Music and Cats

A sunny, breezy April Sunday would have been reason enough for joy.

A gorgeous, glowing shade of orange would have been reason enough for joy.

Beautiful, edible wild spring greens (wood sorrel and miners lettuce) would have been reason enough for joy.

But what brought me so much joy today that I couldn’t keep from grinning were the musicians who, lured by the lovely weather, came out to play for the crowd at the Ballard Farmers Market. The Tallboys‘ Charlie and Charmaine, my nephews’ favorite clogger, were just setting up Paul and I arrived, but a little ways down the block, a young fiddler was playing old-timey tunes on her tiny violin. Rhythm, intonation, poise; this young lady had them all… as well as parents hovering nearby, cheering her on. I added a dollar bill to those already littering her fiddle case; she smiled back at me as she continued to play.

Farther down the block, three more seasoned musicians entertained the young fiddler’s peers and their parents.

Do you want to see what joy looks like? Look at the little boy in the brightly-colored cap — the way his small body leans in toward the music, the delight on his face. Look at the small girl in the green-striped dress — airborne as she dances, her hair flying.

And see the face of the fiddler, watching the pleasure that the music he’s making brings to these little ones. There is joy in the making of music, but seeing such a response to it ups the joy quotient immeasurably.

Joy in the sunlight, and in the music. Joy on faces, and on the breeze.

* ‘Upping the joy quotient’ is a phrase I’ve borrowed from Terrilynn, who used it in a comment on a post I wrote a couple of years ago about some other tiny dancers.

This week, the McKittens are taking a break from their hectic photo shoot schedule, and are happy to yield the Feline Friday floor to a special guest.

The lovely Isabel shares a sunny Seattle apartment with her feline companion Owen, and humans C & B. Isabel is sleek and shiny, a minimalist study in white and shell pink. She has one blue eye and one green, and the deafness that often accompanies such coloring. Although she can’t hear people telling her that she’s beautiful, it’s evident that she knows. How could she not?

Is Isabel dreaming of all the animals aboard the Friday Ark? Or of May flowers, like the cats at S’Kat and the food’s Weekend Cat Blogging? Or perhaps of the elegant Aloysius at Catymology, which hosts Carnival of the Cats on Sunday?

It’s Saturday afternoon, and I’m enjoying what is, sadly, a rare treat for me these days: a weekend day not spent at the office. The sun is gradually breaking through this morning’s gray skies. And through my office window, I hear the twittering of birds stuttering of a jackhammer.

I took this photo of our house this morning, from the bottom of our driveway. It is, truthfully, a bad photo of the house, but I wasn’t trying for high art. I took the photo to document that which the jackhammer is at this very moment destroying: the old, mossy concrete retaining wall on our side of the driveway.

As is common in some of Seattle’s older neighborhoods, our house shares a driveway with the house next door. The property line runs down the middle of the driveway, and also through the middle of the garage at the back of the two lots. The upkeep of the driveway and garage are, therefore, a joint venture between us and our next-door neighbors.

This wall has a knack for taking bites out of unsuspecting vehicles, including ours during our first months here. Once we learned to negotiate the driveway, we didn’t think much of the wall until our neighbor sold his house. The driveway is narrow — only seven feet across — and our soon-to-be new next-door neighbors drive large vehicles. (Why any city dweller needs… no, don’t let me get started. Anyway…) As part of our shared plan for redoing the driveway (regrading, repaving, widening slightly), the wall is coming down. On Tuesday, a landscaper will come to regrade that edge of our yard, and install a a loose rockery to help retain the slope. Once planted, it will be pretty, and our driveway will be a safer place… even for oversized vehicles.

“The only way to eat well in England is to have breakfast three times a day.”
– Somerset Maugham

A while back, Sam of Beck’s & Posh posed the question: Is English Food A Joke? Somerset Maugham evidently thought so. I, however, beg to differ.

I have enjoyed many a wonderful meal in England. Elegant pub fare (not a contradiction in terms) at the Notley Arms, nestled on the edge of Somerset’s Exmoor National Park, and in the thatched, golden stone of the Falkland Arms in Great Tew. Delicious, locally grown vegetarian food at Stones, surrounded by Avebury’s magnificent circle of standing stones. Cream teas too numerous to mention; in the gardens of small Devonshire tea shops and accompanied by a string quartet in Bath, and — one of the best — at a picnic table on the edge of Exmoor, after a long, beautiful hike. Noodles at London’s hip Wagamama, fabulous Indian food in Leicester (!), and, on an evening when my new husband and I were both tired and a little cranky, the best Whopper ever at the Burger King in Shrewsbury.

And yet… when I consider the meal that has kept me on my feet, hiking English hills or wandering English museums or tripping on English sidewalks because I’m looking up at buildings yet again, I think of breakfast. The English cooked breakfast. The full breakfast. The fry-up.

The ingredients for a cooked breakfast are simple: eggs, bacon and/or sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes, bread, orange marmalade. Some people consider baked beans an indespensible part of a full breakfast; I’ll save those to go with my shepherd’s pie, thank you. The preparation is simple: fry up the bacon in a skillet, then add the sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes and eggs according to the time they will take to cook to your taste. While you could fry the bread, I toasted this homemade whole grain meal bread in our toaster. (Sadly, we do not have a quintessentially English toast rack in which to stand toast.) Lower sodium bacon, chicken sausage, local free-range eggs and organic tomatoes do not a traditional cooked breakfast make, but it sure was yummy. And after we’d eaten, I felt ready to build an empire… or take a nap.

(We ate our cooked breakfast last Saturday on our very English Denby stoneware. We bought this little blue Denby pitcher on our honeymoon, while on a tour of the factory.)


UPDATE: In honor of St. George’s Day, Sam’s epic roundup of Fish & Quips posts will prove to even the most skeptical that English food is no joke. Sixty-five bloggers participated in Fish & Quips, and Sam has collected a photo and quotation from each of our posts. Take a look! Have a read! This is English food to make you drool.

fish & quips, fish and quips

Recently, a friend gave us a small armchair that she no longer wanted. While it is just the right size for a short woman (me), it appears that it is also the right size for a pair of cats. The two larger McKittens fit quite nicely; I’ve seen them snuggled up together in the new chair several times this week. Sergei rarely bathes anyone other than himself, but a couple of days ago he gave Sasha a good ear washing — followed by a nice long nap.

Someday I’ll get to sit in that chair. I’m sure of it.

Settle down for a visit with the animals aboard the Friday Ark.