Update on Ghost

He is currently sleeping on his chosen spot on my bed. My sister and niece took him into the vet on Monday, (the one I was told couldn't see him until Tuesday, and then was told she was out of town.) She checked him out and decided he had an infection in the paw that was spreading into the leg. She gave him one of those super antibiotic shots and they brought him home. He immediately jumped out of the carrier and hobbled as fast as he could back to my bed to take up residence for the remainder of the day. In  the early morning hours he decided he'd like to roam around the house a bit, jumped off the bed and ran out the door as if there was never anything wrong with him to begin with. It is amazing how fast antibiotics work in an animal  that rarely receives them. He spent today between resting and  reclaiming all of the spots he's ignored while he was lame and lying about on my bed. Now he prefers spending the late evening hours with me. I think my room is officially the cat room.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends. I hope that this holiday finds you well. And that you will have a wonderful day filled with family and friends.

The holiday in the US is still several weeks off. This year, I am grateful for that for many reasons. I have thought in the past that the holidays feel like Happy Hallothanksmasnewyear. Once October starts the year runs non-stop, full speed through the holidays and right into the next year. Often not giving me time to reflect on or fully appreciate the day that I should be celebrating. As much as I want to make this year different, I'm not sure that can happen. I will spend this year without my children, or grandchildren. And without the friends, co-workers and church family that I spent my life around. It is an opportunity for me to make new memories and new traditions, but I miss everyone. And I'm a bit homesick. Being here is good for me. And there are many reasons that staying wouldn't have worked. But holidays are a transition, and I'm going to have to work through this one.

Part of the reason the nostalgia has hit me so hard this weekend is a bit of sleep deprivation. Our black cat, Ghost has been injured and has been hanging out in my room. I noticed him limping on Wednesday after I came home from Sit and Knit. I tried to get him to let me see the paw, but he refused. It was a really cold night and he was lying by the door in the living room. I picked him up and brought him to the chair in my room. It's one of his favorite places. Thursday morning he was favoring his paw, but still getting around. I finally got a look at it. From what I can tell it seems he's split the hind claw. I called the number for the vet, but since he isn't technically my cat, she wouldn't give me an appointment. My sister called my niece who came over and disagreed with me over the cause of his limping. She looked it up on Google and said that he most likely had a strained paw. He let us take turns holding him with a wash cloth soaked in Epson salts on it.

By Friday morning he'd quit putting weight on the paw and it is swollen, a little more than twice the size it normally is. My niece called the vet again, and was told that she was out of town, we should take him somewhere else. The only options were to take him to an emergency animal hospital or wait until Monday. We can't afford the emergency vet, so the poor kitty has had to suffer since Wednesday. In the mean time, he's gotten really attached to me and very used to my bed. I think he may have  taken it over.

The other thing that happened this weekend is that Jess got married in Georgia. As planned, Mollie was her Maid of Honor.  Mollie wanted to give the speech of her life for Jess's toast. And to do that, she instant messanged and Facetimed me all night on Friday. The toast had to be perfect for her friend. And it was. Her boyfriend, Chris filmed it for me and I saw it. She did a fabulous job.

These girls, born on the same day. Friends forever and joined at the hip even though they now live nearly a thousand miles apart. And their lives are so different.

I feel sad that we all live so far from each other. And still I'm glad for the technology that keeps us all together.

Cats and the Three Little Kittens

The weather has been getting cooler and it has turned the cats into snugglers even more than normal. The place that they love to snuggle most seems to be my bed. I have had two or three of them sleeping with me almost every night. That being said, I am really not much of a pet in the bed person. But discouraging them would take more energy than I have to give it.

yYou know, taking over my bed is one thing. But now they seem to want to take over my computer too...

The weekend is coming up. This will be the first one in three that we haven't had the three little kittens over. Last weekend a group called Flight Club had an event, mostly for children at the community center. Flight Club is a travelling aviarium. The kittens loved seeing the birds during the Main Street Festival, and more so at the community center. They were able to interact with the birds indoors in ways that wasn't possible while they were located outside.

To say the least, they had a wonderful time. They came home from the center, ate dinner and were in bed watching a movie by 8:00.  The next day we went to a pumpkin patch and corn maze. The kittens had a blast. We went on the hay ride, walked through the children's maze, played farm games, fed goats and rabbits and played in the corn and hay bins.

We had a beautiful fall day to do it. The weather was a bit nippy, and mostly sunny where we were at. But as we were out enjoying the day on the horizon we could see the snowfall that was happening not even 50 miles away in the mountains.

I have seen storms roll in over the Atlantic ocean and over the great plains, but this was a first for me. It was fascinating and beautiful.

I don't have much planned for this weekend. The Puget Sound Yarn Crawl will be happening, but I haven't signed up for any more of it other than helping out for a few hours at A Little Knitty. If the nice weather holds tomorrow, I may go out and take some photos for another post that I keep thinking about. 

