Before I begin, a quick warning. This entry has to do with girl parts. If you’d rather not read about this kind of thing, now’s your chance to flee (I recommend checking out Cute Overload because the sheer cute can make you forget *anything*).

I remember when we were first given all the information about ‘becoming a woman’ back in elementary school. My mom gave us her own version of the talk so by the time the elementary schools got around to it it wasn’t all that much of a shock, but I still remember it anyway, because the information came with little booklets about what would be happening to our bodies. And I remember very well that the booklets discussed the possible side effects. Mild cramping, is how they put it. Nothing to be concerned about. Do a few sit-ups and they’d all go away just like magic. Otherwise, becoming a woman (and all that it entails) was going to be a magical, marvelous journey and weren’t we all lucky we got stuck with the double-X chromosome and got the joy of experiencing it.

What the books never told us young women-to-be is that sometimes the cramps are so bad that you end up doubled over in pain and no amount of asprin or Motrin is going to make them go away once they kick in. And sometimes the flow is so severe that no amount of padding will prevent you from ruining yet another pair of pants or shorts or skirt. And that sometimes ‘becoming a woman’ comes with a premenstrual dose of suicidal depression that makes you ponder all the ways you might want to off yourself until it finally dawns on you that this happens about once a month and maybe next time you can be better prepared for it when you feel like knocking back a bottle of pills, just because. And the books don’t tell you about a whole lot of things that come marching into a young woman’s life, hand in hand with good old Aunt Flo, because the writers of the books think that if they don’t tell you these things, why, they won’t ever come true, and also, that all those nasty side effects are just in your head because you are a silly emotional girl and you don’t know what you are talking about anyway. So you spend years wondering what the hell is wrong with you, and only if you are lucky enough to have someone in your life who has experienced this kind of ‘joy’ in becoming a woman, do you ever know you aren’t alone.

So based on all of this I went on the pill in college, because I was sick and tired of the emotional and physical side effects and truly, there is better living through chemistry after I got over the initial few months of the body adjusting to the hormones and me being a complete bitch to live with in the process.

It’s not been the ideal situation – I’ve tried a few other options over the years (the most memorable being the brief stint on Depo, which required a shot in the butt every three months and which came with the nifty benefit of a rather quick weight gain, and also a level of bitchiness on my part so high that even *I* could see it) but I have always ended up going back to the pill because at least I knew what to expect. But there have been side effects of being on the pill, both physical and emotional, and if it was just me all by myself maybe I would just grin and bear it, but that’s not been the case for some time now, and so I have spent a bit of time over the past few years pondering other options. I knew that whatever I ended up with, I wanted it to be permanent, because while the ‘better living through chemistry’ was effective for a while, the negatives have been far outweighing the positives for too many years now, and I didn’t want to just switch to yet another temporary method, again and again and again.

Alas, no doctor out there is willing to take out girl parts unless there is a valid medical reason. And when I was younger, any inquiry into getting something more permanent done was met with the equivalent of a fatherly pat on the head that I might change my mind (being female and thus, of course, prone to fits of indecision, especially when it comes to the subject of children, hormones, and other emotional things like that). But once I passed the magical age of 30, suddenly the attitude started to change. I found a doctor who didn’t automatically assume that I coudn’t possibly know what I am talking about when I say I really do not want to be a mom, and I found a procedure that seemed like it would be a good fit, and after doing a lot of reading and a lot of soul-searching and talking with Richard about it, I decided that it was time.

There have been referrals, and appointments, and even a last minute pregnancy test because they want to make very sure that they weren’t sterilizing a woman who might be pregnant (this last part amused me the most, since this is the one test I sort of assumed I’d never be taking), and all of this has been going on since before we left for Ireland. Because the procedure I wanted is something fairly new, it took a little extra time, but the doctor I spoke with was very excited because she wanted to get it started at the hospital since she learned of it, and I ended up approaching her at just the right time.

