One-Upsmanship, Kindergarten Style

A conversation overheard while substitute teaching in kindergarten!

Child #1: My mom is going to have a baby next month!

Child #2: Oh yeah? Well, my Dad is pregnant.  He's going to have twins!

Child #1: I say your Dad this morning, and those babies look like they're going to pop out any day now!

Monday Musings

Graduations!
 It's happened!  Two kids graduated!  Youngest child graduated from the Community College, and Middle Child graduated from his 4 year school.  That deep sigh that you hear from me is a sigh of deep contentment.  Two kids now have 4 year degrees!  Only one left to go!  Daughter is transferring to a four year school in the fall.  She's going to continue to live at home and commute.  The school is about 40 minutes away from home.

One thing hasn't changed - college graduation ceremonies are very long, day long events.  We spent close to 5 hours tied up at Middle Child's ceremony.  The doors opened at 11:30, and the ceremony started at 12:30.  We got out at 4:00.  By the time we found the car, got out of the parking garage, and got my Mother In Law Safely delivered home, it was after 6.  Exhausting but exhilarating day! 


A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Growing Up
When he was little, middle child was appalled that I used to bring home made things to school for events.  Home made cookies and cupcakes were packed in his lunch, and his sandwiches were frequently wrapped in home made tortillas.  I would send in home made goodies for events at school, and one particularly memorable sleepover, we had make your own pizzas that featured dough that I had prepared in advance of the evening.  He was mortified that I was making stuff that didn't look as nice as what you could find in the store.  He told me it was embarrassing.  I kept doing it anyway, because that's what I did to cut down on expenses.

Fast forward many years.  Yesterday, middle child was getting ready to go over to a friends house for a night of Dungeons and Dragons.  How did he spend his afternoon?  Making a huge batch of soft pretzels to take with him.

(Oh, by the way, his pretzels are amazing.  He makes them gluten full when he takes them out, but he makes the gluten free for me! He made me a mini batch of gluten free before he began his gluten filled batch to take with him.)

Tiger's Memorial Garden
We finished Tiger's garden.  We wanted to make it into a place a cat would love to hang out, so we've planted berry bushes (holly bushes), a rhododendron, and a couple of azaleas.  He loved hanging outside under the bushes, so we made sure we had big bushes along the back of the garden.  We put Hostas in the middle ground, and big New Guinea Impatiens in the front.  Daughter has bought a couple of solar powered lanterns that she placed in the garden.  One is a very small tree like thing, and the other is a glass bird.  We finished the area with a stepping stone that daughter and I made for him.

Unintended Consequences
Finally fixing the bathroom has led to an unintended consequence: more deep cleaning.  I had to empty the linen closet by the bathroom so the workmen could get into the plumbing for the bathtub.  I just pulled everything out of the closet and tossed it into the living room when they were coming.  Moving everything back into the closet has led to some serious cleaning and tossing.  I found toothpaste that expired in 2001, ya'll.  Think about that for a minute.  2001.  We didn't even live here at that time.  It was a brand of toothpaste I never use because I am allergic to one of the ingredients.  That means my in-laws left it here when they moved out, and I never dealt with it at the time.  I've been living in the house for 11 years now.  It does make me wonder exactly why I was avoiding that closet for the last 11 years, though.  I'm going to have to go through an inventory with you one day soon.... it's an eye opener!  (I don't want to out the toothpaste company, though.  I threw out 3 tubes of toothpaste today.  I'd like to think I would have used it if I could have!)

Quick and Easy Dinner
We've been trying to make food from other cultures. I'm also looking to find foods that are easy to make on the evenings that I work long hours.  Anything that makes our evenings easier when I get home late is heaven sent.

I found a recipe for Slow Cooker Banh Mi Bowls on the Skinnytaste blog.  I tried it this past Friday night.  It was amazing.  All told, I spent less than 15 minutes on prep for this delicious dish!  I bought the shredded carrots and matchstick radishes at the salad bar, and set them to marinate before I went to work.  When husband came home, he cooked the brown rice and shredded the red cabbage.