Whatever your weekend holds, I hope it's something that will make great memories for you.

Goodbye September, Hello October...

Well, it's been a few days. The excuse of course is that I've been far to busy watching the shenanigans going on in D.C. I would love to say that all my friends and relatives have seen the light and the Kool-Aid that they've been drinking for the past several years has warn off. Unfortunately they are even more virulently assertive that the man-child tyrant is being persecuted and falsely accused by hearsay. They refuse to acknowledge that THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES! Even though it is being shouted down the street by every self-respecting citizen available. What's more, they refuse to understand that he has sold out the integrity of his office and that of our country to serve himself and his wallet, and to Russia no less. It will be fascinating to see who is willing to go down with this traitorous ship. Already the clown-in-chief has declared that this will help his re-election campaign. Really? Thank you Loveable Susan Riepenhoff for doing such a fantastic job of teaching eleventh grade Government and Civics that I am not under any illusion that I have anything to fear. Impeachment, which will happen, guarantees that there will be no possibility that the Gambino wannabe will ever have the option to hold office again.

Stay tuned. I am told by the liberal false news agencies that this will only get better. :)

Karen's Birthday

Today is my sister's birthday. So of course I couldn't let the day pass without notice. I gave her, her actual present several weeks ago She had been sleeping on the couch in the living room for who knows how long because it had the only television in the house. She really wanted one in her bedroom, but wouldn't buy it for herself. Then we were in one of the local stores and they had smart TVs for almost black Friday prices. My brother and I went halves to get one for her. She has been enjoying it and sleeping on her bed, in her room ever since. But still, she needs a bit of something to mark the day. I left her a goody bag on her key chain hook after she went to sleep. And I adorned her FB page with this cartoon. You know, I just have to remind her I'm THAT SISTER...

Yeah. you've just got to celebrate the day, ya know.

Happy Thursday.

Early Morning Conversations

I was knitting and watching a documentary on Netflix about how the brain works. It was about 11:00 pm Pacific time and I was thinking that I needed to get to bed so I could be up in time for the Wednesday Sit and Knit group. Then I got a text message from Mollie.

"It's a bit strange but I just watched Stepmom with a couple of friends after work. I want to know what you thought of it when you first saw it, when you were sick, and now."

What a loaded question. The movie came out when I was getting a divorce from my ex-husband. Within two years, I was a single mom battling cancer. Mollie was roughly the age of the daughter in the movie. That was about as similar as the movie got to our own realities. But she found a dvd of it at a second hand store and watched it incessantly.

We talked until 5 am Pacific time, discussing a lot of our perceptions and feelings around the time. What we decided is that Hollywood is very good at making life look neat and pretty; wrapped up in great houses and happy endings. It rarely gets divorce or cancer right, and wasn't a good measure of what our reality was. Does divorce ever leave peoples lives that unscathed?  I'm fairly sure that it would have been impossible to hide my cancer treatments. Especially after my hair fell out. Magical mid-night horse rides on snowy nights are hard to come by. And people who are dying do not have the energy to create memory quilts. Or even the time between medical appointments.

Mollie told me that she was embarrassed to be re-hashing 11 year old feelings again. I told her that she was 11 and that the situation she was in was too complex for an 11 year old to deal with. She needs to work it out now that she can comprehend the reality of it.

The good thing for her is that I didn't die, leaving her to be raised by the evil stepmom...;0)

I Stand Corrected

After I read from everyone that they didn't think people could get colds from pets, I did the logical thing. I Googled it. Turns out, in fact people can't get colds from pets. Pets do get colds, but they aren't the same viruses that infect people.

This shows the kind of thinking I grew up with concerning health. With seven kids we were taught to cover our coughs and sneezes, wash our hands and not to share food or drink to prevent spreading whatever grunge that was going around. But we were also told a lot that can only add up to superstition. You know the kind of things like covering our ears in cold weather to prevent ear infections and not going outside in cold weather with wet hair to keep from getting colds and flus. If we did get sick, it had better be able to be cured with baby aspirin and gingerale, or we'd likely die from it. So as a result, my sister and I have some strange ideas about health. Disabusing myself from most of it has taken time. And as you can see, the process is ongoing. My apologies for spreading false information.

The Heir and The Spare

The cats (the real ones, not the three little kittens) had a cold and sneezed on my sister. So Karen got the cold and had it all of last week. I tried very hard to follow precautions. Nonetheless, my brother got the cold on Thursday and I woke up with it on Saturday. Saturday was the day that the three little kittens came over to go to the festival. It wasn't a great time to be sick, but I was. I went to bed after the kittens went home and slept through most of Sunday and very late today. I woke up after noon feeling greasy and smelly because I sweat out my fever overnight.

