Yellow Jackets

I have been out boiling bees tonight, beside my garden. My neighbor Gilbert had been kindly mowing the lawn around my garden, which is beside the prison, down a path from my house, until he got stung. Gilbert, like so many men, tells me to pour kerosene or gasoline down the holes. My mother would do it, but I am just green and girly enough to resist. After all, my brother George the custodian kills wasps at school with dishsoap and water, he says, and my vegetarian witch friend Julie tells me boiling water works on yellow jackets, so I fill my canning kettle with water and dishsoap and bring it to a boil, then lug the pan with both arms along the woods trail and pour the boiling water into the holes. I pour a little, then jump out of the way and wait for the yellow jackets to calm down, then go back and keep pouring. The soapy water keeps disappearing. The men at the prison are curious about what I'm doing. They are out smoking cigarettes and they come closer (this is a minimum security prison) and start asking me questions, saying they've got yellow jackets bothering them too. Maybe their cigarettes are another reason to resist using kerosene or gasoline. When that canning kettle is empty, I wave goodbye and head down the trail to boil another five gallons before it gets pitch dark.

Powerful again!

Okay, we don't yet have a title for my collection, but we have our power back. Several days without power, without a generator, is enough to make one doubt one's effectiveness. It took me a full day to really grasp the reality that the power might be out for a while. For a day I scrounged candles before going out and buying a hurricane lamp; for days I let food defrost slowly before taking it to Susanna's house. I didn't write, and not writing made me feel ill-at-ease--surprising how addicted I am to the computer. My brother Mike said "It's not bad--it's like camping." Mike is a very good sport. Christopher said, "It's good to be reminded how most of the world lives." Chris and I read, went to sleep a little earlier than usual, drank the usual amount of wine nonetheless. The power came back on a day before we expected it. We didn't mind, not really.

Now back to titling my collection. I still like Witch's Tit, and Chris suggests Witch's Milk, Julie suggests Brass Monkey, and Gina's Cold Rural is nice. I've thought of Driving Rain. Somebody suggested Lake Effect, though there aren't really many lakes in the stories. How about something that suggests Dirty Weather. What about Natural Disasters? (There's even a story with that title in some versions of the collection.) Even having full-on power doesn't solve all problems, doesn't answer all questions, does it?

Witch's Tit

Smart friends have informed me that I cannot call my new collection of short stories Witch's Tit. This is sad news because after months of trying to title this collection (many of the stories of which take place in winter), it is the only title that feels in the spirit of the stories, and my darling Christopher likes it. And I very much want the title of my next book to be something that cheers or startles folks, even though the stories might be a tad depressing. (I should mention that some, like David Magson are viscerally offended by that title.) I've been sending the collection around to no avail with the title Winter Life: Stories from a harsh climate. I think this title might be too much of a downer. Heidi Bell suggests just Winter Life. Carla Vissers likes Cold Rushing In, while Susan Ramsey favors Boar Taint & Other Stories or Too Cold to Snow. Andy Mozina tells me that the two story titles Storm Warning and Night Train would be entirely fine as titles. I would like the title to suggest cold weather or stormy weather, and to suggest rural-ness, and to suggest women (though several people have advised me not to put women in the title since my first book of stories has women in the title (Women & Other Animals.) Glenn Deutsch has advised me against using the title Meth Whore, which is also one of the story titles. Can anybody think of an interesting old phrase about the weather that might make a great title for a book of stories about people whose lives are a little rough going, maybe because of choices they make. Maybe something farmers say. Or maybe there's another witchy phrase, or a biblical phrase or a phrase from a poem. My original title was Monsters of Winter, but that didn't sit right, sounded too forced. This searching for a title as about wore me out, so any help would be appreciated.

How does anybody eat?

Somebody told me that in Germany only the babies eat warm cooked oatmeal, and so I started putting raw oatmeal in my yogurt. I put lots of other things in my yogurt, too, like shredded coconut, seeds, raisins. My bowls of yogurt are very busy and chewy and exciting.

I drink gunpowder tea and in the morning I eat the previous day's tea leaves, which taste really good and have some of the texture of seaweed. If I make any other kind of tea, say regular green tea or the Japanese gen mai chai with the brown rice in it, I don't eat those leaves. Just the gunpowder.

I drink a lot of seltzer water. If I were a famous rock star, I would demand that my hotel room be stocked with all kinds of fizzy mineral waters from exotic locales.

I don't eat after dinner... That's a habit I took up when I gained too much weight a few years ago. Once in a while I'll eat if it seems rude not to eat in camraderie with other people, but not eating at night suits me, makes me sleep better. I do drink at night, of course, and once in a great while I even drink something like a marguerita, which is a lot like a dessert.

My salad and veggies come from the garden in this season: greens, squash, eggplant, beans, and tomatoes; sometimes I stir a vegetable mess up with wasabi horseradish sauce, and something very dramatic happens to my nasal passages with each bite.

If I am unable to get one of my three meals, I'm cranky. I apologize in advance for this.

All that being said, if you invite me to your house, I will eat whatever you offer me, whenever you offer it.

Letter to my cats

Oh, lovely kitty cats, how we rescued you from short brutish lives by bringing you into our modest home. Orange kitty, you were skinny as a potato chip, skittish, sitting with your mouth open below the bird feeder. Gray kitty, you were scared, pregnant, not well connected at all. So we took you both in, fed you nourishing food. For a year, orange kitty, we tolerated your spraying on the lower shelves of books. We endured that rank odor. Gray kitty, we understood that you would not be affectionate, that you might scratch us, for you had been through too much---the feline abortion was the least of it. For you two, through all of this, I have kept all three of your litter boxes scooped on a regular basis. Kitties, certainly you must be aware that other pairs of kitties do not get the generous variety of litter boxes that you have: the one in the TV room (by far the most popular), the hallway box and the bathroom box. In other words, I offer you ample places to shit. And now, late in our relations, you instead decide to shit in the guest room. I suppose I should have noticed before now, but nobody visits us anymore, and so I don't spend time in there. Under the bed, I discovered no fewer than fifty piles of shit hardening on the carpet. And now that I have shut the door (after scrubbing the carpet), you begin to shit elsewhere. I found the pile behind the wood stove, another under my desk, yet another under the couch in the TV room. Please, kitties, explain this to me. Or just stop doing it.