sweet

last night my hands smelled of peaches.

i blanched, peeled and cut up 5 1/2 lbs of peaches-freestone county, texas peaches. we stopped on our way back from my aunt's house at a road side stand. they were selling freshly picked peaches, strawberries and other local produce. it was heady to hand over my $20 to buy a peck of peaches fresh from the tree. our car smelled so good on the rest of the trip home. it spoke to me of summer and childhood and peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream.

i will have peaches for a while, now.


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we visited my aunt this past weekend. she lives in houston. it's been 21 years (gak!) since i last visited her. this was the first time for me to visit her alone and as an adult. i told bunny that i was jealous of him since he had no baggage in relation to my family. he got to meet and get to know her without any preconceived ideas or past experience.

i have a difficult relationship with my family on my father's side. it has to do with manipulation by my grandmother, difficulty with my grandfather, criticism by many adult relatives about my weight, living very far away from all of them and many other things too numerous to mention. i am trying to get to know them and, in turn, they get to know me.

it was a good weekend with my aunt. i became less intimidated. i think i became less "weird" to her (nose piercing, tattoos and all) and we found common ground. bunny enjoyed himself, too. the astros lost, but the astro dogs were tasty.

so, my hands smelled of peaches last night. i wish it hadn't faded.

hope denied

we took a really sick stray kitty to the vet saturday. we (and a whole bunch of other people) found him at the town square. he was skin and bones and covered in icky stuff. everyone was standing around looking at him and i couldn't just stand there, so we took him to the vet.

it was really sad because he had FIV and mouth cancer, so he couldn't eat or drink. the whole time he was in such pain, he still wanted love and affection from us. he rose up to meet our stroking fingers as they bumped their way down his bony back. he head butted us to make us his and ask for more scritchings under his chin and rubbings on his ears. we ended up having to put him to sleep.

i cried.

i named him travelin' joe. i like to think he was looking for us when he showed up on the square because he didn't want to be in pain and have to starve any more; that he wanted a last bit of loving to make him feel like someone's baby again.

he was "ours" for about an hour and a half.