Babies

I really need to redo the photos on here.  That header?  Those kids don’t even exist any more.  Reagan has been through three hair colors since then, pierced her nose and added three tattoos (that I know of).  Hayden looks like a baby up there.  He’s probably six inches taller and has a beard for heaven’s sake.  Faith has probably grown that much too - her height I mean.  She doesn’t have a beard.

But a new header featuring my kids means all three in the same place at the same time in an agreeable mood with a photographer present.

So the header stays.

But here are updates on their lives:

That’s my favorite recent photo from Reagan’s Facebook page.  I haven’t seen her in person since August.  The cat is Persephone and is technically her roommate’s but they co-parent the cats.  Caspian is still alive and kicking … literallyReagan is a junior+.  If she sticks the “get me the heck out of college ASAP” schedule she’s set for herself, she will graduate next December.  I kind of wonder what the hurry is.  I suspect it has something to do with the fact that her boyfriend lives in L.A., but she says she’s just ready to get on with life and quit paying money to take dumb classes that she isn’t interested in but that a Liberal Arts degree requires.

A valid point.

In addition to the 15 credit hours she’s taking, she has a waitressing job and coaches a high school Slam Poetry team.  She’s also still heavily involved in Slam herself.  In August she went to Nationals in Oakland and competed for the Nebraska team.  The aforementioned boyfriend helps run a YouTube channel so she also gets roped into helping film events which she likes to do as it involves travel, Slam and the boyfriend.  

She’s kind of busy.  I marvel at all she juggles and miss her terribly.

This is a picture I took of Hayden when we dropped him off in August.  He does not participate in social media so I don’t have anything more recent.

Nor do I have any more than mere scraps of info about his life in college.  Here is what I do know:

• He has a roommate.  I guess they get along ok because I haven’t heard otherwise.
• The food in the residence hall is good.
• He’s going to class, not chronically oversleeping as I feared. This fact has been confirmed by other sources as well.
• He doesn’t like his Soils class.  I can’t imagine liking an entire class about dirt either.
• He says his grades are good.

That’s it.  That’s all I’ve got.  I need to see the boy soon as he’s much more forthcoming in person.

Faith is stuck up here in Minnesota with us.  That means she’s doing a LOT of adapting.  Adapting to a new town, new school, new dance studio, new church, new friends, new home, new dog … 

It’s a lot of adapting.

Most days she does pretty well, but I strongly suspect that if we were to pack up and move back to Lincoln tomorrow she would be thrilled.

Since that is not a choice, we keep pressing on.  That picture is from Homecoming.  She had vehemently decided to not go.  The thought of walking into the dance where she still didn’t know very many people (it was the second week of school) was overwhelming.  At diner the night of the dance she was scowling into her plate at dinner time, hating life. However, the young ladies who have befriended her kept bugging her until, an hour before the dance started, she decided to go.

Of course, shopping for a new dress was an impossibility so she pulled out one we bought a couple of months ago, brushed her hair, threw on some make up and was ready to go. (The friends in the athletic gear were dressed for the black lights.)

Oh to be 14 and lovely enough to pull off a trick like that.

Faith turns 15 on Saturday, which means that this post should definitely NOT be titled “Babies” but … 

that is what they will always be to me.

Kittens Are My Favorite

I know.

I said I’m not a blogger any more, and yet this looks suspiciously like a blog post.

It isn’t.

It’s just me marking a moment in our lives for posterity, which is a totally different thing.  To prove it, I changed the date of the the “Bookmark” post so that it remains at the top of the page and I’m sliding this one in underneath it.

Because this is not a blog post.

It is just a small announcement that we have a new kitten.  There is only one good thing about having as many cats suffer untimely deaths as we have had and it’s that we have gotten to have a lot of kittens.

And kittens?

Are the very best thing.

Sure, puppies are cute too and they have puppy breath and soft puppy ears and round puppy tummies.  But puppies don’t come already housebroken.  Nor do they hang off of window screens or do mad acrobatics.  

Or purr.

Not being able to purr puts puppies firmly behind kittens on the list of the best things.

This is our new kitten.

You’ll notice that he is definitely not Siamese which is quite a departure for us.  The thing is, that I can not find a breeder of Modern Siamese cats, which we prefer over the traditional variety, within 500 miles.  The one we got most of our cats from retired.  We prefer the Modern variety because they’re super cool and the shedding is very minimal.  But 500 miles is a long way to go for a cat and the prices of them have really gone up.

