Laura

https://thefridayfive.dreamwidth.org/145281.html

1. What’s harder to live without, chocolate or alcohol?

I was about to say chocolate, because I cannot stand the taste of alcohol. But honestly, while I love chocolate and would like to have it, rubbing alcohol is actually useful for its purpose, so I might have to go with that. (In the end, absent disinfection needs, both can be done without. As far as food, I vastly prefer chocolate. But.)

2. Does the colour yellow remind you of anything?

Daffodils, the sun, and not much else.

3. Who most annoyed you last week?

Me. Look, forgetting to do things and scrambling to catch up isn't fun.

4. Do you have a cutesy romantic nickname for your partner (or previous partners)?

That is between me and him. I do have cutesy (but not romantic, obvs) nicknames for the kids. And I will not share them either, because they would be rightfully annoyed.

Kala and Maria, however, are "kitchen kitten" or "chaos kitten" or "mighty huntress" (Kala only) or "sili-cat" / "silly cat", among many other things. (They are not kittens. They are still kittens. Chaos kittens go zooming through the halls and then launch, still at running speed, to the top of the cat stand.)

5. What is your favourite Stephen King movie?

This one's easy. I don't like horror in general, but I do like _Firestarter_ which...walks a line, a little bit, at least in movie form. Mostly I'm not a Stephen King fan, but that movie I do enjoy, on occasion.

I am tired and out of them. But I know why: I got the second dose of the shingles vaccine yesterday. On the plus side, the local reaction isn't as bad this go-round as it was for the first. On the minus side, the tired factor is at least as bad, maybe worse. But it will pass soon, and I'd far rather be tired for a few days than get shingles.

We will see how much chaos this week does or doesn't bring. I've kept it fairly light on appointments, because Scott is going in for jury duty tomorrow. After tomorrow we'll know if he gets seated and hopefully know more of whether that means I'm soloing school drop-off/pick-up or not the rest of the week. It is doable, but not fun. The busiest piece of the morning starts about 8 am, so if he is at jury duty he won't be helping with that. (The middle school starts at 9:15 am. Whee.)

At least the various decisions on the covid vaccine are all sorted out and we can get them scheduled now, and insurance should cover them. It was uncertain there for a bit, and I'm just as glad to have a clear answer.

The cats remain adorable. It has taken some effort to get Kala to stop trying to nap on our oldest's chromebook while he's doing online school, but she seems to settle for curling up behind it now.

Other than cats on keyboard, so far the school year is going well. And as always the school staff / teachers / etc. here are great. Possibly a little strained this year with the budget cuts, which is not ideal; I hope they're not running toward burnout.

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.

Andrew's registration fees for the after-school enrichment courses this term is paid. And Ian's kindergarten registration is filed now, and I can forget about it for the time being. Yay! It's different from when Andrew entered kindergarten, but not by a lot. No choice of half-day or full-day (it's all full-day now) and no fee for full-day. But now you need a form that they've had a dental and vision check. Before that was not required (although Andrew had had both; they simply didn't care if I had proof or not).

Also today, Andrew's backup pair of glasses arrived. He likes them, though hopefully he won't need to wear them often.

Tomorrow I have a meeting at Ian's preschool. Wednesday I have my annual physical (and have to fast for it, because blood tests), and Andrew has a dental appointment in the afternoon (which Scott is handling, fortunately for my ability to get work done). Thursday will hopefully be the day that I pick up Apple. Friday we have the gaming group over in the evening.

Saturday I may hibernate. ;)

Thank goodness for doing this; reading back over these reminds me of many, many little good things that can otherwise be forgotten. And as I write them it helps me really look at, and find the positives in, my days.

So, here's February and March. (Well, except the first couple days of February were on the last one.)

( That's a lot of lines.... )

Seriously, argh. So. There was Conflikt. We returned. Tuesday, Ian started day care, which means most of February I'm on leave and he's in day care (lets me respond if needed, and get stuff done otherwise).

So I need a fair amount of dental work (again...pregnancy hormones and the lower energy levels and no time and teeth that are soft to begin with...yeah, actually it was better than I feared this time!). So that's scheduled throughout February, I have my allergy shots (need to get back up to maintenance, since they're stopped the last month of pregnancy and resume after recovery), the cats needed to go to the vet, Drew had his 3-year pediatric appointment, Ian has a two-month appointment, Drew has a dental appointment....

February's gonna be interesting. But this week? Oh dear ... GAH. Monday we drive home, arriving basically in time for dinner. Tuesday we take both boys to day care, then I collect Drew later that morning for his pediatric appointment (no shots needed this year - I didn't expect that! It went well). Then I return phone calls for various appointments and whatnot. Today I got my allergy shots, then took both cats to the vet (they were THRILLED, I tell you, THRILLED - I was not - I had trouble getting Drew's car seat out of my car, the first time I've had to take it out since it moved to the side position and switched to LATCH attachment, and it was not cooperating--). Tomorrow I have a dental appointment and a routine medical exam/blood draw. Tomorrow evening is the gaming group, I hope I'm conscious by then.

