This weekend we flew up to Seattle to visit with my sister and her husband and my very favorite niece. I was worried about the sinuses, but both flights were blessedly free of turbulence or other sinus-awakening maneuvers, so all went far better than expected.

We had a very lovely visit, although I am a horrible auntie and did not take a single picture (in my defense, neither did my little sister, even though we both own, and carry around constantly, perfectly functional cameras). My sister picked us up at the airport Friday night, and we chattered non-stop on the drive back to their house. She and her husband and Richard and I tiptoed into the house so as not to wake the niece and then camped out downstairs in the family room to watch a little bit of the Olympics (men’s diving and track) and do a few more hours of chatting, before the yawning became too distracted to talk anymore.

We had nothing particular planned for the weekend except just spending time with the niece and her parents. We played lots of board games. We tromped around outside and oohed and aahed over their rather impressive vegetable garden (which puts our sad little tomato jungle to shame). We finally got to meet their chickens, since we’ve been hearing about them (and seeing periodic pictoral updates) ever since they got them as tiny little bits of peeping fluff. We went miniature golfing (and I proudly took last place because yes, I really am the worst miniature golfer ever). My little sister gave my niece and I henna tattoos. In the mornings we ate pancakes, and homemade croissants filled with chocolate or Nutela. Saturday evening we ate dinner outside on their back deck, with the chickens clucking aimlessly around the lawn, and a tiny little wild rabbit nibbling its way through the grass, and after the niece had been put to bed, we adults stayed up for another few hours, talking and laughing and working our way through an entire ice cream pie.

I wish we could do this more often. It’s so hard, to only get to see my little niece twice a year, if that. My little sister and I chat on IM and there are emails and the occasional phone conversation, but those things are all a poor replacement for being right there, in the same room, sitting around a table playing games; eating outside with chickens and rabbits and trees and the clear blue sky.

There’s been a big shift in the weather lately, starting with a nice drop (or increase – the type doesn’t matter) in air pressure. How do I know this? Because my sinuses decided, after weeks of playing nicely, to slam me with a little slice of hell on Monday. My head was hurting so badly I ended up finally giving up and going home, to take some pills and curl up on the bed and wait until the medication kicked in. Alas, it wasn’t just the sinuses at that point; by the time the sinus meds finally kicked in, the migraine was in full force, and since migraines come with an accompanying bout of nausea (my life, you want it, I know you do), basically my entire afternoon was spent curled up in a little ball on my bed, head draped in ice packs, praying fervently to whatever deity might be listening that I could keep down the pain meds *and* the sinus meds long enough for them to actually do some good.

Luckily everything finally stablized, just in time for me to scurry off to rehearsal. That was all kinds of exciting in itself, since, what with being highly medicated by that point, my brain was a wee bit floaty, and concentrating on difficult music was more of a challenge than it normally is. But I made it through that, and then came home and sat down with my floaty head and some needles and yarn and whipped up a dishcloth because naturally, the Dishrag Tag box arrived that afternoon and as captain of my team, it was incumbent upon me to get it back into the mail as soon as possible.

I’ve been dutifully popping sinus meds the rest of the week, since I can feel a return to depressurization lurking angrily, just behind my cheeks, and except for that pesky little side effect of the decongestants called insomnia, things seem to be holding out just fine. The fact that I am scheduled to climb aboard an airplane this weekend, twice, and the fact that on previous occasions when my sinuses have been trying to kill me while flying it turned the trip into yet another slice of hell, does not have me panicking one teensy bit. Nope. Not at all. Ugh.

I got up early this morning, mainly because someone has decided that, starting at about 5:30 every morning, she needs to ping onto the bed and begin an hour-long session of crawl-under-the-covers-squirm-out-of-the-covers-jump-on-the-windowsill-lather-rinse-repeat that comes complete with its own running commentary. She’s extremely cute and all she really wants is attention, and considering how amazingly far she has come in the last few years since we adopted her it is hard to be truly mad at her, but you know, sometimes it would be awfully nice to be able to sleep in late, without being hollered at by a tiny little tortie before it is completely light outside.