Friday morning, after a few months of referrals and discussion and waiting for appointments, I went into the hospital and was their very first patient to go through this procedure at that location. It’s not like I was in any danger – the methods they use are things the doctor’s done before, so this was just one little extra step, and it’s such a simple little process that none of us were worried at all.

It feels a bit odd now, to have it finally be over, but it’s a good feeling, to know that everything can finally settle back into place and sort itself out. I am mentally preparing myself for the return of the killer cramps and possibly even the one-day-long suicidal depression, but the chances of either of those returning after being on the pill for so long are pretty slim. Even so, I know how to handle those. I am okay with those. I dealt with them before and I can deal with them again, especially since this time around I’m not some naive young thing reading a little book full of lies about how wonderful and exciting ‘becoming a woman’ will be.

Checkers has been off the Paxil entirely since last weekend, because she finally figured out the pill-in-the-wet-food trick and that was the end of any hope of pilling her any further. And Rosie is back down to pills every other day.

What this means is that things are finally getting better. In fact, they’re getting a lot better. Rosie’s back to wanting to play and even doing a tiny bit of skittering, which is a huge relief. There’ve been one or two screeches from Checkers’ hideout in the linen closet, but as near as we can tell, it only happens when one of the cats pokes his or her head in, and Checkers gives them the benefit of her opinion. Even Rosie’s been screeched at, but the big difference is that now Rosie just walks away. She isn’t lying in wait for Checkers any more, or chasing her down. She’s just shrugging her shoulders and walking away. The drama is now only on Checkers’ part, and not on Rosie’s and wow, what a difference and what a relief.

The best part of all of this is that Checkers is finally coming back out of her shell. She’s not a carrying kind of cat, but she will let me cart her around tucked under one arm for short distances, and I’ve been taking her further and further out of her little self-imposed exile. Yesterday it was like the doors were opened for her for the first time – suddenly she’s coming out of the bathroom on her own, trotting around the computer room, rummaging in the maze of boxes under the desk with the server, hopping up and down from the windowsills, and even hanging out on the cat tree, hopping from one level to the next and peering around the corner to see what’s going on in the rest of the house, all the while keeping up a running commentary on the whole experience. She’s spending a lot more time sprawling on the floor and a lot less time lurking.

I’m feeling like it’s too soon to declare this a permanent change, but oh, I am really hoping that it is. It’s obvious she’s feeling more confident now that Rosie’s stopped the harrassment, and Rosie’s feeling a lot better now that we’re tapering her off the medication, and even if Sebastian still feels the need to hiss at Checkers when he sees her (sigh), the important thing is that Checkers doesn’t care. The progress we’ve seen in the past week has been amazing and I am really, really hoping that it continues.

The house call vet came over Friday morning, and for the first time I was faced with an interesting dilemma. Usually when she comes over, I chase down Zucchini and lock him in the bathroom upstairs, but this time I couldn’t exactly do that, because that’s where Checkers is still hanging out. So I decided to take a chance, and when I noticed he was lurking in the kitchen cupboard in the corner, I stuck a chair in front of the door so he couldn’t escape and figured I’d see how that worked out. Unfortunately, when I tried to extract him, he freaked out completely. I’d hoped to drag him into the laundry room, but that wasn’t going to happen. So we let him go and the vet and I decided that, based on the speed at which he flew up the stairs, he was obviously feeling well and healthy and could forego the usual yearly checkup. Instead, she left me the syringe with his booster vaccinations and I managed to corner him two days later so I could inject it.

For being the smallest cat in the house, Checkers required the most restraint. I burrito-wrapped her in a towel and between the two of us we managed to get her checked and vaccinated and also clipped her claws (something I’ve not been able to do on my own). The rest of the cats were almost boring by comparison to Checkers and Zucchini. Looks like we’ll need to take Rosie and Sebastian off for some tooth work, but otherwise everyone’s in good health.

