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Saturday, October 14, 2006

can we keep him, Mom? can we?

Yesterday the kids looked outside and saw a stray cat (or rather a half-grown kitten) on the porch. They went outside thinking they'd try to pet him, and to their surprise he actually let them. Enthusiastically. They noticed that he was attempting to eat little black fragments of -- well, of whatever it is that comes off the barbecue grill when you clean it -- from the porch, so they brought him a bowl of food, which he scarfed, and a bowl of milk, which he did likewise. He came in the house without blinking an eye, and they presented him to me.

OK, I must be completely honest with you, my vast blogging public. That last sentence? Happened in the opposite order. Ahem.

Anyway. He was starving, matted with stickers, hosting a couple of ticks, and uncannily like our cat Henry, who died a little over a year ago. We cleaned him up, treated him for fleas, and put a collar on him. Meet Darcy:

(ordinarily I do not attempt studio-style photos of pets, but I had constructed a light tent for some ebay photography -- see the photo blog -- so while I had it already set up I stuck him in there. He didn't much want to sit still; I was lucky that he sat down to wash himself and I could snap a shot as he lifted his head.)

Anyway. At least I call him Darcy, because he fights with Elizabeth. C calls him Smoky, and LT calls him Oscar, because (having apparently been on his own and scrounging for quite some time) he has a strong feline passion for the garbage, which he is constantly trying to overturn in hopes of a snack, even though he might already have eaten a small plate of leftover spaghetti sauce, a huge portion of cat food, and probably a cup or so of milk. During the night he succeeded in his quest, and T thought the position of the FOUND flyer to be humorous enough to risk using THE NIKON while I was sleeping to take a picture of it:

(note the blurring to protect me from crazed Internet stalkers. I'm not just going to hand it to you guys.)

I did put several of those up around town but we secretly hope that nobody calls. If we haven't heard from anyone by the end of the weekend, I'll call the vet on Monday and see about getting Darcy/Smoky/Oscar his shots and his testicles removed and all that sort of fun feline stuff. And then I guess maybe we'll have to all actually agree on a name. :)

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Almost-Wordless Wednesday: Roman

(Roman is the name of Dad's new dog [see previous post]. Because he was roamin'. Get it? Maybe you had to be there.)

Saturday, January 07, 2006

Elizabeth again

Nothing special about this picture except that it was taken with a Nikon D70s. With my Nikon D70s. THE NIKON, as opposed to The Nikon, which is of course still an awesome little camera. (lest you think I'm joking with the capitalization, pay attention; those are their actual nicknames and there will be a test later).

This is, of course, the obligatory I-just-got-my-camera-set-up-now-what-can-I-photograph photo. I had all these grandiose ideas for what I'd point it at when I clicked the shutter for that momentous first time, but the UPS driver inadvertently shattered all my plans by arriving after dark. And then we had to drive to the valley (very, very foggy oh my gosh how I hate driving in thick fog). And the gorgeous half-moon was behind clouds when I got home and refused to poke out. So you get Elizabeth, because the kids wouldn't appreciate the flash in their faces. (tripod and 1600 speed, though, I don't think they could mind -- right? stay tuned...)

Friday, December 09, 2005

Elizabeth

... joined us today.

She's six months old and very affectionate. She and Mary (all we need are three more girl cats and we'd have all the Bennet sisters represented) are not exactly best friends yet, but there haven't been any hisses or growls either.

I had expected to have to do a bit of convincing to get T to go along with a new kitty. Turns out he had been wanting to get one for a few months. But I didn't tell you that, OK? We wouldn't want to ruin his tough-guy image. OF COURSE he wouldn't have already fitted out Broadway tunes with new lyrics that include Elizabeth's name. Only someone really soft-hearted and a little zany would do that.

Sunday, September 18, 2005

the sad and the funny all tangled up together

Tonight while I was on my way across our neighbor's field in order to get to a good spot to try and get a few decent moonrise pictures (and also to get enough stinky stickers on my person and clothing to start a tarweed colony on Mars), I nearly stumbled over what was left of the body of our cat Henry. I barely looked at him long enough to register that indeed it was what was left of Henry, and walked on, but I called T to let him know not to bring the kids over to hang out with me, like we'd thought he might, because we didn't want them to see. We decided that after he came out and moved the body off the path, he should go ahead and tell the kids, though, so they (like we) could stop wondering and finally know what had happened to our little buddy.

