And she's off!

I'm having focus issues tonight, because the LOST finale is on right now. I'm taping it, as always, and we will watch it later tonight--probably around 10:30-ish. I REALLY, really want to just flick the tv on right now and peek, but I will not give in. I'm so distracted, just thinking about it and watching the clock. I, being the impatient spoiler-hound that I am, already know some juicy tidbits about tonight's two-hour finale, but it doesn't remotely lessen my enjoyment of watching. I know who is in the coffin, and I am SO NOT happy about it. They really better go about this coffin issue in the right way, or I will be sulking for the next eight months!

Okay, so let's flash back to D's school 'incident' and why she is no longer attending any classes at Parker this year. I have watched, since D started attending Parker in her freshman year, and become increasingly disheartened and now angry over the way the students are treated, their complete lack of civil rights, and the complete absence of common sense and natural consequences at this school. I have learned that Craig is run in the same way. At least they keep their fuck-ups consistently spread across the school, rather than just limited to one. Let me preface by saying that my child is so not perfect. My issue is less about my child and more about the other children, many of whom are very disempowered and disenfranchised and are very vulnerable to the type of predation that the police and school system are using on these children. First of all, the ONLY time the police have any business disciplining or even talking to children at school is in the case of violence or a legitimate threat of violence, or drug trafficking. Any other discipline or correction should be administered by educators.

The full-time police officers in the high schools here, have seemingly taken over the school discipline. This officer is not an educator. I don't even know that his is educated, as college degrees are not required for city officers. Any dealings I have had with police--even the few who seem decent--do not indicate that the average IQ of officers is over double digits. I respect intelligence, and I respect compassion. I have seen neither in the majority of my encounters with law enforcement. I also believe that people, particularly children, should be given the benefit of the doubt and treated respectfully unless they prove that they don't deserve such treatment.

I have complained about, but put up with, regular "lockdowns", which necessitate stopping all academic activity, while police and K9s go through the lockers, bookbags, and purses. The girls were forced to dump the contents of their purses out on their desks, for male police officers, in front of everyone in the classroom. How humuliating for the girls! The vice-principal did concede that in the future, they would have a female police officer examine the contents of the girls' purses when they were dumped out on the desk. Great. I feel oh so much better knowing that. @@ *those are my eyes rolling, in case you don't spend too much time on the web, like I do.*

D has been on the waiting list for a parking permit since the beginning of second quarter. She is also lazy. This means that frequently, instead of parking off campus and walking the several blocks to get to school, she tries to park in the parking lot and visitor lot and hope she doesn't get a ticket. She has gotten many. They are quite expensive, but they are hers to pay. While I think it's fucking ridiculous to charge the kids lots of money to park their cars at school, I have never taken issue with this policy. This most recent time that D. parked in the visitor lot, the school cop decided she had enough "warnings" (three tickets for the visitor lot at $20 each). He told her she needed to pay $80 immediately at that time or her car would be towed and it would cost more to get it out. Oh, and he also issued ANOTHER $20 ticket. She called me very upset, and I was forced to give my debit card information right then and there. Neither of us could afford that at the moment, but of course that is not their concern. Both the police dept. and Davis Citgo both made a little money off that exchange.

My daughter's locked car, was opened. This is NOT required for towing a car. I know this, because just to make sure, I called both the Jvl PD and the towing company involved to ask them if that would ever be necessary, under any conditions at all. They both told me, unequivocably, "No". The investigation we requested the PD do on this issue was closed, and we were told that the towing company opened it. I don't think so. We will most definitely be pursuing the fact that my child's car was broken into with no warrant. That's a huge infraction of civil liberties!

All of the above--definitely frustrating and concerning, as is the tons of issues that I didn't mention. But here's the most ridiculous of all to me. Common police-state tactics there consist of $375 disorderly conduct tickets for saying "THE F WORD". Really. I have watched this happen to good kids, who definitely cannot afford BS tickets like this. Can you imagine, sending your kid to school for a free public education to have them return home with one or more $375 tickets. For swearing. Teenagers swearing--such a travesty! The notion of charging students money of this amount for swearing--not necessarily at someone--just swearing. D was threatened with such a ticket for asking who the fuck opened her car up (when she found that they had broken into it). That seems like a pretty fair and logical thing to say, considering the circumstances. High school kids and their parents are (or should be) putting money away for college. D is a senior who starts college in the fall. We most definitely cannot afford to be paying nonsense tickets for using WORDS! Many of the other kids who got tickets for this are in the same boat. I personally believe that freedom of speech is very important, and that as long as kids are not being hurtful or disrespectful to others, they should be able to say whatever words they wish. I would not take issue with them disciplining for language issues, IF they were disciplined by an administrator and without financial penalties. Detention, for example, is a reasonable, sensible way to discipline for language. Police involvement is absurd and insulting.

There are still a few of us who remember when we had civil liberties. Those of us who did not willingly sign them away for the false promise of safety. Those of us who are unwilling to let others forget that we are still entitled to the civil liberties Bush and friends ripped away from us. Those of us who will fight to keep the precious little we have left from being taken away, especially from our children.

