Tag Archives: josephine

soggy tissues and sneezing on the cat

Leave a reply

Well friends, the last two weeks of April definitely challenged me. It was the most important time of year for my work goals & performance indicators, and it was (and continues to be) intense for the kiddo. Her schedule is full of daily track practice, weekly track meets, and theater rehearsals. All of which requires planning for transit, the appropriate nutrition, and very different sets of attire. This in addition to the usual schedule of work, remote and office days, school, regular appointments and meal planning. How do people have more than one active child and stay on top of it all?

After several hours last week at a particularly windy and frigid track meet – ankle deep in mud – I succumbed to the head cold that had been lingering in the wings waiting for a stage cue. The meet itself was well worth the discomfort- the kiddo’s stepmom and I were the only family members in attendance due to schedule conflicts. K and I get along well and I really enjoy her company and commitment to the kiddo. We watched the kid compete in shotput (where she placed first) and the 200-meter (where she took 4 seconds off her practice time). A successful outcome considering it was her first ever track meet!

And I always love that my goth kid is instantly recognizable in a sea of lookalike kids in hoodies and sweats. My kid will be the one warming up between events in a John Bender flannel, skeleton pajamas and a skull blanket.

My subsequent illness turned into a painful sinus infection and really kiboshed the weekend plans. I ran the kid to theater rehearsal and then went straight to Urgent Care. My Urgent Care is the best – I don’t even think they really care if I’m sick. I tell them “I have xx”, they take my blood pressure and look in my throat, prescribe horse pill antibiotics to my pharmacy of choice and I am merrily on my way. I spent the rest of the weekend in bed with Pot Roast. She is a constant nursemaid despite generally preferring Brandon and despising the explosive sneezing that has accompanied my illness. Maybe she just knew that in my weakened state, I could be easily dispatched with a soft paw on my jugular.

Other than sleeping, I plodded along with “Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone”, the most recent Diana Gabaldon Outlander contribution. 39% in and my quick review: so far it’s not as interesting as her earlier efforts. (Spoiler: someone HAS already been eaten by a bear and that was kind of a high point. And there are a lot of the usual interjections of “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ” from sassy Claire and sexy Jamie grinding out “Och Sassenach ye drive me mad” which make it a fine book for a sick day.)

I don’t have a finished object to show (I’m close!) so I’ll update you on my crafting with progress on my current cross-stitch.

Hope everyone is well and happy. I’m girding my loins for another intense week and hopefully less sneezing.

holidaying

1 Reply

We’ve been enjoying a quiet holiday week at home. Our Christmas morning was relaxing and simple, opening presents with Miss L and having a nice breakfast; Pot Roast was particularly involved in the morning festivities and thought all of the presents were HERS.

img_7036-1

“MINEZ??”

Brandon’s birthday lands on Christmas so since we’ve been dating, we’ve had his folks over for Christmas dinner to celebrate. He has simple tastes – he considers it the best birthday ever when he has his family around him, he gets a rock & roll birthday cake featuring one of his fave artists, and he gets a nice bottle of whiskey to nurse throughout the year. This year, he got a Ramones cake (last year was Morrissey and two years ago, Elvis) and a bottle of Clyde Mays. It was expensive so hopefully it’s good (while I like beer and wine, and the occasional gin & tonic when the weather permits, I can’t abide whiskey, bourbon, Scotch – anything like that. Just the smell makes me ill. So I leave it to him to judge).

44fb1664-6a53-4311-aa3c-d3dfb96dbce1-1

third verse, different from the first

We also had filet mignon and some baked Brie and lots of wine and forgot to open champagne. I think it was a happy day for all of us.

Miss L went to her dad’s and Brandon went back to work, so I spent my Boxing Day in a delightfully empty house in pajamas. I’d intended to go for a run but just could not muster myself; instead, I napped, finished up some Vlogmasses on YouTube, finished reading “City of Girls” by Elizabeth Gilbert (review to come on Show Us Your Books in January), and puttered around the house. All of my favorite things!

Today I finally left the house, and accompanied Miss L and her Girl Scout Troop to a showing of the new Little Women, which I really liked, except for a couple of minor quibbles regarding its length (CAN’T we go back to the days of shorter films) and Laura Dern as Marmee (come ON). I went into it thinking that no one could do a better Jo than Maya Hawke and I came out a Saoirse Ronan convert. But I’ll admit that the absolute high point for me was Timothee Chalamet as Laurie especially after seeing him in “The King” on Netflix.

I’m off until after the first of the year and I love the feeling of forgetting what day it is.

I hope you are all having a wonderful week so far and looking forward to a happy weekend doing things you enjoy.

xoxo

img_7033

 

 

regardless, there are always highlights

Leave a reply

No one really wants to hear about the weather in a blog post, unless it’s raining grasshoppers or something else unusual, but it’s stupidly hot in Michigan. I always forget that September really is still summer, despite my dreams of frost on the pumpkin.

I’m grumpy because of the heat and what felt like a short weekend mostly spent, it seemed, preparing for another work week. Nobody tells you that once you’re a grownup, a 40 hour work week is just the tip of the iceberg. You also need to count hours spent commuting and doing laundry and grocery shopping and food prepping and all that other stuff just so you have your shit together just to spend all those hours at work.

Regardless, there are always highlights. Brandon and his cousin got his shelves installed, and Emmett promptly had to crawl all over them to investigate.

