I shot the video when everyone else was out of the house and then showed it to them when they got back. Thomas edited the video and added the sound effects. Note that Rory was doing this for several minutes before I grabbed the camera. Crazy kitten!
More than a million roses bloom
Thomas’ term came to an end on Friday and he still had unfinished homework. Homework has been an ongoing concern all year and the frustration level for everyone involved is high. We’ve been working on getting him organized and learning to break big projects into smaller chunks, but he still becomes overwhelmed and fails to factor in his busy schedule. He was originally scheduled to join his Boy Scout troop on a campout this weekend but we made him stay home and finish this project that had been due on Friday. He was lucky that his teacher allowed him until Monday morning to finish it before she submitted his final grade. Still, it’s been a struggle all weekend to keep him focused on the task and he’s still working on it even now. A few weeks ago we addressed these issues with him and his teachers during conferences and he said he had a good plan going forward. Since that plan has failed it’s time for our plan. More on this as it develops.
Aside from that, it’s been a very nice weekend here. The sun has been out and we even left our windows open last night. We spent this morning doing some yard work and then we let the kittens out but not for very long. It’s too hard tracking all three at the same time!
Thanks to Kathy Sue, we also have been enjoying a Starz Preview Weekend on DirecTV. My Tivo is overflowing with movies now and I’ve made most of them green (“Keep Until I Delete”) so we’ll need to watch some movies this week. We’ve already watched several including a really scary one with Luke Wilson called Vacancy. Tina kept squeezing my fingers when we were watching it and then claiming that I was squeezing hers!
Learning songs about the one that got away
Yesterday, part of my IM conversation with Tina went like this:
Tina: so guess what?
Me: what?
Tina: there is a surprise for you in the boys bathroom. it has paws.
Me: mouse?
Tina: and it scared the shit out of me
Tina: yep
Tina: wrapped up in a towel
Tina: waiting for you to come home and throw it away
Me: we should set traps again
Tina: thinks that’s a good idea
Tina: at first i thought it was a toy
Tina: then i saw blood
Tina: then i screamed
Tina: and threw a towel over it
Me: haha
Tina: mice are scary
I was able to guess the answer easily because this is the second we have found this year. The first we took from one of the kittens more than a week ago after they had eaten the guts out of it.
After I got home last night, I went into the bathroom and grabbed the towel in question. I took it out into the garage and put it into the garbage can, which is conveniently full to the top. I unwrapped the folds and found a positively live mouse looking at me inquisitively. There was no sign of blood and the little fellow look quite healthy. I quickly refolded the towel and went back into the house. “That mouse is still alive,” I whispered to Tina. The range of emotions that passed over her face was pretty amusing.
I found a plastic container in the recycling and dumped a little baking soda in it and returned to the garage with the intent of gassing the critter. I put the container on the floor and began to unfold the towel to dump the mouse into the container. Unfortunately, he landed right next to the container and took off under the car. Baby, who just happened to be in the garage with me at that moment, immediately pursued the new toy under the car. I assumed that he would emerge with mouse in mouth, but I was wrong. Soon he was digging around behind some shelves where his brother joined him, but they never caught the bugger.
When Graham got wind of the situation, he refused to go to bed. We eventually talked him into it, but I think that the presence of his nightly companion reassured him that he would be safe from any rogue rodents that might trespass into his bedroom.
Rory spent most of the evening camped in front of the stove intently looking underneath it. Since that was a prime spot for catching mice last year, I’ll put a couple of traps under there tonight as well as one by the cat food and one under the dishwasher.
Rory comes home
As I tried to drift off to sleep Sunday night (er, Monday morning), I imagined the conversation that the cats had when Rory appeared again after being gone for three days. Here’s the scene:
Ming is laying on the back of the couch in the library room and Baby is relaxing nearby on the rocker/glider. Butters bursts into the room exclaiming, “Rory’s home! Rory’s home!”
Ming slowly opens his eyes and says, “Rory’s phone? Rory has a phone? Then someone should call her because I haven’t seen her for awhile.”
“NO, MING,” Butters shouts, “I SAID THAT RORY IS HOME!”
“I can barely hear you, boy, you’ll have to speak up! You say Rory’s alone? I bet she is, she’s been gone for awhile.”
“No, no, no, ” says Butters. He turns to Baby and says, “Did YOU hear me? Rory is home!”
Baby blinks at Butters twice and slowly says, “That’s cool, man, because that chick is fun. But I’m just going to hang out here a little longer with Ming. I’m tired and have only napped for 10 hours today. I need to get my sleep so I can tear around after everyone goes to bed.”
“I can’t believe you guys,” Butters tells them, “We should go make sure she’s alright. Come on!”
And with that he runs out of the room as fast as he can. Unfortunately, he’s going too fast to make it around the first corner and slides right into the cabinet where Frederick the Frog lives.
“What the hell’s wrong with you crazy cats?” croaks Frederick. “Let’s see you come up HERE and do that, smarty pants!”
“Oh, sorry, Frederick,” says Butters, “It was an accident. I’ll come visit later.”
Just as he’s saying that, in walks Rory who says, “Hello, boys. Didja miss me?”