We made the decision that, although I've endured this joke of a school system for almost four years now, we will not send her for the last two weeks (she only attends there mornings). She continues to attend her awesomely fabulous International Academy in the afternoons. We simply cannot afford to risk sending her for the remainder of the year, as any further fines would come directly out of the college fund. Considering the fact that she's received about a week's worth of education from there over the course of this entire school year, the risk further financial compensation to the JPD is just not worth the "education" she would receive in return. I don't think that many parents can afford that type of education.

I should add, though, that I don't blame the schools for their inability to educate the students well. They are limited by ridiculous government policies (the worst and biggest offender being NCLB) and increasingly limited resources. That is exacerbated by the fact that these already limited resources are divided in such a way that about 20% of the students are receiving about 80% of school funds. Why? Because gov't policies have mandated that the special needs students (many of whom are merely labeled as such and are really victims of crappy, lazy parents) and ESL students. They all must be accomodated in every way possible, including full-time one-on-one aids in many cases. That means, in addition to the "regular" resources that these students consume, one individual student requiring a full-time personal aid costs an additional $40,000 approximately. Many of these students are profoundly incapicitated and uneducable, but the parents have the option to send them to school full time and receive free babysitting services free. What a deal. The meager amount of remaining funds are divided up amongst all the other students--the ones who wil be employable in the future, running our country and such. Then we end up with schools who have no money for paper, toilet paper, books, etc. The teachers are bound by increasingly ridiculous mandates like NCLB, which forces them to teach only for testing, rather than educating. Throw in much too high student-teacher ratios, sprinkle in lots of kids coming from rotten households with poor parenting, and you have a guaranteed recipe for a collapsing and ineffective school system.

Rant over. Time for LOST!

I'll at least end on a positive and share some more pretty garden shots.







Creeping phlox (in the rock garden)







Blushing lady tulip

Dwarf equisetum in the rock garden



Oriental poppy buds: soon it will be full of gorgeous orange flowers






We had a wonderful long weekend, with lots of good family time and lots of good weeding time. Mark got a lot of pruning done, too, so the garden is in pretty good shape for the moment. There are still plenty more weeds for me to pull, but I already have over half of the gardens weeded, which is good for the end of May. The bindweed is vicious this year! I'm so glad it comes out easily, but there is more than usual, and it grows so fast I need to stay on it.

Our baby robins all fledged and left the nest on Friday and Saturday. I spent lots of time roaming up and down our block doing "ground checks" to make sure none of the babies were stuck on the ground and vulnerable to cats. We have a couple that I am feeding outside that I can't yet get near that I was worried about. L and I did our ground checks to ensure that everyone was safely up out of reach by dark. It seems so quiet and empty out front now. I'm hoping for another clutch soon!

This afternoon we went to my parents' for a cookout. Food was good, but since it was so windy and muggy at that time, we ate in the house. When we left there, we went to the new Menards store. We needed some odds and ends and hadn't yet been in the newly opened store. It's huge, but since they were closing early today, we only had 20 minutes to grab what we needed and get out. When we returned home, it was so beautiful, we stayed outside until bedtime.

L. chatting with Grandma Carolyn

M. chatting with his parents



While M. worked out on the patio on his daily blog entry, I pitched the hot-pink baseball, so L. could practice her batting. My eye-hand coordination is really not good, so it's always a mystery where my pitched ball will end up. It makes batting practice more exciting. ;D L. got her first major injury of tonight while batting. She swung at the ball, missed, and the bat kept going and struck her in the back of the head. It really hurt, and she sobbed. I felt horrible for her and even more horrible, because I had to work really, really, hard not to laugh. It looked pretty humorous, and it is so something that I would do, but she would have been very sad if I had laughed aloud at the incident. I managed to keep my laughter inside, but I still felt a little guilty about it. She rested with an ice pack on her head for a little bit and then was ready to get back to practicing.

The second injury occured after we were in her room and settling down for reading time. We're currently reading book 1 from the Trixie Belden series, which I loved as a child. M. let her pick out a light bulb called a "party bulb" from Menards (yeah, I left them alone for a couple of minutes at Menards--that's what happens). I was reading and wasn't paying attention to the fact that she had a bandana in her hand and was going to use it to unscrew the very-hot light bulb that was currently in her lamp. She screamed "OW", I looked up, saw what happened, and started to run to the medicine cabinet to get the aloe gel. She reminded me, as her little finger was burning, that we had just put an aloe plant in her room the day before, so we pinched off a tip, applied it, and it felt better. It was a hard night for my baby girl!

The big aloe plant that I keep in the kitchen, for my many burns and mishaps, had 'babies'. Last weekend, when we repotted plants, I put each of the babies in a pot, so the girls could each have one in their rooms. I like to have at least one plant in every room, and those are practical, easy and fun. It turned out to be useful right away.

With nine days left of school, Dej will no longer be attending Parker (the regular high school that she attends in the mornings) other than just going in to take her final exams. She will continue with afternoons at the International Academy. I look forward to telling the very long and enlightening story about the police state that is called Parker High School, but it will have to wait for another day. I am actually fairly relaxed at the moment, and I don't want to get my adrenaline going by revisiting that story.

Daisy watches us play baseball, while Jezy takes a nap (plays dead?).

Lila claims the empty Menard's bag before we even finish unpacking our purchases.

Even more babies!