Too bad the cats can’t take any comfort in the fact that we’ve had to go off for our own tooth work. Both Richard and I had three cavities each to deal with. He got his filled last week; I had mine done this week. Between us and the cats it’s been all about health maintenance lately, but the important part is that it’s just the usual stuff. No one shows any sudden weight loss or other weird symptoms. The only issue we’ve still to deal with are Checkers and Rosie (and the medication seems to be working better, enough so that we’ve been able to start slowly weaning them both off), and some antibiotics for Tangerine. After the past two years of issues with Allegra and Rebecca, it’s a bit strange to be faced with such mundane issues that can be dealt with by the mere act of giving a pill.

You wouldn’t think, to look at him, that he just spent the past HOUR hollering at the top of his lungs, at absolutely nothing.

The Avon Breast Cancer Walk site has all kinds of information – more than you would ever think you needed to know about the event. One of the pages included a ‘what to pack’ list. Lucky for me, I like lists, and this saved me the effort of making one myself. Shorts, t-shirts, sleeping bag for me, extra sleeping bag for the sister flying down from Seattle, extra socks, sunglasses, an economy sized bottle of ibuprofen. All of this had to be stuffed into a bag that could weigh no more than 30 pounds (sleeping bag included) and had to be compact enough to stuff into a two man tent that was actually going to be holding three people (including gear). I am business travel woman – I know how to pack light.

I headed up to Napa and picked up my older sister, and then we zipped off to the airport in San Francisco and older sis wandered through the baggage claim area while I aimlessly circled the terminals (I think I went around at least four times before my little sister called me and we were able to all converge in one spot). And then it was off to the hotel. They’d set up a block of rooms at a reduced price at the Marriott in san Francisco, from whence we would all be bussed at o-dark-thirty Saturday morning to the start of the walk, so it seemed to make the most sense for us to just spend Friday night there.

The Marriott is conveniently located less than a block away from the Metreon, so we dumped off our stuff and checked in with husbands/kids and then we were off to go have fun – fun which consisted first of lunch (at a cafe in the restaurant) and then a movie and virtual bowling (not necessarily in that order). We decided to see ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ because as much as the three of us really wanted to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, we knew our husbands would be far less likely to be miffed at missing a movie if it was a fluffy chick flick. It’s a cute movie – fun and funny without requiring much in the way of thought.

The virtual bowling was my older sister’s idea. Younger sister and I were not too sure about it, but then we started playing and what do you know, it’s really a lot of fun. Also, I am apparently really good at it. First time in my life I have ever scored over 100 on a bowling game. Too bad I will never manage to match that kind of performance in the ‘real world’.

We had dinner at Mel’s Diner because we decided that when facing two days of intense physical activity, one should do some serious loading with foods that are frozen, buttered, or fried. We’d picked up our registration packets moments after they opened the doors, which turned out to be a good thing, because by the time we were done with dinner the line was out the door and things were getting a little crazy in the land of the bright and pink. So after dinner we decided that we ought to try to get to bed early so as to be ready for the far-too-early start the next morning.

The walk started at 7. The pre-walk pep talk started at 6:30. The busses started carting us over slightly before 5am. When we reached Golden Gate Park it was still dark outside, and the air was chilly. But they had a huge spread of food and coffee available, and there was a huge sea of people in pink, and they gave us a lovely little pre-walk talk and a cheered us on, and suddenly, off we went, a huge crowd of a few thousand women and men, transforming slowly from mob to line of walkers over the course of the next few hours.

Saturday’s route took us just a bit through the city before meandering off towards a rather nasty hill and then across the Golden Gate Bridge. From there we wove our way down under the bridge and around the coast and off into cute little coastal touristy communities. The air turned from chilly to almost a bit too warm to be doing this kind of thing. And my feet turned from happy about the whole idea to hating my guts. Ugh.

So once we hit the 13 mile mark, I decided I’d had more than enough pain fun and joined a large crowd of other similarly minded walkers, and headed off to the Wellness Village, which was the temporary camp they’d set up for us in Crissy Field. My older sister really wanted to do the full 26 miles on Saturday, so she and my little sister continued on (although my little sister ended up deciding to call it quits for the day at around mile 18). I figured I might as well get my gear, and our tent, and tried to get that set up, but there was a host of lovely volunteers who were more than happy to do all that for me, so instead I decided to take advantage of the free massages that were being offered.