By about 7 I gave up and climbed out of bed and tossed one of the sparkly catnip mice on the bed to distract the aforementioned furry alarm clock, and then I went upstairs and opened all the windows to take advantage of the lovely cool breezes outside. I poured myself some coffee, and then I settled into my chair at the computer (where my lap was promptly taken over by a loudly purring Sebastian) and I spent about an hour or so catching up on blog-reading and the news, and listening to the world outside. The squirrels were in fine form, based on the sheer volume of skittering I heard, and the rest of the cats were studiously ignoring the squirrels because there were sunbeams to be sprawled in. It felt for a moment as if I was the only one awake in the entire neighborhood, until I heard a familiar sound and looked outside to see little boy who lives down the road being pulled rapidly along the sidewalk by his (mostly new) puppy.

It was nice to have a little moment in the morning to catch my breath, mainly because this has been a rather whirlwind sort of weekend. We climbed up into the closet in the guest room and dragged down all the remaining boxes of kitchen stuff, and either added them to the growing pile of stuff to donate, or found places to put them away. We rearranged the guest room, now that they no longer need it for staging, and you can now walk through it without having to sidle past boxes or random ceiling fans or chairs blocking the way. We went out and bought a towel rack for the upstairs bathroom, and curtain panels and rods for the dining room. Richard cut some narrow dowels for me and I cobbled together a (mostly effective) method for organizing the spice drawer underneath the range, that will do for now. We bought shelf brackets and shelves and installed the first set on the back wall of the pantry, and then promptly filled them all up. We dragged every remaining bit of renovation-related material out of all the places it has been living and corralled it either in a corner in the pantry, or in a box on the counter, and vacuumed up an assortment of tiny little screws and nails and random bits of wood and other related objects.

It all seems like such tiny little things, when I write it all out – but it’s been an exhausting two days. We rearranged the dining room so that (aside from the old fridge still lurking in one corner) it’s back to its usual layout. I made countless trips up and down the stairs doing laundry, or carting things out to the trash, or putting things away, while Richard dragged both bikes out of the carriage house and hosed off all the cobwebs and spiders and construction dust, cleaned out an area inside the carriage house as well so now we can walk in the door without having to fight through a thick layer of cobwebs and dust. We loaded up the car with a huge pile of stuff and dropped off most of it at a local thrift store, then came back home and promptly found even more stuff we’d intended to take but forgot about. We went to the huge farmer’s market under the freeway and came home lugging a canvas sack overloaded with white peaches and grapes and corn on the cob, red and yellow bell peppers, heirloom tomatoes in all different colors, sweet potatoes, onions. I decided to rearrange the living room furniture, and while Richard was hanging the new curtain rods, I finally sat down and glued the glass lamp shade back together, from when it fell, months ago, and two tiny pieces broke off. And then I went into the kitchen and chopped up all the peaches and made a white peach crisp, and while that was in the oven, I chopped up a potato and some shallots and some garlic and one of the lovely red bell peppers we picked up at the farmer’s market, and I put together another Potato and Corn Fritatta, to serve to my parents who came over for dinner.

There are still a myriad number of little things left to take care of, before the house is finally back to normal, and most of them still revolve around the kitchen. But my goal this weekend was to make a serious dent in all the cleaning and putting away and rearranging that has been in limbo for the past three months, and so I think it is safe to say that I succeeded.

The floor is DONE. You have no idea how happy this makes me. This past weekend we charged up both the Roomba and the Scooba and gave the kitchen, dining room, and living room a thorough sweeping and scrubbing. I can finally walk around the house without feeling that horrid grit under my feet. It’s a lovely, wonderful thing. In fact, not only is the floor itself installed, they also put in all the baseboards and the quarter-round trim, so except for a transition strip between the dining room and the kitchen room, that part of the remodel project is complete.