We are desperately seeking GOOD, lifelong homes for these two sweet ladies. The little black one is under two and the mother of the most recently rescued kittens living near the fastfood lot. She is extremely friendly and absolutely loves cuddles and attention. She's tiny but full grown and will be spayed this week. The kitten is a sweet little girl diluted tortoiseshell. She misses her siblings and is very playful. They've both made it through so much and had such a hard start, and they really deserve a loving forever family!

Tonight was the volunteer dinner at M's work. L. and I rode with my parents, as M. has to get there ridiculously early. He gave a very nice and entertaining presentation, as usual, which was very enjoyed by the volunteers. L. had her ticket drawn, so she got to choose a raffle prize. She chose hummingbird food concentrate, and she now wants a shepherd's hook in her gardens so she can move the hummingbird feeder there. She also dropped the plastic bottle on the way out. Fortunately it didn't break the bottle but did crack the top and spill some on the floor. While M. worked on cleaning up the very sticky liquid from the floor, I picked up the very wet sticky bottle and got the pleasure of carrying that home. That resulted in me arriving home to find despite my efforts to limit the stickiness to only my right hand, I somehow ended up having it on both hands, up my arm, on one leg, and on my face. L. licked the stickiness off her own hands and found it sweet and tasty. She offered to lick my hands an arm clean, but I declined.

The dinner itself, well, that was unpleasant, to say it as politely as possible. We had vegetarian meals, which apparently means, to the caterer, that it must be devoid of all flavor. The carnivores received a twice-baked potato, which was totally vegan, but since it had flavor, we were not allowed that option. We got half a plate of gummy plain white rice--no wild rice, not basmati, no flavor and overcooked. The other half of the plate was filled with a couple chunks each of broccoli, cauliflower, baby carrots, and zuchinni. These were boiled. In plain water. No herbs, no margarine, no salt, no flavor. There was no soy sauce to add a little flavor, just plain salt and pepper. Can you tell I'm a bit irritated? I am so tired of receiving crap on a plate from caterers! I feel safe in saying I will avoid any events catered by Elsberry's Edibles in the future! The vegetarian options we've received at various venues have been lacking in most cases, but this was pretty bad. I took a couple of bites and just quit eating. My jaw has been really painful lately (griding my teeth at night probably), and this food wasn't even worth the pain of chewing. It was downright insulting, and they had the nerve to charge $20 a plate for this shit. UGH!

I told L. before the event to get dressed nicely for daddy's work dinner. She came out dressed, well, in that special way that L. does so often. She dug the R.G. t-shirt out of her pajama drawer, put on two necklaces (by herself!), changed her bandana to a red one she picked out today at H.L. She really put some thought into "her look".

She's in a bandana phase--loves to wear them on her head. We ran out to Hobby Lobby today to look for loom loops (we struck gold; she's set on loops for quite a while now!), and she found the bandana aisle. I told her she could pick two out, one of which she felt the need to wear tonight. She felt quite pretty and put together, so this is how she attended the dinner.

Oh, and look how fast these babies have grown! Whenever they aren't being fed, they have their little heads popped up looking for mom and dad and cheeping for food. If you look closely, you'll see three little beaks peeking out at once here.

The alliums are in full bloom, making the front garden look really fun. We've had many people stop by the house to ask what the "Dr. Seuss-looking flowers" are. On the right, front, there are some blue camassia flowers. On the right, back is the threadleaf weeping birch we put in last year.

The small tree in front is our baby magnolia, nearing the end of its bloom cycle. Front left is the first peony blooming this year.

Tuesday's treasures

L. received a loom and a bag of loops, from her Girls Craft Club, a couple of weeks ago. She really took to it, once I got her started. She has made potholders for her dad (he got the first one of course), me (for mother’s day), Larry (M’s right-hand man at work), and my mom. She thought they would make great coffee cup coasters for M. & L., and she’s right. She’s ready to make more, so we are trying to track down the right sized loops for the loom. No luck at Michael’s—the ones they had were way too thick. We will try Hobby Lobby later this week. If I have to, I can order them from the Internet, but I really prefer not to. The ones I have found online have little-to-no description, so it’s tough to tell if they are the right size or will work well for her loom.

She's been prolific with her art lately. Today she made me a beautiful book about fairies, and a an artistically altered seashell (probably from her San Diego collection?). The cat is on the convex side and the beach scene and signatures are on the concave side.

L. helped me this weekend with some repotting of houseplants (those the cats haven’t yet killed). We also put shale ships on top of the soil. In addition to shredding the plants themselves, the cats like to play in the soil, leaving large messes. If the pot is big enough, Baxter likes to pee in the plants, which is what killed my beautiful big braided ficus, and a huge philodendron plant—both of which I have had for over 12 years! I have tried covering the soil with aluminum foil, but they just ripped that right out of their way. I’m eager to see if this works. I love my houseplants and like to have them in every room. I’m not yet ready to cede this battle and give up on having live plants.

Tica played with her ball last night, for the first time! She’s finally relaxing enough to play and learning how her toys work. She’s also growling less at the other cats. She will still growl if they get too close, but she used to growl anytime she could even see them, and she’s stopped that. It’s a small improvement, but it’s pretty significant considering the short time we’ve had her.

