Confessions of a Walking Disaster

The weather’s finally been cool enough to be outside all day without dying of heat stroke or getting swept away in torrential rain. September is my favorite time of year — except my birthday is coming up and I keep getting older.

Dennis and I went golfing with friends in Townsend — the “quiet side” of the Smokies. It’s still in the mountains but without the Gatlinburg chaos. If you’ve been there, you know: stunning views, always busy. I say we went golfing, but really Dennis golfs; I drive the cart and look for golf balls he’s hit into the wild blue yonder. Turns out finding golf balls is a lot like finding mushrooms, and I’m pretty good at it. I’m not sure I ever found a ball he actually hit into the wilderness, but I found several someone else had lost, and that’s what counts. We ate at a neat little place that actually had food that didn’t make us want to slit our wrists to let the grease out called Peaceful Side Social Brewery and Craft Kitchen. Weird name. Good food.

It’s nice to have people almost as weird as me to hang out with, too.

I’m a baker in more ways than one — but here I mean bread. Dennis is a sucker for yeast breads: soft, fluffy, Wonder-Bread–type loaves. His favorite is brioche, but I’ve never been able to perfect it (plus it has a shit pot of sugar). The closest I’ve come is an egg bread. The eggs make it fluffy and soft, and an egg wash makes the crust golden and magically delicious. The dough is easy to handle so you can shape it however you want. I’ve been braiding loaves, but they rose too high and wouldn’t cook in the middle without burning the tops. For this one I made a super-long loaf. During the second rise the braid broke a little, but at that point there was no repairing it, so I threw it in the oven and hoped for the best. Behold: the lobster loaf! The taste was fine — it just looks funny. Now that I’ve gone too tall and too long, I figure the next one will turn out just right.

The quail are so weird. They don’t make a sound and they walk like they’re trying to sneak around. One has a crossed beak and is smaller than the others, but it seems to be eating and drinking fine. It just looks weird — you might have to blow the photo up to see it.

They really like their sandbox, but other than that they’re pretty boring birds. Dennis is working on a different enclosure so we can have more and he can start eating them. This is how these things always go for me: I get a pet and he gets dinner! I’ve never tried quail, but it’s supposed to be tasty and easy to process. More on that later. Maybe. We’ve had a total of four eggs since we got them, which isn’t great for what we’re putting into them, but maybe they’re still freaked out from the move or don’t like me peering in like a hungry predator.

The eggs are small and you need a special pair of scissors to crack them open, or else you get shells everywhere — they just shatter because there’s nothing to hold on to. Cute little eggs, though. And you’ll never believe this, but they taste like eggs. Let me know if you want some and I can hook you up… eventually.

Meet Willy.

Willy doesn’t give a damn about quail or eggs or anything, really. I found him on the side of the road in a duffel bag on my way to work a few years ago. He still had his nuts, so he smelled like a Tom cat that had been around the world a few times, and he looked like it too. His nose was split and his eyes were different sizes. He had scars and scabs from fighting. He looked like hell, so it was no surprise he didn’t get adopted and ended up here with us. At first he wanted to be outside, roaming around and peeing on everything. I’d never seen a cat spray before, but Willy is the grand master champion of the sport. I was told he would stop months after getting neutered, but he most definitely has not. Willy fought with everything at first. It didn’t matter that the dogs outweighed him by 70 pounds; he was going to show them who was boss, and he did. To this day, the dogs walk around him or let him go ahead because they’re afraid of getting attacked by the little orange street fighter. He would jump on the counters and let me pet him — but only a little — and then he’d bite me. He likes head butts but will suddenly bite my nose in the middle of a good snuggle. He’s sweet but always seems to feel the need to be mean.

We almost lost Willy when he jumped up on the table where Dennis was eating breakfast and sprayed all over everything. We both freaked out and Willy ran off, and Dennis was done with him. Willy had been whizzing on everything and our house smelled like his bachelor pad. I did some research and found a hormone diffuser that supposedly helps; I bought it, and amazingly it worked. I put one in each problem room and he stopped. The product is called Feliway and you can get it from Chewy — because Chewy rocks. I quit using them for a while until Anoah arrived and Willy started whizzing on the door to the workout room. I put a diffuser by the door and he quit. Why in the hell do we keep a pissing orange devil around? Because he fits with the rest of this misfit crew we’ve accumulated. If you come to visit, you probably won’t see Willy, but you will smell him — because he marks our porch to keep us safe from other orange demon cats that may do us harm. Viva la Willy!

There’s a pond near Weavers Bend that’s stocked with fish by air a couple of times a year. I’ve never fished there, but I’ve seen people. I can’t say if anyone ever catches anything. I wonder how many fish survive the drop from the stock helicopters. There’s rarely anyone there because it’s hard to get to and the water looks yucky. We took Maggie and Moose last weekend to get away from the house and for Maggie the water dog’s end-of-season swim. Moose is not a water man. Moose is a muffin man. The amount of trash around that place was astounding; I think it’s being used more as a hangout spot than a “let’s enjoy nature” spot. I wish people didn’t have to go around mucking stuff up.

Speaking of mucking stuff up, what is going on in the world around us? I did not know of Charlie Kirk until after his assassination, but Dennis had listened to his talks. I don’t think his murder shocked me as much as people’s reactions to it. The man was a father, husband, and son, and all of that was taken away because someone didn’t like the words coming out of his mouth. Those celebrating his death made me sick to my stomach and deserve whatever consequences come from the words they’re spewing back. Have some respect for each other, for shits’ sake. We are all the same: you can die rich and still die; you can die believing in God or not, and still die. None of us are getting out alive so why can’t we just be nice to each other?

I confess, I did not pick up the trash at the pond. There were condoms and vapes and who knows what else and I’m not trying to be a saint. I’m a walking disaster with good intentions and spotty follow-through. Still, I regularly jack up bread loaves and keep the cat hormones in check; little stupid things that stop the world from feeling like it’s crushing me. That’s my contribution for now. Take it or leave it.

What do you do to keep your sanity with all of the chaos and uncertainty that surrounds us? I’m always down for new ideas and things to do. This is perfect hiking weather, just say when and where. 🥾