I’ve always thought the enemies-to-lovers romance was a kind of bias-to-understanding story, close-mindedness to open, if you will. Which brings me to my bedroom.
A couple of months ago, I adopted a stray cat with only three paws but a lot of attitude (pretty sure she’s a Maine Coon). She was scrawny and wary and she had no idea what a litter box was for, but she needed a home and I had one for her, if I could just convince her to stay (and that the litter box wasn’t her bed).
After trapping her inside (she wasn’t amused) I won her over with expensive cat food and fresh water and a heated cat bed and she had the back bedroom all to herself so life was good. Then Krissie came to visit and the dogs and I had to get out of her bedroom and back into the summer bedroom with Emily. There were a few tense moments, but that’s all behind us now, probably because the dogs are very mellow (well, Mona is mellow) and Emily after months of good eating is now bigger than Mona and roughly the size of Veronica. And now when I sit in bed and look out at the tree tops of my back yard I have three roughly fifteen-pound pets snoring in harmony.
That makes me happy.
What made you happy this week?
Other Emily news for those who have been asking:
Emily was a stray for at least two years (according to my neighbor) so she was never going to be an inside cat completely. She wasn’t crazy about the dog door (neither are the dogs, too much work) but something clawed a huge hole in back door so she can get in and out at will. The thing that’s important is that she always comes back, and most of the time she doesn’t bother to leave. Emily knows a good thing when she has one.
They’d met before this and had pretty much decided on staying five cautious feet away from each other, Emily glaring, Veronica hot to lunge but knowing she’s not allowed, and Mona perplexed, but it’s been a week now and they’ve settled in. They’re not exactly buddies, but I’m thinking that they might come to like each other, curl up together, accept that even though cats and dogs living together appalled Bill Murray, it can be done if everybody is just open-minded and remembers that the woman telling them “NO” when they begin to narrow their eyes is their source of food, this will all turn out just fine.
Now my only problem is the raccoon that keeps coming in to eat kids’ food. Yes, I’m sure it’s a raccoon, I caught the little trash panda in my kitchen, trying to open my bread box. (The day before he’d knocked it to the ground and lunched on my sour dough.). I’m pretty sure that’s where the hole in my back door came from. The back of the house is going to have some interesting moments when Rocky meets the dogs, so it may all work out just fine.
How much is this like an enemies-to-lovers romance? Well, they’re sleeping together now, so I’m pretty sure we’ll get an HEA. (Yes, that’s Emily’s paw on Mona’s neck. Gently.)
Andie’s banana bread! It barely lasted the day. Yum!
Rosie the Puppy’s first trip to the beach
https://www.instagram.com/p/CQne1rRNmru/?utm_medium=share_sheet
Tim Minchin live on Friday night! Brilliant!
A symphony performance of Four Seasons (contemporary arrangement) accompanying a recital by Jolt Dance – a dance group for children and adults with disabilities of all sorts. I cried.
All good things, I must remember them amidst having not run this weekend (at least I have a body able to run), my partner maybe being allergic to the puppy (god I hope not, it is cold season so let’s hope he’s just sick), and my work to-do list feeling like a weight on my chest that makes it hard to breathe (just keep swimming and yay for being paid). Everything is going to be fine, I am very lucky, nothing but good times ahead.
I’m allergic to dogs and cats. Claritin helps.
Purina is advertising a food that reduces allergens in pet hair by 40%. I don’t remember if it is for cats or dogs. My sister read about this breakthrough years ago, but this is the first time I’ve seen an ad for it being available commercially.
Yes, but will they eat it?
Well, if you’re feeding more than one, it’s likely to be a case of “What’s SHE eating that I haven’t got?” Two cats, I discovered years ago, rarely seem to have dietary quirks.
Oh no! Yes, he’s trying his hayfever meds so we’ll see.
Happiness is partner and puppy, living together.
So do allergy shots. (And they really do not hurt). 🙂
Yeah, I’ve had cat and dog in my shots for almost forty years and I’ve been working with animals for twenty-eight years now.
We dropped by our local IKEA yesterday, and for the first time experienced the new parking lot solar system. On a very hot day in June, it was wonderful to emerge from the store to find our car calm and cool under the shade, plus — electricity!
https://www.hyattsvillewire.com/2021/04/13/ikea-solar-carports/
Such a clever idea. It should be adopted worldwide.
