Tell me why you're going again?

"For fun," I said. I was talking with my mother during one of our regular Saturday morning phone calls.

We're leaving today for a very quick trip to London. How quick? We fly home Monday. We've been before so we're not trying to see and do everything in two days. That's a good thing since we'd have to stay up the entire time and we'd still miss things.

Our goals for this trip are three-fold:

• Shop for fabric
• Eat Indian food
• See my sister and her daughters

It's a quick trip, but we'll have a good time and we're really looking forward to it.

Tired of politics?

I know I am. So here’s a political story of a different stripe.

Kent’s been working hard on his photography and in addition to taking a class this fall, he’s also submitted some of his work to various Flicker groups – local groups, genre groups and also a high resolution group. For that last group, he submitted these two pictures:

Wally’s picture was selected but Eddie’s was not.

OK, maybe it's a stretch to say it’s political. But one got chosen and the other didn't and besides, it’s all I could come up with the day after a debate I don’t care about.

You can see more of Kent’s work here.

Edited to add that Kent just told me both pictures eventually got selected. Now that's what I call win/win.

He's been sleeping in my boots

Click the picture so you see the larger image. See all that yellow fur? That's from Wally, who apparently thinks the insides of my boots makes a great cat bed.

Cat fur, the new accessory?

Picture this

The scene:

It's night and we are both asleep. 

I am awakened by the sounds of gentle snores. I reach over to the right side of the bed to nudge Kent so he’ll shift his position and stop snoring.

I touch fur where I expect to touch his shoulder. I wake up just a bit more. I realize I've touched a cat. In fact, it’s the cat who’s snoring. Specifically, it's this cat:

Last night she slept up between our heads with her body aligned like ours. I think I touched her rump, but she never stirred. She turns 12 this month—possibly 13, she was between one and two years old when I got her. I guess she’s entitled to her snoring. 

Sometimes he bites

And sometimes he licks plastic. Today he licked.

I get a fever

When I was a little girl, I was sick a lot. Between my evil tonsils and my rotten ears, I was down for the count pretty often with tonsillitis, bronchitis, ear infections, strep throat and—in second grade—mononucleosis. And I tended to pick up any gut virus floating around, something that’s continued to plague me as an adult.

My mother would make me soft boiled eggs on saltines, and I got to drink ginger ale then too. It’s funny, I don’t turn to ginger ale any more when I get sick (probably too closely associated with the various stomach bugs I got), but I still love the soft boiled eggs on crackers.

I will say that no one else in my family loves them the way I do. In fact, they all turn away in disgust. Yes, the eggs are soft and bland (some would say slimy)  but isn't that the point? To eat something soft that won’t hurt a tender throat or upset an already roiling gut? Plus they’re easy to make: simply slip an egg or two into barely boiling water and let them simmer for three minutes. Take them out, crack them open and spoon them over the crumbled-up saltines. Add salt if you so prefer (which I do) and then gratefully eat the supreme comfort meal.

It's a hard boiled egg, but
doesn't it look like a chicken chef?

Kent demonstrated the depth of his love for me a few years back after one of my many surgeries. I really, really wanted the eggs but hadn't recovered enough to go make them. So he did it for me, manfully swallowing his gorge over something he finds so gross. Sad really, if he tried them I think he would like them. Or maybe not.

Anyway, I came home from work last night running a fever over 102F. I haven’t run a fever in years. And I could tell from how I felt that it was almost certainly going to be an unpleasant night with my innards. So I made some soft-boiled eggs on crackers because I was hungry but didn't want to inflame things more by eating something less soft or bland. I thought about taking a picture of them last night to share with you all. I didn't  both because I felt so crappy and also they wouldn't photograph well at all. They look very white and bland—mostly white eggs on all white crackers. But they tasted great. 

I should whisper

Because Wally has changed. Yes, he's still a very smart cat (too smart for his own good) and he gets bored very easily. But he's learned to come ask for affection and petting instead of being so destructive like he was here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

It only took five and a half years.