Could be a sign

Chloe doesn't kitty pile with the other two cats. They've tried their entire lives but she is not interested. Sometimes she'll be so soundly asleep that she won't realize Wally has edged up next to her. As soon as she wakes up and notices that another cat is touching her precious fur, she grumps at the offending cat and scoots out of there.

Yesterday she woke up to find Wally sharing the brown cushion with her and he was on her sacred bear. Yet she stayed there for about five minutes. That's a long time for a cat who has established clear no-touching boundaries.

Some of what I've made

In this picture, you can see the large bag I made for Jen--it's the same pattern I used for my pink bag only here I've used heavier material which will make for a sturdier bag. You can't see the lining, but it's a laminated version of the monkey material you see on the rest of the projects.

I didn't want to use a print for kids on the outside of the bag because after all, Jen is an adult. But she's also expecting her third child, so I tried to make this bag useful for carrying around things for her children. I put pleats on the bottom of the large interior pocket and elastic on the top so she can put sippy cups in there. I made it big enough for two cups, I think. The laminated material can be wiped off if/when things get messy in the bag,

I also made a baby blanket, three bibs, three spit cloths and a hooter hider for nursing.

And here's a picture of the two throw pillows I made for us. As you can see, Eddie approves. 

Where the wild things are

This morning, I tried to collect some of the finished projects to box up and send to their recipient. I'd draped a jacket of mine over the projects to keep curious cats out of things. Only that strategy didn't entirely work since I found two cats curled up on the jacket.

I love how Eddie watched me very carefully while Wally studiously ignored me.

A mash up

No posting since Thursday because I've been working on a huge stack of sewing projects:

Nice floors, huh.

That mess is actually about 10 projects all stacked on each other. To date, I've finished five of them so I'm about halfway through.The cats, predictably, are entranced by the mess so at the end of the day, I have to carefully drape a blanket over everything so they don't get into things they shouldn't.

And here are two random, recent pictures of the greys. Chloe likes to sit on my lap staring at the computer and I managed to get a picture of her online obsession.

Chloe

Eddie loves it when we watch TV and will squeeze his girth into the smallest place possible, almost always on me, and then fall asleep with a paw draped to indicate his ownership.

Eddie

You're the one

My friend Jeanne sent me this inflatable rubber ducky.We've got a whole meme going about punching ducks and she pointed out that it's hard to punch a duck if you don't have one.

I wondered what the cats would think about it. Since Wally eats plastic, I thought there was a chance he'd just eat it, especially if I didn't blow it up. So I inflated it. Here's how they reacted--watch for Eddie's tail whip at the end:




Last night I left it on that chair while we watched some TV and it really bothered Eddie. So I moved it to the ottoman next to the chair and he was happier. Wally continues to stay away, and Chloe couldn't care less.

Another birthday!

March was a busy month for me. Both of my children were born in March and I always though that was the perfect month for having a baby. It's not winter any more, not really, but it's not so glorious outside that staying inside with a newborn is torture.

Today is Ben's birthday. We don't have a lot of baby pictures for Ben. That's partly due to the second child syndrome but also due to the film developers losing two rolls of film from Ben's first two weeks of life. Remember those days when you had to get your film actually developed?

But I do have this picture. Now I will say that while Ben rapidly turned into a really cute baby, he wasn't all that pleasing to behold at first. He was three to four weeks early and looked a little bit like a deflated Jabba the Hutt (sorry, Ben, it's true). He's about two days old in this picture and the markings you see on his face weren't actually there. This is a photograph of a projected slide and the slide had gotten damaged. Otherwise, yes, this is how he looked then.

And here's what he looks like today:

Happy birthday, Ben!

There’s no place like home?

We had some friends (husband and wife) over Saturday night and at one point the conversation turned to the Midwest. Seems he feels obligated to go to Oklahoma to visit his mother, with whom he isn’t particularly close, and to bring his wife since they’ve never met. But he doesn’t want to go to Oklahoma and thinks they’ll have a rotten time because it’s Oklahoma.

I suspect his reluctance stems more from the less than stellar relationship with his mother. But he’s chosen to focus his distaste on Oklahoma. Among other issues, he complained about all the narrow-minded and bigoted viewpoints he thinks they’ll run into when/if they go. I think he thinks people just start out casual, social conversations with huge political stink bombs and let things devolve from there. I found it so strange. I think reluctance to visit—not move to, but just visit—a particular location is really weird and pretty narrow-minded.

One of the best things about my last job was the traveling I did to parts of the U.S. that I would normally never think about visiting. I went to Sheffield, Texas*, Tomah, Wisconsin, and Guernsey, Wyoming along with other places you might have actually heard of. And while I wouldn’t want to move to any of those three towns, I saw some incredible scenery and met some really nice people. I know myself well enough to know that I enjoy living in a more urban environment than those towns offer. I’m still glad I got to see them, and if I had a chance to visit other, similar places, you’d better believe I’d go.

*Sheffield is so small, it doesn't even have a Chamber of Commerce web site!