Tuesday morning I was the first one into the office. I headed into the kitchen to put my lunch stuff in the fridge, and decided I would be nice and start the coffee for everyone else. Checked to make sure the pot had been set up the night before, which required opening the little door to make sure there was a filter full of coffee. Then I pressed ‘On’ and went back to my desk and did not think a thing about it until about half an hour later, when I remembered ‘oh yeah, coffee’. By this time, two more coworkers had arrived, and as one, we all headed toward the kitchen.

My first thought was ‘there’s a lot of water on the floor’, followed by ‘wow, we have some kind of nasty leak’ and then, only then did I actually look toward the coffee pot and discover that apparently when I checked to make sure there was a filter full of coffee, I did not get the little door closed properly, and it had swung open, resulting in an entire coffee pot full of extremely hot water to do its best to cover the entire kitchen. In case you were wondering, one coffee pot full of water can cover a very large area.

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This morning, as I was approaching the door to my office, I twisted my foot, just a little bit. Just a tiny little stumble (because no one will ever accuse me of having any grace whatsoever); nothing major. Except that by the time I got inside I could barely put any weight on it, and I had to beg my coworker to come pull my chair over so I could sit down and wheel myself the rest of the way to my desk.

Two ibuprofin later, I can focus on something other than my throbbing foot. Can’t put my full weight on it yet, which makes walking around kind of fun (I can stand on my toes on that foot, so it’s an interesting sort of hobble), and I have to be careful how I bend it, because normal walking flexes it in just the right angle to start the pain again. But I don’t think I did anything too serious. I hope.

I am enjoying what has been, so far, a very three day weekend. Got to sleep in a whole extra half hour on Friday morning (since I had it off from work) before Sebastian’s hollering finally dragged me out of bed. Took advantage of the fact that I did not have to actually go anywhere any time soon to cook breakfast – a scramble of diced sweet potato, eggs, and some salsa (next time, remember to add onions and maybe some green pepper). Then I spent a lovely hour doing nothing more strenuous than lounging on the bed and knitting, before the house call vet came over to ‘torture’ the cats (otherwise known as giving them their yearly check-up).

Since we’ll be moving, all the cats got rabies shots this year. They’re all indoor only, so we haven’t bothered with rabies shots the entire time we’ve been in the current house, but we figured it was a good idea to get them vaccinated now, just in case one of them gets out, or something happens. Sebastian was the first, mainly because he was standing right there, looking puzzled, so he was easy to grab. He’s lost about half a pound, which isn’t too bad considering he’s always been on the dense side, but luckily that half pound didn’t go anywhere, since Rosie hung onto it for him. Tangerine’s got earmites again – sigh – since she seems peculiarly prone to them. Zucchini, of course, was his usual terrified self, and peed all over the kitchen floor during the scant two minutes it took for me to hold him down and for the vet to peer at his teeth and stab him in the hind leg with a tiny needle. And Checkers – oh my, what a year can do. Last year we had to burrito-wrap her in a towel to keep her from shredding either me or the vet with flailing claws and teeth. This year, she was scared, but there was no screaming, no flailing, no biting. She just burrowed into my elbow and let the vet do her thing, and best of all, she’s gained a full pound – weight she very badly needed to gain.

Yesterday we did a whirlwind errand run in the morning, loading up the car with all the recyclables and taking them to the recycling center, then swinging through Starbucks for some coffee and scones, followed immediately by a trip to Vacaville to pick up cat litter and a bird feeder for my dad for Father’s Day. We did a quick run through CostCo, then the grocery store, so now the kitchen is fully restocked for another week of healthy meals, and then it was home to do nothing remotely productive beyond knitting and playing Civ 4, and watch the latest episode of Dr. Who.

