Checking in at 39

This past week I turned 39. This year will mark 9 years of marriage for me, 5 years of home ownership, 12 years with my current employer and 11 years with my cat Bethesda. She is my first cat that chose me – and that I adopted on my own. I walked into the animal shelter and when the attendant opened her cage she promptly hopped up onto my wrist, climbed my arm, and sat on my shoulder. “I guess she’s mine!” I said. Candy is now 5. We hosted our 7th annual Chili Day and 2nd annual Surf n Turf. It also marks 9 years with the Cavalier which we have decided to keep for the time being.

We rented a Malibu for a day and drove it around doing “regular” things with it – grocery shopping, I drove to Ann Arbor to visit my mom, etc., and I just couldn’t get excited about it. If I’m going to lay out money for a car payment I want some Wow. The Cavalier will have to be replaced but for the moment we’ve set the plans on the back burner with the understanding that if the transmission goes or the car requires some other major repair we will cut our losses right there and buy a new vehicle.

This year has been very good to me. Of course, this is the year I finished the Schryer family history project. I moved it to another server where it can reside alone so if you’re just interested in reading the book you can go to http://www.plumlovely.com/wordpress and comment there.

I took 4 1/2 months of yoga and found that it didn’t fit my current body shape and needs. I took a water aerobics class that I unfortunately dropped out of. Now that it’s nice out I’m starting to walk again. My usual route takes me down to QD for a cup of decaf (QD is a Lansing equivalent for 7-11). It’s about 45 minutes. Weight Watchers continues well. Life is going well.

And Hubby and I are planning a wine and cheese party!!

Candy and Bethesda: One Year Update

One year ago last month we welcomed Miss Candy Cat into our household. We had a few iffy moments but no real trouble. No litter box trouble. No tufts of hair laying on the carpet trouble. No torn ears trouble. Some hissing, yes, but not “I mean it” hissing, if you know what I’m saying.

Welcoming Candy into our home turned out to be a great move. A living creature to enjoy and interact with every day. For people who have chosen not to have children this is huge, this “other living being” in your space dealio.

Candy and Bethesda get along very well.  All that “healthy exercise” the vets and toys encourage and we all know the animals need, they get that chasing each other in friendly fashion all over the house all day. There were some mild turf issues, which Bethesda lost to  my dismay, but then the other morning I walked by the bedroom and they were sleeping together on the bed.

Bethesda cries a LOT LESS. Amen. She doesn’t sit with her butt turned toward us to demonstrate her general disapproval of everything every night. She doesn’t whine about being bored. She’s lost 2 pounds and while she wasn’t over weight before, she’s now not in danger of being over weight. Candy gained 2 pounds and while she’s not in danger of being over weight she no longer looks like an animal who lives in a cage.

It’s all good.

There Are No Funny Pictures Because It’s Not Funny

I am a blogger. I blog. If something comes up in my world that would be a good blog posting, I try to post about it. My blog follows my life and my interests and my activities. I hope you all are interested in genealogy, ’cause you’re getting a lot of that right now.

Good blogging involves a certain level of visual interest – photos, maps, scanned images, etc. I’m pretty lame at this aspect of blogging – I’m a lousy photographer so I don’t bore you with a lot of bad pictures.

So, what makes for a good picture? What could even a bad photographer make look good? Well, a cream colored carpeting with clearly visible sooty black paw prints frolicking from one end of the room to the other, that would make for a pretty amusing photo. I am aware of that. It’s not that I don’t know that. It’s that sooty black paw prints are not amusing. They are expensive. So the only shot you got the other day was of the most damaged section.

It’s a second time around boys and girls, second time around.

The morning after the carpet cleaners came and steam washed the soot out of the cream colored carpeting in the basement family room I get up as usual and make my way to the kitchen to start a pot of  coffee.

All over the kitchen countertops are – you guessed it – black, sooty, putty cat paw prints. ALL OVER. We make this little joke, ha ha, hee hee, that the cats take over the house when we’re at work and probably – oh isn’t this cute – sleep on the stove. Well, they don’t. I can tell you that because I know exactly where they spend their time on my kitchen counter tops – EVERYWHERE BUT THE STOVE. THE CATS WERE EVEN UP ON TOP OF THE FLOUR CANISTER AND THE CEREAL CONTAINERS.

There is no cat food and no cat treats on top of the flour canisters and never has been. And yet, they were up there, way up there, way up under the cupboards:

No, I didn’t take a picture of the paw prints. I sprinted down the stairs to see what the basement looked like. It wasn’t as bad as the day before, but it wasn’t good, either. Sooty paw prints all over one end of the cream room, out onto the linoleum, up the stairs, up onto the counters. Of course there was soot cat vomit. TMI? Yeah, for me, too.

The two big containers of craft materials that we’d used to block the fireplace were pushed casually out of the way. I scrubbed down the kitchen while the coffee started. I didn’t take pictures. Yes, they would have been amusing. This situation is not even remotely amusing.

From the kitchen I went on a kitty hunt, looking at paws. Candy is the culprit. Little orange-and-white soot-eating monster that she is:

This weekend we decided to take care of the soot situation. We emptied, vaccumed and washed out the fireplace. Ever washed out a fireplace? Yeah, down on your hands and knees with bucket after bucket of not-ever-going-to-come-away-clean water it feels pretty much like that. And no, soot does not come out from under your fingernails or in the cuts on your hands very easily.

As I write we are waiting for it to stop raining outside so we can wash down the grate in the backyard, then put the whole thing back together again and wire-tie it shut. We wanted to drill it shut but the metal won’t support that so wire ties it will have to be. We don’t use the fireplace so it won’t be a loss. In between now and then, even though it’s been thoroughly washed down, here’s the state of the fireplace:

I can’t guarantee we’ll take that chest away even when it’s wiretied shut.

I Don’t Plan to Laugh About This, Like, Ever

Believe it or not, blogging was not the first thing that occurred to me when I went into the family room this morning and found the 13X30 space tracked from one end to the other with black cat paw prints. This means you’re not getting the “full effect” photos. The picture below is  after my best cleaning effort. Remember that sea of cream carpeting I blogged about last year? OK, this is totally it:

The grate in front of the fire place was pushed out and the paw prints started there. Under my craft table was a large wet spot of black: soot cat vomit. The entire room is tracked with putty cat prints. I am not exaggerating on this point. I couldn’t believe it as I got out the vacuum and did my best to get up the prints. They romped into all the nooks and crannies.

I called the culprits this morning with my cooing voice to get pictures but they didn’t get any damned treats for posing. Little bastards:

I have a call in to Maurer’s carpet cleaners. I could have waited until they were open but instead I called them at 6:30 when I found the mess and left a message.

I can’t even be cute and amusing in blog fashion about this. My sea of cream carpeting is an unmistakable romp of black kitty cat paw prints.

What Ike Wrought in the Wee Garden

Bethesda surveys the damage after three days of Hurricane Ike’s northern rains swept through Michigan.

The roof was rained on for three days, also. Know that roof we priced but planned to buy next year? Yeah, that’s going to be happening NOW. RIGHT NOW. Blogging of the event to come (but of course).