Still Life, With Cats

The longer I go without writing, the more difficult it is to start back up, primarily because I start to feel as if I have to cover everything from the time I missed, and it gets too long and unwieldy. So I shall, instead, summarize.

Cats: Zucchini started losing weight at an alarming rate and his fur was matting something awful. At his age, I knew it was only a matter of time before he came down with one of the Big Three (hyperthyroid, diabetes, or kidney disease). The verdict – advanced kidney disease. He was nearly 17. We buried him in the backyard with the others.

The numbers in the house, however, are still the same. We picked up a new kitty at the shelter – a little one-year-old siamese mix. We’ve named her Nutmeg. She’s surprisingly quiet, for being part siamese, but she is adorable and has bonded with Richard (she is very much a Daddy’s girl) and loves to skitter all over the house chasing balls and if we could just get Ingrid to stop antagonizing her by growling every time she catches a glimpse of her, everything would be peachy.

As for everyone else – let’s see. Checkers’ eye finally cleared up, much to my great delight because I was getting seriously tired of chasing her down to dose her twice a day. Rosemary is hyperthyroid, but luckily she tolerates the pills just fine, so (fingers crossed) it’s an easy treatment for now. And Rupert has figured out how to scale to the top of the new office desks – the seven foot tall office desks, mind you – so we’re now slowly adjusting to looking up to see a fuzzy little face peering down at us without freaking out about it.

House: The downstairs bathroom sinks have faucets with lever handles. One of the sinks doesn’t drain very well. Rupert and Ingrid are extremely smart cats who like to play in running water. Do you see where this is going?

So basically after they flooded the entire master bedroom, we turned the water off under that sink and then hightailed it to Home Depot and ordered an entire new counter (because if we were going to replace the faucets, we might as well replace the sinks that we hate, and if we’re going to replace the hideous sinks, we might as well also replace the hideous tile). The counter is currently sitting in a giant box downstairs, and we are nearly done hacking off the remains of all the mortar and junk that was underneath the tile, so that we can install the new stuff. Possibly it will happen this weekend. We’ll see.

Everything else: Vox Musica went to Chicago to sing at the ACDA National convention. It was stressful. It was crazy. It was also kind of fun. We performed twice, in front of several thousand people. We did a lot of walking all over downtown Chicago. We got to see a few other groups perform. Alas, what we did not get to do was hold an official music-burning party once we returned home (let’s just say some of us are heartily sick of some of those songs at this point), but maybe we can still try for later on that one.

I finished my Estimating class and got an A+ (much to my shock, but hey, I’m not going to quibble!). So now I have my Tuesdays back, but I’ve lost my Saturdays for a few months because I’ve been spending them in training sessions to become a Master Food Preserver. I suspect it will come as no surprise to anyone that I am having far more fun in my MFP classes than I did in my Estimating class.

Knitting – sigh. I feel as if I’ve lost my direction there. Nearly all the knitting I’ve done lately has been test knitting patterns for someone else. I’m poking along slowly at two pairs of socks, but not really feeling the love on either of them. I have ideas for patterns in my head but I haven’t worked up the energy to actually play with them and work them out onto paper. I have a giant lace project that *must* be done by mid May, and I haven’t touched it in weeks. I know it’s only a matter of time until I’m back to my old level of enthusiasm – this isn’t the first time I’ve hit a lull and I know it won’t be the last – but when I’m in the middle of it, it’s just generally frustrating.