And, you know, I have to pump milk for Ian in amongst these appointments, and I'd kinda like to clean the house as I'd intended because the state of my kitchen and pantry has me wanting to *scream*. (Not "it needs a scrubbing" - "it needs someone to decide where stuff goes and then bully it into place". Where 'someone' had better be me, because I am fussy about where stuff is, alas. Good thing Scott is comfortable with/accepting of my chosen order.)

(Also, kudos to Scott, who helped me *over the phone* with figuring out what I was doing wrong getting that car seat unmounted. Counter-intuitive interface ahoy! Now I know and next time it should be easy. Go figure. I'm going to have him guide me through putting it back in, rather than doing it himself, too - I haven't had to do that in this spot and I should, so I know.)

As for the cats, Ray's weight has held steady and he's a fine fit cat. Apple's dropped a pound, so we're going to give her a little extra canned and monitor, but we're not sure that there's an issue yet either, since that was over a bit more than a year. Apple got three vaccines, Ray got two, and since I released them in the house after the appointment, they have been studiously out of reach and mostly out of sight. :P

Going back to work won't be restful...but it may come close, relative to what I'm doing this week. Sheesh. It will at least involve fewer needles and less drilling.

And, yannow, I owe emails and such to various people...I am so behind on things. O.o If only I could get far enough behind to be ahead, but alas it doesn't work that way.

Oh, and laundry. And dishes. Babies make for a lot of dishes. So do toddlers. And both help make a lot of laundry.

Today has, on balance, sucked. Lots of work done at the old house, almost ready to list. And realized Apple was missing. Neither of us recall seeing her since last night...when Drew opened doors several times and left them. Neighbors haven't seen her. We've posted fliers, called vets, etc. More tomorrow. She's indoor-only. And no collar because she always took it off. Microchipped. I am so worried and heartsick. :(

Please come home, Apple, come home safe and sound.

The Cat Adoption Team has mentioned on their twitter feed how people feel about black cats, and the occasional black-cat story is made. Here's mine, but it doesn't fit in 140 characters.

When I was in fifth grade, we adopted a semi-feral little black shorthair kitten that had been near a friend's house. I'd wanted her brother - and we eventually got him, a black/white mix - but she was the one we were able to get hold of first and my mother loved black cats especially. And she turned out to be the better pet of the two (her brother was nice, but never fully tamed down).

We lived on a farm, and she was an indoor-outdoor cat. She quickly got named "Basta Ya!" (That's Enough!) or Basta for short. She was playful, full enough of energy for any two cats, and fun. And she would hunt and bring us bird bits. Ew. But she was a good huntress. And then, being an indoor outdoor cat, she disappeared.

We mourned. And some months later she came back, fat sassy and happy. We could only surmise she'd moved in with a neighbor for a while, who was now wondering where 'their' cat had gone.

This was the cycle for years. She would be there for a year or two, vanish for a number of months, and come back. She slowed down as a huntress over the years, but she started out a good snuggler and got better, and she had a very comfortable purr and head-butt. After about 10-12 years of age, she stopped vanishing and settled down to live with my parents.

When my mother was dying of lung cancer, Basta sat on the end of her hospital bed (in her room at home) most of the time, getting down only for food and water or to use the litter. Mom would tease her, sometimes, by bouncing her foot, because Basta often lay over it. Basta would wake up and look around, startled and out of sorts, then put her head back down and go to sleep.

After Mom died, the next night, Basta slept on the hospital bed. And then they took it away (it was rented), and Basta made Daddy cry - in the middle of the night, he heard her yowling. She was sitting in the middle of the room where the hospital bed had been, crying her heart out. He petted her, comforted her, picked her up and took her back to bed with him.

She lived six months after Mom died, and then she went herself; she was 21 years old, a venerable lady who still purred well.

She was one of the best cats I've ever known.

Ray finally found a cat bed that fits him.

Well, kind of, I suppose...I won't tell him if you don't.

...going to Google and pressing "I'm feeling lucky" with the search box empty today (New Year's). Very cool!

Also, I uploaded a ton of photos to my Flickr account. Most are of Drew and are friends/family only (if you have arstrasz mutually friended, you can also get to them from a post I made last night, and an email will be going out to friends/family later today - after I add a few photos I forgot to add last night!). But the other photos and videos, the non-Drew ones that are public, include Phoenix ZooLights, Oregon snow, and some of our cats.

( Four I'm especially fond of )

Happy New Year!