By the time that was done, however, my right hip had started locking up, my right knee was pretty much useless, and my feet weren’t speaking to me anymore. So the next stop for me was the medical triage tent, where they sent me first to chiropractic, and then on to the physical therapy tent. The general consensus was that I’d managed to seriously wrench a few muscles and I needed to ice them, but it’s rather hard to hold ice onto one’s thigh for long periods of time, so they filled a few large baggies with ice and then used plastic wrap to ‘stick’ them to my leg. I joked that this was my spa treatment, and that at least the one thigh would now be thinner than the other.

My little sister showed up just as I was finishing up my treatment, so I helped her track down our tent. Imagine a sea of blue tents, all identical, set up in rows and rows across a field. Add in the factor of heavy winds that were merrily blowing away all the little markers the volunteers had so carefully laid out, and it meant that unless you had some kind of landmark to follow, trying to find your own tent was an exercise in futility. It was obvious there were people who’d done this before, because a number of tents sported flags, towels, balloons, and any other type of colorful item that would give their inhabitants some idea of how to get back.

My older sister showed up a few hours later, having actually managed to finish the entire 26 miles in one day. By then, my little sister and I had already taken advantage of the fact that there was no line for the showers (they had huge trucks set up in a warehouse that were basically filled with rows of showers – wonderful showers with plenty of hot water and terrific water pressure) and had tried to organize all our stuff in the tent so there’d be room for three people in a space meant for two. The three of us headed off to get dinner, and to pick up whatever goodies were available at the various booths around the site, but then we all went back to the tent and pretty much collapsed. Despite the amount of ibuprofen I’d already taken, and the icing, and the physical therapy, my leg was still in a lot of pain, so my little sister gave me something stronger, and I curled into my sleeping bag, and we were all so tired that we started laughing, until we got fussed at from people in the next tent over, and then the something stronger kicked in and I fell asleep.

I have figured out, in retrospect, why I was having such a hard time with the walk, and my feet, and the pain and all, but at the time I was just annoyed and irritable about the whole thing. We did an insane amount of walking while we were in Ireland and while my feet would hurt sometimes from all the walking, it was a normal type of soreness – nothing like what I was dealing with at the walk. The problem, I’ve decided, is that in Ireland, I wore my hiking boots everywhere, and on the walk, I wore my sneakers, and obviously the two were not one and the same in terms of effectiveness. But Sunday morning I was in too much pain to really be thinking clearly about it. I took a lot more pain killers and we ate breakfast and took down our tent and turned in our gear again, and set off out of the campsite, setting our sights toward the next rest stop which was three miles down the road.

I really did want to try to do the whole thing, but by the time we were about a mile in, it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen. So I made it to the first rest stop and then finally gave up, and my two sisters went on without me. We finally met up again at the end of the walk, and we all got our walker t-shirts (even more pink) and stood around waiting for the post-walk celebration to begin. The crowd cheered for the organizers and we cheered for the volunteers, and we cheered for the San Jose police officers who volunteered their time to provide security and encouragement during the walk (and also a bit of eye candy, since they were all wearing tight shorts and were riding bicycles along the route). We cheered for the fact that as a three person team we managed to raise over $6000, and as a collective whole, we managed to raise over $5.4 million, and then it was finally over and we all collected our gear and piled onto busses and they drove us back to the Marriott. We walked just enough further to track down my car, which sat in a nearby parking garage all weekend, and we debated getting dinner, but by then we were all tired and getting dinner would have somehow required more walking, so we dropped my little sister off at the airport and then I drove my older sister back to Napa, and then I came home and took even more ibuprofen and collapsed and hoped that maybe I could just avoid moving my feet or my legs again for a very, very long time.