I hope that catches on. Walmart, Target, the impact could be huge.
At airports.
The school parking lots here in Clovis are gradually being covered with solar panels. They’ve been at it for a couple of years, and I’m not sure exactly how long it will take until all of them are covered. God knows that if Central California has anything, it’s lots of sunshine. Maybe that will help with the air conditioning bills.
On the subject of what makes me happy, I just finished reading two books. It took me three weeks, but these are the first books I have been able to read at all since the pandemic started. (For the record, one was a 400 page nonfiction book about Agatha Christie and Hercule Poirot, and the other was FIVE LITTLE PIGS, vintage Christie that somehow I had gone my whole life without reading, although I had seen a dramatization. Actually it’s one of her better books, I think.) I have been reading constantly since I was about five years old, often multiple books per day, and to go a year and a half without being able to concentrate on anything longer than a news article is beyond frustrating. It’s still an effort, but maybe I can begin working my way through the heap of new books piled on my coffee table that I have continued to purchase during this time. Amazon still loves me.
Wow. That is so cool.
And it was several years ago that they installed solar panels all across the roof, that go a long way to cover the electricity costs to power the whole store.
We have those where I work – Michigan State University.
I’m more than half way through my coop which makes me sad – I love working on the farm- but lots going on. I harvested snapdragons and sunflowers every day, planted 300 gladiolu bulbs, dug out Ranunculus corns and weeded. Lots of weeding – hard work but very satisfying. My boss’s mother is ill and staying with her. I usually have a quick chat with her at some point in the day – she reminds me of my mother.
Marathon gardening day yesterday – planted my dahlia tubers, tied up raspberry bushes and planted/cleaned up the remaining annuals I bought earlier but didn’t plant. Some slug damage but saved most of them. Today I’m doing my first volunteer shift in the historical garden near me.
DH got his 2nd vaccine this week and DS got his first. Soon we’ll all be able to see more friends/family.
2 days quilting with 20 friends! The local quilt shop was finally able to do a retreat, and we’ve all stitched away, making beautiful things.
The new kittens continue to be delightful. We had 4 people over for a movie last night, and each person was charmed by having a kitten come sit on or next to them at least once. It’s a bonus to have such friendly ones. DH has always been good for playing, but not a huge cuddler…. Teeger thinks differently, and frequently hops on his lap and settles down for a long sleep/purring session. They are not yet convinced that the basement kitty litter is exactly the same as (supposedly temporary) one upstairs, but other than that they are perfect and incredibly entertaining.
Resting up after a visit from my nephew and his family, including kids 11, 8, and 5. We haven’t seen them in 2 years or so, since they’ve been in Germany and of course we couldn’t visit at our normal interval. So much fun, such great kids, so much energy!
So along with normal commitments, there were children running around the large yard yelling and playing and laughing (most of the time.) They were good kids, and their parents have a marriage that’s pleasant to be around. Today we’re happy zombies.
So glad Emily came in from the cold. Writers and cats: both enjoy holding still for a long time.
This week is my birthday week. DH apparently hadn’t realized it is one of those that ends in zero. I’m just as glad not to have a party. I surely don’t feel that particular age – in my mind I’m 35, so I’ll continue to act my age. 🙂 I ran a long list of errands yesterday that included visiting places that were offering a birthday present. I made out like a bandit at the quilt store! I also included a stop by a friend’s new place to visit both her and her furry family, including a rambunctious new kitten. My older friend Paws, the polydactyl kitty was very happy to see me, while the little black Manx mix kitty sniffed my toes. I’m sure I smelled like three kitties he doesn’t know!
This past week was a long tough slog on the work front. This coming week will have it’s own challenges, but hopefully not as many as last. After my errands on Saturday, I plopped down on the couch and watched the start of the Tour de France. I justified the five hours of TV time by starting a new crochet blanket. There are two new great-babies on the way, so I need to get started. That’s happy making too.
This week and last, I was part of a pick up choir at church for a service. It was lovely to be able to sing with a group again. I always get a joy out of being part of a choir singing harmony.
Happy Birthday Week! 🙂
Happy birthday!