When I walked in the door, the smell was absolutely sublime.  It tasted even better.

You can find the recipe here: Banh Mi Rice Bowls

Graduations!!!

My middle child is graduating from college later this week.

Youngest child is graduating from the community college today.

I've got family literally crawling all over the house!

Oldest child has been home for a week now, and I have been the happiest of mommies!

I'm taking a break this week - I'll start posting again after Memorial Day.

Believe me, I've got a ton of things to say and share, but for now - I want to spend my time and energies with my kiddoes!  They'll all be off and back to their own adventures soon enough.

If you've got the time this week, please keep little Coquito from Life in Amy's World in your prayers.  He's been in the hospital for almost a month now with chemo treatments, secondary infections, low blood counts, low platelets... the list just goes on.  To top it all off, his Daddy was admitted to the hospital with pneumonia.  Please keep them all in your prayers.  It's been a rough couple of months for them.

Spoiler Alert

I was helping a young man find a movie about Samson and Delilah at work the other day.  It was a movie he had seen before, so finding the exact match was a little tricky.

Once we finally found the movie, he began telling me about the story...  Almost word for word, here as his words as I remember them:

Samson was this like, really strong guy.  Like stronger than the Rock.

He got all of his strength from his hair, so he never cut it.

And then he met this woman who was bad for him.  Her name was Delilah.  Samson loved her but she was like, seriously bad.  She tricked him and found out that he got all of his strength from his long hair.  So she cut it. 

But then, his hair grew back, and he was strong again.

And then, he was in this building and he went to push the building and

*SPOILER ALERT*

The building fell down!  Can you believe it?

(Yes, he really did shout spoiler alert!  I smile every time I think about it!)

Mothers Day

Most women get candy or flowers for Mother's Day.  How many people can claim that they get their very own throne?  #spoiled

Busy Morning

Years ago, I wrote this piece from the point of view of Tiger. Enjoy!

2002-2017


This has been a particularly busy day for me today.  The morning began when I gently sat upon the chest of my human.  When she refused to open her eyes, I gently batted her face with my paws.  She rolled over and knocked me to the floor.  Silly human!  As if throwing me to the floor could prevent me from stalking her! 
Since patting her on the face didn't seem to work out so well, I had to resort to other, less civilized (but much more effective) means of waking her up.  I bit her toes.

Once she was out of bed, I moved on to the next of my victims.  Humans number two and three were still snoozing gently in their beds.  I love these two boy humans.  They feed me, they scratch me, and every once in a while, they will get me my favorite treats.  I was so excited at the prospect of them playing with me before they caught the ride in the large yellow limousine at the corner, I jumped on top of each one of them until they began moving. 

After I woke everyone in the house up, I insisted that they let me outside.  I stood by the kitchen door, scratching and meowing until they opened the door.  Once the door was open, I stood and sniffed the breeze.  Since it was rather chilly out this morning, I quickly turned around and went back inside.  My young girl human had just moved out of her bed, so I quickly slid into the warm place under the covers that she had left just for me.  Ahhh... it was so nice and warm, I quickly fell back asleep.

When the two boys left for the big yellow limousine, I followed after them.  I went outside and walked with them just to the edge of the driveway.  They went to the left to walk to the corner of the street.  I turned to the right and quickly darted into the special slot in the street made just for us cats.  You know, there are several of them along the sidewalks.  They are about 3 feet wide, and several inches high.  There is a big slab of white rock over the top with a hole like a circle in the top, covered with another brown circle.

I stood on the ledge just inside of the fort and waited until the yellow limousine safely picked up my boys, and then I proceeded furthur underground into the maze that is the fort. 

My girl goes to the right at the end of the driveway to catch her yellow limousine.  You see, I go through the maze and wait for her near her waiting place.  While she is standing and waiting with her friends, I reach out with my lightning fast paw and grab shoelaces.  My goal for the morning is to untie all of the laces without being seen before the yellow thing comes.  It was a good morning for me.  I untied all 10 pairs of laces without being detected!  Boo-Yah!