Despite the fact that it was an extremely painful event for me, overall, the walk was actually kind of fun. It’s quite possibly one of the most well organized events I’ve ever experienced. Throughout the entire event there were hundreds of staff and volunteers encouraging us, cheering for us, passing out drinks and cookies and buttons, driving by in crazily decorated cars and honking their horns, dancing for us, and supporting us in whatever way they could. Every few miles there were rest stops with water and gaterade and snacks, and medical people ready and waiting to treat sore, blistered feet. The Wellness Village (where we spent Saturday night) was extremely well organized and planned – from the showers to the full stocked medical tents, to the volunteers rushing over to help the walkers set up or take down tents, pack up gear, or whatever else might be needed. It’s definitely something we all thought maybe we might want to do again…except maybe next time we won’t be walkers. Maybe next time we’ll take part as either volunteers, or as staff, based primarily on one important criteria. The volunteers and staff had cars.

Pictures from the walk are all here.

Once we are finally over the post-vacation ick, it’s been a whirlwind of socialization around our house. First up was meeting up with a friend at Ben & Jerry’s, where we could sit outside and chat and people watch and catch up on our respective lives. He’s still working for the Big Fish (or rather, the company that swallowed the Big Fish, because that is the way of the tech business these days) so it’s always a challenge to hook up with him (and if he’s bad, his wife’s even worse – we haven’t seen her in quite possibly years because she’s also always on the go).

Next was a vaguely impromptu barbeque. Richard decided he wanted to do something with his grill, so we had a small crowd of friends over on Saturday night for hamburgers and hot dogs, corn on the cob, and white peach cobbler. Again, these were all friends we often have a hard time coordinating schedules with, so to get them all together on the same night was a welcome change.

And finally, there was the usual gathering of the families for the Fourth of July. Originally we’d talked about tossing a big hunk of salmon on the grill, but while at the grocery store on Monday night, none of the salmon available looked very good, but there just happened to be a turkey available. So…we grilled up the turkey. It’s a very American bird; somehow it made sense. We also had corn on the cob (again, because it was so good!) and I made a chocolate tres leches cake, and I was worried there wouldn’t be enough food from the turkey so I also bought a few containers of potato salad. Richard’s family showed up first, bearing sodas and birthday presents for me (including a huge stuffed dragon that’s covered in swirls of color – it’s very cool). My parents came next, with salad and bread, and finally my older sister and her family arrived bearing a huge bowl of fruit salad.

I think that this Fourth was quite possibly one of the most fun gatherings of family we’ve had in a very long time. Not that family gatherings are so awful, but this was one of those times when everything seemed to click. The boys are both old enough now to be able to hold understandable conversations.

We’d bought a pile of bottles of bubble solution and sent everyone outside while dinner was getting ready, to blow bubbles and enjoy the backyard. My dad brought over his bocce ball set and his new croquet set and the entire family either played or watched the others playing. Turns out those DG paths we’ve got in the backyard make great Bocce ball courts, and my nephews were really getting into it.

The turkey actually took far less time than we’d expected and was done an hour before people were to arrive, so dinner took very little additional work. There was, of course, far more food than we could possibly eat (I didn’t need to get that potato salad after all) and it was all delicious. The cake was a bit experimental, since I’d never made this recipe before, but it turned out pretty good (although I did discover that when they put an expiration date on the can of sweetened condensed milk, they really do mean it).

We weren’t sure if we’d still be able to see the fireworks from the backyard, but this year, at least, it was still possible. The neighbors behind us planted some fast-growing evergreens and they’re just getting to the height where any lower-flying explosions were partially hidden behind them, but since most of the explosions took place higher in the sky, it still worked out. It started getting pretty chilly once the sun began to set, so I ran around gathering up any available blanket, jacket, or sweater (apparently I need to make a few more afghans – they would have come in useful) and passing them out so that everyone would be warm enough.. This is the first year both boys have been willing to sit outside for the whole event, and the fireworks show was pretty good.

