A Quick Recap

Five lovely days in our favorite southern home-away-from-home is really... too short. Beach, pool, family... it was great, and went by way too fast.

Returned home to find flags installed on each and every unit in our neighborhood - it is about time! Did not realize ours was a bit fouled when I took this picture... still, they are gorgeous.

And, wait, who is this man holding my daughter?!

Yes, we got to see Don this weekend! His two-week training cruise aboard the Coast Guard Barque Eagle landed him in Baltimore for a weekend of liberty. The kids and I drove up on Saturday to tour the ship, eat lunch, and walk around the Inner Harbor a bit, exactly where we were exactly two months ago. Wonderful.

So, in summary, busy week of travel, awesome time to reconnect and catch up with D, psyched that we have a mere four weeks until we will be all packed up and moved out and returning to CT for a short bit. Oh, and we now have some ideas about what that next thing could be after Don's graduation, but I'll save that news for when it is more official. I'll try to come up with something interesting to write here in the meantime; I sure have plenty on my mind (and on my to-do list) these days.

More Old News

Way back in August during our Connecticut visits we had the opportunity to visit this lovely place with Don's mom and the kids. It was the perfect little "farm" experience for Amy and William.

Highlights included holding a bunny...

Feeding a very eager goat, and some equally-eager ducks and chickens...

And holding/petting a guinea hen chick...

William was so super-gentle about this, and kept looking up at the Mrs. Farmer as if to say, "am I doing this right?"

After the petting zoo portion of the morning we walked through the woods on the "Gnome Trail" on a clever little scavenger hunt. Good fun all around.

In more recent news, I sewed a really cute dress for Amy's baby doll today - at her request. Every time I sit down at the sewing machine I enjoy it so thoroughly that I wonder what in the world is wrong with me that I don't simply make more time for sewing. Sigh.

Otherwise my Big Project these days is packing a few boxes when I can and making all sorts of mental lists for what needs to be done once moving prep kicks into high gear in October. We've got one more little trip coming up and then it will be full steam ahead. Expect some Maryland reflections in the coming weeks as we prepare to leave the home where my kids have spent nearly their whole lives so far. Big Stuff!

Thoughts on Fostering

Today was a big day in the crazy-cat-lady realm. I feel rather emotionally exhausted, interestingly not unlike how I felt on THE September 11th... though obviously under much different circumstances.

Last week someone put in an application to adopt Garfield, one of the three brothers who we have been fostering since early July. All week long I knew he would be going to his new home today (and therefore took a lot of pictures). I did not know that the man adopting him would also decide to take his brother Harley, too (and therefore I did not get any recent pictures of Harley). They are off to the home of a single father with two adolescent boys and a boxer puppy. All us crazy cat ladies at Feral Cat Rescue were slightly uneasy at first, because frankly, not many men want to adopt cats. I personally stewed over this all week, hoping and praying that this would be a good and safe home for these sweetest of sweet cats.

Anyway, after meeting this man and his boys at Petco this morning we were all assured that this would be a good home for Garfield, and even happier when he agreed to take one of his brothers, too. Now there is my peace of mind knowing that the kittens will have each other in yet another new environment and have feline companionship while the house is empty during the day. It's all good.

And of course, this left me in the situation that I have been pondering for weeks - if two get adopted, will I keep the third? And the answer is, yes! I signed the papers and brought Humphrey home to stay. He seems a little lonesome for his brothers but I must remind myself that he is a cat and it does no good to project my human emotions onto him. He is comfortable and loved (especially by Amy who has favored him all along because he tolerates being picked up), and that is really all that matters to a cat. For them there is no past and no future; they just live in the present and are happy there.

So, fostering kittens... emotionally draining because I get attached. How can you not when you have this handsome little silent-meower jumping around the house?

It is hard because I don't want to mourn their loss - it should be a celebration of two more cats finding a home in the world. And I need to learn to release my control-death-grip that I like to have on life and learn to trust that the needs of every little critter will be provided for, even if I am not personally the one cracking open the can of food. God cares for the sparrows and the lilies and the kitties and all of us. Right? Right. But I will miss them.

So there, my crazy-cat-lady monologue for the evening. Thanks for your patience! And by the way, the "crazy-cat-lady" bit was from Don, who referred to me as such with utmost affection, and neither he nor I consider those who take care of multiple felines to be at all crazy. At least not very crazy.

Watching the Grass Grow

I am not a very good gardener. I say that not because I can't get anything to grow; on the contrary, I can grow things very well. My problem always comes at about this point in the season, when everything is all blowsy and overgrown and buggy and disheveled... then I sorta lose interest.

Our little vegetable garden really did just fine this season. The tomatoes I lovingly raised from seed all grew vigorously and while the "purple cherokee" kept splitting before I could enjoy them, the two cherry tomato plants produced abundantly. We had potatoes, and would have enjoyed cucumbers and a few beans if they had not all peaked while we were away. But since I am now on a mission to ready our house for moving I decided it was time to officially undo the vegetable garden. (Which Don first installed back here, by the way.)

It actually took me a very small amount of time to ruthlessly clip and rip out the remaining plants, take a big crowbar to the bed, and rake the dirt smooth. We had a bit of leftover grass seed to use but I will need more. I moved one of our dinky wire fences in front of this patch to deter general trampling by children... feline trampling seems unavoidable.

Amy was a little suspicious of all this "undoing" so I simply explained that the veggies were done and now we were growing a grass garden. That was enough for her (not that our moving is a secret to her, by the way), and she quickly sat down to Watch the Grass Grow. Excellent. One pre-move project done, one zillion to go.