While I will greatly miss my students and my class, I will not miss the long, long Tuesdays of working all day in Madison , going straight to class after, and arriving home for the first time at around 7:30 pm . This is my first free Tuesday, now that classes are done, so I’m excited at the prospect of only being away from home for 10 hours today (8 work hrs plus the commute) and having more time with L. & my other babies. I have to go in for an hour or so tomorrow night during my final exam time, in case students have questions or problems with the take-home exam I gave them. L. is planning to go in with me, as she’s never been able to come to a class. She’s really excited about seeing my classroom and writing on the white board. I will start grading finals Weds. night, when they are due, and hope to be done with grading, so I can have final grades entered this weekend.

Here's a shot of L & H playing outside this weekend. The car is his, and this is the first time I've seen it out. It's usually put up in the garage, he said. I will not go off (right now) on what I think of these cars and the message they send children. He was excited to bring it out, they played in it for a couple of hours and had a blast. And then, the crash. They had a steering accident, ended up in the grass and may or may not have hit a tree (their descriptions were a bit unclear, conflicting, and puzzling in some areas). In trying to get it 'unstuck' they may have done something to "blow up the gears" or it may have happened merely as a coincidence. The children fought, much yelling ensued, and the car returned to the garage. Children being what they are, the next day they were playing together, 'the incident' forgotten, and H's dad had fixed the car.

On a different but related note, M. took this picture and pointed out to me that the logo on the front is 'Compuware'. I used to work for them, years and years ago. What a small world.

Jesus Christ is not a weapon.

That, so far, is my favorite LOST line ever! That's saying a lot, as there as so many good ones to choose from. Oh, and Sun--holy hell--I love when she gets badass like that! Another great episode, but now we have two long weeks to wait during which I will be trolling for spoilers.

Our lilacs along the back fence are in full bloom, and the back yard smells wonderful! It's the best time of year to weed the back garden, because I love the smell of our lilacs so much. I look forward to the short bloom period every spring.

Mark's been working a ton again lately--seven days a week and lots of evenings, too. As much as I love the weather this time of year, it's a HUGE bummer that M. is never around (or is beyond tired when he is here).

We did get a little time together last night for date night. He took me out for my 'mother's day' date. We had another fabulous dinner at Buraka (I ate way too much but loved it all), and then we went to see Spamalot at the Overture center. It was really, really funny. It would definitely be in our top three favorite performances. We also had great seats! We were four rows back from the stage and had an aisle seat--I love aisle seats, as I tend to get claustraphobic crammed in the middle of a row. We ended an already great night with a re-watch of Thursday's LOST, which was the perfect ending!

Tica is home from her spay and appears to be recovering quite well. Since last night was our date night, L. & D. spent the night at the grandparents. Tica is still in L.'s room, and she sleeps in bed with L.--usually on her chest. Poor Tica really missed her last night. I kept her in bed with me until quite late, but when I was afraid I would fall asleep, I took her back to L's room. She woke me up early this morning, crying. I went in L's room, afraid she had gotten hurt or ripped a stitch or something like that. She was standing right inside the door and ran right to me as soon as the door opened. The poor little thing was just lonely and had missed her roommate. While she was at the vet recovering from her surgery, we put a window seat in for her, and she really enjoys supervising the neighborhood from her window.

Babies, babies, babies!

This week just FLEW by! Here it is Thursday already, and I really can't account for where the days have gone. We've had fairly nice weather, so we have gotten some weeding done in the evenings. Not nearly enough, but some. In a mere two hours, I will be getting my LOST fix. There's no episode next week, so I'm hoping tonight will be good enough to keep my little brain busy pondering it for the next two weeks.

Our baby robins have hatched, and the cats are very intrigued by the sounds they hear just outside our front door. Petey has taken up the habit of perching on the inside front door, so he can get a better view of the birds out there. He likes it enough that he sits up there pretty regularly, even when he's not interested in bird watching. He can also get a birds' eye view of part of the house, including our birdroom, from that spot. None of the other cats are crazy enough to try getting up there or balancing on top of a door, so he never has to share it. It makes me very nervous, but Petey has always been an atheletic little risk taker, and I know there's nothing I can do to change this behavior.

I lose almost every battle I take on with Petey. I did win one with him. It's so rare that it makes me ridiculously proud--yea, me! I finally outsmarted a cat! Lila gets one meal a day of kitten food, as she won't be a year old until June 1. The other cats, most of whom are slightly hefty, have no need for kitten food. I buy the food in 8 pound bags, put as much as I can fit into an airtight container, and feed Lila out of the container. The rest of the food in the bag needs to be hidden, as all bagged cat food in the house, or the cats rip the bags open, feast, and leave a giant mess. I hid the bag of catfood in the linen closet upstairs, behind the towels, and closed and latched the doors. Petey knew where the bag was and became obsessed with getting into the linen closet. I became obsessed with keeping him out. My stubborn little boy learned that if he repeatedly flung himself at the linen closet, he could just grab the ledge under the doors. You can see his claw marks all over the linen closet, the ledge, and the drawers underneath. Somehow, he also figured out how to get the latched doors open. I would come home to find the doors open, big holes in the food bag, and food all over the closet and floors. Of course the other cats were right there to enjoy the spoils, once he liberated the food for them. After trying to keep him from being able to open the doors many, many different ways, I finally rearranged stuff so I could put the food in one of the drawers beneath the linen closet. Once he discovered his secret little stash was no longer in the closet, he was NOT happy. There is no way he could ever get those big heavy wooden drawers open. HA! I win, sort of. He taught me a lesson, though, by getting into the linen closet every day for a couple of weeks after I moved the food. He would rampage through it--knocking all the drugs and first aid stuff off the shelves, tipping over the extra shampoo, conditioner, and various other grooming products, unrolling towels, etc. He has moved on to other things now, so I am counting the linen closet as one victory for me (versus like the thousand that the cats have won).