Bathroom Tile

The tile formerly known as yellow.

Disclosure Notice: This post contains Affiliate Links.

While I really wanted to have the old yellow tile ripped off the walls of the bathroom, it cost more
than we had in our budget.  After doing a lot of research, we decided to try painting the bathroom tile - to re-enamel it - so that it still looked like ceramic tile.  White ceramic tile, but ceramic tile.  Our thought was that if it looked horrible, we were giving ourselves enough time to rip out the tile ourselves and replace the wall with bead board paneling or ceramic tile.

Thankfully, the experiment worked!

Here's how we did this:

1) We used this product:



2) Husband spent time following the directions to the letter.  He cleaned the tile with Comet, cleaned it again using Lime Away, and then lightly sanded the tile.  Keep in mind, we're talking a LOT of tile here.  This is the tile on the walls surrounding the entire bathroom.  The tile came a little over halfway up the walls.

3) After the first coat, the walls looked like this.  (And the house smelled HORRIBLE.)

4) Since we had the time, we waited a week before we painted on the second coat.  The walls looked like this when we finished:

5) We still have time to add another coat if we want.  We've got another week or so before the installation of the floor begins!  What do you think, should we go for a third coat?

Look at that snazzy new baseboard heater!!

So, even without the help of the Property Brothers, HGTV, or This Old House, this project is getting done!!!   I don't want to discourage anyone from HGTV from helping us out here.  Believe me, we've got MORE big projects that need to be done.  This is just the first of many.

The Fuzz Factor

I originally wrote this piece from Tiger's viewpoint after a memorable morning.  I was attempting to get the kids out of the house and off to school when this happened.  Even though it's been close to ten years since this happened, I can still remember the mouse scurrying along the kitchen baseboard, and Tiger watching us with great disappointment.  And I can still see Oldest Son sitting on the floor, having a very serious discussion with the cat about people food.   He never did teach us to hunt! 

I had a great day in the yard this morning. 

I love fall.  You see, the small grey mice are scurrying around, looking for new, warmer places to spend the winter.  I just love playing with the mice.  This morning, I had one for breakfast.  Mmmm....yummy mice.

I was out early this morning.  For some reason, my humans let me out early today.  After I had my breakfast, it hit me that my humans did not know how to hunt.

The oldest boy human should be able to hunt for himself now, and yet he spends his time looking for prey in the noisy white box in the kitchen.  What kind of parents are those two grown humans anyway?  They should be teaching their young humans to forage for themselves!!

Anyway, since I was up and about early this morning, I decided it was time to boy human #1 to hunt.  I thought I would do it just like my mother did for me.  I would cripple the mouse, and then bring it to him so that he could kill it off.  Fortunately, the mice are frantically scurrying around now, looking for food, so it was easy to find another mouse to offer to the oldest boy human.

I knew my humans were up, I could see them stalking the giant white box for food.  I caught my mouse and brought it over to the door.  Keeping the mouse safely tucked into my mouth, I began scratching at the kitchen door to be let in. 

Perfect!  Boy #1 opened the door for me!  I bounded in and dropped the mouse at his feet.

Ungrateful humans!  The mother jumped onto the kitchen chair.  Boy #2 began laughing so hard tears were coming out of his eyes.  Boy #1 looked like he didn't know what to do.  He picked up my mouse by the tail and tossed it back outside!  That was a great breakfast!  Freshly caught mouse, and he just tossed it aside like a used catnip mouse.  I scolded him with my whiskers back, and he sat down with me and tried to explain something about "mouse is not people food." 

I switched my tail at him and went back outside.  Fortunately, I was able to find my mouse quickly, and I sat down to enjoy my second breakfast.

How can I be expected to teach my humans how to hunt if they don't take me seriously?

Indoor Plumbing

Finally, finally, finally.  Our indoor plumbing is up and running!