Saturday night we walked down to our local 1920’s-era movie theater, which is a thriving contributor to our little Main Street, offering live music out front on summer weekend evenings and $5 shows for not-quite-second run films. We saw “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”, Quentin Tarantino’s reimagining of the Manson Family murders. It was a bit bloated, but I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed a movie more in the past year or so. I’ve done a lot of reading about that timeframe and being able to see the Spahn Ranch, Cielo Drive, etc – or at least reasonable facsimiles thereof – was fascinating. I loved both Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio in their roles, and seeing faces like Timothy Olyphant and Bruce Dern in cameos was fun, too. Sharon Tate was miscast, and although Tarantino admirably restrains himself from his usual penchant for gratuitous violence during 98% of the film, the 2% in which he lets loose and indulges himself is pretty stomach-churning. Despite that, a very fun film, and we stopped off at our local corner bar to have a drink and decompress before walking home. I love that about our little village- Main Street’s bars, restaurants, movie theater and library are just a short walk away.

We went for a run that was supposed to be 10 miles but only ended up being 8, just due to our schedule, and Miss L and I hit up the season’s first vintage toy & collectible show. I love these things. The people are awesomely geeky and there are always treasures. I snagged a couple of vintage horror comics and a print of the Creature from the Black Lagoon for my retro horror mantelpiece display.

Pot Roast had another visit to our neighborhood vet last week and after a vitamin shot and another mega dose of probiotics, and another round of antibiotics (“time to pill the Roast” is a common evening statement in our house), she’s on the mend. Pooping in the litterbox is a vastly underrated skill in a cat that you don’t admire as much as you should until they don’t.

Hope you’re all enjoying your early week thus far.

xo

the short week

1 Reply

Why do short weeks always seem the longest? I think because everyone has to fit 5 days of work into 4. Plus, although Labor Day is a sort of secondary holiday in the pantheon of US holidays, it marks a big seasonal change for those of us far enough north to experience it, and it’s also sort of the unofficial “New Year” for everyone in school or with school age children. So in my house, the short week after Labor Day is summer end; it’s back to school, back to a different schedule, more routine. Which translates into getting up earlier – Miss L’s school starts an hour earlier, she is riding the bus, so her mornings are early and now mine are too. I actually really enjoy this – I’m most productive in the morning hours and getting to work at an earlier hour means I just get more done, I feel better, etc.

So last week’s short week was also stressful because as a mom, I was full of trepidation and anxiety about Miss L’s transition to middle school. I remember middle school as an absolute horror show. I was miserable to the point of feeling sick every day when I had to walk into what felt like an absolutely chaotic zoo full of mean kids, the horrors of gym class and lockers with combinations, and teachers who didn’t care about me because I was just one of many. This of course was not true, but it took me a solid year to find my footing and feel even a little bit comfortable there, and I was terrified that Miss L would have the same experience. However, she is a different kid than I was, more confident, independent, and resilient, and although I know it won’t all be smooth sailing (understatement of the year), her first week was better than I could have hoped for.

Pot Roast’s tummy troubles continued and necessitated a vet visit. She did not enjoy this one bit and was so grateful to be home with us when it was over, even forgiving me for sprinkling her food with probiotics and forcing antibiotic pills down her throat once a day.

Anyway, it’s Monday again and let’s hope this normal-sized week feels better than the abbreviated one, for us all! I’ll be back tomorrow with a quick update on our weekend dining adventure in Detroit.

josephine

Leave a reply

Trust me when I say that I really didn’t need anything else to take care of at this exact moment in my life. The end of summer is always insane. I’m trying to keep up with new responsibilities at my job, I have a summer friend who is coming home soon and no doubt expecting to find a girlfriend who will be able to spend time with him, Miss L and birthday festivities, book club, yoga class, a family wedding and charter fishing trip, and the usual trying to keep a house clean / yard trimmed (“Not the Best Lawn On the Block but Not the Worst”), and two cats. Also trying to carve out self care time. So when L and I rocked up to PetSmart last weekend, it was intended to be a quick pit stop to grab some kitty litter before heading to Home Depot to buy a replacement furnace filter as I realized at some point that the existing filter had likely not been changed since my ex-husband moved out.

The best laid plans.

I wrote on Facebook that sometimes true love happens at the most inconvenient and unexpected times and this was true for Miss L. The minute she laid eyes on the tiny striped ball of fluff in the cage in the adoption room, she lost her heart irretrievably and that was that. I am a pushover and I love animals too and two hours (yes it really did take that long to fill out paperwork with some bighearted but organizationally and administratively challenged rescue ladies) later we walked out with Josephine.

My cats are two big boys and they are not particularly nice even to each other sometimes. So we are taking the introduction period very slowly. We’re also relying on Jackson Galaxy to provide instruction. Josie has taken up residence in a spare bedroom that has morphed over the years from unused business room to unused playroom (and is really just a receptacle for stuff I don’t know what to do with). L and I did a psycho cleaning session to get it kitten-ready. She is an intrepid little thing and hates being locked away from the rest of us so we try to scent-swap,and let her explore rooms when the boys are elsewhere. We do feeding sessions together with the boys on one side of a pet gate and Josie on the other (the pet gate is not entirely effective unless she’s preoccupied with a bowl of kitten slop, though – she can squeeze through one slat that is just a teeeeeeny bit wider than the others). And we’ve done some play sessions, and the boys have generally been very good. There have been some hisses and growls, but not nearly what I expected – and when it happens, it’s sort of understandable as Josie is quick and tends to charge at the boys (tiny tail straight up) and try to rub against them and Sarge will have NONE OF THIS. I think it’s mostly just them figuring out their hierarchy and she has to learn manners and learn the pecking order, so I’m encouraged and pleased by their progress.

I know that school starting isn’t necessarily going to put an end to the feeling of being overwhelmed and I certainly did myself no favors by getting a THIRD CAT but sometimes you just have to roll with it and realize that life doesn’t always go according to plan. Wish me luck as I navigate the next few weeks and try to keep all the plates spinning.

xo friends and happy weekend.