Tica was spayed this morning and is doing well. We were able to visit her tonight for a while. She was so happy to see us, she went from quivering in fear (she does that a lot) to purring. She ate a little bit while we were there. We gave her lots of love and hated leaving her. We get to pick her up early tomorrow morning, and we can't wait to get our girl back home!

I actually had much more to say, but since I started typing, we had a pop-in visit from a gardening friend (we live fairly close, and he's "in the business" too, so we walk by each others' homes and admire the gardens throughout the growing season), and my husband just got home from teaching a workshop on ornamental grasses. I have to update him on the day's events and be ready to watch LOST in 20 minutes, so I'm off for now.

btw...if my post titles don't make sense sometimes, they are either song lyrics or something from LOST. Coming up with titles is the hardest part of blogging for me, so if I can't come up with anything right away, I just pull up a lyric or something from LOST that is going through my head at the time.

Baxter begs

Here's a short video that is so cute. I've been hoping to capture Baxter doing this, but it's not easy. I had to shoot this video one handed, while eating with my other hand. L. brought me my "Mother's Day donuts" in bed this morning. So while I was eating, Baxter was "helping" me by looking longingly at my food and taking bites and chewing with me. How can I not share with someone so very cute?! I know it's not the best quality video, but it's the best I could do with one hand while eating.

Only fools are enslaved by time and space

I'm feeling a little random today, so I'm posting another pretty tulip picture and another precious Tica picture.

First things first. LOST was indeed brilliant. We will be re-watching tonight, and we can't wait to see it again! I love that my three favorite characters, Locke, Ben, and Hurley, are on an adventure together! They are all great, great actors with fabulous roles. Michael Emerson (Ben), however is one of the best actors I have seen. He should most definitely win an award (I have no idea which, as I don't pay any attention to the Hollywood awards stuff) for his portrayal of Ben.

L. and I finished the Hawkings' book, George's Secret Key to the Universe, a couple of weeks ago. We are currently re-reading, "Claude and Medea: The Hellburn Dogs" for our bedtime reading. This is a fantastic book by Zoe Weil (who I'm hoping will write more like this), who is the founder of the Institute for Humane Education. This book has an engaging plot with fun characters, yet still manages to present several important social issues that children should be aware of. It's sensitive, in that it doesn't overwhelm children with the ugliness and evil in the world, but it does introduce some important issues to them: child slavery, environmental issues, animal issues, etc. We're enjoying it as much the second time around.

Tica has continued to adjust and is doing great, with the exception of her terror of other cats. We will have a LONG way to go with this one. It makes me sad that she is so afraid--that she has had to develop that as a survival skill.

We still have some cats we are working on catching for TNR. We don't have homes available (as usual) and they aren't human friendly. At this point the best we can do is stop them from procreating, get them medical treatment for anything they may have going on (at least one seems sick), and release them back to their outdoor "home". I wish we could do better for them, but we can't at this point. We just need more good homes and fewer selfish humans!

I finally finished up reading and learning what I needed to in order to get going with my body rolling. I went through an entire session today. I'm not sure if I will feel sore tomorrow or not, but I cannot believe the instant results from this. After the first spine roll, I could feel a HUGE difference between the side I just rolled and the side I hadn't yet gotten to. I don't think I have ever done any form of physical activity that had such immediate positive benefits. I feel that I can take deep breaths like I haven't been able to forever! I would be a fool to not continue doing this on a regular basis! Since I struggle with willpower sometimes and always struggle with finding enough time to get everything done, I may prove myself to be a fool soon enough. At this point, though, I intend to continue this. I would think that even if I could only get to it once a week, it would be so worth it, and I would still have the positive benefits of it.

Before I get lost in the brilliance of LOST...

I thought I should update. I meant to yesterday, but I had some unexpected database work to do instead. I also spent a couple of hours trying to track down a problem with what I thought was our network. We store all our data on drives that are downstairs, hooked up to the office computers. Our mapped network drives to this storage kept mysteriously dropping and not allowing me to access them no matter what. It's been driving me crazy, because so many times I need to get at or save data/pictures, and I can't because of this issue. I finally tracked down that it's a problem with Vista, which is what we have on our laptops. Yet one more way Vista proves it's a piece of crap! I found a fairly simply registry hack that is supposed to fix it. It seems to be working so far, but we'll see if this holds up. I have NO faith in Vista, as it's really poorly designed and full of bugs. Damn Microsoft.