This morning, since it seems only fitting that things continue along in the same vein, three day weekend or no, included no sleeping in for me. But instead of hiding under the covers and trying to make the cats go away through sheer force of will, I instead got up and decided to make the best of it, which primarily meant tossing some chicken into some spicy yogurt-based marinade for tonight’s dinner, then making a new batch of yogurt (since with the marinade, we were nearly out – have I mentioned lately how very cool this yogurt maker is?). We’ll meet my parents and my older sister and her family for lunch shortly, then it’s off to Vacaville for knitting group (for me) and writing at Borders (for Richard) and that, aside from doing laundry and cooking dinner and doing a bunch of prep work for meals for the coming week, will be it for the day.

That was some of the most fun I’ve had with online journaling in years. Not only was it fun writing up my own pieces; it was fun following along with everyone else’s. And of course, there was yet more proof that I have the most awesome husband ever. Seriously. Even when sinking into zombiehood, his last thoughts were of me and the cats.

But anyway. Back to the real world. The fun of writing yesterday was finding ways to incorporate real life stuff into the what-if of a zombie uprising. That car I saw, pulled over with all the police? Real. The story I told about the guy floating down the river, and the other guy who fell in and drowned? Real. The rest of it…well, I’ll leave it to you readers to pick out what else might have been fantasy versus fact. In the meantime, now that we are free from the threat of marauding zombies, I’m nailing down vacation time for the first week of July, because that’s when we’ll be moving. There is so much to do to get ready for it, and so much to do once we get the key, before we can bring in the furniture, and so much to do once we’re finally in, and if I let it, it sometimes gets a little overwhelming, but we’re too excited to care. And woe be unto any zombies who might get in our way.

Updated to add a link to this because it is quite possibly one of the best entries from yesterday’s little trip down zombie lane.

Getting to work today was all kinds of not fun. Seems like everyone decided today was the day to get into some kind of fender bender, and of course these had to happen right before the causeway in Davis, which means traffic was backed up for miles. I called Richard (dutifully using my hands-free device, which never fits well enough in my ear that I maintain any sort of confidence it will not go leaping out of its own volition one of these days. But I digress) to see if he could dig up any traffic incident report, just so I would know how much longer I was going to have to be inching along at the oh-so-swift speed of five miles per hour, but he couldn’t find anything. It wasn’t until I got to work today that I found out what had happened. Two or three-car pile up shortly before the causeway, apparently, timed just right so that by the time I would have passed the accident, it was already gone. As it was, it took me nearly an hour to make a trip that usually takes only half that long to drive. Yet another reason I am looking forward to moving to Sacramento – at least when we are there, I’ll have more than one route to get to work. Right now, I’ve got my choice of two highways, both of which have a tendency to have inexplicable slow-downs because they include hills and apparently to the drivers in Solano County, hills are so unnerving that everyone had to hit their brakes and, just for kicks and giggles, plow into each other from time to time because sometimes slowing down for a slight incline isn’t fun enough.

I suppose if it hadn’t been for the traffic, I wouldn’t have seen that one car though. As I was inching my way along the freeway, singing along to my Abba CD (because I defy anyone to listen to Abba and *not* sing along), a highway patrol car came screaming by on the shoulder. I saw it later, stopped by yet another accident – this one on the opposite side of the freeway, though – but as it was passing, it drew my eyes toward the road that runs slightly parallel beside the freeway. There’s this one building there that cannot ever seem to be successful, no matter who goes in there. It’s been a succession of diners – it’s even been a Dennys twice since I’ve lived around here – but the last diner gave up a month or three ago and now it’s just this boarded up building with a big empty parking lot in front, waiting for the next enthusiastically delusional young diner owner to fall in love with it and give it a go. Anyway. Right in front of this was a white car, pulled off to the side of the road, surrounded by more police cars than I’ve ever seen in one location for a simple traffic stop. The thing that struck me, however, was that for all the cars, there wasn’t a soul to be seen. Just a lot of patrol cars and a lot of flashing lights and the little white car sitting there by the side of the road with no one inside.