Baltimore

I can't believe that an entire month has gone by since I took the pictures in this post. We spent most of August with family before Don left for OCS, but we started out our trip with a two-night stay in Baltimore Inner Harbor and it was lovely. This has become a favorite place of ours in the time we've lived in Maryland; we've taken Amy to the National Aquarium every year for her birthday. Since we wouldn't be doing that this year we decided to make our aquarium trip into a mini-vacation for just our little family before Don went away. We stayed in a very gracious hotel with an excellent view and enjoyed all the luxury that accompanied that, and splurged on a couple of very nice dinners out - something we rarely do. Add in our day at the aquarium and it was a perfect little trip.

A highlight for both kids was simply watching out the window from our room. We could look straight across the water to the aquarium. Amy stayed up late one night to see the city lights, and William simply loved watching the cars below, saying "vrrooooomm" all the while.

We took this blurry family portrait on a moving escalator at the aquarium...

And for the first time in our many visits there we saw the dolphin show. I was outside with a melting-down William for most of it, but Amy LOVED it, and she has cherished the pink dolphin we got her as a souvenir ever since. She also took this picture:

Oh, and I insisted that we take a picture of the four of us in front of our house before we left since we don't really know if we'll ALL be back here together again, and I simply wanted a record of "Us, Here."

So there we are. I'll be back with some more highlights of our August adventures, and any other interesting current events that pop up in the meantime.

Creepy-Crawlies and Other Things Taking Over My Yard

There is magic that happens in a garden when you leave for a few weeks. I swear, nothing grows with such enthusiasm as it does when no one is looking.

We have been growing Morning Glories in this yard every summer, and saving the seeds. So between the self-sowing and reseeding that we do, we have achieved (perhaps over-achieved) our goal of having morning glories everywhere. Oh my.

I couldn't even get the lawnmower out tonight because there is a vine wrapped all the way up the handle.

But really, I can't get enough... this is what the corner of the yard looked like when we got home around 5 pm last night... a little scary, right? I mean, the wind chimes have been swallowed whole.

But I step outside this morning and, well, wow. And the pictures really don't do them justice.

The vegetable garden is in there somewhere, but I haven't gotten to it yet. Today I focused on pulling out some spent sunflowers (seeds eaten and everything!), and deadheading the cannas. And in doing so I found this lady:

Now, in four summers here in the quasi-south my spider-creep-out threshold has increased dramatically but still, heebie-jeebies! that is one big spider. Of course I leave them be, because I am a good nature-girl and I know spiders are my friends and all that, and really, I have no desire to mess with a spider over 3" long. I think what creeps me out about the spiders in the yard is not only how many separate species of gigundo spider we've come across, but where are they when we don't see them...?

Anyway, on to a far less creepy creepy-crawly:

Thoughts? We did not plant this. I don't think we even ever ate anything like this. (We composted right on top of our gardens during the winter). This mystery squash-thing is like a large, flat, white, jack-be-little pumpkin. It's really cute... kinda looks like a flying saucer... I don't know whether to eat it or decorate with it, but hey, gotta love the volunteers.

Oh, and if you need a little music to go with this post, try this, a not-very-high-quality version of the song I get in my head every time I step out the backdoor in the morning. One of Don's and my first dates was a mini road trip to see these guys.... just about exactly seven years ago! Good times.

PS - Got a nice chatty letter from Don today, sounds like everything is just ducky, and he should get a chance to call this week or next!

Back-Logged

Or I suppose back-blogged would be an even better term. I just unloaded 408 pictures and don't even know where to begin when it comes to catching up my kind little audience here on what we've been up to this month. I will get caught up, I promise. We are home now from a 3 week stint away so I will be getting back to my usual routine and as things settle out I'll get back on track here. In the meantime, can I tell you about my fabulous day?

First off, the only un-fabulous part: saying goodbye to my parents after 2+ weeks firmly entrenched at their house and enjoying every minute of it. Also un-fabulous because it is slightly possible that I'll never come back to that house in exactly the same way, as we are all hoping it sells in the next month or so. But that's another story. On to the good stuff, rapid-fire:

- A smooth and safe drive back to Maryland with my two little passengers who are so very good and patient on long car rides.

- Slipping down I-95 before any earthquake nonsense. I don't know if it ended up causing traffic problems around Baltimore or DC, but I didn't find any. Phew.

- A church sign reading: "Life forecast: God reigns and the Son Shines." I'm sure it's been said before but it was one of those things that hit me at exactly the right moment, and all was well.

- The ice cream truck that pulled up just after we pulled into the driveway, AND having cash in my pocket (thanks, Mom!) to get the hugest, tastiest ice cream sandwich any of us have had in a long time.

- Huge gratitude to my pre-vacation self, who busted her hump cleaning the whole house before we left, and huge gratitude to my cat-sitter who kept up the house so nicely that I had very little of that post-vacation flurry of cleaning to do upon walking in the door. Incidentally, paying someone $16 a day to watch your cats is totally worth it just for that.

- There wasn't much in the fridge, but there was a bottle of Blue Moon. And fixings for grilled cheese. Need to hit the grocery store tomorrow but I don't even know where to start...

- Amy remembered what I told her about our "new" bedtime routine, and all on her own she picked out books for me to read to William so I could get him to sleep first. That part didn't quite work out, but it was a super-sweet bedtime with both kiddos anyway.

- Best of all, a surprise 6 pm call from... Don!! It was brief, but it was wonderful.

Okay, there is much else to do around here before I crash for the night. More from me in the coming days!!