The plumber had to come out and dig the line out from the house to the septic tank, and then replace the line from inside of the house, through the foundation wall, and out to the tank.  Our plumber showed up at 8 am this morning to begin work on what I thought was going to be a massive undertaking.  3 hours later, the line was replaced, water was running out of the house (instead of into the basement) and we are able to use our indoor pipes once again!

The bonus?  Our plumber upgraded the plumbing on that line to meet current building code!  Who-Hoo! One less thing to worry about!

Backhoe coming up the hill.

This is where the pipe failed.

 

Pipe is gone!  There's sunshine coming through that hole!

New pipe in place, cement around the hole.  Now to clean up that wall...

Pipe from the outside - house to the septic tank.

We lost the bush here. The pipe you see coming up from the ground is the clean out for the plumbing. Building code met.

Total Time: 3 hours 15 minutes.
Ability to use indoor plumbing: priceless.

BTW: This is where I wanted to fix the landscaping in front of the house.  Do you remember my resolution to fix the landscaping here?  This is the spot!  I'm glad the backhoe took out the bush instead of us! (He wouldn't agree to take out the rest of them, though.)

Now this

Luna

Since Tiger's passing, Luna has been very sad and quiet.  She has been hanging out in all of Tiger's favorite hidey-holes.  She's not been as talkative as usual. She's been disappearing for long periods of time, and when I find her, she's in one of Tiger's favorite quiet spots.  Because of this, we decided to take her to the vet.  We wanted to make certain that she is healthy, and find out what we can do to help make her adjustment to a life without Tiger a little bit easier.

Our amazing vet spent a half an hour with Luna, talking with her, cooing at her, giving her some awesome scritches and asking us questions.  Once Luna gets through her kitty mourning, she will be fine.  We don't know how long her mourning will last, but we need to keep her as happy and content as possible.  And we need to keep her challenged.

Our vet then shared with us information about Enrichment toys for cats.  These aren't the same as chew toys for dogs - or even catnip toys (of which she has many).  No, these are food puzzles.  It seems that cats in the wild only catch 15% of the food that they hunt.  Thus, they are able to keep themselves slim and trim.  In our house, the cats only have to walk over to the food dish and eat their fill.  It's seemed to be a good method, but Luna needs more stimulation right now, and she needs to lose a few of those little pounds that she has recently gained.

And so, we've spent the past couple of days making food puzzles for her.  Right now, she has an open egg carton filled with food.  She has to put her paw into the egg holes and get her food out.  We have each little cup filled a little over halfway with food.  She puts one paw down in the lid of the egg carton to hold everything still while she fishes for her food. 

We've been working on making the next one right now.  We've taken a small water bottle and cut a couple of holes in the sides.  The idea is that we'll put her food in the (empty) water bottle and leave it in the spot where the egg carton is now.  She'll have to bat it around in order to get the food out.  Our goal is to eventually have enough different kinds of enrichment feeders that we'll be able to put a new one out every day for two weeks without repeating anything.

If you'd like to find out more, you can follow this link that our vet gave us:
http://foodpuzzlesforcats.com/

Tiger

Sweet little kitty with the heart of a warrior.

 

Tiger passed away last week at the grand age of 15.

He followed my daughter down to the bus stop when she was in Kindergarten.  He was trying to catch the straps on her back pack.  He watched her climb onto the bus, and then he followed me home.  I opened the door, and he darted inside and climbed into the dryer, on top of the nice warm laundry, and refused to move out.

We posted signs all over the neighborhood, but nobody ever claimed him.  He stayed in our house and became a part of our family.  For 15 years, he's been there with us, a part of our family, always in the middle of everything.  He allowed the kids to dress him in doll clothes and push him around in the stroller.  I can't even begin to tell you how much I miss this little guy.  He's been with me through so much - a mainstay when my Dad passed, and the furry little pillow who would get up when I had trouble sleeping and insert his purring little self up under my hand.  He always knew when I had a bad day, and he would just sit with me, purring and licking my hands and face until I felt better.