I had a truly wonderful time the rest of Thursday, because the reason I took the day off in the first place was that the Yarn Harlot‘s only California stop was in Petaluma, at Copperfield Books, and I didn’t want to miss it. It helps that I have all this vacation time I never get around to taking. So after lunch I picked up my knitting mom and she and I drove off to Petaluma. I find great amusement in the fact that of the four book signings I have now attended in the past year, three of them (the Yarn Harlot, Terry Pratchett, and Christopher Moore) have been at Copperfields in Petaluma.

There was talk of going to a Faire this weekend, but by the time we both dragged ourselves out of bed Saturday morning, it was far too late to be heading off to Tahoe, so instead Richard went off to his writer’s group and I drove all over Vacaville shopping for a birthday and Father’s Day present for my dad. The birthday present was easy to find since I knew exactly where to look, but the Father’s Day present is apparently far less available than I would have guessed, so I am still searching. Otherwise I spent Saturday lounging about, reading ineffectual mysteries where the point of view tends to jump between far too many characters, and whose common thread (a tenuous one at best) is that they’re all centered around a woman who runs a needlework store, but they are quick to read and require not thought whatsoever and sometimes that is the sort of reading I prefer. Sunday was more of the same, but included baking a low-sodium chocolate cake for my dad for his birthday party, meeting a bunch of knitters for lunch, and starting an experimental batch of yogurt that involved soy milk instead of regular milk and would have probably had a far greater chance of success if I had remembered to turn the yogurt maker *on* once I plugged it in last night. Ah well. Oh, and it also included watching the latest episode of Dr. Who and wow but this season is amazing and intense and proving just how outstanding an actor David Tennant really is. I may never look at big stone statues the same way again (and also it made me love gargoyles just that little big more.

This morning we met our realtor over at the house in Sacramento and took copious measurements of the entire lower floor so we can then calculate out total square footage of alternative floor covering that is needed to replace the rather shaggy carpet that is currently in place. We also walked around the house for a little bit and added a few more things to the rapidly expanding list of ‘we should’ and ‘we could’ for this new house, because purchasing a house is basically buying into a design/renovation project of epic proportions that will never end. I was going to take some pictures of the unfortunate kitchen and the turqouise bedroom, but I left my camera at home, so you will all just have to keep on using your imagination on those rooms, likely until we move in.

My dad turned 60 today, which seems somehow very difficult to believe, because I am not sure I am ready for that (I suspect neither is he). All family members living within driving distance gathered at my parents’ house this evening for dinner and presents and experimental low-sodium chocolate cake (which was…interesting. Not bad. But…interesting), and my little sister and my niece called in from Seattle so we all sang him Happy Birthday together over the phone lines as one big connected family and it was cute and fun.

One of the things I got for my birthday was a yogurt maker, because it sounded fun, and also because it sounded easy, and those are the two main qualifications that I look for in a kitchen appliance. We’ve already made one batch – plain with no flavoring at all, and it’s just as easy and fun as I expected. This morning I set up batch number two, this time with a little vanilla extract stirred in to provide at least some form of taste (plain yogurt is really quite…plain), and now I am pondering how to duplicate my very favorite yogurt flavor – orange and cream – for batch number three or four or whenever I get around to it. The possibilities, they are endless.

I have actually been extremely productive today, especially considering it’s just barely past lunchtime as I write this. I took the day off, but there is really no point in me ever attempting to sleep in again as long as Sebastian’s voice maintains it’s charmingly air horn-like quality, and his level of persistence remains firm. So I got up at the usual time, which meant by the time Richard had headed off to work I had already started a batch of rice, started the batch of yogurt, and whipped up broccoli and basil frittata for breakfast. And even with giving myself an hour here and there to just camp out on the sofa and knit, I’ve also managed to run two loads of laundry, two loads of dishes, vacuum the upstairs (where the where the worst of the dust bunnies always seem to lurk), and make lunch. And not once this entire morning have I played any Civ IV at all.

