Eww, doggie kisses!

Picture of the day: Natalie gets some loving, about a month ago while Andrea was still visiting. Andrea! We miss you! You two need to kiss and make up, just like Caesar and Natalie are right here.

*poke* the weasels! =)

Oh, the Hair-manity! :)

Jim & Steve and John went down to North Carolina a few months back to bring up the contents of their Moms storage locker to her so she could stop paying monthly storage fees. Well Jim got some dulcimer-making supplies that his dad had bought, and his Mom promised to send up the plans if she could find them as she sorted through the piles of stuff.

Yesterday JimE got a box of tidbits that his Momma thought he might enjoy - trinkets from Korea we can't identify, a yellowed news article about him working at the cider press in West Newbury... and this undated yet clearly amazing homage to the eighties.

Yay! :)

Pretty Kitty - Naked Belly!

The kitties are doing much better now, to our enormous relief. They still have lost their voices, so when they try to meow Morgan is completely silent and Griffy squeaks like a mouse, but they are sooo much perkier, hungry (for the soft, non throat-scratching food), lovey and much much better. Poor guys.

Anyway, now that Morgan has had a sonogram (to find he was 100% empty and had not swallowed string) his naked little belly has led to a new, very dangerous game around here. You stroke the kitty once starting at his head and going all the way down his back, whispering "Pretty Kitty", which is what we always tell him, but then you alternate this with tickling the naked belly while chirping "naked belly!"

*Swish swish* goes the tail. So far, no one's been mauled playing this game, but no one has dared to play it more than 30 seconds straight, either. :)




In other news,

• raspberries that Alexe helped me plant are ripening, not very many but I can see them out the office window and I keep ducking out there after work to eat a few yummy berries. Yay!
  
• The beans twined around the string trellis I put up sunday... by monday morning. Jim called this "creepy".
  
• I have been very uncomfortable in the hot hot work room (vermont is experiencing a heat wave in the 90s and most of us aren't set up to handle that sort of thing), and Jim set up that portable heater slash AC unit in the office for me today, which I actually turned on despite the cost and it's helping a little.
  
• I'm making a new flower bed out back against the house. Natalie and Will dug a hole near the house for my plastic pond I had at Green Street. Natalie said: you should bury the pond! I'll dig the hole! ... an hour later we've got the pond in the ground, dumped in the pond buckets with water hyacinth & we're standing next to it going huh... OK now there's a big hole. Maybe we should have slept on that. :)
  Anyway, it's full of little frogs. FULL. There must be 20 of them in there, I have no idea how they found it (it's about 3 by 4 feet) but if you walk out next to it on the (brown, crispy, weed-whacked in preparation for making a flower bed) grass 5 or 6 jump back into the water. And at night, while we're sleeping, we hear little froggy noises. It's really wonderful. :)
  

Kitty update + flower pics

I'm just back from my third morning spent at the vets.
I dropped Griffin off at the vet this morning on my way by with Morgan headed for a sonogram in Essex (my vet doesn't have sonogram & the xrays didn't show anything). Griffin was in a good mood but still gagging this morning so I had to bring her in. In the car she usually yowls bloody murder and this time she could barely squeak, so I knew she must have a very sore throat. So a sonogram of Morgan and poking and prodding of Griffin later, Morgan is empty - he didn't eat any string. They both have very inflamed sore throats and must have shared something very bad that Balthazar and Caesar did not get into at all. Racking my brains I can't figure out what, but the doc gave them a steroid shot to bring down the soreness and we'll give them pills when they feel a little better. I only wish I could figure out what they got into to make sure they can't do it again. At least no surgery for Morgan, which is a big relief.
*whuff* :(

On a lighter note, here are some pictures of the biggest scarlet monarda (bee balm) ever! If Jim looks a little wacky, it's probably because he didn't *want* to be used as a ruler. :)

Progress on the Office!

Here are pictures of the office in progress. It's coming along!





On a worried note, Morgan is at the kitty hospital right now because he is very sick with heaving and not eating or drinking. The doc says the xrays showed big gas areas but no foreign objects that Morgan might have eaten. Then, last night Griffin started to feel bad, barfing a little all night - but I think she is sick from being a pig and eating a big pile of catnip and then a bowl of oil on tuna which was meant to help Morgan pass a hairball, not as a one-cat treat.

Anyway, I'm very worried. :(

Natalie the Debate Team Captain.

Caitlin (to deck slaves): "All that grass on the deck is Natalie's fault. She mowed AT the deck.

Natalie, from kitchen: "No I didn't. Prove it."

Caitlin (yelling back): "You were the only one who mowed, and there's grass all over the deck!"

Natalie (stuffing face with candy from jar): "Well... you got me."

:) Those deck boys better do a good job - the only reason I hired them is because they underbid on the sanding. I would never have paid good money for painting, which I'm great at - I just didn't want to sand it.

Happy Birthday To JimE!

How was everyone's weekend?
Oof. :) Kagan got home in 8 hours and 15 minutes tuesday.
That's interesting, because despite Alexe and Kagan travelling up from DC, we spent over 50% as much time in the car as those two youngsters this weekend. Argh.

To Cuttingsville, then Springfield, then back to Underhill, then to Brownsville and back - we spent over 10 hours in the car this weekend. And we *live* in Vermont. :)
That last one wiped us out & we stayed put on the fourth, did a little puttering around the house, had some yummy sandwiches, and went to bed.

by the way everyone,

Happy Birthday to Jim!!!