After showering I decided that my grungy bed linens needed a good wash too, so I changed them and put fresh linens and a clean quilt on my bed. I no sooner had the bed made than Max (the cat looking at the camera) decided it was safe to take a nap on it. And since he'd made himself comfortable by the window, Ghost had no choice but to take up residence in the center of the bed. They are comfortably napping free from my grungy cold germs. I on the other hand am still washing the other set of linens and wishing that I had room to curl up too.

As a side note. On Friday, thinking that I had dodged the cold I got my flu shot. So now Karen is convinced it caused me to come down with the cold. I just don't understand the thinking. Now in her mind, the flu vaccine not only causes the flu, it causes colds too. Never mind that the whole household came down with the cold sans the vaccine. I just have to wonder.

And in case you were wondering, I did suggest that it might not be a good idea to have the three little kittens over on Saturday. But no one was having any of that. I'm sure they come up against worse germs every day at school.

Thank goodness for ginger tea and honey. I think I can cope.

Three Little Kittens

There are three little girls who visit our household regularly. Their mother is my nieces ex-lover, and they came to view my sister as a grandparent. Their father and the other grandparents choose not to participate in their lives and my sister is more than happy to fill in the gap. Fortunately for them neither my niece nor their mother see any reason to deprive them of the one grandparent who chooses to be there for them. So the three little kittens still visit often.

They came to visit on Saturday to go to the Main Street Festival with us. Karen particularly wanted to take them because the last time they visited we were in the park and a private party had a bouncy house set up, but the girls were not invited to the party. I hate to have to be the one to tell a kid that they can't play with the others. The festival offered a bouncy house and this was the opportunity to make it up to them.

My sister went to pick them up early in the day, but when they got here they didn't want to leave. They wanted to do the things that they can do here that they can't at home, which is watch TV, eat ice cream and take a bath. They do not have a television service at home. They have a shower, but no tub and their freezer is too small for tub of ice cream. My sister provides a constant selection of new books, puzzles and art supplies for them, that they enjoy. And my brother made them a swing and bought them bikes and a wagon to play in the yard with. So they like to be here...a lot. It was just as well, because it was the middle of the afternoon by the time we made it to the festival. All the other kids had come early and gone home for naps by the time we got there. The three kittens had the bouncy house and all the games, face painters and sand crafts to themselves.

We let them play until they tired out and then treated them to a lemonade and a cupcake. I tell you, I need to start a bakery. The baker charged us five dollars each for the cupcakes It was nothing fancier than piped icing with a mallow cream pumpkin on top. The cupcake itself was dry and the icing was way too sweet. There was nothing about it that was worth the price. If you think of it, there are 24 cupcakes to a batch of cake batter. So if you do the math that's $120 for a cake. A decent cake mix and the frosting might have cost me $10. A whole bag of the pumpkins can be had anywhere for $2.50. The girls could have had a tray full of cupcakes for less than the 3 we bought.

 But here's the truth about it, he didn't have his prices listed. And if he did I would never have offered them to the girls to begin with. You can be sure that I will never stop at his booth at another festival. Even if he'd sold them for $3 each, I wouldn't have been so offended by his price and would treat the girls whenever he was around. His greed has lost me as a future customer both at festivals and in his store. I'm sure that I'm not the only person who feels this way.

My niece works in a bakery, and my sister used to do catering. I am seriously considering renting a booth at future festivals to give him a run for his money. Two and a half to three dollars is a fair price. And I'm very confident that I can make a better cake and my icing will at least have flavor beyond sweetness. I really think that I can do better. I might even call my booth "A Better Slice of Cake"

#OverProtectiveness

My brother got a package in the mail yesterday. I'm kind of surprised because he doesn't shop, not even online. But I suppose this was something that had been bothering him. If he had told me what he was going to do, I would have told him not to. He's been concerned about my safety on the bike and the safety of my sister while she is out after dark. He bought us stun guns. They are more like heavy duty stun flashlights. Really, just hitting someone with this thing will cause damage without discharging it. But it's discharge is fearsome. I don't know what to think about this. He was so proud of himself, I hate to say something negative about it to him. What's more, my sister is actually excited about hers. And he also bought one for our niece and his daughter. Serial killers in the PNW should be wary of people sporting flashlights. They may be more potent than they appear.

After I received my unexpected gift, I was off to the evening version of Sit and Knit. I had planned to ride my bike, which unsettled my brother. It would be dark for my half mile ride home. He insisted that I take his van. Dinner took a bit longer to prep than I had anticipated, so I took him up on it just to not be late. I like this group more than I liked the afternoon group. There was no assortment of fake service dogs peeing on the floor. And the conversation was more of normal things, children's homework woes and car mechanics, etc. Unfortunately this group only meets every other week.

Jen (the owner of the knit shop) signed me up to help the store with a Yarn Crawl that is happening the first weekend of October. I'm not getting paid, per se, but I can taste the wines and will get the patterns and mini skeins that will be given to participants. Also, I will be able to meet a lot of people in the crafting community in the area. I'm hoping that there will be more people like the ones who are in the evening group than the morning group.