My birthday was Wednesday. So if my math is correct (because the older I get the less I care, so whenever anyone asks, I always have to pause to do the subtraction in my head) that makes me 38. Two more years til I hit 40, which quite frankly does not bother me as much as I suppose it should. Perhaps that is because I have always managed to avoid having any sort of freak out about my own age by having a little mini one about the age of my older sister. She is just a little over one year older than me, which means she always hits the milestone years first, and that gives me time to do the ‘holy crap, how did she get to be *that* many years, and that means I’m next’ a year early so by the time my birthday rolls around, I am so over it, and ready to just move on with life.

But anyway. I had my birthday and as my birthday usually goes, considering its close proximity to a holiday, it tends to stretch out over a few days. Richard gave me presents on Tuesday night and on Wednesday morning (including some wonderful knitting books I’d been wanting, and my very own Mr. Bento, and of course the latest version of Civilization, which I have been playing every single night since. Knitting? What knitting?) . Since the family gathering part of the birthday wasn’t going to happen til this weekend, he cooked salmon on the grill – or tried to, because we have now discovered that the stuff that looks like charcoal but isn’t (it’s made of wood or something) might burn, but it produces not nearly enough heat. So we gave up on the salmon and tossed it onto the broiler and it turned out just fine.

I have been having fun with my Mr. Bento, because it makes planning out a lunch a different sort of challenge, centered around trying to find enough different things to put in all the little boxes. I haven’t tried bringing hot food yet, but if I fill the exterior container with ice in the morning and stick it in the fridge, it can then sit on my desk all day and everything inside remains nicely cold until I’m ready to eat it. Also I am inexplicably charmed by the fact that it comes with its very own stainless steel spork, but we all know that I am easily amused, so I am sure this comes as no surprise to anyone.

Presents have arrived in the mail – a very cool cellphone holder shaped like a dragon; a book of celtic crossstitch designs that I intend to transcribe to stranded colorwork for knitting. And this evening we had the full family gathering, all of us meeting at the usual midpoint in Fairfield for dinner and chatter and presents.

So it’s been a rather nice week, as far as birthdays go. I even managed to squeeze in some knitting and a shopping trip with my mom in between work and endless games of Civ 4.

As far as three-day weekends go, this Memorial Day weekend was one of the nicest I’ve had in a very long time. We filled it with a shopping trip to get some new clothes for both Richard and I, a party involving the frying of several large turkeys with some friends, and much wandering about in hardware stores, looking at kitchen cabinets and countertops, and comparing the merits of various types of flooring, and in general doing our best to overwhelm ourselves with all the choices we’re going to be facing when we move. The shopping was not nearly as painful as it might have been, due primarily to the fact that I have the very best husband, who not only does not mind going clothes shopping with me; he is actually very good at picking stuff out for me to try on. This is extremely useful because I am *not* very good at picking stuff out for me to try on, so it’s nice at least one of us can figure it out. The turkey fry party was on a perfectly lovely day, and we got to see our friends’ newly landscaped backyard (lovely), but I did let them know how disappointed I was that the frying of the turkeys resulted in nothing more than cooked food. All those stories one hears about turkey fryers that involve great columns of flame shooing into the air, or exploding propane tanks really had me hoping for at least a little bit of excitement (okay, not really, but it was fun to tease them anyway).

Memorial Day itself was a quiet day, mainly because I knew I was going to be up til far too late last night (or actually, far too early this morning) , due to the fact that the women’s ensemble was scheduled for a recording session. So I tried to take a nap but wasn’t very successful and instead just decided to hope for the best. I got back home around 2 in the morning, and by that point my brain was just too wired to let me sleep much at all.

Needless to say, today my coworker (who is also part of the group) and I were a little spacey from exhaustion. Naturally this meant that we had people come in from an office across the country, and they arrived just in time to have a nice long meeting upstairs in the conference room where it’s warm and there are comfortable chairs and how I managed to *not* doze off I will never know.

