Tempting Fate!

   I have to admit that Bat, the Bayou Prince Cat, amused me when he decided to take a nap in the old cast iron pot.  Obviously, the pot was toasty warm which made it the perfect place for a snooze on a chilly day.  Well, he is at it again!  This evening, I lit a fire in the old cast iron wood-burning stove.  This is an antique cookstove that has top plate burners and a working oven.  The oven warms nicely but unless the fire is kept stoked and the door closed, it never gets overly hot.  It stays nice and warm but not "burn to the touch" hot.  While in use, I keep the oven door open so the heat can enter the room.  The oven door being flat open almost on the floor also provides a convenient place to stack a few "fire sticks" as my granddaughter calls them.  It only takes a handful to keep the old stove going for some time.  Mr. Bat has decided that the open oven is an "open invitation".  That silly cat moved into the oven as a napping spot! I am really going to have to watch him this winter so he does not decide to jump on top of the stove!  THAT does get really hot...hot enough to burn his paws.

  Never before has any of our bayou cats taken a liking to sleeping inside the oven but this cat is way different than any of the others.  He is far more inquisitive and far more adventurous.  Given a half of chance, he will attempt anything.  He is one goofy daredevil and is going to find himself in a heap of trouble some day.  He has already been bitten by a cottonmouth (dry bite, thankfully), chased by the eagle (smart enough to dive under the pier) and has taken a swim in the Bay (his doings).  His nine lives are going to be used up quickly if he does not start being a bit more careful.  Sleeping inside an oven may not be helping matters much!  Oh, Bat!  You are one silly cat!

A Bit of Warmth...

  I am one of those weird folks who does not mind using whatever I find to remedy a situation.  It is not in my nature to run buy whatever is needed.  I usually can find a substitute for any given missing element to a problem.  It all goes back to having a bit of ingenuity and being able to survive without outside help if the need arises.  I figure what Pop taught me so many years ago still rings true today.  If something is broken...fix it.  If something needs doing...do it.  If something is needed...get it.  Nope...no buying back on the farm.  We used the brains instead of spending hard earned money.  

  This morning was downright chilly.  The skies were still grey and a slight drizzly rain fell from the sky.  With the north wind blowing a gale, the Little Bayou House was cooling down quickly.  Son had split a lot of wood for the cast iron wood stoves but I had a different idea of what to burn.  Earlier when I had the old dog out, I noticed that thousands of hickory nuts had fallen under the tree on the east side of the house.  Yep!  I was going to burn hickory nuts!  This is nothing new for me, however, as I have been doing it for years in the old stoves.  The nuts put out a lot of heat, burn long and smell great!  It was the memory of all three that had me scooting out in the misty morn to gather a five gallon bucket of the nuts.  That would last me all day and well into the night.

  The burning of hickory nuts would probably not be the smartest idea in an open fireplace as they do occasionally explode and send shards about the place but the cast iron wood stove is completely enclosed so let them pop away!  Once the fire was started and the nuts caught, the slow burn started and the Little Bayou House warmed and smelled nicely!  That, my friends, is thinking!  Pop would be proud.

Interesting Twists

  Call me an old fogey if you wish but, for the life of me, I cannot understand a lot of the language used these days.  When writing, folks use a lot of acronyms in place of words and even those have changed since I was a kid trying to be cool.  About half of a written paragraph is made up of a bunch of random letters smashed together to supposedly make a phrase.  It is stupid, when you think of it.  No one is going to be able to write a decent book at this rate.  It will be filled with things like BTW, LOL, IMO, OMG and THX.  That last one is a bit confusing as it means thanks...understood...I guess...but then TQ means thank you.  How?  Simply how?  How does that Q translate to you?  Yep, I am getting old.  But it is not just acronyms that get my feathers ruffled.  There are a ton of new words or old words that have new meanings that are merely out there to befuddle old folks like me.  Take for instance "Twitter" that used to be something that birds did.  "Tweet", again...birds.  Now, those have totally different meanings and if you use them in the original sense, folks look at you like you are weird.  Perhaps, I am.  Some of the new meanings to old words are not so nice so you have to be careful what you say!

  So, when my cousin wrote that she was out "twigging", it took me aback a bit.  I was not sure just what she was doing or even if I wanted to know.  You can imagine my relief when I found out that she was actually using the word in a way that made sense.  She was twigging, indeed.  Truth be known, she was gathering twigs for her wood-burning stoves.  Makes sense and is something that we share.  I have long used the word for the very same thing.  On my hikes around the hillside, I gather twigs.  It is a two-fold task as it cleans the yard at the same time gives me firewood.  A old cast iron wood-burning stove can burn for about an hour on a handful of hefty twigs.

  This morning, I gathered my usual bundle of twigs and dumped them down in the old tub that sits by the wood-burning stove in the living room.  As I did, I pondered if my grandmother would approve.  This tub was her old soap-making pot and never held a dirty twig in its whole time on this earth until I came in possession of it.  Now instead of making soap out of lye which is made from potash, it holds the twigs that make the potash to make lye for soap-making.  Interesting twist on things when you think of it. So I guess folks who twist words around to suit their needs are not that far removed from my twisting the use of a pot around to suit mine.