The dishwasher is installed, and we stood there and carefully read through the manual to figure out how to use it (this is becoming a trend with all the new appliances; in fact, I admit to being just a little bit intimidated by the microwave, because it also doubles as a convection oven and the manual for that puppy is thick). In honor of finally having a working dishwasher, we pulled out all the pretty new blue glass dishes, ran them through the dishwasher, and then we packed up all the old dishes in paper and stashed them in boxes for a friend to pick up later. I’m hoping that this coming weekend we’ll have some time to swing by the local thrift store, so we can drop off the old microwave, and the toaster oven, and a whole bunch of other random stuff I’ve purged from all the boxes of kitchen stuff, and our closets, and the house in general.

Even better than the dishwasher being installed, however, is the fact that on Monday they finally installed the new fridge. It’s kind of a bear to get into right now, since it doesn’t have its panels (and therefore its handles) yet, but once it reached its proper temperatures, we emptied the old fridge and arranged everything into the new fridge, and that means that the old fridge can finally be removed from the dining room and maybe, just maybe, by the end of the week the dining room can finally be free of anything kitchen related once and for all. Having the fridge installed is something we’ve been waiting for, mainly because it’s so nice to no longer have to move from room to room when doing something as simple as pouring myself a cup of coffee, or when trying to cook something.

Speaking of cooking, we’ve actually been doing a little of that lately, now that we finally have a completely functional kitchen (and I will note right now how awesome it is that both of us can be in the kitchen, at the same time, working on cooking or cleaning, without bumping into each other, or getting in each other’s way). Friday night Richard decided to find a recipe that used as many of our new appliances as possible, so he put together some chicken packets with peapods and peppers and shallots and garlic, and they were delicious. And this evening I put together this Potato and Corn Fritatta that was seriously awesome. The original recipe called for scallions, but I wanted to use up more of the shallots Richard bought for the chicken packets, plus there was one red bell pepper left that needed using, so I chopped that up and stirred that in with the potatoes at the last minute. We’ll be taking the leftovers for lunch tomorrow, and we’ll also definitely be making this again. Delicious.

Friday, since it was my day off, I finally tackled the issue of the back splash. We’d originally picked out some tile we thought might work, but that was before we chose a paint color, and the more we looked at those sample tiles, the more we just didn’t care for them any more. So Friday morning i drove off to the stone and tile showroom and I wandered around for a little while, carting my bag of plans and granite and wood samples and paint chips, until someone took pity on me and came out to help. The very nice woman showed me a few options that might work, but then we both found one that seemed as if it was tailor-made for the combination of our granite and tile. So she collected a small pile of samples for me, and then I headed back home to show them to Richard. I’d been hoping to just send him pictures of various ideas using my cell phone, but the pictures didn’t come out very well (something with the lighting, I guess).

Richard liked the tile, so back I went to the tile store, this time with Richard along. We were hoping to place the order for the tile right then and there, but the women helping us noted that it would be better if we had the contractor who would be doing the installation figure out how much he’d need. So instead of ordering the tile, we worked out a design pattern, and she drew out a little diagram, and they wrote down all the catalog numbers and percentages of each type we’d need for the highlight piece over the range, and we stuffed that into our little back of samples and went back home and even though I pondered it over the weekend I amazingly did not even think about changing my mind on the tile choices (something I am normally prone to do if you give me too much time to ponder). This morning Richard and the contractor went back to the tile store together, diagram and selection list and measurements in hand, and it is now officially ordered and on its way. In a few weeks our kitchen will have back splash. Hurrah.