A few weeks ago we bought a new cat tree for Checkers. Or rather, we bought a new cat tree to replace the one that used to be in the computer room, because the old one was looking pretty shredded and smelled pretty rank, and since my dad and I built it back when my parents lived in Roseville, that means it was getting to the point where it was just about old enough to ask for the keys to the car, so we decided it needed to go away. And while technically the new tree is not just for Checkers (because we are not so far gone that we are about to purchase expensive pieces of cat furniture for each individual little feline prima dona who lives with us), since she refuses to set one dainty toe outside the computer room except on the rare occasion that a sparkle ball HAS to be chased into the hall (followed shortly thereafter by the cat equivalent of “holy crap how the hell did I get out *here*?”), she just ends up the primary user.

We found a nifty new style that came in a box and had all kinds of interlocking parts which also happened to be on clearance, and we put it all together and then stuck it in the corner of the computer room right next to my desk, and then ‘convinced’ Checkers to sit on it by basically dragging her, mad and hollering, out of the corner shelf and plopping her on the shelf. Where she stayed only for the .23 seconds it took  her to turn and dash back to her shelf and commence with a marathon session of glaring and sulking.  It took her a day or two to get over being horribly offended by the change in furniture, but eventually she came around and decided that the new tree is actually pretty cool, and even better, after a week or so she decided that the new tree was so cool that she no longer has to live in the corner shelf unit.

I suppose only someone else who has lived with an extremely opinionated, highly nervous, overly prone to panic and hollering type of cat would understand how big a deal this all is, but trust me, this new cat tree has really been a big step forward for this little cat. She is happier. She’s gained a little weight (she was on the too-skinny side for a while there). She’s doing a lot more playing (those sparkle balls are surprisingly frisky). And the plus side of all this feeling happier and more confident is that she’s starting to stand up to the other cats a little more. When there is hissing between her and Rosie, now, nine times out of ten Checkers is the one that starts it and Rosie is the one that walks away looking nervous.

However, I am hedging my bets here. We bought this cat tree knowing full well that she will be the primary user in this house, in this computer room, but also with the pretty strong suspicion that when we move, it’s not suddenly going to become a multi-user sort of item like every other piece of furniture in the house. So it’s better that she gets used to it here, so it’s old and familiar and a safe place to hide in the new house, in the new computer room, where if she really insists on maintaining her self-imposed one-room territory, she can.

When our realtor said he was determined to sell our house before the end of the month, we smiled and nodded, but privately, Richard and I sort of assumed it was going to take a while. After all, the housing bubble definitely burst, and it is very much a buyer’s market (good for us on the ‘buying a house in Sacramento’ side of things; not so good for us on the ‘selling our current house’ side of things). We specifically set up all the financing so that we would be covered in the event our house might take a little bit longer to sell.

But it looks like our realtor might have managed to pull it off anyway. Right now we’re sitting on a confirmed offer; an offer that puts us in the range we wanted to get for the house. The only downside is that this particular offer is contingent on them selling their own house, which means that while we’re one step further down the road, we’re not quite there yet.

So just in case they’re not able to get their house sold in the time we’ve given them, the house is still being shown and it is still technically for sale, and we are still soliciting offers. Except that now these would be back-up offers, just in case the first offer falls through. And what all of that means is that we are still having to keep on top of the dust bunnies and the smudges on the bathroom mirror and the scrubbing and the clearing and the keeping the current house in a state of ‘clean’ that makes it feel strange and empty and not remotely like home. And of course the lovely irony in all of this is that we have, so far, had more interest in the home (three showings so far in the last four days alone), now that there is the possibility it might be already off the market, than we did when things were free and clear.

I am trying very hard not to stress about all this. I am trying to instead think positively; to send lots of house-selling vibes to our potential buyers, and to distract myself by looking up all things kitchen, in preparation for the rather massive remodeling project we intend to kick off about ten seconds after the house in Sacramento is officially ours. And this means that I have to go through the process of wondering why the heck kitchen designers the world over are so obsessed with speckles when I so very much do not like speckles, and debating the merits of every possible type of countertop available, and pouring through Consumer Reports to find the best appliance options and crossing my fingers that the wall we are hoping to knock out is not, in fact, a structural one, and looking forward to the day when all this is over.