Today there are signs lingering everywhere I look of the fun. Even though we foisted leftovers on everyone we could, there is still an entire container of potato salad in the fridge, and slightly less than half the cake (we ate some of it for breakfast this morning), and a huge bag of turkey in the refrigerator. The weather outside is still lovely and there are jars of bubble solution lined up on the raised flower bed where everyone was hanging out, and an extremely colorful stuffed dragon sitting in front of the living room fireplace, and there are the cats, all slowly creeping back into view after all the noise and activity from before.

I have pretty much given up on ever finding a way to replicate those cinnamon chip scones that Starbucks used to carry, but at least the search has turned up a few new scone recipes that are (almost) even better. These Pumpkin Scones, for example, are amazingly filling, and manage to avoid being dry and crumbly like most other scones. And while browsing around the internet one bored afternoon recently, I found this recipe. I’ve made them twice now (the only change was that I substituted whole wheat flour for half the white flour) because they are so very good.

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Apparently this is the week for unseasonable weather all over the country. The East Coast is getting hit with rain and storms, but here on the West Coast we’re getting slammed with unseasonably nasty heat waves. It’s this kind of weather that reminds me of just why it is that one of these years I need to move out of the Sacramento Valley (preferably to somewhere where in the winter, it snows). Ugh.

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After several years of forgetting to go, I finally broke down and went to the dentist yesterday afternoon. The verdict? Three new cavities. Hooray for crappy teeth.

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I have no idea what the graphs from this site mean, except that they somehow graph how your site is connected across the internet. But I will admit that I think the pictures produced are kind of pretty.

Here’s the one for this journal

And here’s the one for Knit One, Purr Too

Before we left for Ireland we were dealing with a situation between Rosie and Checkers that we knew was going to have to be resolved one way or another…but which we also knew had to wait until we returned home. Rosie, unfortunately, is a bit of a bully. With the other cats in the house there’s never been a problem, because if she tries anything, they either ignore it or have enough backbone to smack her, and that ends the issue right there. Checkers, however, has turned out to be a first class wimp, and unfortunately, this has only made matters worse. Rosie charge her every time she sees her, and has taken to lying in wait in the library and essentially trapping Checkers in one of her hiding spots. If Checkers would just haul off and smack Rosie upside the head even once, it would end right there, but since she won’t, things are just getting worse and worse. With the summer heat coming on in full force lately, shutting the door to the library just isn’t an option – it gets really hot in there when there’s no air circulation, even with the air conditioning on. And we also really do not want to have to keep Checkers separated from the rest of the house forever. It’s not fair to her or to the rest of us.

So after we got back and monitored the situation for a bit to see how things were going, we finally called our marvelous housecall vet, and both Rosie and Checkers are now on Praxil. Yes indeed, folks, my cats require behavior alterating drugs. Rosie gets it because it should mellow her out enough so she will stop fixating on Checkers, and Checkers gets it because it should make her feel less anxious and more willing to come out of hiding and try exploring the rest of the house again, once Rosie stops harassing her.

I had to do this twice with Sebastian, but that was years ago, and at that time he was on Buspar, twice a day. It worked, but it was expensive. I was getting it at cost through a vet friend so I was only paying about $1 per pill, but still, he was getting two pills a day and I do not even want to think about how much it would have cost if I’d had to pay the full marked-up price.

With the Praxil, we only have to pill them every other day, which makes all of our lives much, much easier (and also cheaper – because since we got it through our local pharmacy, it’s costing us much more than the Buspar did). This is especially good because while Rosie is fairly easy to pill (in the grand scheme of things), to Checkers the simple act of trying to hold her head still and pry open her jaw is the same as if we were trying to kill her slowly, by ripping off her paws. However, I am hopeful we’ve found a solution – this morning I put her pill in her little plate of wet food and she wolfed it down without even noticing it was there.