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It has not been all kitchen renovation all the time around here. Yesterday we drove down to Berkeley to attend the wedding of a friend. It was held in the arboretum on the UC Berkeley campus, in a beautiful little outdoor amphitheater surrounded by huge trees and flowers. Our friend was gorgeous and radiant, as most brides are, and it was a fun little wedding, with some laughing and some tears. There was singing by the bride’s mom and some of her friends, and one of the guests did an impromptu (but extremely well executed) drum solo with the band. The wedding officient was the bride’s aunt, and the canopy over the couple and the officiant during the ceremony was hand-knit by one of her closest friends. We sat with a bunch of other people we know, and chatted with some we didn’t know as well (but hope to hang out with again), and we ate delicious food and hugged the bride and even danced for a very little bit, and had a wonderful time.

First off, hooray for the AT&T technician, who showed up, looked around briefly, and then replaced the wire which was loose, or cut, or something. I have my suspicions that somebody did something while they were mucking about with wiring, because the two times we’ve had it go out has been right after they’ve been doing wiring in the kitchen, but whatever. The point is, the phone line is finally working again, so, yay.

In other news, we have flooring. Ta da!

It’s bamboo – engineered, hand-scraped something or other – with a walnut stain that picks up a little bit of red from the lights and the cabinets just like we hoped. It’s not completely done (obviously, from the picture above), but enough is down that we can now avoid walking on the extremely dusty subfloor, something that makes me happier than I can possibly say.

In honor of having (some) flooring, I came home and promptly dragged out the wet Swiffer mop and spent about half an hour furiously mopping the floors to remove as much of that horrible white dust as possible. They put some kind of leveling stuff on the floor on Friday and then sanded it and ever since, the resulting dust has been unbearable. It’s the sort of fine grit that gets absolutely everywhere. We got a doormat to put at the entrance to the kitchen, but that doesn’t do a darn big of good, no matter how hard we wipe our feet going in and out, and of course the cats aren’t exactly big on wiping their paws either.  I’ve tried to be very zen about the construction dust during this whole process because I knew that it was just going to be a part of our lives until the kitchen was done,  but this was really getting to me. Granted, the cats are still likely going to insist on tramping around in the dusty parts, because cats are that kind of ornery (and you’ll see from the picture above that I *still* did not manage to get rid of all of it – that stuff is insidious!), but I can put up with a few sprinkled white paw prints here and there if at least we humans can avoid tracking any more of the stuff into the rest of the house.

They’ve put in most of the under-cabinet lighting, and it looks like there’s outlet strips lurking around on the counters so hopefully we’ll have those installed (we don’t have outlets on the walls – they’ll be outlet strips under the cabinets, behind the lights. Hidden. Very spiffy). Richard says they were going to try to install the dishwasher today except they didn’t have the proper washer or something like that, but I suspect we’ll get that in by the end of the week. Not sure when they’ll be putting in the refrigerator yet, since it can’t be installed until the floor is done, plus rumor has it that we managed to pick a brand of fridge that is a serious chore to install, but who knows, maybe by the end of the week we’ll get lucky on that too.

Everyone always wants to know when it’s going to be finished, but really, I have no idea. The guys who installed the granite apparently broke the hinges on the little pop-out drawer under the sink so that has to be fixed (according to our cabinet guy, who came out this week to see how things were going), and the light strip under one cabinet has to be special ordered, and there was an issue with our hood and the molding on top of the wall cabinets, so the cabnet guy had to come out and ponder that one too, but we’re getting there. Slowly. Especially now that there is flooring and 75% less nasty white gritty dust. It’s easy to return to being (mostly) cheerfully zen about the rest of the process now that I can finally be free of that dust.

The phone system went out again on Saturday, which means that once again, while we at least have DSL, we get no dial tone when picking up the phone, and people calling us only get a busy signal. It is completely bizarre because we can find no reason for this.

