Hi Natty

How are you, my love?  I hope everything is well with you.  It's a busy day for me, go go go!  I'm dripping wet after taking a shower, and it's almost sunset so I can't chat long.  I did have time to make dinner: it's fried flat noodles with chicken.  I finally got a chance to cut the grass, the weather has been so wet lately.  Anyway, gotta move on!  I love you!

10 more days

Hi Natty!  How are you, my darling?  I hope you are having a great time, and are healthy.  I'm doing OK, there's only 10 more days of fasting left.  Wow!  It's been a fast moving month.  But soon I get to drink coffee in the afternoon again.  I can't wait!  I haven't had coffee in over 20 days!  Most people go crazy over the Eid.  I don't think too much of that.  I don't really pay attention to public holidays other than that it's tourist season, and now there's Covid.  But God has a special way of handing out paychecks, and the tourists have become residents, and the whole world is a small town now, so I pray that God will have some financial mercy on me soon.  Dinner is rice with eggs and "petai" in hot sauce.  Petai is a legume which enhances spicy rice entrees with a unique, slightly bitter but very strong and pungent flavor.  It's hard to explain, it's probably an acquired taste, but I like it.  Call me local.  Then again, Americans are getting hooked on durian while I don't eat that stuff.

Boy's life

Hi Natty!  What's up?  How are you feeling?  I hope you are enjoying this luxurious time for you, with its books, puppies and mountains.  You must be taking trips to town to get your books, or through the mail.  You can't buy second hand books through the mail, can you?  I guess you could.  I guess I need to think of a personal library for you...  When I was small, I used to sleep with a whole lot of books covering me like a blanket.  Now I only read one book.  I want to master that book, and I don't know if I will live long enough to do so.

Lily and Bro are softening and cleaning up nicely, from being indoor kittens.  Yeah, there's a huge difference between indoor and outdoor cats.  You can tell just by looking at them.  Here's the latest snapshot of Lily.  She still has a dirty face from rubbing her eye where Floofy punched her.  She kind of has a sad look about her, don't you agree?  Perhaps she remembers the time she died from pneumonia, if you follow that "cat have 9 lives" saying.

Her brother Bro is looking totally fabulous.  He's a really cute kitten now.  This is probably the best kitten snapshot I've ever taken.  You can tell that Bro is totally posing for the camera.  He's so adorable!

He's probably pumping up the cute factor now before he grows up, because he knows that male cats don't stay indoors.  I don't know what he's thinking in that matter, because if he succeeds in swindling me into keeping him in the house, he's going to be neutered and what guy wants that?  I'm afraid boys get treated differently than girls in this regard, and it's absolutely because of the peepee.  When he becomes sexually mature, he's going to be an outdoors cat.  And I will probably never see him after that, because male cats never stick around the homestead.  It's a boy's life.

Chicken soup

Hi Natty!  How are you today, my beloved?  I hope you are feeling good, and healthy.  I'm waiting for sunset again, and the evening is nice and cool.  My mother gave me some chicken soup, and I have plenty of other stuff to eat, so I didn't really have to cook.  It's a clear broth type chicken soup, I guess it would be more accurate to call it chicken stew- it has potatoes.  I did fry up some chopped up chicken skin- makes great artificial bacon bits.  Otherwise, there's not really much going on other than the usual.  I'm just going to watch some TV until they call the prayer.

Spaghetti again?

Hi Natty!  How's it going?  Are you enjoying your own cooking?  I hope you are... practice makes perfect!  Yes Honey, I listened to your podcast.  I'm listening to it right now, actually.  And Happy Mother's Day to your mom.  Natty, you're such a beautiful child!

I'm cooking spaghetti sauce right now, as well.  Actually, I'm done cooking it and it's sitting on the stove top cooling down with a tight lid so that vicious scavengers don't stick their muzzles into my dinner.  It's a heavy pot, I don't think it can be tipped over.  It's a beef and eggplant sauce, and it's extra thick.  I don't know what it tastes like, I'm fasting.  I put all the slop together and cooked it without salt, so after sunset I'll heat it up and add salt then.  The noodles are done and chilling in the cooler.  Yeah, I like my spaghetti noodles on the dry side.  I'm a go-with-the-flow kind of cook, but I've had lots of experience.  In my case practice doesn't make perfect, it's more along the line of "practice makes confidence and great guesswork".  InshaAllah.

Sunday

Hi Natty!  How are you today?  I hope all is well with you.   It's Sunday here for me.  Wow, the fasting month is more than half gone!  It's been full of aches and pains this year, but I think I managed to step up inshaAllah.  It's a busy day as usual, but the evening is nice and cool again.  I spent most of the evening in the kitchen.  Today's dinner is ramen: I have the broth ready, when I'm done with the sunset prayer I'll just flash heat it then add the noodles.  I also bought a kilo of eggplant the other day, so I fried up most of it then blended it in preparation for eggplant sauce.  Yes, spaghetti!  Maybe tomorrow.  Well, it's almost sunset so I must get ready.

Hometown hero/villain

Hi Natty!  How are you today?  I hope everything is easy-going for you, and you are having a wonderful time.  What's it like to be the hometown hero?  Oh the Public Eye is a nuisance all right, but it is the state of our marriage.  We try to do good but it's never good enough, so we turn out to be the villain.  It's easier to do good in the sight of Allah instead of the humans.  They're so nitpicky.



I have been working on a mesh head for Mary Unknown7's avatar, mesh being higher in quality and features than the free system head we get when signing up.  Catwa had a giveaway for their Freya head, and I've been working on getting it to look like Mary.  Here's the Freya mesh head:

And here's the system head we've been using all these years:

Mary said, "That looks absolutely nothing like me!"  I replied, "It does so look like you except the nose, mouth, and eyes."  I got glared at.  Since this is the giveaway head means that almost everyone else has it, so Mary will look somewhat like everybody else.  Isn't that the point?  To jump on somebody else's train?  Shaping the mesh head is like stretching a squeeze doll: you might get a somewhat resemblance of your model, but it still has the look of a squeeze doll.  Mary doesn't want the Freya mesh head, folks.  But I might get her to try it a couple of times.  Or get a more accurate mesh head.