C's response was utterly typical of her: fifteen minutes of loud sobbing followed by several hours of intermittent sniffling. LT's was more stoic. He wondered if we should have a funeral -- "and what do people do at funerals, anyway? Is there cake and ice cream?"

Monday, August 29, 2005

the start of school (and Henry)

We start school this morning. We were going to start after Labor Day, but of all things, the kids bugged me to start earlier. Today was the soonest I could really feel ready. Here's hoping that this level of enthusiasm lasts, eh? If I were going to set up a betting pool about it, I'd put $5 on... Thursday. Thursday is when the enthusiasm will wane and the griping begin. But hey, I am darn sure going to enjoy this while it lasts. Here's what our day looks like (schooldays get longer and longer as they get older):

1. Prayer and Flag Salute (the latter is largely a concession to T, who is a school-at-home homeschooler if ever I saw one, but honestly I'm that way in the beginning of the school year too)
   
2. Read two chapters of Exodus, taking turns (this will happen every day until we finish the book, and is preparation for the 40-week-long study of Exodus on which we're about to embark in our chapter summary study)
   
3. copy work (printing/cursive practice. The text they're copying today is Philippians 2:14 -- "Do everything without complaining or arguing." This has been our first-day-of-school verse for three years now. After Awana starts on Thursday, they'll each have one of their Awana verses to copy each day.)
   
4. History (discuss early California)
   
5. Geography games on the computer
   
6. ---------BREAK-----------
   
7. Math
   
8. Science -- collages of animal groups cut from magazines (mammals, insects, birds, fish, etc), with discussions of characteristics
   
9. Read Chapter 1 of The Indian in the Cupboard; discuss, and look up vocabulary words
   
10. Crazy Libs (parts of speech)
    
11. ---------LUNCH------------
    
12. 1/2 hour free reading
    
13. P.E. -- play catch, then ride bikes. (ordinarily we haven't done PE in the past, figuring that outside play was enough. However, our kids are a little behind on things like throwing and catching, etc., and so we decided that a little structured practice on large motor skills each day would probably be a good thing.)

So that's our day. By spring it'll look more like:

Read a lot. Do a page or two of math. Talk about whatever. Maybe do a little writing.

I've come to realize that this is OK. Our kids are at or above grade level in everything (except the aforementioned PE), so something about this entropic system must be working OK.

P.S. Our cat Henry disappeared over the weekend. In the grand scheme of things, especially this weekend (plenty happening on both a grand and a small scale), that's a small thing, but we're sad about it. He was the friendliest cat I've ever met. We've decided that we'll keep Mary but we won't get any more cats while we live here -- apparently (since this is the second of our pets to disappear this year) we live in a bad spot for them. Ironically, we had just started letting our now-flea-free cats be mostly indoors again when Henry went out at 2 AM and never came back.

Saturday, January 22, 2005

much ado about... not much

Tonight I read a chapter of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh aloud to the family. One of my favorite memories from childhood is the way my brother and I would lie in bed while Mom sat in our room and read out loud to us. Both of us were old enough to read ourselves, and I had already developed the nose-in-book disease that would plague me so deliciously for the rest of my life, but somehow having Mom read to us was special. She read Charlotte's Web, and a wonderful little book called No Children, No Pets, her copy of which I later destroyed by much reading and which I tracked down and bought on Bibliofind.com (may it rest in peace) when I first had Internet access, and some of the Little House books and some of the Narnia ones. I've tried to do this with my kids over the years but it's always fizzled out after a few weeks. This time I wised up and picked a book that T really, really likes, so maybe he'll help me not slack off. ;-) Should we get through Mrs. Frisby, we'll move on to C's choice, The Wizard of Oz, and then LT's, Journey to the Center of the Earth, which I may record for my dad.

Cat update: Henry and Mary can now occupy the same couch without a single smidge of hissing or snarling or even crouching. They aren't washing each other's faces yet (oh, poor Molly, we miss you so, so much) but it's progress. They remind me of a blended family wherein a 15-year-old girl who wants to be a rebel but is good at heart just acquired a soft, skinny little 12-year-old stepbrother. Only they've never yet called each other "pizzaface" or listened in on each other's phone conversations. Give them time, I guess.