So today, after sitting through an entire morning of one conference call after the other, I finally gave in and called AT&T to report the problem. It took several minutes of slogging through voicemail hell but eventually I got to a real live support person, and I had only started to get the slightest bit annoyed with the endless voicemail menus and ‘select 1 for this, select 2 for that’ instead of ready to beat my head on the nearest hard surface. Even more amazing, not only did I get a real live person, I got a real live person who was actually *helpful*. Will wonders never cease.  She gave me a test for Richard to run, which he did, and which, naturally, did not fix the problem, but when I called back, this time around I kept on stabbing the 0 button until I got to a second real live person, who was also helpful. They can’t send anyone out today, but they had an opening tomorrow, so I made the appointment and since Richard’s been working from home anyway, due to the kitchen construction, he’ll already be there when the technician arrives.

Naturally, I fully expect that the phone system will magically fix itself mere seconds before the technician arrives, much like it did last time this happens (although last time we hadn’t gotten around to calling for service yet, so maybe it isn’t as ornery as I am making it out to be), but if Murphy’s Law does *not* come into play, maybe they’ll figure out what the problem is and fix it, and we won’t have to deal with this anymore. Hey, a girl can dream, can’t she?

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This picture has nothing to do with our phone issues. It just cracks me up. Rosie barely fits on the piano, and it doesn’t look remotely comfortable how she’s leaning her head on the edge, but, well, that’s cats for you.

Sebastian, meanwhile, is just annoyed because someone woke him up with some stupid flashing thing going off in his eyes. It’s a hard life, in our house, being a cat.

After a week or so of complete inactivity on the kitchen, due to waiting on things to arrive, they’re back at work. This week they’ve been doing more painting, finishing up the lights and the switches and electric sockets, and working on the floor. There was some crack-filing and leveling that had to be done, and they finished that up today.

Because they were finally hooking up the light switches, including the one over the stairs that also hooks to a switch downstairs, Richard had to take down the cat-proof barrier at the base of the stairs. We talked about whether we wanted to try to put it back up again, but then we decided that now that all the cabinets are in, and there are no exposed beams or nails or other things where cats could hurt themselves or find ways to escape into the big scary outdoors, we could try letting the cats back upstairs. So once the work crew was done for the day on Wednesday (the day they finally hooked up the aforementioned light switches), when I got home from work, I went downstairs and opened the door and released the hounds…er…cats. And then I promptly dragged out a broom and the vacuum cleaner and went to work on the stairs, because there was all manner of construction debris lurking in the shag carpet covering them.

Sebastian was the first one up the stairs, followed closely thereafter by Tangerine. Azzie wasn’t too sure about the whole idea, nor was Rosie, but eventually they all made it back upstairs. There was a lot of exploring and sniffing out new smells, and quite a bit of whining (mostly from Azzie), but it didn’t take long before the couch was once again covered in cats, or before my lap was full of cat the second I sat down at the computer. Rosie even brought one of her little stuffed dragons halfway up the stairs, and it’s been sitting there ever since. The cats get locked back into the master bedroom during the day when the work crew is at the house, but since that’s during prime nap time, they don’t really seem to care.  But at night, they get to roam free – something which has made Checkers extremely happy, since once again, she now gets the master bedroom mostly to herself (she refuses to step one dainty toe outside the master bedroom door – we have no idea why, but she seems quite happy in there, and it’s a huge room, so…whatever works for that wacky little tortie works for us).

We’re slowly moving things into the kitchen, now that the bulk of the work is done and I can be assured that once I dust out the cabinets or the drawers, they won’t immediately be re-dusted due to construction activity. It’s been kind of fun, wandering around, unpacking boxes, trying to figure out where to put everything. At one point this weekend I had sticky notes on all the cupboards and drawers indicating what was inside each, mainly so Richard could find where I was stashing things.

