StrangeRanger

The Traditional Use for a Kitchen

Not only is the kitchen used to prepare food and drink, it is also a space in which to consume them. Witness.

Maddie always loved to drink from her glass (and yes, it was specifically bought for her) on her stool (which came as part of the butcher block set and was not bought for her)(which didn't prevent her from appropriating it as desired). 

What?  You sit on the stool and drink those foul Colombian bean squeezings with creamer...why shouldn't I sit here to have my far more civilized drinkies??  If I had a pinkie, I assure you, sir, it would be stuck out.

True, Little Miss....

As she aged, Maddie took her liquid refreshment on the floor in the corner next to the dishwasher.  She went from perching on the stool, meowing loudly for her water to doing the same in the corner.  

Hey.  It worked.  Be off with you.

More info on our kitchen work (please feel free to disregard if you've only come for the cat):  

In the top photo you can see more of the kitchen, including the 1970's stove that was here when we moved in.  We were not sorry to see it go when it died and we bought our current one.  You can also see in the right middle of the pic the plastic strip that was nailed to the baseboard to hide the 2 inch gap between the floor and the wall.  We think that, after three (3!!) attempts over 17 years to have the floor jacked up, the guy that's doing the job for us has finally gotten things worked out and that once the new floor, baseboards and toe kick are installed it'll look like rich people live here.  Or at least people who don't have a gap between the wall and the floor.

In the middle photo you can see our old dishwasher.  It was 20 years old if it was a day and although loud, it was the first dishwasher we had in our married life and we loved it.  Worked like a dream until the leak started.  We actually regretted having to replace it.  We really wanted to give it a viking funeral, sent off into the sea on a blazing longship.  I really think that it's now off in some Appliance Valhalla.

It's funny... I tend to be a type of animist and want to imagine the spirit of my dishwasher enjoying the eternal rinse cycle.....

 We got our new low-end Bosch dishwasher on deep sale and are quite pleased.  The only thing that bothered us?  It is so quiet that when we turned it on for the first time we thought it was broken!  If we'd had the Bosch from the first it'd have saved us a lot of spilled water. There were a few times that we made the mistake of firing the old one up while Maddie was having drinkies on her stool.  When the loud ol' Whirlpool started it's very loud cycle and took Maddie by surprise...well off she went!  You'll notice the stool has a narrow base and is not stable under that kind of feline acceleration.  You guessed it...the stool and the glass FULL of water hit the floor.

Tough!  Jeez, that thing is LOUD!!!  You outta WARN A CAT next time!

Well, more boring kitchen stuff next week, maybe.  I'll try to find more cat pics to make it palatable.

All Ahoo

It's been a different sort of week here at ChezRanger.  Things are indeed all ahoo.  

(and for those who might be curious..."ahoo" is an archaic term that I think signifies that there is great disorder  in one's physical environment.  I get this word from Patrick O"Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels, the books upon which the movie Master and Commander was <loosely> based.  They are a wonderful series of books set during the Napoleonic Wars.  I've read all of them twice.  They have had a monstrous impact on my everyday speech, much to the puzzlement of my dear LadyRanger.)

The cause of all this chaos is the kitchen (which was proceeded by a complete replumbing job and will be followed by some electrical work).  We're getting some work done and, for the duration, our kitchen is scattered about the rest of our smallish 80-year old bungalow. (another fine word!)  It's not been a simple time, thus my lack of postings.

"At last!" you say, "A cat!  The reason I come here!"  I don't think I have many pics of the house without a cat.  You'll just have to put up with it.  Here, Ivy is settled by the "repair" that was done in the old, cheap, crappy rolled linoleum that we've been living with for 17 years now.  That spot looks even worse now than when this pic was taken.  Ivy never seemed to mind though.

You can form a decent appreciation for the state of the walls and the paint from this pic, if you ignore the imminent confrontation.  Well, actually, Maddie let Ivy enjoy her bag of strawberries in peace.  That's actually one of Maddie's cavernous yawns instead of her usual howl of outrage at Ivy's existence...

As I look through my photos, I find I really don't have much of anything to showcase the old kitchen.  Here you see the floor, the bottom of the range, our cut-rate though much-loved butcher block table, some really amazing cookies and the wee tuxedo cat, who loved the kitchen.

Really, I think that all of my pics of the kitchen are actually of Ivy.  I think that most of my mental pictures of place are actually images of the people I've shared those places with...hadn't thought about that until just now....

Ivy loved her kitchen.

She'd just come in and hang out, tummy up, trusting us not to step on her.  She knew how a house worked and she did love being around her humans.

Maddie came in the kitchen a lot, too, but I think for her it was more mission-driven.  Eating or drinking were her reasons.

In any case, we know both of our girls had reason to appreciate the kitchen.  As have we.  We hope they'd approve of the changes.  We also hope that the next feline residents of ChezRanger (and no, we have not yet found them) will have reason to as well.