We had another beautiful day today, so L. and I were able to do much of our homeschooling work out on the patio. Once we finished up with today's work, we stayed outside until it was time for me to get ready for class. I can't believe my semester is almost over! L. rode her bike, and I got some weeding done. Our tulips are blooming (those that the critters didn't eat), so the yard is bright and cheerful. We enjoyed walking around the yard looking at the gardens and also checked on our mommy bird, who appears to have 3, maybe 4, eggs in the nest. They haven't hatched yet.

My baby wants leg warmers. Leg warmers! I will admit to participating in some hideous 1980’s fashion, but even then, I never wore or owned leg warmers. I had enough sense to see that they were not only stupid looking but just plain stupid! I plan to try to forget I ever heard this request. If she really wants them badly enough, she will find a way to make her own. She already asked me if she could cut the feet and the tops off some of her tights. I explained that they would unravel if they were cut. I’m hoping the new baseball obsession takes her mind off this awful trend.

She is now officially signed up for a baseball league. She talked her daddy into taking her to Target Tuesday night, while I was teaching class, to buy baseball gear. I came home from class to find them in the back yard with a pretty pink aluminum bat and several pink baseballs. She is happy to use her sister’s old glove (which has already been conditioned), so they didn’t purchase a new glove. She was hitting and throwing quite well, considering she’s never played baseball before. Her season doesn't start until June 2, so she has plenty of time to work on her skills before then.

I took Ivan and Oliver to the vet on Monday. As I suspected, they both have urinary tract infections. The joy of boy cats! So they’re back on Clavamox twice a day. Those two are not pleasant to pill. Both of them are able to somehow make it look like it’s swallowed—I hold their mouth, wait, check to see that they are opening it and licking their lips normally—then I still find their pill somewhere around the house later. The sour cream is all licked off it of course. Oliver is also really good at sensing when I’m going to pill him and running away and hiding. I have to go through these increasingly elaborate fake outs to even have a chance at him. I can’t repeat my fake outs either, because he remembers. This really forces my brain to be much more creative than it’s made to be prior to 7 am when I have to give the morning dose. The night dose goes a little easier for me, though.

Tica also went to the vet with us Monday, so she could meet her new doctors and to get her looked over. She’s healthy, other than her leg, and although she's definitely on the thin side, it's better for her to stay that small because of the stress on her good back leg. They shaved her stomach and looked very carefully for any signs of a spay scar but could not find one. She will go in for her spay on Thurs. 5/15. They will have a bit of a challenge trying to spay with her funky right leg, as it doesn't spread open and will impede their access somewhat. They promised that they would be able to make it work without causing her any physical trauma--I don't want her any more sore than she will be as a result of the spay. They felt her age to be around 2 yrs.

Her unusual leg really intrigued them, so I ended up with all three doctors examining it. They agreed that she seemed to be in no pain, and they also agreed that leaving it as it is would be best for her. They took X-rays and found the strangest thing: at some point, quite a while ago, someone tried to put pins in it to correct it. They said it was done badly and was wrong (which is why it didn't work) and the pins had been absorbed into the bone. The pins aren't bothering her--they do no harm and no good, as they are now. They were not 100% certain but felt that, based on the x-rays, it looked like it was an injury, rather than a birth defect. It was pulled out of socket and completely rotated around 180 degrees. We were all shocked by the pins and just blown away by the weirdness of the whole situation.

She is terrified of just about everything! She loves love, and she loves people, but everything else is very scary to her. I can understand why, the poor little bug! We are working VERY slowly on socialization. I am bringing Oliver into her room for 5-10 minutes each night. He is infallibly sweet and kind to all, no matter what, so he's perfect to help her learn that cats won't hurt her. She hisses and growls and is clearly scared beyond belief, and he continues to give her very sweet looks and never gets aggressive back. She has quite a fierce little growl for such a tiny girl! She's comfortable in Luciana's room now and has stopped being afraid of all the inanimate objects in there. I also bring her into our bed with us for a while in the evening, and she seems comfortable there, too. We're working on the rest of the house. For a portion of the evening, I carry her in a sling (like I did with my babies and Lila when she was little). She rides pretty calmly, looking around at everything with giant eyes. I know it will take a LONG time and a lot of work, but I am very excited for the day that she won't be afraid of anything or anyone in our house. She enjoys catnip but has no clue what to do with cat toys. I finally got her interested in one fishing-pole type toy with feathers on the end. She doesn't chase it yet or play with it as it's meant to be played with, but if I hold it still with the feathers right near her paws, she will quickly put her paws on top of the feather and look pretty satisfied with herself. It's a start and already an improvement, so I'm sure she'll be romping around, hoarding, hiding, and destroying toys (and the rest of the house) like the rest of the cats.




I discovered something HORRIBLE when I left work on Wednesday. My Flying Spaghetti Monster "jesus fish" type thing was stolen from off my car! I loved that. It made me very happy. Now it's gone, and I can't justify spending another $10 when it may just as easily get stolen again. What kind of beast steals a FSM fish?! May whoever did that be touched by his noodly appendage--and not in a good way! Ramen.

He's HOW OLD??!!!