We’ve been doing a little preemptive shopping for the kitchen (it was inevitable, of course). We now have a brand new set of dishes – cobalt blue glass – that I have been coveting for years and years. We stocked up on our favorite glass coffee mugs. We bought some drawer organizers and took measurements for others, although I am realizing that, due to the depth and the length of the shallow drawer under the range, I am going to have to cobble together my own spice drawer organizer, because all the ones I’ve found for sale are either too high, or too long. I’ve got some ideas, though, mainly involving various lengths of dowels, so I see a trip to the hardware store in my future. Plus, we still need to work out the issue of shelving in the pantry, so I also see a lot of hanging things and sanding wood in my future too. Fun times, people. Fun times.

Part One:
One of my coworkers is getting married next weekend, up at Tahoe. Unfortunately, most of the rest of us in the office aren’t able to go (even though he very nicely invited all of us). But we all like our coworker, and we all really like his intended bride, and well, let’s be honest, we also all really like any excuse to go out for a nice meal. So to make up for being unable to attend the ceremony itself, we decided to go out for a nice dinner instead.

We picked Mason’s, since our little group hasn’t been there yet, and we went on Thursday night. There was quite a flurry of emails zipping back and forth between my coworkers and I, coordinating for the dinner and for a very nice gift basket full of chocolates and wine and so forth, so by the time Thursday came around, we were all set.

It’s an interesting sort of place – very modern, minimal decor. We started dinner with a cheese platter full of an assortment of cheeses ranging from very hard to very soft. Although they provided a descriptive list in the menu, by the time the platter came out, none of us had any idea which cheese was which, so it was sort of a gamble each time we poked tentatively at a crumbly hunk with a knife. They were all (well, most of them) pretty good though, which is good because we’re all big cheese fans in my office, apparently.

Dinner itself was pretty good – portion size was not overwhelming – although I think maybe I should have selected something other than the scallops. And then we followed that with dessert, which included slivers of dense chocolate cake and mint gelato, or peach tarts, or brownies oozing with chocolate and cream.

Everything was delicious, and it was fun to get everyone together for dinner, to tease the soon-to-be-wed couple, to catch up with various coworker spouses, and to just hang out and have fun.

Part Two:
Technically, the trip to Safari West was our official anniversary celebration this year. But Monday rolled around and we started thinking maybe we ought to go out to dinner anyway (see above re. ‘any excuse for a nice meal’), and then I remembered that there is this place in Sacramento called The Kitchen that’s been on the list of ‘someday we have to go there’. So I called them up and amazingly they had space on Friday. I say ‘amazingly’ only because they have exactly one seating per night, and they only seat 50 people at a time, so somehow we got lucky.

Anyway. Friday night rolled around and luckily we thought to look up directions because it’s not exactly easy to find. Because it’s a reservation-only sort of place, there is no sign out front, and the restaurant itself is kind of tucked in the back of a tiny little strip mall. But we found it eventually, and they ushered us inside and led us to our table, got us something to drink, and told us that we were welcome to wander around anywhere in the place – including in the kitchen – to ask any question we wanted, to talk to any staff member. In short, the feeling of the place is as if we were invited to a private dinner in someone’s home.

Dinner itself took close to four hours, total. The head chef came out and introduced everyone, and then walked us through the six courses we would be having over the course of the meal. All the food is made with fresh, organic, locally grown produce, humanly raised meats, and a few additional amazing ingredients. They stressed throughout the evening that if, at any time, we wanted more of anything all we had to do was ask, and Richard and I both admitted that with nearly every course, we would have been glad to get a second helping, except for the fact that we knew even more was coming and we wanted to try to at least save room to taste everything.

It was an amazing dinner experience. Every single dish was incredibly delicious. There was a break in the middle with sushi and sashimi served outside on the little enclosed patio, and before dessert they rolled out a huge cart full of fresh herbs and you could have them brew you an individual pot of tea with whatever combination you wanted (I got a mix of mint and lemongrass and rosemary that was incredible). All the portions were fairly small, but there were just so many of them that by the time dessert was being served, we weren’t the only ones sitting at our tables groaning. Still, I didn’t see a single plate that wasn’t scraped clean, because when the food is that good, somehow you can always find just a little bit more room to eat just one more bite.