The last kitten we got, Caspian, is a regular Siamese and while we like him very much, he sheds all over the place just like any old cat does.  So if I have to have a cat who sheds, I’d just as soon rescue one from the shelter which is what we did on Friday.

Rich actually is the one who picked him out and he did a great job.  This little guy is active enough to be fun, but also pretty chill and confident.  Which means he’s been very comfortable with everyone and doesn’t go hiding under the furniture all the time.

Which is a very good thing, because it turns out that small black kittens blend in really well to shadows and are kinda hard to spot.

The only thing that really got a reaction out of him was The Poodle and then he puffed right up.  

It took us two days and way too much discussion to name the little guy.  Amongst the names considered and discarded, were:

1. Hendrix
2. Johnny Cash (because he’s a man in black)
3. Batman
4. Edgar (as in Allen Poe)
5. Angus (of AC/DC because he’s back in black)
6. Gotham
7. Michael Jackson 
8. Allistair
9. ZZ (as in ZZ Top because he’s a sharp dressed man)
10. Loki
11. Thor
12. Sirius Black

We went round and round and I really thought he was just going to end being called “Buddy” or “Cat.”  Then Rich and I were sitting on the couch watching Sherlock Holmes and I was thinking about names that go together like Sherlock and Watson and Calvin and … Hobbes.

We absolutley love Calvin and Hobbes around here.  Rich had amassed the entire collection in a pile of paperback books which my older two kids read until they were shreds.  Although the strip was retired nearly 20 years ago, I still hold out hope that Bill Watterson will revive it one of these days.

So I turned to Rich and just said, “Hobbes”.  He thought for a couple of minutes and it was totally obvious that that was this kitten’s name.  He even has a patch of white on his belly that he likes to have scratched.

Now if I can just figure out how to make him stay little … 

A Whole Month In One Post

I have not written a post in a long, long time.

Go ahead: call me Captain Obvious.

But it’s dance recital weekend.  Never, in the history of this blog have I neglected to write about a dance recital.

However.

I am not emotionally equipped to blog about this particular recital today.  I will get to it - this week even.  I promise.  Today however, I’ll just play catch up.

What has happened in the last month?

1) Easter.

We have celebrated Easter with my best friend and her family pretty much every year since forever.  Here is a picture from Easter 2004:

Now they look more like this:

Every year after dinner, the dads hide the 300-400 eggs we have stuffed with candy and loose change and we turn the kids loose to hunt for them.  It’s a bloodthirsty egg hunt and I love it.  I love it so much that this year I contemplated the fact that of the eight kids, three are in college (one of those engaged to be married), one is a senior and the youngest two are in eighth grade and so maybe, just maybe, it was time to end the hunt.  But then I decided that I was not ready to do that yet and so I informed Reagan that college freshmen do indeed hunt for Easter eggs if they want candy.

It’s so nice of her to humor me.

Either that or she’s inherited my “anything for chocolate” philosophy.

2) Rich and I took a trip to Vegas.  He had to go for a conference and I tagged along.

I hadn’t ever been before, and had a great time.  We didn’t gamble much and still came away -$40.  We stayed at the Venetian and I have firmly decided that the only way to go to Vegas is on an expense account because after staying at a hotel that nice, I don’t think I could settle for a lesser experience.

3) Reagan moved into her first apartment.  She’s living with two friends from high school and she took Caspian with her.  Let me repeat:

She took her cat with her.

Which means I am down to two kids, one dog and one cat.  There is hope that one day soon my house may be truly clean.

One day.

4)  I got a new job.  Starting June 16th, I will be an Executive Support Associate to the Vice Chancellor of the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources at UNL.

Which is fancy speak for I’ll be a secretary at the Ag College at the university.  Or, as Hayden says, I’ve figured out a way to work at yet another school my children attend.

I am really excited about it.  I liked everyone with whom I interviewed and it sounds like I’ll be doing some really interesting work.  Which is not to say that I won’t miss middle school - I definitely will.  I think any job I work for the rest of my life will be boring in comparison with what I’ve done for the last two years but this new job comes with better pay, better benefits and much bigger opportunities.

So that’s it.  All caught up.  And later this week, when I’ve regained my composure we’ll get to the recital.

