six cats in the yard

It’s been a long time since I posted anything on this site and I think I’d like to try, along with everything else I want to do, to start new and see what happens. I may not succeed, but I feel like I need some kind of outlet, whether that really means I should keep a journal instead of typing things for everyone to see remains to be seen. Let’s just hope I can come up with something worth writing and worth reading!

I’m going to try my best to update this blog over the next couple of weeks, as nap time & daddy time give me a little break from the wee one. Lots of things, both good and bad, have happened over the last 2.5 months. 

• a baby (actually several if you include friends’ babies) was born

• my mother succumbed to pancreatic and liver cancer

• Leigh’s father passed away only a week after my mother

• we are still trying to sell (or rent) our house and move to Portland and we are keeping our fingers crossed that we make it before Nov. 1

• stay tuned because I’m sure there will be more news; I just hope that it’s all good for awhile.

Very spectacular sunset yesterday when we thought it just might rain!  But no such luck. 

I have been talking, for months, about wanting a pedicure. I tried to get one in SF in April when we were there and just never was able to make the time. Or I just ran out of money and couldn’t justify the expense. Nonetheless, I kept talking about it. Unexpectedly, one of my friends at work handed me a gift certificate for one of the local salons that would cover the most extensive pedicure. Then I had to decide, oooh, did I want to get a manicure, too?? I made the appointment for both and the day before the appointment, another friend at work said she wanted to pay for the manicure! Very exciting. So then I decided, I might as well get my haircut too. And so goes my spa day.   It took 3 nice, long hours, and started with a manicure that included a paraffin treatment: basically putting your hands in hot vanilla-scented wax.   While she was working on my manicure, another woman came in with her young daughter. I heard them before I saw them, the woman asking what color her daughter wanted (this little thing was probably only about 6 years old or so). Then I looked over at the two to get a look. And all of my preconceived notions about what kind of women get mani/pedis went out the window. The mother was in her late 40s, with long, dark, nearly dredlocked hair and was dressed in modern hippie attire (camo pants & a batik shirt). The daughter was wearing a long knit tan/brown poncho and looked like she could have been one of my childhood friends (or even me), free-flowing towhead blond hair, saltwater sandals, and shorts. The little girl was very excited about getting her nails done and the mother was obviously a regular. Then the mom asked about which of the nail products was more environmentally friendly, and to my amazement, the manicurist pointed her to one particular brand because apparently it didn’t have any formaldeyhde in it! Apparently I have much to learn about all of the ways in which we can make a difference without completely sacrificing some of the small enjoyments in life.  I got my first pedicure 2 years ago at Leigh’s sister’s wedding in Miami. I had previously avoided doing it mostly because I thought it was kind of frivolous and girly, and thought it was just plain silly to spend money on such a thing. Then after the first one, I realized how nice it was to have someone massaging my feet.      I’ve been reading the Simple Living Guide in hopes of getting back to the time before vet school when I really did enjoy just a sunrise or sunset, sitting and laughing with friends, seeing a beautiful flower or enjoying the moment, whatever that moment happened to bring. I haven’t been able to to that in quite awhile. The book has reminded me that “simple living” doesn’t mean depriving yourself. And the mother and her daughter brought home that point. It’s all a matter of spending your hard-earned money (or in my case, someone else’s) on something that brings you joy, even as you realize that it is a transient joy. My nail polish lasted less than a week, but the moments enjoying the massage, the soft lotions, the smells and the overall experience has helped to bring me one step closer to my goal of slowing myself down and taking in the moment.

After bugging Leigh to go to a movie last weekend (we never made it because he was readying Zippy, his lone running Roadster, for the Canby Datsun show), he mentioned that the new Shyamalan movie opened on Fri and did I want to go. It wasn’t as good as Sixth Sense, but, while it didn’t exactly have a surprise ending, it was terrifying, suspenseful, and, surprisingly, thought-provoking. I won’t reveal much about it, in case anyone out there is hoping to see it, but I found myself wondering about the possibility of such a thing happening, how fragile human existence is when we find ourselves up against the force of nature, and what we might need to do to change the possibility of such an outcome. Regardless, I still find myself disturbed (in a good way) by some of the issues raised in the movie.I have been sleeping downstairs to give the incubating baby and myself more room to have restless sleep, though half the time I find myself feeling like a mummy due to the cat on my left, the cat on my right and the cat sleeping on top of me. But last night I decided since neither of us had to get up early for anything in particular, I’d sleep upstairs with Leigh.  I have to tell you that we have been dealing with a racoon who was nightly eating all of the cat food out of the food bowls in the kitchen for 2-3 nights in a row about 4-5 nights ago. We couldn’t close the cat doors since the cats go in and out at night as they please and there was no way to wrangle all 6 of them in the house by the time we went to bed, so we hid the food. We put all of the bowls in a cupboard and the 50# cat food bag in the dryer each night to dissuade the bugger from coming back. No food, no reason to visit, right?So whether it was the movie or the ice tea I had at the theater (caffeine?) or maybe the baby bulk or trying to sleep in a bed with Leigh and 20 pillows, I was having trouble sleeping last night. At midnight, I gave up and collected my pillows to move downstairs. Right about the same time, Leigh got up and turned on the bathroom light to go pee. What did I see in light of the hallway, but a *$(%^ racoon ambling toward the bedroom door. I screeched “Get out, get out” and, of course, it came right toward me. I don’t know how I was able to leap so fast up onto the bed, especially given that I was just starting to experience a muscle cramp in my calf and needed to walk that off. It went under the bed and out the bedroom window onto the roof, hot on Wilbur’s tail who was unfortunate enough to be sitting on the windowsill when the beast came into the room. Needless to say, I shut the window after watching the racoon climb down the Rhody bush and down onto the front porch.Now we know how the racoon has been getting into the house (not through the cat doors; we wondered how it was able to squeeze through the cat doors given that Wilbur, all 17 pounds of him, barely fits through). It makes me glad that I haven’t been sleeping upstairs the last week or so because of how often I have to get up (and I never turn on the light). And we thought living in town would spare us some of the wildlife troubles… 

We’ve managed to move 4 times in the last year (my husband claims to have lost count), but we’ve ended up in the best possible place in the world, though I work too much to enjoy it for the moment. For all of my friends who wonder why they never hear from me and wonder what we’ve been up to since we got married in August of 2006, this will hopefully fill the gap.

I will try to, slowly but surely, post the pictures and the stories of the last year since that beautiful Gorge day on August 12, 2006. We’ve bought a house and put down some roots in Hood River and have even taken on yet one more cat to give us the nice even number of six. I’m hoping to use this to keep in touch with people and to give my brain something other than veterinary medicine to think about.