What remains of the day remains to be seen
I am now in the winning stages of a five day battle with strep throat that caused one side of my neck to swell up and made it very difficult to swallow for several days. The doctor concluded today that it was likely the preliminary stages of an abscess. Yesterday the pain had actually moved into my jaw and the swelling had progressed into the middle of my neck. On my first trip to the doctor on Friday, he prescribed amoxicillin and vicodin after concluding it was probably strep throat. He said to watch the swelling and if it got worse, see him again. And so I returned yesterday after spending a day alternately sleeping and zonked on vicodin. He agreed that the swelling had worsened but wasn’t ready to resort to more drastic measures like prednisone or stronger anti-biotics. He did have me make an appointment for today to check on my progress. I stuck with the omoxicillin and vicodin and threw in a box of shells and cheese (first real food in several days) last night. I slept for nearly 12 hours straight and woke up just in time to make my appointment with him today. And I felt great. And feel great still. Hail to the shells and cheese!
Thursday night I wasn’t feeling very well so I asked Thomas to put the trash and recycling out to the curb. Tina volunteered to help him and I’m grateful they spared me the effort. Sometime during the process, though, our little girl, Rory, snuck out of the garage and hadn’t been seen until just a few minutes ago. Tina and the boys made “missing kitty” posters and were going to plaster them all over the neighborhood. We feared that she had escaped to the greenspace behind our house where coyotes are rumored to wander. We know for sure that there are raccoons back there so we were very concerned. Tonight when we returned from dinner and book shopping at Goodwill, we thought we heard distant meowing outside the garage. When we went outside to investigate, there was Rory on the roof and glad to see us! I can’t tell you how happy our household is at this moment.
Mid-morning nap time
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More days to come, new places to go
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted family news here mostly because I do that on Twitter several times a day. For more on that, you can read this and then join here. It’s free and easy and you’ll like it. I promise.
And now, the news:
- Since the end of October, we’ve been mad for Guitar Hero III. Although playing the game is a blast, equally cool is watching my boys groove and sing to some of my favorite bands. Right now they both like “Even Flow” and “Holiday in Cambodia“. Thomas is the house champion in career mode, but we still only have one guitar so we haven’t settled on a true champion.
- Thomas’ video game time has been limited, though, due to poor scholastic performance in the first half of this semester. He has been having problems getting his homework done and is easily distracted when he’s supposed to be doing homework. We suspended gaming privileges until he got his grades back up and his computer has been disconnected from the internet. With Tina’s help he’s been able to get his grades up closer to where they should be but he’s still got a lot to learn about managing his time.
- Graham had a chess tournament yesterday in which he recorded two draws and a win for his team. He’s also become a pretty good Medium-level Guitar Hero player. He’s so fun to watch play because the guitar is a better size for him than the rest of us. He really looks like a rockin’ dude when he plays! He and Rory, our little girl kitten, have become good buddies and she sleeps by his head at night.
- The kittens are doing great and Ming has grown used to their eager presence. Tina took them to the vet to get them neutered last week. The boys were as rambunctious as ever that night but poor little Rory has been sluggish until today. Because she has stitches, she has to wear one of those funnel collars to keep her from ripping the stitches out. She spent much of the weekend on my lap trying to lick through that damn collar. Funny but sad. We’ll take it off Tuesday morning.
- Yesterday morning we received our Oregon kicker check in the mail. The kicker law says that the government has to give back money when their income is more than they estimated. This results in a “surprise” tax refund every few years. The average kicker check this year was supposed to be around $600 and we did a little better than average.
- The boys’ last day of school is on December 21st. Sometime soon after that, we’re hitting the road for Phoenix, Arizona, by way of San Francisco and Moreno Valley. We’re looking forward to the trip since the boys haven’t seen their cousins Wil and Xander in so long. The drive shouldn’t be bad since we’ve broken it up into three days with visits of friends and family on the way.
Kittens, kittens, kittens
I’ve had a pile of kitten pictures to review for several weeks now and having been doing it a few at a time. Tonight I finished editing and posted them to the Rynosoft Gallery for your viewing pleasure. I started with well over 500 pictures from our three cameras and was able to weed it down to 92. I probably should have cut more but they are just too damned cute! All four of us took pictures so credit goes to everyone. You can view the Photo Properties to see which camera was used. Most of the great shots are from Tina’s PowerShot S2 which Tina and I both use. Some are from my PowerShot S330 which is less than spectacular and the boys use an old Olympus that I scrounged from work. Most of the pictures of the kittens at the beginning of the album were taken by the boys.
Vital Statistics
Weight lost (in pounds): 30
South Beach days in the last week: 3
Hours of sleep last night: 9
Hours billed last week: 43
Aches & pains: wrists, left shoulder
Current reading:: 2107 Curious Word Origins, Says & Expressions by Charles Earle Funk, The Book of Totally Useless Information by Don Voorhees, Death By Black Hole by Neil deGrasse Tyson
Recent listening: This American Life, Coverville, DrugMusic, Pure Pod For Now People, Science Friday, Fresh Air
Recent viewing: Countdown, Hardball, The Daily Show, My Name Is Earl, CSI: Miami
Recent playing: Guitar Hero II (XBox 360)
Recently accomplished: Updated Tina’s OS, cleaned up kitten poop in Thomas’ room, 2nd annual 40th birthday party, updated resume
Imperative To Do: RMA old Tivo drive, sift through inbox, post office, finish garage, freecycle gorilla shelf parts, sunglasses, sign release papers for Sears commercial