For our anniversary this year (seven years – wow!), we decided to treat ourselves to a little adventure. At some point in the last few months I stumbled across a website for this place in Santa Rosa called Safari West, which is a huge privately owned wildlife park full of all sorts of African critters. Originally we were just going to stay overnight and maybe take a safari tour, but when I went poking around the website I found out that we could sign up to be Keepers for a Day. And that sounded like a whole lot more fun than just trundling around the park in a truck with a bunch of other tourists, so that’s what we signed up for.

I’ve been a little concerned because the air quality in recent weeks has been pretty horrible, what with the nearly 1000 fires burning all over Northern California, spewing smoke into the air and making life hellish for people who might already have problems breathing – like, say, my extremely asthmatic husband. But the air has finally been clearing up and there is barely a haze on the horizon now, which means we’re just about back to our normal levels of gunk in the skies. Yay.

We drove down Friday night and stayed in a rather basic little hotel in Santa Rosa, mainly because neither of us was really in the mood to get up at the crack of dawn in order to drive two hours to get there at 8am sharp. Through the magic of Jeeves, our cute little GPS unit, we tracked down a nearby Starbucks on the way out of Santa Rosa, and despite having to take some detours to get onto the freeway due to construction, managed to get there earlier than we expected. So we hung out in the dining hall for a little bit, and drank some coffee, and watched people stumble in, bleary eyed and rumpled, to get their own coffee, before a young woman showed up and took us off to start our day. And from then until about 4pm, with a short break in the middle for lunch, we were busy working, hefting heavy things, feeding lots of critters, getting completely dusty, and having a blast.

We started the morning at the feed barn, where the two of us and a chatty, friendly volunteer filled dozens of buckets with various mixes of critter chow. First up was feeding the nyalas.

I should note that this is about the only antelope variety whose name I remember, probably because it was the first variety we met, and also by the end of the day we had seen so many they all started to run together. And also because shortly after that, I got to bottle-feed a baby nyala, who was completely adorable, and not at all patient about waiting for the keeper to mix up his formula, and far too wiggly for Richard to snap a picture. Ah well.

It was fun in the big barn because that’s where some of the giraffes hang out, and as we walked by, lugging giant buckets of critter kibble, giraffe heads came at us from over the partitions and loomed way, way down to try to sniff the tops of our heads. There was a little bit of hiking around, dumping food in some of the other enclosures, including one where we couldn’t actually go in, because there was a baby some-kind-of-antelope in the food hut so we had to wait til it left before we could enter. But eventually we all wedged ourselves into the feed truck – the chatty volunteer very nicely volunteering to sit in the bed atop the buckets of chow – and we set off to feed the rest of the gazillion varieties of antelope and other critters of ungulant nature around the park.

It was quite a lot of fun. For one thing, the keeper was quite willing to answer any and all questions about the various critters we were passing, and we probably got a far better tour than we would have received sitting in one of the safari caravans everyone else had to take. We learned which critters were very friendly (giraffes), and which should be watched carefully at all times – cape buffalo, which she referred to as ‘the mafia of Africa’, zebras, and ostriches. We got to feed a giraffe, although ‘got to’ is a relative term, since the giraffe in question would have been perfectly happy to help himself out of the food bins as we were refilling them, but he was also just as happy to lick the food out of Richard’s hand.

Considering how much I cannot stand slobber and slime, it’s good that Richard was the one getting licked and not me. He kept muttering things for the rest of the trip about giraffe drool, and how no wonder they have such long tongues from the amount of spit they produce. Shudder.

The park has two different types of giraffes, and two different types of zebras. Here we are, standing in front of a cluster of one type of zebra, who were willing to be social only because we had just finished dumping about 10 buckets of food in their various feeding troughs, and therefore could possibly be tolerated for a brief moment.

