Good grief

First of all, a mother and writer I have known via parenting lists for years, and with whom I did one of my favorite journalistic interviews with ever in my writing career needs prayers. Her teenage son is in critical condition in ICU. Prayers are welcome.

Also the young kitty that adopted us/has been hanging around on my front porch the last week also appears to be quite ill. She's got very little color - I suspect yet another case of feline leukemia, though she must have come to us like that. NO MORE CATS for 6 months! She is quietly enjoying the warm sidewalk in the son and is very quiet and weak. I can't afford to take her to the vet, and don't want to drop her off at the shelter, so plan to keep her as comfy as possible over the next few days and see what happens. She's eating, but is very thin and lets me examine her with no fuss (not a good sign).

At they gym doing a final project for school while the kids are in class. Feeling grateful for my babies and hugging them tight.

Full Moon

I do not understand the full moon phenomenon around here. We lost a chicken several months ago during the full moon because she wouldn't go into the coop. Then we lost 2 last month during the full moon. Two nights ago, a weasel got in to the coop and killed two chickens (our bad, the coop wasn't shut tight). Last night, the stupidist chicken wouldn't go into the coop but roosted someplace else. Thankfully, we found her safe in the yard this morning. However, our last remaining cat got hit by a car last night and I found him dead in the yard this morning. We have a little white cat who has adopted us, that Emma calls Mary, and she still is hanging around. But geez, we are having bad animal karma lately. It wasn't so long ago that our other cat crawled under the porch and died.

Our new puppy has to go to Cornell next week to have her back leg checked out. She seems to have some sort of neurological problem and is using it only intermittently. GAH!

The good news is that the board of trustees at May Memorial voted last night to bring me on as their student intern minister from Fall 2010 to Spring 2012. I couldn't be more thrilled :).

Everyday Drama

Lucy just ran in here with a video, wailing "we already watching thiiiis one!" Oh, the drama.

We've been listening to Mrs. PiggleWiggle on tape though, and it seems to help Jude put it all in perspective. Now, I merely have to pick up my phone and pretend to call Mrs. PiggleWiggle, and everything sorts itself out magically.

Yesterday was filled with painful drama. Emma came home from Florida (yay!) and promptly fell up the stairs with her suitcase and smashed her knee.

I came in and dropped Soren's music stand on my toe and am pretty sure I fractured it. I'm limping around quite a bit and had a very short walk with the dog this morning.

My husband missed an entire day of work for an emergency tooth extraction.

Nothing insurmountable, just frustrating.

Good news is I finished my sermon, and it's sunny and a bit warmer. The geese are doing their O'Hare impersonation, which is fun, and Jakob is having a doggy playdate today.

I'm obssessed with the idea of getting another dog before he gets much older (I think this is stand-in for having another baby ), and I keep visiting dogs. My husband is very tolerant of me and even has accepted the idea of trialing chickens next month, for eggs and meat. I'd like a goat too, but I think he'll draw the line there ;).

Random Life Updates

In no particular order:

1. one of the cats we adopted peed in my tub today. He also pukes a lot and sheds globs of hair. He is old and is dying. He has a lot of spunk left in him though, as I am unable to restrain him enough to get hairball medicine into him daily. As soon as it warms up, his butt is going outside.

2. The other cat discovered the cockatiel's existence, and has his first exposure to the great outdoors at our house today. It went well, as he didn't kill our other old and arthritic cat (who showed him his place immediately), and came right back inside when we got home (I shoved him out so he wouldn't kill the bird while we were gone). Now to see if he's a decent mouser or not.

3. The dog has massive spring fever. He needs a friend to run around with because he's being all infantile and needy and I already have two young children who sit on me all the time.

4. My oldest child will be home in 48 hours. I can NOT wait. I miss her. And another weird thing is that we're on a Yahoo list together now. How 21st century!

5. My husband and I have been trying to watch last week's Heroes episode since LAST week. One of us falls asleep every night and we still haven't watched it. He's snoring next to me right now. Soon we'll have to watch two, and then what will we do?

6. I'm going back to work at First Unitarian as the RE Assistant (Administrator?) again. Sadly, the woman that replaced me has to resign for personal reasons, and Jan asked me to fill in the rest of the year. Yay! I loved that job and am excited to go back to it. I start in two weeks. By then, I might know if I've landed the other job that I really want, that is more permenant, and very community-oriented, in a 21st century kind of way. Good thoughts are welcome, as it would be from home and compatible with homeschooling!

7. I finished my sermon draft and got Very Helpful feedback from a fellow seminarian. I've submitted my thoughts for the order of service as well. Nervewracking and exciting. I can NOT wait to start school again. I think that my winter malaise is passing, despite the bitterl cold weather we're having here. It's a good thing, because I gained 7 lbs. last month, which is quite unlike me.

