The first thing I did when I got up this morning was to can the apple butter. Seven more jars, and this time only one of them didn’t seal. Now I must decide whether I want to turn the jar in the refrigerator into more apple butter cinnamon rolls, or else try making apple butter pie (just like pumpkin pie except you use apple butter instead of the pumpkin pie filling). Hmm. I think the rolls might win, but whatever it is the apple butter becomes, will have to wait until after Thanksgiving.

Anyway, today I’m going to share two videos with you.

This first one is of Rupert and Ingrid. It occurred to me that, while I posted about *getting* the kittens, and have been merrily posting pictures and stories about them to Twitter and Facebook, I never managed to transfer that sort of thing over here. So the first, and most important factoid is that when we took the two little kittens to the vet to get fixed, the vet called to let us know that Orpha was actually a boy. So Orpha (the crazy little tabby) is now Rupert.

They are very busy, very curious, very cute. They get into everything. There is pretty much nowhere in the house that is safe from them anymore. Anything and everything is a fascinating new toy – this includes knitting patterns (Ingrid has snatched papers straight from my hands), raw beets, shelled walnuts, cardboard of any kind, the drain cap for the bathtub, Richard’s sink, and on and on.

I heard noise from the kitchen this morning and came out to find them working industriously on a new project. This, right here, would be why it is that we are thinking that Christmas is going to be extremely…interesting this year.

The second video I wanted to share has nothing whatsoever to do with kittens. I know that most of the people in my generation probably associate Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” with the movie “Wayne’s World”. I, however, will always associate it with when my oldest nephew was a tiny little baby. My sisters and my mom and I were all together – I’m not sure at whose house – and we were all laughing and tired and getting punchy, and Bohemian Rhapsody came on, and my sisters and I started lip-synching and head-banging along. I suspect if someone had had a video camera it would have been one of those marvelous home movies we could have brought out to completely and utterly embarrass the nephew when he’s a teenager trying to look cool – irrefutable proof that his entire maternal side of the family is Just Plain Weird. But alas, such a video does not exist. So you will all have to make do with this version instead. I suspect my oldest nephew will prefer it this way.

Nanowrimo update: 43,010. This time last week I was despairing that I’d even be able to finish. Funny what cranking out more than 11,000 words in one weekend can do for one’s writing morale.