There has been some progress, in the week they’ve been on the drug. Rosie isn’t hanging out in Checkers’ room as much anymore, and there hasn’t been a single screaming match between the two of them since they started the medication. And two days ago Checkers came to the very edge of ‘her territory’ and yelled insistantly at Richard until he came into the room to play with her. She hasn’t done that since this whole thing with Rosie started. So this is a good first step.

This morning we had a short list of errands to run. We needed to buy the last of the summer birthday presents, come home, wrap them all up, drop off my dad’s Father’s Day present at my parents’ house (since he’ll be flying away tomorrow), and ship out the birthday presents that need shipping.

So the first thing we did was head off to the store, where we tracked down the thing we were looking for almost immediately, and then we came home and got the presents wrapped and I rummaged through my yarn stash and found the skein that I wanted to send off to my One Skein Secret Pal, and things were going along swimmingly. We got my dad a croquet set, which wasn’t exactly easy to wrap, so instead I decided to just tape a card to the outside and leave it in its case unadorned. As we were gathering everything up to take it out to the car I swung it up onto the kitchen counter (it’s kind of heavy) in order to put it on a flat surface so I could attach the card. I am only mentioning this mundane little detail because it’s important later on.

First stop, my parents’ house. I’ve got a key, and I knew they were off at the Methodist convention in Sacramento so I figured I’d just zip in, leave the croquet set on the dining room table, and zip back out again. Nothing to it, right? Less than a minute and we were off to the UPS store, to get all the packages into the mail. And as we were standing at the counter, my cell phone rang.

“Were you in our house?”

At first I was confused – I thought they were staying in a hotel, so I’d not bothered to ring the doorbell.

“Yes. Sorry – I thought you guys were gone-”

“The security group just called us. You set off the alarm.”

The alarm. Oh yeah. They have an alarm. After they had their house broken into a few months ago they had an alarm system installed. And guess what both Richard and I completely forgot about? Since I’d only been in there for barely 30 seconds I wasn’t there long enough to hear it when the sirens started. And naturally, the security system not only called my dad, they also called the police.

So I left Richard at the UPS store to finish getting the packages shipped and dashed back to my parents’ house, fully expecting to have to explain everything to the police when they showed up (if they weren’t there already) and feeling like a complete idiot. But by the time I got there my dad called back, and let me know that the police call had thankfully been cancelled. Phew. Luckily my parents have a good sense of humor and so we could both laugh about this, and as my dad put it, at least now we’ve successfully tested the system and discovered that it works quite well.

So back to the UPS store I went, picked up Richard, and we headed immediately home. We walked into the house I immediately smelled gas. A LOT of gas. And one look at the oven confirmed my suspicion. Remember when I swung that croquet set up onto the counter? I can only surmise that I must have accidently hit the burner knob, and turned it on. It didn’t light, but it was on just enough to release the gas. And it had had a bit over half an hour to fill the house up with a whole lot of it, because we could smell it *everywhere*.

Luckily this part of the store has a happy ending. Once I figured out the problem I immediately turned off the burner and then we raced madly around the house opening every single window and turning on every single ceilng and exhaust fan. Within a few hours the house was clear and the gas smell was gone. But even though I can laugh about it, and I joked to my knitting friends at the gathering later this afternoon that at least none of the cats had taken up smoking, I know just how damn lucky we were. Because we could just have easily decided to go somewhere else today. We could have gone grocery shopping, or decided to drive off to Costco, or a hundred other errands that would have had us out of the house for a few hours instead of just thirty minutes. The simple act of opening the garage door could have created enough of a spark when we returned. Even during that short time we were gone, there was enough gas in the air that there would have been damage, and if we’d been gone longer the cats might not have been so lucky either. All the windows were closed (because it’s hot out and the air conditioner was on) and a few hours of gas might have meant that some of our cats might have never woken up again. It makes me a little queasy just thinking about it.

So I am counting us lucky right now, even though maybe two crazy things in one morning might not seem like luck to a lot of people. But the luck is that they were only close calls and nothing else. They were only Almost. And that’s pretty darn good luck to me.