I am really going to miss that little kitty.



Old Posts about Tiger

A Word From the Cat
August 19, 2011
November 3, 2011
July 5, 2013
July 25, 2013
September 28, 2013
January 15, 2013
January 28, 2014



Taking the Cats to the Vet

From the Cats
July 20, 2012

2017 Resolutions - April Update

April has not been the best of months.  My beloved Tiger, cat with the heart of a Lion passed away.  After 15 years with our family, he tried his hardest to stay with us, but it was his time.  I really am going to miss that cat.  I've tried to capture in words what he meant to me - but I just can't.  He was there for me through thick and through thin - the kids going off to college, my Dad passing away, and the slow loss of all of my Dad's siblings.  New jobs, promotions, sleepless nights, and wonderful news - he was there for it all, purring and gently reminding me that my job was to scritch his ears.  

Once you get past that, this has been a great month for my resolutions!  I've met a lot of goals this month, including a long term goal we've had on the list for YEARS now!  I am so excited!


1) Complete 12 Home Improvement Projects in 12 months.
This month's project was an unexpected one.  The pipe that runs the water out of the house and out to the septic tank exploded - right where the pipe goes through the basement wall.  Not a planned fix, but the value of having waste water go out of the house can't be underestimated. 

2) Lose a Few More Inches Around My Waist
1/2 inch so far.

3) Get Away With My Husband - Twice
It happened once back in February.  It's going to happen again in July!  Who-Hoo!  Hopefully, this time I won't get sick while we're there!

4) Lenten Cleaning Challenge
Done!  40 Bags, boxes, dump runs - it has been finished!  There is noticeable improvement in the level of stuff in the house!

5) Post At Least 12 Book Reviews on my Books for Teens Blog
I was a little behind! I've caught up this month!
Every Falling Star: http://librarynut-booksforteens.blogspot.com/2017/04/every-falling-star.html
Strange the Dreamer: http://librarynut-booksforteens.blogspot.com/2017/04/strange-dreamer.html

6) Finish the Hallway Bathroom
In progress.  I am so excited to knock this one off of my list!
So far, we've replaced the baseboard heater, and husband has been re-enameling the wall tile (not the tub surround.)  Replacement of the tub, tub surround, vanities and toilet is scheduled for later this month.

Re-enameling the wall tile!  What a stink!

7) Participate in the NoSpenduary Challenge
 For the first three months of this year, we spent no unnecessary money.  This was the money we used to finance the bathroom remodel and pay the plumber to come in and fix the pipes so our water runs out of the house and not directly onto the floor of our basement.

8) Learn Another Language
I think I might have to give up on this. I am just not applying myself to this the way that I should.

9) 100 Things Every Marylander Should Do
I wanted to do a few more of these - the quintessential Maryland experiences.

My plan for today is to drive Charles Street from downtown to the Baltimore County Line.  Look for pictures later this week!

10) Daughter's Quilt
I've been working on it.  I hope to have it finished before the end of the year!

Luna "helping" me quilt.

11) Clean Out Closet and Dresser Drawers
I've been working on this.  I've cleaned out my closet, and the tall dresser.  I still need to get at the low dresser.  Somehow, I need to arrange to have more time in my week!

12) Clean Out the Little Room in the Basement and Make it Usable
I need more time in my week!

13) Work on Landscaping the Front Yard
The weather is warm enough.  However, after the death of Tiger, I am working on a Memorial Garden.  It's not going to be in the front yard, but it will be in the back yard, in one of the spots where Tiger liked to spend his time engaging in academic bird watching.  I've already planted a Rhododendron and a Holly Bush.  I've got more plans in the works....

14) Take At Least One Class Through the American Library Association
I finished the class!  I submitted two of the lessons that I wrote, and they have been approved as library programs for this summer!  Hooray!  It's going to be a great summer!  Even better?  I got a few more CEU's to add to the total number of hours I need to renew my teaching certificate.