets to write for the day, and I would get bumped to subscriber of this blog.  CRAP would now stand for “Cats Rule Amongst People” and the only content would be cats in tiny Harley Davidson garb or pirate costumes.

I decided the category should be called Blog Shorts.