Grass and Sky

I woke up early, have already shoveled the snow twice, and have nothing fun to do until the Pens' game at 2. So it's time to post a snowy picspam.



( More snow pictures this way. )

I'm in a good mood today. Mal came out and played with his toys yesterday, for the first time in a month. Now, admittedly, as soon as Zoe joined us in the living room Mal took off for the safety of the bed. Still, a week ago, he was hiding under the bed all the time, even when Zoe was safely locked away somewhere, so I'm seeing definite progress finally. All I have to do is keep one or the other of them locked up when I'm out of the house and at night, and most of the time when I'm home, too. We seem to have settled into a decent rotation. Most days and every night it's Mal in the bathroom. Once or twice a week, I give Mal the run of the house and keep Zoe locked up during the day. Such a day is today. Mal was out and about when I left for work, and I'm hoping to see him still out and about when I get home. That would be a really nice way to start the weekend.

Yesterday evening was rather stressful and unhappy. Mal and Zoe had a big fight, which I suspect occurred because Mal got cornered attempting to use the litter box. Which resulted in him freaking out and pooping in the living room. Having just a few months ago said good-bye to one cat who was pooping inappropriately, I was really not pleased to see it happening again with another one.

With Mal freaking out and so stressed, I thought I really better find another home for Zoe, much as I love her. One of my friends was thinking about getting a cat and had said I should let them know if things didn't work out with Zoe, here. I called her last night and she immediately said she'd be happy to take Zoe and would pick her up today. I suggested she and her husband take overnight to make sure they knew what they were getting into (they've never owned any pets before) but that they would be welcome to come over today and meet her, and coincidentally to drive us to the vet. I then spent the rest of last night and this morning feeling so sad and guilty that I couldn't keep this darling girl that I've completely fallen in love with.

When D and M showed up this morning, they admitted that upon sober reflection, there was no way they could be good, responsible pet owners right now, since they like to travel and have several trips planned in the next few months. Also, they are hoping to move back to Australia within the next year or two and wouldn't be able to take her with them. They did, however, still take us to the vet (and then the petstore and then out to lunch).

I had been worried a little because Zoe had developed some rather swollen nipples, and I was concerned that she might have some sort of infection or growth. Turns out she was pregnant last month, when she got spayed, and is just having some symptoms of being in heat as her body deals with all the changes. The vet was very reassuring and said that she would probably calm down quite a bit within the next few weeks or a month, as her hormones return to a normal balance. He also thinks she's probably a good bit older than the vet my brother took her to thought. She may be as much as two years old, which puts her much closer to Mal's age.

The vet was also very encouraging about not giving up on getting Mal to accept her. He suggested that I set up three litter boxes around the apartment (pretty much results in one per room, except I refuse to have one in the bedroom) which will hopefully prevent altercations like the one last night. He also recommended something called Feliway, which is like a Glade plug-in, but instead of being some sort of sweetly scented room deodorizer, it's a pheromone sprayer. It contains the same pheromone cats have in the scent pouches along their jaw, and is designed to send out 'all is well' messages, to help cats feel more calm in their environment. The thing was insanely expensive and the outlets in my house are old and crappy, so I could only find that the thing would fit in without immediately falling out again (I also have this problem with pretty much everything else I plug in anywhere in my apartment), but if it helps my furkids learn to get along, it will be worth every bit of expense and annoyance.

I'm not naive enough to think that this will make a huge immediate difference, but the vet was pretty confident that between the litter boxes, the Feliway, and Zoe's slowly balancing hormones, things really will get better between them. So I'm feeling much better this afternoon. And in order to celebrate not getting rid of Zoe, and in hopes of getting Mal and Zoe comfortable with each other, I finally got around to making a new icon. This picture was from day two, before Zoe went crazy and scared the living daylights out of Mal. This is what I hope will be the case again, in a month or two.

Yesterday, Zoe was still feeling very cautious and wondering what the heck was going on, new place, new person, new cat. That's a lot of new things for one little girl to assimilate, so she spent most of the day snoozing on the sofa.

This morning, she and Mal are doing a bit more of the jostling for power. I have a strong suspicion Zoe is going to win this war. Mal is allowing her to set the rules, and I have twice now seen him roll over and expose his belly in her presence.

Zoe is also proving to be a very competent hunter. She has already destroyed Mal's fishing rod toy by chewing through the cord and detaching the feathered end. I'm going to have to watch out for my shoe laces with this one. I am also going to have to unclutter all the high surfaces that Mal can't reach, because Zoe is lightweight and already proving to be a superb jumper. She made the leap from bed to dresser top with no signs of difficulty this morning, something Mal always wanted to do, but rarely managed, even in his much thinner days.

Poor Mal. He just looks so perplexed by this whole situation.

Progress report for Monday, Aug. 24.

*Figured out how to set up and operate sewing machine
*put gather stitches in both upper bodice pieces
*sewed darts in both lower bodice pieces
*pressed darts
*pinned one set of upper and lower bodice pieces together
*adjusted gather
*basted pieces together
*sewed pieces together
*removed gather stitches
*got tired of sewing and cleaned the bathtub instead.