We managed to make it through this whole crazy week and weekend! Whew! I'm sneaking in my blog entry during family movie time. We're all in bed watching 'Martian Child'. Luciana is enjoying it so far. We selected it based on a recommendation from a friend. I'm just holding my breath hoping that it doesn't make me weepy for the night. Along with the three of us (Dej chose not to join us for the movie tonight:( , a few cats, and the snacks, we have a baseball glove in bed with us. L. mentioned a few nights ago that she wants to play baseball. She's been reading the old Charlie Brown books, and decided that baseball looks interesting. We told her we will get her paperwork in to the Y this week, and then she can start. In anticipation, she made me dig out Dej's old t-ball glove, so she could practice catching. She's been wearing/carrying the glove since then.

Mark's parents came today for a visit and just left a bit ago. It was a beautiful day, so we were able to sit out on the patio and enjoy the weather and the beautiful male cardinal who sat in a tree singing for us.



The birthday boy with the poster L. made him. He told her once that his favorite animal was a white tiger or an elk, so she drew a picture with both.


Yesterday was my dad's 60th birthday. My mom was able to pull off a surprise party--he had no clue! Mark helped yesterday by keeping my dad busy working at the gardens for a workday, and they took him out for lunch, which kept him busy until party time. It was great to see how many people came to wish my dad well in his senior years. ;P Sonya, L's new little friend (from Africa) was able to come to the party, too. We were all happy to see her and absolutely heartbroken to see that she cried when she left.




The girls playing together. Surprisingly, this did NOT end with anyone getting hurt or angry!

Before the party, we had a minor emergency. One of our little rescue kitties was supposed to be picked up from the vet by the woman we thought was going to adopt her. (This is not one of the mother/kitten group, but a totally separate incident.) We found out at the last minute that all was not well with her arrangements. This little girl kitty is severly handicapped and extremely tiny, though the vet said she is full grown. Because one of her back legs grows totally backward, it doesn't work, and she has poor balance and limited jumping ability. She weighs about 4 pounds. There is NO WAY she could ever survive the proposed living situation, so we had to come up with other arrangements. We had time constraints, and Al. and I were unable to get to IL to pick her up, in addition to the fact that we had no place for her. After several hundred panicked phone calls and e-mails, we found a wonderful friend of mine (non AR person!) who was willing to pick her up and bring her to my house (thanks a million, Mike!!!). She is so perfect and tiny and precious! We love her--a lot.

She is living in L's room for now, where she is extremely happy. She goes back and forth between eating and coming over for love and cuddles, purring the whole time. She was very frightened of normal house stuff at first--TV, computer, toys, shelves, etc. She's very friendly and sweet, but it seems she hasn't lived in, or spent much time in, a house. We are planning to try to socialize her with one cat at a time. So far, my cats have all been really pleasant with her--very curious but mannerly. She, on the other hand, growls whenever she sees another cat. She's so tiny and at such a disadvantage, I certainly don't blame her. If we are able to integrate her so she's 100% safe, we will keep her. The whole family is in love with her! After much switching back and forth and voting, L. decided she wanted to name her Tica. These pics definitely don't do her justice! I took them tonight, while she was in bed with us for movie time.

'Help, I'm steppin' into the Twilight Zone'...

If you love 80's music the way you should, you'll have that song stuck in your head all day now. :P

The last couple of days have been beyond crazy! I'm going to have to leave part of this long and very strange story out, because it's just too long and too weird to even try to explain. In short, we've been trying to catch a mommy cat and her babies for quite a while now. She has been living in a narrow strip of brush and scrub on the bank of the Rock river--between the river and the drive-thru/parking lot of a fast food restaurant in a crappy area of Beloit (which describes most areas in Beloit). Behind this narrow strip of riverbank and the restaurant, are woods. Mommy ventures out and is quite tame and friendly, but the feral babies were the problem.

Mommy cat, being a good mommy, had the babies live in an underground burrow, under some tree roots, right on the bank. This burrow was created by some other animal and was quite large and elaborate. Unfortunately no digging, prodding, reaching, crawlin--NOTHING could get us access to these babies. We knew they were there but couldn't see them or get to them. This difficulty was increased of course, by the fact that it was so close to the water, so we had to be very carefuly not to do anything to damage the structure of the area or if we actually got a chance at the kittens, to make sure we didn't cause them to fall into the river.

In addition to these physical hurdles, we've had some human hurdles. This is the part I really can't explain. It's beyond strange and doesn't make any sense. There were at least two separate groups of humans who were trying to interfere with our efforts. One of these groups were comprised of some males who worked at the restaurant and didn't want us to get the cats. We still don't know why. They tried to interfere in any way possible and ultimately ended up threatening us with throwing firecrackers at us and damaging our cars. WTH??!! I swear every person at that restaurant, including the customers, were like Twilight Zone residents. The exception was our liason there--the girl helping us out--who works there to get through college. Everyone else we interacted with--just bizarre. A. and I would look at each other like, "did that really just happen?!" Another group of guys wanted the kittens for dog bait. I think they receive a nominal amount of money for each innocent animal they are able to sell to the pit bull fight trainers. Then there were the random people--maybe with good intentions, maybe not--who came to the drive thru and tried to lure mommy kitty. Of course even if they had good intentions and didn't intend to do bad things to mommy (high risk, because she's black), if they took her the babies would die.

Mommy is also developing what appears to be mastitis, as of yesterday we were unable to express any milk from her poor swollen teats, and the babies were small than they should be and turned out to be dehydrated.