I’m happy for cats and dogs living together — a Twitter account I follow features a kitten (now cat) adopted into a family with a German Shepherd Dog, and the two of them are madly in love with each other, and it’s just so damn cute. As the person who gave them the kitten said, he thought he was giving the family’s daughter a kitten, but it turned out it was the dog who really wanted it.
I’m also happy for Martha Wells, whose Network Effect won the Locus Award last night for best novel, and Ursula Vernon whose Guide to Defensive Baking won the Locus for YA. Basically a repeat of the Hugos.
And I’m happy for me for the reminder today of why I do all the generally quite frustrating (this week was a doozy of running into scientist-built walls to block out patient voices) patient advocacy work, when someone reached out to me for information about my rare disorder to help get through a related health crisis.
Yay for Emily! And yay for you, giving her a home and a safe place to live, even if it does have dogs in it. And, apparently, a raccoon.
You should probably be cautious about the raccoon. They do occasionally have rabies, although they are more likely to just move in and steal all your food. (A friend had a mama raccoon give birth inside her walls…the whole family lived there until the little ones were old enough for mama to move them. It was apparently noisy and smelly, but my friend loves raccoons so she didn’t care.) I’d suggest blocking up that hole, even if Emily does like to use it to go out.
I’ve been struggling to find my happy, because thyroid issues are still causing extreme fatigue, depression, and brain fog. (I’d be happy if the damned endocrinologist’s office would actually call and give me an appointment. THAT would make me happy.) But I’ve been making some dents in cleaning/organizing projects around the house that have literally been on my list for years. It is slow going, but I do love a neat space.
My biggest happy is planning a brief (Friday morning to Sunday morning) camping vacation with my coven/extended family toward the end of July. With husbands (two) and children (two, my goddess children, who are 13 and 14 and among my favorite people in the universe) and my witchy gang, there will be eight of us. The campground isn’t very far away, but it is on a river, which is nice. One couple is bringing their RV, the family is camping in a tent, and I’m renting an on-site RV for me and my bestie because I am too old and creaky to sleep on the ground. We’ll hang out together, grill a lot of yummy food, sit around the fire pit in the evening and drink wine or beer, and generally just enjoy being together. We were supposed to go on a longer trip to Lake Ontario last year, but obviously that didn’t happy, and after barely being able to see each other for a long time, I’m incredibly happy that we’re all vaccinated (even the kids) and able to hang out together.
That sounds a brilliant plan, Deb!
I hope you have a great time on your camping and that those endocrinologists get their butts in gear.
I second the caution on the raccoons. Not only can they have rabies, but they also carry Baylisascarias which is a roundworm that can infect humans and pets and for which there is no totally effective treatment. Maybe Emily needs an enclosed catio for outdoor viewing.
Correction – Baylisascaris.
Had a great time with my two closest friends from university this week. And my strawberries are making everyone very happy.
You have strawberries? Wow, so jealous – ours are only at flowering/tiny green fruit stage. Very late this year, so hope we actually get some!!
I have a superabundance – come and pick some! (Seriously: I’ve already made two batches of jam, and frozen enough for a third.)
Just got back from an 8 day road trip where we saw my brother in law and his permanent fiancée (they asked my daughter to be a bridesmaid when she was 14; she turned 30 last month), my brother, his wife, and their four boys, our son for three days, my mom, my sister and her boyfriend (of four years but the first time we met him) and brother in law again.
Aside from my son we hadn’t seen any of them since before the pandemic
Seeing most of them made me happy and it was nice that the visit to my mom was relatively low stress.
Congrats on the family blending together!
I spent years with dogs and cats blending in my family and it’s awesome. Especially when they develop games they play together. So fun to watch. It takes time to build trust no matter who’s coming together and sharing space, but once they bond it’s so lovely to witness.
Also, gotta say Jinx, think that Ikea carport thing is brilliant. Yay them! Thanks fo sharing:)
I get tomorrow off for Juneteenth! Only ten days later, hahah. And I got out of rehearsal for the day, so I can go to karaoke the entire night tomorrow. Huzzah.
Yesterday I got to hang out with a new karaoke friend I ran into at the Farmers Market. I’ve been needing the socialness, so that was great. I also took a day off this week to go hang out with retiree friends, so technically I’ll be only working four day weeks for 3 days in a row.
