Drought

We've finally had a smattering of rain - 30 seconds here or there of a downpour, but its only enough to make it hat much more steamy. We've had unseasonably hot weather, and the winds are blowing from the southeast - gee, I love weather from the humid gulf. The sun has been unrelenting, but the clouds show some mercy and puff up by midday, shielding us from some of the worst of it. The buffalos by the hiway are usually out in the field in the morning, but by noon have taken shelter in a stand a mesquite by the now-dry streambed running through their field, and I feel greatful I'm not a huge wooly-headed beast like them. Speaking of hot wooly-headed beasts, Charley's AC in his truck went out, and he's been too busy fixing other things to fix it. I've heard it hasn't been this dry in Texas since the 1920's, but unless its a rainy year like last year, you always hear we're in a record setting drought. The news out of Iowa sounds pretty grim with all the water along the Mighty Mississip... they are suffering on the complete other end of the stick.
My mom is here, visiting from Minnesota, and we've had a busy week! I'm going to put some photos on flickr of the house in its new state - soon, I promise! - I'm just sorry now that I didn't take some 'before' pictures! My mom and I (right, mostly my mom) have cleaned the place from top to bottom. Germs and dust bunnies be damned! We hauled out 5 trash bags of garbage and 4 bags of goodwill donations. Just about every piece of furniture has been moved to a new place. However, the routing of the house did require us to give up some of that furniture, which was difficult - like prying chocolate from a pregnant lady's hand. It also forced Charley to box up approximately 200 t-shirts of his 'cool t-shirt collection'- also difficult, like... trying to pry 200 cool t-shirts from Charley's hand. Craigslist has since put some money in our pockets, introduced us to some cool folks, and rid us of the extra - However, I have refused to let go of the green velvet high-backed rocker, and insist it 'goes' in the dining room, and likewise, Charley refused to part with his torn and ugly big blue recliner, and insists it is his 'dad chair' for when he has baby duty. Even though, we now have more than a foot-wide aisle through the house to walk through! (I TOLD you we went a little crazy at last year's estate sales)Sometimes we spread our arms and legs and take giant steps through the house now, just because we can! Charley installed a beautiful pantry cabinet that we (okay, he) salvaged and refinished, and it is really great to have a place to put cans and boxes of food other than my clothes closet. My diapering station is even ready, stuffed with cloth diapers from the diaper service we'll be using. I'm feeling very settled in, and comfy in my nest. I just have a few more things to gather, and my last day of work is July 28th. I'll have a week or three to rest and be leisurely, and go swimming and take naps before the baby decides to be born.
I have noticed the vine of Texas Plums is fruiting... they look like a string of Christmas lights strung along our lane. The mandivilla vine came back to life, and will hopefully spread itself out on the lattice shading our kitchen. We have a few small figs, but the leaves of the fig tree are turning yellow and brown, even with the water we give it. Other than that, our brown scrubby grass and the enlarging hoppers are about the only life around the house showing their face.

Twisted Country Fun - Big Spiders & Little Snakes

I mentioned we've been seeing turtles. Charley even stops the car to rescue them when we see them on the road. We've been seeing snakes, too, but the snakes are always smooshed flat and mangled if they are on the road. I've seen him handle his favorite snake, a harmless hognose gone limp, one we found out around the nose cone buildings last fall. Recently, I was talking on the phone and pacing around outside. I was hoping it would fill in for my usual tour of the grounds, but I found myself walking up and down the lane. On my second lap, I walked up farther, closer to the main road than the last. There, on the ground in the middle of one of the tire tracks on our lane, lay a broken and jointed looking snake. Snakes are usually smooth, with lots of curves. But this one lay with its tounge lolling out of its mouth, in angles. It had been run over to be looking like that. Except! It could be one of the tricks the hognose snake plays - opossum, being one of them. The others include hissing and flattening its head like a viper, and even sometimes shaking its tail and hissing to masquerade as a rattler. I watched it for a while, still absorbed in my conversation. It didn't look like the hognose I've seen, and besides, I've seen them go limp, but I've never seen one portray brokeness, for goodness sake. Only the roll of a big tire could have done that to the poor little thing. I was still having this conversation, but now I was really distracted. I wanted to get the dead snake and save it for my husband! He would like that. (weirdo) He could tell me what it is, and we might even skin it. That would be cool. But ew! I don't actually really want to touch it. I've seen a recently extinguished snake before - they still move in reaction to heat and touch stimuli, even without a head and skin on the meat. Ew. I didn't want to touch it because it might move, and then I would have an involuntary freakout and feel stupid. So I picked a stick. Well, I was looking for a stick, but the light was fading and I had to hurry, so I just broke off a dry weed, about 8 inches of dry weed to poke it with. Poke it? Well yes. I was pretty sure it was dead, but just in case, I was going to poke it. I'm faking attention to my conversation now. Remember? I'm still on the phone. And I'm moving in on the snake, reaching my - oh really probably too short, I realize, to keep me safe from anything, but I keep poking that stiff weed out towards it. .. poke. POKE! Scream! Kara jumps. Snake jumps. Hissssss! Slither! Scream! Pant. "Sorry for screaming in your year, Mom. " And I might have explained, but I remember at least thinking " yeah, I poked a dead snake. It wasn't dead. I guess that was a hognose. " It was kind of a weird situation to explain all the sudden. It was outta there, never to be seen again. I was left tasting the metallic tang of adrenaline that I hate to love so much. Yesterday, I spotted a Banana Spider hanging out on its web, attached to the roof and wall at the back of the house, by the laundry line and the rock pile. Banana Spiders are HUGE spiders, and weave a gossamer web with a thick, cottony zig-zag up the center, where they usually rest. I admired its race-car coloring, jags of hornet yellow and pure ebony all over the shiny carapace and smooth, jointed legs. Tonight, I spied a wild-eyed, stripey-legged large and juicy hopper - one of the damned grasshoppers that has been denuding the fig tree, and felling the mandevilla flowers within moments of bloom. I wondered aloud to Charley what would happen if we grabbed it, and tossed it into the Banana Spider web. He thought it would hop a lot, and ruin the web. We decided it was worth some action, and spiders repair webs all the time... that's the point. Just to be kind, Charley yanked the legs off the poor prickley hopper, and tossed 'er in. MAN. It wasn't 5 seconds and the big lady had her wrapped in one translucent layer of silk. Wide sheets appeared, and the spider rolled her bundle. The next pass made the packet opaque, and the spider crunched down to deliver some uh... anesthetic. We both stood there with our mouths open, and then our conversation was something like "that was fast did you see that?" "Yeah, oh my god that was fast holy cow!" That spider made quick, tidy work of that poor handicapped grasshopper. I felt a little guilty, almost, for greedily handing out an advantage. The spider didn't even have to fix her web, and she left her little package to liquify, and resumed her place on the soft pad of cottony zig zag, the throne in the middle of her impenetrable fortress.