Invisible Snow

Sometime soon I will resume writing more about food and including some recipes as well. I am only this past week really getting back into cooking after a whole lot of eating out while moving. In the meantime I want you to squint your eyes almost shut on the above picture and tell me if you can see the snow? Point and shoots don't capture snow very well. At least, mine don't. I'm hoping that the camera I'm buying from my crafty friend Mary (at The Craft Addict) will capture it better. I love snow. Even in April! It snowed giant flakes yesterday in the late morning.

Weird weather? Hell yes!! Last week there was one day that got almost to the 80's. Now snow.

I have no desire to live in a big city again, but if I did, there is only one city I would consider moving to: Portland, Oregon. It's so beautiful! The flowering trees alone are enough to take my breath away, but all the gardened nooks and crannies, the crazy number of bicycles and scooters in evidence everywhere makes me giddy. While I will always consider San Fransisco one of the most beautiful cities in the world, I'm sorry to say that I have put Portland on the top of the list, right next to Edinburough.

This is my mom's neighborhood. That's my mom in the purple.

The best news is that Pippa is officially free of ring worm. Penny still has a tiny speck of it but because it is so tiny the Vet has given them both clearance to be out of quarantine. As long as we don't sleep with them. So the acclimation of the pets has begun and it is a tedious process. The heartening truth is that Chick doesn't want to eat them, she wants to play with them and lick them til they're sopping with dog slobber.

Pippa is fairly tolerant of it though she's constantly trying to figure out how to avoid this dog whose tongue is bigger than she is. Penny is not at all willing to be covered in Chick's spit. I don't blame her a bit. Chick was being an adorable puppy trying to get them to play by nudging them with her paws. Unfortunately, too hard of a nudge with her paws could produce a kitten pancake so I have to force the dog to sit and mellow out. Which she does for two seconds.

The encouraging part is that neither of the kittens is so fiercely hateful of the dog that they've tried to hurt her. Penny has made a couple of gentle swipes at her nose but not put her claws out. This is encouraging because Chick was tortured by Ozark and in the end I'm pretty sure she changed her agenda from "Play with weird creature" to "Eat small orange feast". If the kittens don't torture her they may come to some kind of truce, maybe they'll even develop one of those enchanting rare relationships where the dog and the cats snuggle up together.

We have finally found out why it seems that we are surrounded by nursing homes disguised as regular homes- it's because we are surrounded by three homes for developmentally disabled adults (two of them for men only) and one hospice. For some families this might seem like a giant shadow on the dream house situation. I can't say I'm particularly excited to find out that we're surrounded by pretty iffy characters...but to be honest, I don't really think it's much different than anywhere else. At least we know what kind of issues might be found in those homes, generally speaking you can be living next to Jeffrey Dahmer and not know it until someone finds a human head in his freezer.

There are two reasons why I'm not particularly concerned:

These homes are under constant supervision by professionals, day and night.

We have a ferocious black dog who has already terrified EVERYONE in our cul de sac. No one will try to enter our property without permission.

It just seems so typical of us to find our dream home in a cul de sac where people come to die or to live under the caring iron rule of professional assistance. Anyway, it's the kind of thing we're used to. Philip's parents, the whole time he was growing up, had him and his brother spend every Thanksgiving and Christmas with the homeless people of Sausalito, the majority of whom were drug addicts or crazy people...often both at the same time.* I grew up around a lot of hippies who were pretty much fringe drifters; people who put their toes into the pools of regular life but always ended up drifting back to the outer edges of society with their pot and their guru sloguns.

It it flipping cold outside today so I think this is the time to dig into the sewing room I promised a sneak peak at my newest project but it will have to wait for one or two days as I unpack my sewing crap. I'm so excited about that room but it won't really come together until it's painted which certainly won't happen until after my trip to Scotland.

For those not yet in the know: my dad is getting married in Scotland in May. I am going to go without my boys because we can't all afford to go. Both my brother and my sister will be there and it will be the first time we've traveled anywhere together in over twenty years. I'm super excited and the only shadow over it all for me is how I don't have time to slim down and I am embarrassed to have my family see me so large. (My dad and my brother have not seen me in two years) I have decided that I must at least have some clothes for the trip that don't make me look worse than I already do and I am going to make a new coat.

I think it's time to go and make more coffee and then start dealing with the room. And the mess. Yes yes. I can't do it. What doesn't kill you may not make you stronger, but at least you're not dead.





*Not to build their character but to be good Christians. They sponsored an "open door" night at their church every Friday night where they would cook meals for the homeless and poor. This included Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Kittens-R-Us

Pippa seems to be a pretty laid back gal. She has started knocking a purr around in her ribs every time I pick her up even though she can still only manage a tiny squeak noise for a meow. She's tinier than she looks in the pictures. She's so tiny that that seems to be all I can talk about all day long. Is this the kind of thing midgets have to put up with? She has really long fur that will be even more gorgeous than it is now when she's done revealing all her bald spots as she is bathed and treated for the ring worm.

Penny is becoming more playful and was feeling well enough today to chase her own tail around and pounce on Pippa who just looks at her like she is the worst kind of spaz. She also has gorgeous fur if you discount the many many bare patches, which, like on Pippa, are multiplying as she's being bathed and scabby bits come loose. She's sweet too and would really like to get out of the confinement of the tub and crawl around on us.

These are the babies getting a bath at the vet's office.

They don't love this exercise in personal hygiene. As far as they're concerned, that's what tongues are for.

Here are some highlights of our kitten adventures for the last couple of days:

• All houses should be designed with bathrooms that have good ventilation and (preferably) windows that let air in just in case you ever need to store sick kittens in your tub who have nasty poop.* Ours does not have this fine feature and Max has let us know that we need to step up our efforts to improve the odor of the main bathroom.

• Like all babies, kittens poop, pee, sleep, and eat...all day long. Also like babies, they make messes with poop whenever unsupervised by a mother of some kind.

• The meat baby food that people feed their children is surprisingly disgusting as well as being very expensive. I got some for the wee cats because I thought it might be easier for them to digest than the regular wet cat food that is full of creepy crap. I love baby food jars. The babies love the smelly pink pureed meat. So in the end it works out.

• The babies are on the following medications: medicated shampoo for the ring worm, internal medicine for the ring worm, anti-diarrhea drops, internal parasite medicine, and ear mite drops.

• Two things they don't have: conjunctivitis or upper respiratory infections.

• Angelina Jolie is pregnant again and I can't really say why, but it depresses me. Oops, that's not a kitten highlight. See how I hunger for these scraps of useless gossip? I just read the headlines now in the grocery store.

• Everyone in our veterinarian office thinks that Pippa and Penny are both going to be fine. And I want to point out that I am not the only one running around saying "She's so TINY!".

*It didn't take stinky kittens for us to notice how unfortunate a design a windowless bathroom truly is. It's not rocket science to deduce that a place that collects moisture and in which people routinely eliminate is a place in which air should circulate. I'm a big fan of good ventilation.