We put on the suffragist play yesterday. There were a fair number of technical difficulties (and coming up with amusing ways to point out that someone was on mute that were in-world appropriate), but overall people seemed to enjoy it and I’m feeling good with how it went performance-wise. That said, we may record the thing over again for future use.
I also…heard from the crush yesterday. He’s in a Zoom show tonight. It wasn’t a personal email (I’m guessing I got bcc’d on the invite), but that’s still surprising to hear from him. Or anyone in my old theater group, anyway since they have all disappeared, more or less. I will watch the show, but with the camera off and just “Jennifer” as the name so he won’t know for sure it’s me. I’m going to be a good girl and not talk to him about it–I’ve gone three months without speaking to him and I’m going to keep up the streak–even though I want to. I miss him. But what is the point in trying with him, so I won’t. What is the point in trying with anyone in this group any more.
Really, I just need to focus on the people who actively want to hang out with me (see above) rather than missing what I thought was (going to be) my theater family. There are people who DO want to hang out with me these days.
But that said…I’m a little happy I did hear from him. I never thought I would at all again, to be honest.
Stay strong Jennifer. Hang out with people who want to be with you.
I’m proud of how well you are handling this. You deserve people who will contact you directly, not just on group emails.
I may deserve better, but somehow I can’t seem to find better….relationshipwise anyway.
Hang in there. If you make space, it will be filled. xxx
Raccoons can be very nasty critters, as witnessed last year. Beware. Yikes, it got into your kitchen. Might bring friends and relatives for a raccoon party.
Having a heat wave on the west coast. Like the sun and warmth but this is too hot. Researching toile fabric and porcelain dishes is making me happy in the shade.
The raccoon has apparently given up. Fingers crossed. At least nothing’s eating my sourdough but me.
Two of the last batch of not-really-feral kittens also liked to lie down in kitty litter.
No idea what that’s about.
Happy for a long walk/talk with a friend, and being able to invoice on a project.
Plus perfectly normal blood work and two poems taking 1st place in Ohio Poetry Day competitions, which will be published in the fall.
Congratulations on the two 1st places — and that the poems will soon be published!
I always thought it might be a cool place to lie in hot weather.
A beaver moved in behind us and we are discussing the pros and conss of leaving him be. I haven’t gotten a glimpse of it yet but all the signs are there. I will check in withe the mammal guy at work and get his opinion on Monday.
I spent a lovely day driving around Charleston with my niece. It has great architecture. We sat in one of the parks for about 30 minutes and watched 8 different wedding parties move through for pictures. The photographers all used the same spots so it was lovely roulette of well dressed, happy people.
My husband is pet sitting for a friend who has 3 dogs and 4 cats. He says he has a had a great time connecting with old friends he hasn’t seen in a while. The hard part is the dogs think they should be at the dog park by 8 AM and my husband hasn’t voluntarily seen 8 AM since he retired.
When I was cat sitting last week, I had to bring a travel alarm because the cats are still on the same feeding schedule they had before their people retired. Most days I would get up, feed the cats and go back to bed.
Seattle heat wave has my son and I camping in our living room with the atomic A/C, which makes me happy, for some reason! Plus, I’ve been binging a series called Ghosts on BBC. Young couple inherits a mansion full of ghosts, which she can see but he can’t. Generally I don’t understand British humor, but this I get just fine, been giggling away.
Sounds something like the old TV show, TOPPER.
Buying my ticket to France this week made me very happy. The fact that I had to add so much to the credit I had from my unused ticket did not please me, but at least I got it nailed down before the prices rose even higher. I’ve never seen the house where Mike and Vickie live and I look forward to reacquainting myself with the Dordogne . I’d love to be a fly on the wall there next month because both of his kids and their families will be there at the same time. Since one set lives in Geneva and the other in Bangkok, this is no small undertaking. I hear that the Bangkok family has been playing skype versions of Grandpa playing the trumpet in preparation. Their one year old loves it.
I returned home from cat-sitting in the suburbs and discovered that I had stopped using my c-pap machine before I left because it was making a loud noise that made sleep impossible. Last night I took it apart for the weekly wash and finally found, I think, the broken part that is causing the noise. Tomorrow I will call the supplier and try to order a replacement part. When it was time to order a new machine, getting the insurance companies on board took forever. I sincerely hope that Medicare and my supplier are in better sync this time. They should be, because this is a part they automatically replace every 6 to 12 months, but I’ve never had to replace anything early before.
