Laura

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it today, and happy Thursday to those who don't.

And for anyone who is having a rough time of whatever type, I send caring and hope it gets better in whatever way it can.

Meanwhile, I share a brief and silly story to brighten your day. We are having Thanksgiving dinner at home, and I don't normally cook a Thanksgiving dinner - let alone a full turkey. But as I was able to get a free one at the store while buying what I would have anyway, I am in fact cooking a whole turkey. Plus miscellaneous sides and so on, though at this stage there's very little left to be done other than application of heat and some mixing for some of them.

But! I was planning out tucking the roasting pan and the sheet pan the rolls will be on back in the oven to cool (so they won't be on the counter when I need that counter space!) later on. At the same time I was getting a kid some microwave pasta because it's hours yet until the feast and he was hungry now.

So I put on the oven gloves to take the bowl from the microwave (four minutes makes for a very hot glass bowl, and I prefer not to burn my hands), moved it to the hot pad I'd set out, turned back to close the microwave door, and - because I'd been thinking about returning things to the oven which is right next to the microwave - very nearly took the gloves off and tucked them in the microwave.

I'd have had a right hard time finding THOSE when I next needed them! Fortunately they are back where they are supposed to be, so I don't have to use a clumsier oven mitt to get the turkey out later, only to find what I needed a bit after when I microwave the peas.

And I complain about Christmas music this early. But tonight is the member preview night for ZooLights, so we are going - hopefully it will not end up being ironically more crowded as all the zoo members in the metro area have the same idea.

I think next year I may suggest we skip ZooLights and look for some other event to do - they exist! - because the drive through option that was added with Covid is now gone and the boys really preferred that. I *like* walking through, but honestly, I would have preferred driving through as well. So since I know we have some lights areas that ARE for driving through, clearly that is a better choice. (For lights: I still support the Oregon Zoo, I'll just find other ways to give them money than ZooLights.)

Forecast says we are going to get rained on, but not as heavily as if we'd gone later in the week.

I need to go get the trash and recycling down later today, pickup is tomorrow early, and I need to grocery shop, pack a lunch for Ian, etc.

Which list of things at least worked to get me to stop procrastinating on writing another post! I'm trying to rebuild the habit of posting here, and if I build it on the back of procrastinating household chores, I have at least still achieved it.

Now I have to go do those delayed household things, though. Alas.

...though I surely don't post like it. October was lovely and I got a lot of things done around the house and taking care of family health. The numbers are working out for me to just stay home, not go job searching. This doesn't preclude my jumping all over a job if someone points it out and it sounds fun/fascinating/interesting/whatever, but the bar is definitely high there, for now. The work itself would have to be worth the time given up to it, not just acceptable in return for money.

Handy, since our youngest has been home sick from school since Halloween with a nasty cough and fever. Negative for flu, negative for covid, negative for patience. Two doctor's appointments this week (the first was 'probably viral, he should get over it, come back if it is not gone by Friday'; the second was Friday). He's on high-powered antibiotics for it now so we will see how that does.

So far either none of the rest of us have caught whatever it is, or we recovered from it easily. (I *think* I may have actually caught it last weekend? But if so, it didn't last a day for me. Maybe I was just having a bad day; who knows?)

I need to find my cute reusable advent calendars and prep them (I need to start finding them now because I am not sure where I last put them away!) - the boys expect one, and I've been buying pre-made ones the past several years, but that costs more and is less personalized, and this year I have time. So that'll be fun.

Maria (tuxedo cat) managed to get some kind of bacterial or fungal infection on her right front paw, so the vet removed all the fur between her paw-pad and toes on the underside and she's been getting an anti-almost-everything cream 2-3 times a day. About half the times I put it on it's uncomfortable for her, and she growls very seriously - the warning rumble of a cat who is about to shred you if you don't stop. For the entire time I'm putting it on. Without following through on the threat. She really is a fairly well behaved cat.

However, it may or may not do the trick - the ointment - because she's SUPPOSED to be in a cone to keep her from licking it off. It took her two hours to figure out how to remove the cone the first time. Second time she did it in under fifteen minutes and it took us until the next day to find it. So I bought one of those orange-shaped donut cone substitutes. Very cute, off in less than half an hour. So I gave up and I cuddle and pet her for a while after most doses (sometimes she leaves too rapidly) to distract her and hopefully keep it on long enough. Statistically I can get her to be petted for longer than the cone or cone-substitute would stay on.

If I call the vet and they want to see her again to check it, I'm gonna say "I told you so" to the cat. And then I may just order this, because it has me giggling a LOT and I don't think she could take it off:

https://www.amazon.com/EMUST-Recovery-Breathable-Adjustable-Alternative/dp/B0CQX832HN/

Sadly the one with the green body suit, which is more accurate and cuter IMO, does not come in a size other than large, and Maria is not large for a cat.

It's finally rainy. I know the state of the world isn't what I want it to be, including climate and weather systems, but it finally feels like a proper fall here all the same.

So we lost our Apple cat earlier this year, to cancer. (She was 16 or 17.) I miss her so much, and I wish I'd had a crystal ball to do a little better by her. But we did our best.