Oh yeah. At this rate, I'll definitely have the dress done by Easter.

( Let the mocking commence in 3...2...1... )

Tomorrow should see more actual sewing done, since all the sewing machine stuff is finished now. And maybe I'll have more emotional fortitude and be able to get more than one piece put together before stopping.

I'm such a bad sports fan. I nearly turned the game off after the Flyers scored their third goal. And I would have missed a fabulous comeback by the Pens. Max Talbot got things going by egging Carcillo into a fight (this was a beautiful thing to behold - it was all nudge nudge nudge and suddenly Carcillo was completely out of control). It seemed to light a fire under the team and they scored fourteen seconds later. And by the end of the game, they had scored five unanswered goals to win the game 5-3, and the series 4-2.

I was even lucky enough to only miss a few seconds (none of them crucial) while getting picked up for babysitting. So I got to see Crosby get his second goal of the night.

So, I get home from babysitting a little after ten, and there are no sheets on the bed and there's junk all over the floor (I still have a few things that I never unpacked when I moved and I was looking through them today) and I'm all tired out. And what do I see as I cross the room? A gigantic centipede up on the wall above the window. Now, you might not think that's a big deal, but dudes, I cannot stand the things. CAN NOT STAND. I kid you not, the very thought of that thing on my wall feet from my bed has my skin crawling still, some time later.

You would all have laughed so hard, if you had been here for the next few minutes. I wanted to get it down within reach so I could stomp it into bug mush with a big boot, but it was up too high to reach. So I started throwing odd socks at it. I now, by the way, have several socks draped over the curtain rod that I'm going to have to get down at some point. I eventually remembered that I had a walking stick that would reach easily. This plan came with pros and cons. Pros: I could reach the centipede easily and certainly knock it down to the floor. Cons: I would have to be standing really close to the wall in order to do this. Really close to all those hundred hairy, fast moving legs. *shudders* Practicality won out and I knocked it down. Slammed and missed a couple times with the boot and suddenly the thing, which moves nearly at the speed of light, I must add, was under the bed.

Now what was I to do? No way I could reach it under there. I couldn't even see it. And no way would I be able to finish making the bed or ever, ever sleep there with a centipede under the bed. Luckily, I have a Mal. He fearlessly charged in and dashed about under the bed. I found my flashlight and spotted the thing, and Mal very helpfully herded it out from under, I was able to successfully smash it into hairy pulp, I remembered at the last minute that Mal might not appreciate or understand high fives, and retreated out of the room to regroup. At some point I'm going to have to go remove the carcass, but I'm not quite ready for that task just yet.

I'm still all jumpy and Tookie just took ten years off my life by sneaking up behind me and touching my ear. Poor thing doesn't have any idea why I jumped a mile and slapped at her like she was some sort of monster.

ETA: Okay, and since when do I need to code paragraph breaks in lj-land? WTF?

Mal is sitting at the foot of my bed, giving serious thought to jumping from there up to the top of my dresser. It may or may not be physically possible for him to accomplish that task, but the fact of the matter is, the top of my dresser is completely cluttered with a million bits of random stuff, leaving absolutely no room for a cat. If he really does make the attempt and succeed, there is going to be one sizeable mess.

I am, at the moment, taking full advantage of my new wireless state of being to work on Merlin fic in bed. Yes, you heard me, Merlin fic. God knows if I'll ever finish it - looking at the fifty or so SGA fics I started and never finished, the outlook isn't great, but it's something to do on a Monday night, when I'm feeling too bleh to do anything else. Besides, researching Arthurian legend is no shabby way to spend an evening. And neither is icon searching, apparently, since I just spent half an hour looking at pretty pretty pictures of the boys and girls of Merlin. The one here (and the other three I picked out) is by fancifull.

Right, okay, Merlin fic. Off I go.

With the start of summer camp tomorrow, I move to a new room and start a new schedule. 10-6 every day, which is sweet. Except that once we start taking fieldtrips, I'll pretty much have to be at work by 9ish every day in order to catch the bus with the kids, which means my real schedule will be more like 9-6, but whatever. The bigger problem is going to be to remember to pack a lunch every day. We have hot meals during the school year, but during summer camp the kitchen staff only cook for the toddlers. Everyone else packs. Which means I should have gone to the store this weekend to buy food, but somehow I didn't. Luckily, I still have a couple slices of bread and some tuna. I'll stop at CVS to pick up some fruit cups or something to go along with that.

We actually had real, almost summer-like weather today, bright and sunny, just cool enough and with enough breeze to make sitting on the porch seem like the very best thing in the world this afternoon. I spent a good half hour or forty minutes chatting with my landlady, who had the same idea. We totally badmouthed half the people at work (she's retired but still knows most of the people in the Infant/Toddler program) - she's eighty-two or eighty-three and doesn't hesitate to say what's on her mind. It can be pretty hilarious talking with her.

I had the front door open, with just the screen door closed, and Mal was exceptionally well-behaved. He only tried to jump up onto the upper, screened half of the door once (an attempt he totally failed at although he's usually pretty good at it). Just as well, as my landlady has a very strong phobia about cats.