Philip’s CPAP machines have a big recall. I know our sleep center’s prompt was “go to the Phillip’s site”. Lot’s of doom followed by hurry up and wait.
Yes. Almost all Philips machines being recalled. I bought a travel CPAP from another company’s few years ago when I left my main one on a plane (subsequently recovered it) so I switched to that .
Be aware the website will tell you your machine is fine and then later that it isn’t …
My lazy gardening skills got a shot in the arm this week by a trip to the local garden shop. I went in for one thing but like a grocery store came out with seven different varieties. Some of which were half price. I just checked the geranium plant and it has 8 buds a leaping. There all in buckets and I’ve put them in the small rock garden outside the kitchen window to give the area some color. Leaving them in buckets gives me the opportunity to move them around. Another thing to mention is my husband cut the rooted ends of a scallion and planted the nubs in the soil of the rosemary plant and now we have foot long pieces of scallion growing. Who knew! I really want to get a tomato plant in a bucket and plunk it by the fence now that we no longer have a tree. May as well use the blast of sun for something. I’m not sure if rabbits or other critters will start feeding on it though. Learning to live without the shade tree in summer is a hard lesson. Have to keep the door closed in the morning until shade moves around after noon time.
We have a head of garlic sprouting on the kitchen counter and I’m tempted to scratch it into the dirt in the front yard somewhere to see if it will prosper. My yard is so random already that a stray garlic plant will surprise no one.
I fell earlier in the week and was beginning to wonder if I had torn something in my good knee as well as the long time damage in my right knee.
Today I think that I’ve come far enough to tell that this is just a normal bump and bruise without lasting damage. Hooray!
Please be as careful as you can with the raccoon and dogs. I have known dogs (all sizes) murdered by raccoons. Very mean critters.
mmm,
encountered raccoon in the dark while crossing yard to granny flat, doubled back to borrow employers doberman pincher.
Dog: wild ferocious barking
Raccoon: much quieter, yet still riveting, hissing and a few growls
Dog: leans against me and tries to go back into the main house.
We went.
Happy today was sitting and watching a movie with the husband that we both enjoyed. ‘Grudge Match’ with Sylvester Stallone and Robert de Niro, which if you’ve ever seen any of the Rocky movies, or ‘Raging Bull,’ you can almost guess. The short synopsis is Old Men Boxing. We thought it was really funny, but it’s also about reconciliation and second chances.
Also happy, have a full five-day workweek ahead but then a four-day weekend. And have been offered a free month of HBO Max through Hulu which I’m going to sign up for so we can see ‘In the Heights.’
Finally, happy because I have nothing else to do today but sit and write on novella-in-progress, which is 3-4 scenes short of a finished first draft.
Back from a long, extended weekend. Finally finished the primary election stuff and ran out the door the next day. My youngest sister and her husband took their RV up to Maine with some friends of theirs and my younger sister went to thier house to dog sit their Labs. I went to their house for a few days to help.
We spent several hours one day walking around Longwood Gardens and another day at an antique mall and a couple of outlets shopping.
My sister and BIL have a wonderful deck. The first evening there was a hot air balloon coming in for a landing nearby.
Had a lovely lobster dinner when the travelers returned on Sunday.
It’s great to be fully vacinated and all together again.
I really think the raccoon gave up since we all moved to the back of the house. The four of us moving around is probably enough to keep him at bay.
You can hope! A couple of years ago my brother and I were standing around in my kitchen when a raccoon trotted up to the back porch, reared up on its back legs, and waved at us through the sliding glass doors . . . .
Yeah, when I confronted the one in my kitchen a couple of months ago, he hesitated like he was trying to think up an excuse for being there, and then he gave up and ran.
I was happy about going to visit my family interstate this week and collect my geriatric cats that have been stuck up there to move them into the new flat down here. Alas, there have been multiple outbreaks across the country and border restrictions are happening again. So now I need a new happy. After I mope for a bit. I haven’t seen any of them in six months.
Cruella! I saw Cruella yesterday and that made me very happy. Such a fun movie.