8. My 10 year old daughter is in a talent show AND giving an oral presentation for 4H this week. I'm not nervous for her at all, because she's a pro. I hope to get a video of everything. She's playing violin, and then doing karaoke Taylor Swift with her best friend for the talent show. The presentation is on gymnastics, and she has a meet the next day, and another one next weekend. She will be exhausted before spring comes!

9. Who the heck changed Daylight Savings Time to next weekend? And why? I'm not ready. Isn't it like 8 months long now?

Empty nesting

My husband and I are coming to grips with not having more kids. So instead we have in the last year added a dog, 2 cats, a bunny, a cockatiel, and are considering another dog. My friend just offered me chickens!! I'm so excited. I have been wanting them and my husband has been resistant, but he must see that we can't afford vacation this year so we don't need to worry about anyone housesitting, and is giving into my desire for chickens and is going to build a chicken tractor!

I'm so excited. Did I mention that? Um, does anyone know anything about chickens? We have a choice of up to 12 (I'm mostly hoping for females and one male). White leghorn and nature's berry brown layers. My husband wants Rhode Island Reds. I am thinking I should start with 6 and then maybe hatch more at some point. I don't even know how long chickens live, or how often they lay. Off to research!

Oh, and I got another scholarship application done today, and put out a plea to my "created family" to donate to my school fund at CRCDS so I can take at least one class there this fall.

And my ex-husband was a saint today. A true saint. I am so grateful for our friendship.

Birth to death and everything in between

So Sunday I taught Sunday School, then went to a birth, then yesterday drove to PA for a Celebration of Life for my former brother-in-law. I drove back home today. I'm exhausted and have accomplished nothing today, except saving my husband from our new mouser kitties, who didn't want to get out of the truck when he got them home.

He also brought home tons of bread. He is working with a semi-homeless person who keeps giving us bread from the soup kitchen, which honestly, is very welcome.

So the service was nice. I got to see a lot of David's family that I haven't seen in several years. His one aunt and uncle are Born Again Christians and the look on his aunt's face when I told her I was going to seminary to become a parish minister was....priceless. She considered (s?) David and I to be Godless heathens (oh, and we're liberal to boot), and I'm sure she thought I must be planning to minister to some satanic cult. I sealed the deal by referencing God as often as possible (after all, I have God, it's just different than it might be for her). I wasn't being malicious, but it was amusing to see her inability to see me in that role. I even mentioned that I could see how I seemed an unlikely candidate. It is still affording me considerable amusement.

I had a nice chat with David's dad, and my mother went and was mostly on her best behavior. David's sister mentioned her gratitude for me bringing the girls multiple times, which was nice; our last interactions were rather fraught with tension. There were some wonderful pictures of Mark, which I had seen before, but it was touching to see them all in one place. It is strange to be ex-family. I knew all those people and had broken bread with them, and knew which picture was David's favorite. But five years has made it really really good to spend time with them, and to remember Mark together.

It's so good to be home. I had a lovely girl-to-girl chat with my hostess last night (an old friend), and slept poorly because Lucy kicked me all night. Tomorrow is another full day - I'm not sure when I will get the laundry caught up.

I am really, really exhausted, which may explain the incoherence of this post, but one last thing - the cats. Tom has been working for this woman who helps people out and restores urban houses that are in bad shape, and some guy ended up moving his cats in, but not himself and then left them there for two months, and kept calling every day to say he was having dreams about them and to check on them, but didn't bring them food or anything ;). So she gave him a date to get them out by and he didn't, so Tom brought them here, because we need mousers, and they've been together forever (I only wanted one cat), and they're parked under my bed. They don't like Tom much, because they both scratched him, and the old one ran off behind the house, but came to me right away.

Oh, and one last thing. I had an interview yesterday morning before I left, for a case management position and it went really, really well. But it would really make homeschooling activities a challenge, and the money sucks. I know I would love it though...but I think I'll hold out for something part-time...or maybe they hated me!

New addition

I promise to get pictures up soon. We got our new baby cockatiel, "Neo" today. S/he (we won't know till after its 6 mo. molt) adjusted quickly. We got the cage set up nicely, with fresh tree branches, food and water, and some new toys. Emma was able to get it out to play with its new playstand this evening, but is still a tad jittery with him, but I think if we work with it every day it will get easier; its friendly, just a tad spastic.

I kind of hope it's a male so it will learn words. That would be very cool.

Tom's car lost its power brakes and steering on the way home from work tonight. He believes it's the pump, but I can't imagine worse timing. Gah.

Jakob and I have had shortened daily meditative walks due to the frigid <15F weather the last week or so. 30F would feel balmy at this point. Tomorrow we have church and a picnic. My friend Sarah and I are doing a chapter on Babies. I could talk about babies all day ;).

I really miss Penguin in the mornings when I go out and he's not there. I brought our other cat, Angus, in until it warms up a bit. He's arthritic and old and toothless and he's VERY happy to be in the upstairs bathroom where he can't pee on anything, laying on a blanket and eating himself to death. As a matter of fact, it would be lovely if he would re-litter train so he could just go in and out as he pleases. We'll see.