Thursday, January 20, 2005

I can't possibly come up with a title for this one

note to self: when using Mozilla Firefox DO NOT ATTEMPT TO USE THE GOOGLE SEARCH WINDOW THINGIE WHEN TYPING A DIARYLAND ENTRY. Because the entry disappears. And the really bad thing is, that's the third time I've done this today. You'd think I'd have learned by now. I hate having to try to re-create what I'd already had typed out. Good thing I've had some diet Coke -- we were out of my crack substitute earlier today, which was part of why I was so crabby, I think -- or I would not have handled that as well as I did.

The new cat's name is (drumroll please) Henry. It was the first name we could all agree on; LT came up with it. And he already seems Henryish. And we don't know any Henrys, which is good, and nobody would agree to Fitzwilliam, Wentworth, or Rochester, which were my three suggestions. Frankly he doesn't LOOK like a nineteenth-century romantic hero -- but a girl has to try. Hmm, maybe I should have tried Frederick.

And now I am going to go to bed in my (never again to be painted by me) bedroom, in my own bed. It was a little weird, sleeping in C's bed and having T come lie down with me in the mornings, because hello, I slept on that bed from the age of 12 until I got married, and it was just a little... squeeby. I love our room right now, hospital-colored ceiling and all, because all it has in it is the bed and a small dresser on its beautiful hardwood floor. I wish it could be that minimalist all the time. Just being surrounded by clutter, before I even get out of bed in the morning, shoves my stress level up a few notches.

I plan to spend a lot of time this weekend reading and crocheting. The dratted bedroom is done, the house is "clean enough" -- I'm going to spend my time at home this weekend (which won't be as much as I like) folding laundry to the accompaniment of Austen adaptations, plowing into my new stack of library books (Ann Patchett, Maeve Binchy, Elizabeth Berg, and one I'd never heard of but it sounded interesting), and seeing how much of that blanket I can get done. ahhh. :) Of course I shouldn't plan for this, because as soon as I do that means it can't come to pass. Hmm. Maybe I'll figure on spending the weekend cleaning instead. ;-)

this isn't about the ******* painting; it's about the new cat

Instead of telling you all how much I hate ceiling trim and how VERY bad I am at installing it, but how I can't leave it up to T because his wrist is quite likely fractured, I will just show you a picture of the new cat.



Mary does not deign to admit that he exists, except to growl under her breath if he appears. And he will only come out of hiding if it's very, very quiet, and what with the STUPID EFFING TRIM that hasn't been happening today. But he is very friendly and has a fantastic purr. He does not have a name yet; we're kind of waiting to see if his personality is name-able, once he settles in. If he never settles in I guess we'll just call him "the new gray cat" for the rest of his life.

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

I AM DONE PAINTING

I. Am. Done.

That nasty awful bedroom is painted. And you know what? Now it looks like a 1963 hospital room, with that kind of sea-green color on the ceiling. And you know what else? I don't care. I won't live here forever, it's better than the dark wood, and above all, if I cared, I would have to repaint it which I am not going to do. Nuh-uh.

Besides, it will look better when we nail the trim back up tomorrow. And tomorrow night I am sleeping IN MY OWN BED darnit. With my husband. And maybe Mary will curl up by my feet like she usually does; that sounds nice.

After a lot of discussion with T and the kids, and after scouring the neighborhood, knocking on doors, handing out flyers, putting up posters, etc., we've decided to go to the SPCA tomorrow and adopt another kitty. Not just for us and the kids (although that's a big part of it) but we're hoping that a feline companion will help Mary get back to normal. (I really REALLY hope we're not bringing Mary a feline enemy, because that is ALL she needs right now). Her temperament is just so changed with Molly gone, and she seems to be looking for her sometimes. This feels a little soon to me -- like this will be a designated Rebound Cat, and we shouldn't be getting into a serious relationship at this point, know what I mean? Maybe we should name this cat Bob. Bob was the only bona-fide rebound relationship I ever had -- lasted a couple of weeks, about two weeks after my first and most serious high school boyfriend broke up with me after we'd been "going together" for almost two years. We held hands and walked around in the pasture on the ranch where I lived; we drove to the city just to get Oreos; he proposed to me. Did I mention he was 19 and I was 16? Yeah. A little soon in a lot of ways, there. At least I had the presence of mind to tell him no, right? Bob's mom had just died and he was on his way to Texas to go to seminary, so his whole life was kind of out of whack at that point, I think. Poor guy.

Anyway. I'm sure the new kitty will not turn out to be a mistake. Even though this will probably mean the return of THE LITTER BOX AUGH for a week or so while we get him/her adjusted to the idea that this is home.

Did I mention I'm done painting? I AM DONE PAINTING.

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