I’m sad to be a really picky reader and television watcher. It’s hard for me to find books and shows that I’ll stick with.
Here I’ve found a wealth of recommendations from everyone especially The Art of Crime.
I’ve just found another series that my husband and I like. German/Austrian police partners. She’s not a bimbo and he’s not a himbo. Murder by the Lake. 2 seasons.
I really liked Murder by the Lake.
I am feeling happy (and also challenged) at having POSSIBLY discovered a copy of a book I’ve been trying to find for twenty-odd years: HANS NIELSEN BRØNSTEDT 1752-1800, by Torfinn Skard. Published in Oslo in Norwegian in 1952, and, according to WorldCat, in four libraries in the WorldCat group; the Library of Congress used to have a copy; I’ve seen it there. It turned up on a list of duplicates in the holdings of the Norwegian Genealogical Society, on a duplicate list that was last updated in 2017. On the one hand, that’s not exactly last week, on the other hand, this is pretty obscure, so maybe no one else is interested in it. Hans was my 4th great-grandfather and, according to my grandmother, whose middle name was Bronstead, the anglicized version, brought the potato to Norway. I haven’t found any evidence of that, but he certainly had a green thumb and encouraged all kinds of new plants and trees to his part of Norway.
Now I get to use Google Translate to frame a polite request in Norwegian to buy the book if it’s still available.
I’m sure they’ll speak English. Scandinavians are impressive that way.
Almost certainly they will — they probably get television reception from the UK, which does amazing things for multilingualism, but I hope I get extra Brownie points for making the effort. I composed a message of simple declarative sentences and kept it succinct.
Earthquake just struck. Kittens are much amazed — it’s their first emphatic one.
Happiness is reading about your gang. Have a great week.
I’m watching the final season of Schitt’s Creek and am really enjoying it (I totally heart David and Patrick), though I’m sad it’s the last season.
I’m working my way through my medical scribe course and I did my mid-point evaluation this morning. I think it went well which I’m happy about. I’m learning a lot but very, very, incredibly frustrated with the course material which is rife with textual and grammatical errors. Several of the answer keys to the “medical files” we are working with have basic errors like having the wrong age for the patient or failure to mention important test results with no explanation as to why they are not included. There are also grammatical mistakes in the supporting material like the student handbook and phrases like “should be little-to-no mistakes” in the final assessment that are just weird. Are we allowed to make “little” mistakes like, say, not capitalizing Tylenol or is it supposed to mean “few to no mistakes” allowed. I know it means don’t make any mistakes and if you have to, make as few as possible but still.
Back when I was taking business classes (I have an undergraduate degree as, of all things, a medical secretary), I had an instructor who pointed out that Your boss will not give you a passing grade on a letter that’s 95% correct.
Of course, our standards in My Day were much superior . . . snicker, snicker.
What an adorable crew!! And you are better about raccoons than I am. I don’t know if it’s the South, but we get rabid raccoons down here not infrequently. Also, I have a very sad story about a raccoon…my parents had a particularly aggressive Jack Russell who got out at night (they live in the country next to a fenced-in pond the neighbor’s horses drink from). This Jack Russell named Sam got through the fence, apparently cornered a raccoon, and next thing you know my parents hear shrill barking and the sound of animals fighting. By the time they got to the pond, the raccoon had drowned Sam. It’s not an old wives’ tale. If you Google it, some sites will say it doesn’t happen. But when raccoons are cornered near water, they will lure the opposing animal into the water and push its head under. My parents were traumatized by the whole thing, of course. We don’t like to think about how poor Sam felt. And yeah, the raccoon couldn’t have been too happy, either. I hope you don’t mind my telling you this story. I still like raccoons but not as much. I always think about Sam.
My dogs are much too old and lazy to (a) fight or (b) make it down the steep path to the lake, probably because they are not Jack Russells. Those little dogs will fight anything. I am sorry about Sam, though. Sounds like he had a fierce heart.
As I speak Mona has crawled into a cloth basket by my pillow, Veronica is ta the foot of the bed staring blankly out the window, and Emily is curled up on the top of her cat house, mistress of all she surveys. And the raccoons are all elsewhere, thank you.
I’m so glad your dogs are peace-loving and that you don’t have any raccoons coming in!
And yes, Sam was too fierce for his own good. But a great dog and still missed!