We have two six-month-old kittens now, Kala and Maria, adopted from Cat Adoption Team. They and Ray are still at a bit of a standoff - he is very hissy at them when he sees them, so they are mostly living in the upstairs bonus room (and playing chase/raceway above our heads every morning, quite happily), which is also where Scott works from home, so they get lots and lots of people time if they want it. Fortunately only some of their people time interrupts his workday, or we'd have to rethink that arrangement.

With Twitter in a mess, I'm going to try to be more here, as well as on Mastodon and Instagram and Facebook. But let's be honest, I wasn't on Twitter a *ton*, so this is not going to free up a whole lot of my attention, and it's the holidays.

I did, though, want to share kitten picture: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cl7GVpmPYtQ/

There are a few others over there if you want, but that one is so far the very most adorable of the bunch.

Not that my life is very exciting lately, but that's a GOOD thing. After breaking my knee in December and all the stuff that followed, boring is good.

I'm working (going into the office now, but wfh is supported - office is optional and masks in the office are required whenever not in your own office by yourself). I'm arranging the usual bunch of before-school checkups and appointments for the boys. At least right now, they theoretically have school - and mandatory masks - starting in September. I'm waiting to see what happens with that and with the numbers.

Only our youngest isn't fully vaccinated; he's too young for the current approvals. Of course, vaccinated is still pretty vulnerable to delta and sharing it with others, even if not to severe disease. I don't like this pandemic or the way we've dealt with it so far. :P Darnit. :P

I hope that everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving had a good one. I did. We hung out at home until time to go up to our aunt and uncle's for Thanksgiving dinner - ran a little later than I intended, but still made it in time. As always, good company and good food. I love these visits!

There are rather more small children among the group than before - they were very loud and excited and happy - but in good ways. It was awesome.

The drive isn't short, but it isn't super-long or hard either, and I'm glad we can make it each time that we do.

As for Black Friday, I got half-price socks, so I'm good. (I also had to go into Costco that day, because Ian wanted my homemade clam chowder and I needed clams. Fortunately, while Costco was semi-mobbed, the grocery section was mostly empty. No BF deals there, but they had the clams I wanted, so it works well.)

Well, this morning had a little minor excitement. We got up to find a bat sleeping on the ceiling of our downstairs hallway.

It has now been trapped and released. And no, I'm not worried about rabies: the professionals weren't, the cats have had their shots, and everyone was sleeping with bedroom doors closed and saw the bat only when we got up. And it was asleep on the ceiling the whole time.

...I don't even really have a suitable tag for this. And I hopefully don't need one. This should be a fairly unique topic for me, I would hope!

This evening I went for a lovely walk. Fall has hit with a vengeance; there are trees in every shade from yellow through brown, not counting the evergreens of course, and while a few are nearly-bare, most trees still have more leaves on them than underneath them. (Except for one enterprising tree I passed as the homeowner was raking: I swear that one had somehow managed to lose an entire tree's worth of leaves and still look almost completely filled in....)

The sky was a glorious clear blue today. (I love the rain, but that clear-sky blue is an amazing color, and I love it too.) The sun was well toward setting, the colors of the trees were vivid, and I was way too comfortable. Because it was 70 degrees. At 5:30 pm.

I uploaded a few photos (taken with my phone) to Flickr. Fine art they aren't, but I do think they capture the day a bit.

Here's one of the photos, and if you click through you can browse to the other two:

It has been a very busy week. But the parent-teacher conferences went fine, the appointment went fine, the benefits info for open enrollment this year at work was boring*, we had a team lunch and I was able to order something off the menu adjusted to be fine for me to eat (and it was tasty).

The road construction today was very much Not Wanted - I ended up parking at Graham Oaks and walking to the school (which is about a 5-minute walk) to pick the boys up from their school's-out program (which is at the school). On the other hand, they are doing the stretch in front of the schools today and tomorrow, when they are NOT open so it's just Club K attendees and some staff affected. It was originally going to be Tuesday and Wednesday next week, when it could have snarled up the afternoon school buses (among other things).

* Open enrollment info SHOULD be boring, in my opinion. It's very, very rare that any excitement around the open enrollment is good. I mean, if they want to do something exciting-but-good I won't complain, but I also won't ask for it unless it happens. But I do like to avoid exciting-because-it's-bad news. :)

(Actually, despite the subject line, I got up at my usual time! I just didn't go into work right away, but woke Andrew up and helped him get ready. I'll work later this afternoon, and get the same amount of time and effort in.)

WHEE. Both boys have a field trip today's; Andrew's is long. He had to be at school at 6:45 (an hour before he normally has to be there) and will be back at the end of the school day. But he got up early (when prompted, but without any difficulty getting up), got ready, and actually had time to play games before he had to go out the door.

Ian is awake and mostly ready; his bus to school isn't for another 20 minutes yet. (Their field trip is three hours start-to-finish, so no early arrival for him.)

I suspect the third grade gathering at 6:45 is partly due to how many things they're packing in, and partly due to the fact that they're headed up the Gorge - which means about a 65 mile drive each way, and that they're running the same direction as commute traffic for the first 25 miles or more. I wouldn't want to do that at 8 am, either.