Pictures On My Phone

1)  Caspian has an overly inflated sense of self.  He now believes he is a focal point for the family room.

Seriously.  That’s where he hangs out these days.  The ego on that animal.  

Bless his fuzzy, wuzzy furry face.

2)  I pulled a plate out of the cupboard the other day and got this.

Points to Faith for thriftiness and problem solving.

I threw it out anyway.

3) More points to Faith for cuteness.

She had two friends for a sleepover last weekend and they all put on footed jammies and slept on the floor of the family room.  That’s about as cute as 8th graders can get if you ask me.

4)  Reagan pierced her nose.

It’s not so much my favorite thing but it’s better than a tattoo.  Of course she has one of those too and is talking about another one.  

Piercings and tattoos.  Not really what I pictured when she looked like this:

But she’s gotta do what she’s gotta do.

Remember your freshman year of college?  Sure you do.  You’re grinning right now thinking about it.  You had a lot of fun didn’t you?  You have some good memories.

At least you think they’re good memories now.

When your own child becomes a freshman in college all of thoee fun memories start to haunt you - become the subject of nightmares actually. 

I’m trying to take comfort in the knowledge that nearly every functional, employed, responsible adult that I know has those memories of their freshman year in college.  They all turned out ok.

Reagan will too.  

Also?

I love her.

And I still think she is adorable.  Nose ring, tattoo and all.

Proof That I Am A Productive Person

This weekend I … 

1)  Made Grilled Margarita Fajitas.You’ll note that the ingredients for the marinade look an awful lot like the ingredients for margaritas.  I say, as long as you have everything out, you may as well make yourself a drink too.

2) Trimmed the Lilac and Weigela bushes.  I love flowering shrubs.  Sure they only bloom once a year but it makes for a spectacular couple of weeks.  My lilacs just finished and the weigela is mid-bloom so it’s a good time to trim them back.  

The issue is that I never did that chore last spring, so there was a LOT to trim.

That bare strip is where the bushes grew over the lawn and kind of killed it.  Whoops.

3)  Admired my front walk.

The roses finally bloomed this week and the peach contrasting with the purple of the salvia is stunning.

It nearly makes up for my decimated shrubs.

4)  Went out to dinner.

Twice.

 And that is not actually proof that I am productive, but it was really fun.  Our city is having an event this week where all the fancy restaurants have fixed price menus.  For $19.99 per person, you get an appetizer, main course and dessert.  On Friday, Rich and I went to a Thai restaurant where the blue-crab fried rice was good, but the lemon curd cheesecake made me swoon.

On Saturday I went to a country club restaurant with some co-workers where the roasted cauliflower puree on the appetizer plate made me want to crawl into a bowl full of the stuff.

I have food issues, in case you didn’t know.

5) And along those lines, yesterday I made a Crumb Cake.  When I was on the Carlo’s Bakery site last week, I saw that they ship their famous Crumb Cakes.  There’s no way I’m paying to have an item shipped that I can make myself for $5 and this lady says her recipe tastes nearly like Carlo’s.  I seem to recall that Carlo’s puts actual cake crumbs into their cake, which this recipe didn’t call for, but since I haven’t ever tried the original cake, I’m willing to believe this one is a close approximation.

Either way, it was yummy.

Possibly the 3 1/2 sticks of butter had something to do with that.

6)  Felt sorry for my poodle.

Curlisse is getting old.  She won’t go down the deck stairs in the dark anymore because her cataracts are so bad and she doesn’t really hear us when we call her.  I don’t think she realizes she’s deaf and she still moves around just fine, but poor Poodle is definitely getting to be an old lady.

Also?

She needs a haircut, but that’s a separate issue.

6)  Laughed at Faith.

Much to her siblings’ delight, Faith has been deemed old enough to mow the yard this year and she did that for the first time yesterday.  

She did not enjoy the experience much and it kind of looked as if a drunkard had done the mowing when she was done which meant she had to go back over several spots that she had missed.

Better her, than me, I say.  It’s why I had children.

7) Wondered about Caspian’s sanity.

Cats do not eat cherries, do they?

No, I didn’t think so either.  Sigh.

This week will be filled with thrilling activities like sanding and priming cupboard doors, taking Hayden to the dentist and driving Faith to the pool and back and the pool and back and the pool and back.

What are you up to?