All of these factors were ratcheting up the stress levels by the day, as we repeatedly failed to capture the whole family. Yesterday (Thurs.) Allegrea, Luciana and I drove to Beloit with all the cat-capturing equipment we could gather. We spent about six hours hiking through the woods behind mommy cat. We were afraid she had moved her babies, as it was clear that someone other than us had been digging holes around their burrow the previous night. We had no sign of the babies yet by then, so followed mommy hoping she would lead us to them. She would walk a few yards, stop, turn around, wait for us to catch up, and then go again. She wanted lots of love and attention. She wanted to eat lots of food (we brought cans of food to try to get the babies out), and she was always ravenous. Since she was so tiny and nursing and the babies were tiny, we would feed her unlimited food while we were there, trying to get her more healthy. She wanted to eat a lot, nap a lot, and get affection, but she was not taking us to the babies. After several hours, she finally returned to the burrow area and called the babies out. They don't come far out their entrance and are very fast and skittish. After a missed attempt to grab one of the babies, they all disappeared into the burrow and we were very discouraged. After about six hours of such efforts and failure, we left. I had to get ready for teaching my class that night.

We checked for ticks and spent lots of time picking burrs and nettles off ourselves and our clothing. I made it through class, and we decided we should head back that night. The situation was getting so much more dire, and storms were expected. This time, I was not dressed appropriately, nor did I have the right shoes on. I went straight from my college, as we really didn't have the time to spare for me to change clothes and such. Our little remaining daylight was too precious to waste!

In short after much initial discouragement, we realized that mommy's health was starting to get to a point where we couldn't lose time. Their lives were all in danger if we didn't get them out and get help right away. We couldn't leave that night without all of them. Long story short, I removed my shoes and socks, as my work shoes weren't made for trying to walk on uneven, sloped, muddy riverbank ground. I wormed my way in precariously planted next to the tree above their burrow, and in a bunch of scrub. I lay quitely and as still as I could on my belly above their burrow's entrance, so I could see the kittens emerge but they couldn't see me. We gave mommy lots of cans of smelly food to keep her by the burrow entrance, hoping she would relax enough to call them out. Finally, after hours of waiting, she did!

I'm not coordinated. There's no way I can hide this fact. I do not have lightening-fast reflexes or hand-eye coordination. Somehow, though, this moment I did. I snatched that little gray baby, who let out the most blood-curdling scream I have ever heard from a cat! This upset mommy tremendously, and she was crying trying the climb up me to get her baby. I began to sob (yeah, imagine that@@), because it was killing me to upset this poor mommy cat so much. She trusted me, and here I was, killing her baby, by the sounds of it! When we put the kitten in the crate, mommy kept trying to get in, crying for the baby, rubbing against the crate. It was horrible, and I was very upset by the whole thing. I had to pull it together to finish up the process, as we were not giving up! It took quite a while to get mommy to calm down enough to eat and call babies again. We had to put the crate with the kitten near the burrow as well, because mommy wouldn't leave it. There wasn't much room there as it was, so this just made it more tricky. I resumed my flat on my belly in the mud position and waited again. Finally we had the whole family and were able to transport them to Les's (she will be fostering them).

When we let them all out of their travel crates into the large area Les had set up for them, it was beautiful! That tiny, sick, malnourished mommy was so happy to see her babies. They all cuddled, purred, groomed. The feeling of seeing that beautiful family of four happy and safe together was one of the highlights of my life. They will now get the necessary medical care and will be adopted into permanent, loving homes--but not until they are older and ready. They will be able to enjoy some safe, happy family time for a while now. That tiny young cat was such a good mommy! I'm so impressed by how she managed to survive and keep her babies safe under such dire circumstances. She had obviously been a pet at some point in her life, as she was very tame, affectionate and trusting. She's an inspiration and a better mother than so many humans I see.

I was so focused on the situation itself, that I never thought to bring a camera. I wished, when I saw the beautiful reunion, that I had! One of the group members who was there--she lives in Beloit and would drive by periodically to see how it was going--had her camera there. She took these pictures for me. They don't even begin to capture their cuteness! You can see that after exploring, the more daring of the three decided to nap up in the little cat bed, while the others took their nap with mommy.

Of course when I returned home last night (around 11:30), tired and full of adrenaline, I realized I had to disinfect before I came in the house. My cats typically come greet me right at the door, and I couldn't expose them to the potential danger I could have brought in from the other cats. I was aniticipating having to do this outside before I came in, but I could see when I peeked in the door that there were no cats there yet. I walked in the door, stripped down as fast as possible, ran to the downstairs bathroom and closed the door on Lila, who was trying to follow me in, and disinfected. Bleach wipes made for fast and easy work but don't feel particularly great on the face. I had snuggled mommy against my cheek, though, and kissed her, so I had to be thorough.

We still have to get one male (black, too), who is living in the woods there. He's covered in burrs, the poor little guy! :( He's very shy, and we can't get close to him. We will be able to get him, though, by setting up a live trap with some stinky canned food in it, for a few hours each day. It's a lot easier to catch one than a whole family! He definitely needs to be neutered! We are working with Stacy (the restaurant employee who's our liason) to make sure he is fed and given fresh water daily, until we're able to catch him.