After we’d driven all over the park, over a lot of very bumpy roads, and managed to empty out all the feed buckets, it was time for lunch, so the keeper dropped us back off at the dining hall. Meals at Safari West are all done buffet style, and everyone sits around big, long tables and eats together. They’ve got a bunch of tables set up outside the dining hall, and that’s where most of the people were sitting. However, we took our food inside, mainly to escape the bugs, but also because we figured what with all the hoisting of heavy bags and buckets, and the accompanying coating of dust, the rest of the guests might appreciate not having to smell us.

After lunch, we met up with a second keeper, this time to focus primarily on the non-ungulants and birds. I can now say that I have gotten to feed a bunch of carnivorous African birds by flinging an entire bowl of raw ground meat, and recently thawed dead mice, one at a time, around a giant aviary. It was made even more amusing by the fact that there was this one bird that was rather incensed that we were all there, and spent the whole time irritably pecking at our ankles. Luckily he did not have a sharp beak, so it was more amusing than annoying, but the keeper pointed out that this particular bird does this every time. And the best part of it is that it always works, because eventually, the pesky humans leave (the fact that their leaving has nothing to do with his pecking is irrelevant) so there’s really no way to train him out of it.

We fed a bunch of different types of birds after the mouse-flinging was done. There was a large vulture, who was rather sulky because earlier in the day he’d been taken out for a demonstration and was still quite put out by the whole experience. He lived in an enclosure with three extremely large tortoises. There was a whole flock of flamingos. There were several large white parrots who I made sure to stay clear of, because in my experience, birds usually do not like me, and I have been bitten enough times by parrots to learn to keep my distance. There were also a whole lot of whatever these guys are, running around the park, and making a whole lot of racket.

We got to pet an extremely friendly porcupine named Prickers, who really, really likes getting her ears rubbed.

We also got to go feed some lovely swans, and a lake full of catfish, some of whom looked as if they could possibly eat a small child, they were that big.

But my very favorite part of the whole keeper-for-the-day thing was when we got to feed the lemurs, because lemurs are some of my very favorite critters, and they had a whole bunch of lemurs. All the ringtails live on an island, all together, and by the end of the afternoon they were finally all coming out to say hello. The fact that we came bearing food definitely helped.

We couldn’t go into the cages, of course, or even touch the lemurs, but we did get to offer two of the black and white lemurs slices of bananas.

That is Richard’s hand, feeding the lemur.

After we were all done, we checked into our cabin, and took very long, much needed showers and also a quick nap because it was a very long day. Here is our cabin.

And here is the interior.

Dinner was another family-style meal, with lots of wonderful food. We ended up sitting next to the couple who had the tent next to ours, and had a nice chat with them.

After dinner, we did a little more wandering around, to go see the ringtail lemurs again, and check out this little pair of black-necked swans and their babies. Sorry for blurry picture – didn’t want to use flash and scare them.

There are three babies in that picture. Can you find them all? (hint – check dad’s back).

Spending the night at the park was definitely an experience, because there was all kinds of critter noise, all night. Our tent had a fabulous view and we left the windows opened (luckily there were lots of blankets because it gets *cold* there at night) so I lay in bed and tried to identify the various sounds. Lemurs were easy to recognize because we’ve heard them often enough at the San Francisco zoo, but some of the others were hard to match up to either bird or mammal. I didn’t get a lot of sleep, obviously, but it was warm and the bed was amazingly comfortable, and so I didn’t mind.

There was a long drive home this morning, where we were greeted by six cats who were quite anxious to let us know how much they disapproved of having been left alone for Two! Whole! Nights! But we made up for it by giving them our dusty shoes to sniff and flop on, so they have decided to forgive us. So now we are home, where the only critter sounds are the occasional howl from Sebastian, or the chattering of the squirrels outside, and while tomorrow is officially our anniversary, I think we picked a spectacular way to celebrate being together for seven years.