susan hayward photography

Why I Made Pie

I have a confession to make. I, Susan,  have been wasting time looking for furniture in the online classifieds. We’re talking hours here. Hours that could have been spent reading, talking to my children, studying scriptures, or eating desserts. But I’ve been too obssessed with the search for a red chair and two green ottomans to stop, because those things would just make the room, you know?

 

And then, our car wouldn’t stop making  a noise that reminded me of an airplane idling on the runway. I worried that it would one day explode while I and the children were sitting at a stoplight arguing over what radio station to listen to. So we took it to the shop. The mechanic rattled on about a couple of holes in the radiator, a sensor on the fritz, and something about it all costing $600. Let’s put this in perspective, shall we? In the last month, we’ve had to get new brake pads and drums, the air conditioning serviced (just in time for winter, eh?), the rear window replaced (a bit of bad luck on that one) and now this. So, that red chair and the two little ottomans? They'll have to wait for some future day when our car runs smoothly and God grants me early menopause.

 

But really, I’m okay with this. After I baked an apple pie, things looked slightly better. And after I ate a slice of the pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream (not Haagan-Daz, unfortunately because, you know, we’re broke), I could cope with the cost of driving a stinking mini-van. (And I mean “stinking” literally. There’s often a strange odor in the van that smells of sour milk or a dead squirrel, I can’t decide which.) I think this is God’s way of saying, “Hey, stop wasting time shopping on the internet and do something more important, like making pie.”  

 

Rowing My Boat

 

I have been thinking a lot about rowing my boat lately. For the past year, I haven't been rowing, exactly. I've been treading water.

However, recently I've been getting out the oars and working on my upper body strength, in preparation for something, I'm not sure what. Then I remembered a bit by Wayne Dyer I saw on PBS years ago. He recited "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" as if it were a poem, and not a children's song. There are some great words of wisdom in that song if you say it instead of sing it. 

Go ahead, try it yourself (I'll insert Wayne Dyer's reflections, at least in the way I remember them):

Row, row, row YOUR boat (row your own boat, not someone else's)

 

Gently, down the stream (gently, not willy nilly-in-a-panic)

 

Merrily, Merrily, Merrily (in a HAPPY way)

 

Life is but a dream. (Is what worries you the point of your existence, or a little blip in the grand                                             scheme?)

 

 

One more thought: Maybe it's not what floats your boat, it's what rows your boat.

Happy Rowing! 

A Cold Summer Day

Is it really June 12th? Because yesterday it was rainy and 48 degrees. Today it's still rainy and cold. And you know that's no exaggeration when you find your cat snuggled up on the bed with a blanket wrapped around her.

 

Our cat reminds me of our teenager, who sleeps twelve hours at a time now. Only, our cat's a lot smaller and has longer nails. 
   

Getting It Done

I have this quote on my wall taken from the novel The Winding Ways Quilt, by Jennifer Chiaverini. 

"Many people who are capable of completing a task lack the will and perseverance to do so." 

I taped this to my office wall to remind myself to finish what I've started. The only problem is that it's been up for so long that I forgot it was there. This means that I have also forgotten to complete a number of projects that I started long ago. 

So last week when my niece came over, she noticed that I still had two yellow rectangles of paint on the bathroom wall. I tested these colors close to two years ago, fully intending on making a decision and painting the room in one weekend. But I never did. 

My niece is a generous girl. "I'll paint it for you," she offered. When I told her that I was going to do it soon, she looked skeptical. That did it. I vowed to finish this project by Saturday if it killed me. Seeing as how it's Friday, I may or may not finish. I am capable, I know that much. I've painted every room in this house twice, and that is a literal fact. But for some reason, I've not painted the bathrooms even once. Seeing as how they're the smallest rooms, I can't figure out why I've never gotten around to it. 

So, dear niece of mine. I'm completing this task this week. Really. I mean it this time! Barring swine flu or cramps, I will paint one bathroom by this weekend. 

You can stop laughing now. 

Check next week for pictures to prove it.    

A Modern House

I've been scouring the city looking for Danish Modern furniture. I think I've been missing my grandpa, who, together with my grandma, put together a spiffy house full of furniture they picked up during their travels. They must have gone to Denmark at some point and decided that's what their signature style would be. What they couldn't bring back, my grandpa made himself. If you put the European-made stuff next to the grandpa-made stuff, you couldn't tell the difference. In fact, I didn't know that Grandpa had made a large portion of their furniture until I was older. (Yes, I kick myself daily for not asking him to show me how to make furniture before he passed away.) 

Fortunately, I have a few pieces Grandpa made, a dresser and a desk that he built for grandma to use in her sewing room. He made the dresser with a middle section just the right size for patterns, and the desk he designed to fit a portable sewing machine. I have had these pieces for a few years now. My oldest uses the desk, but the dresser remains in storage, waiting to be stripped and refinished. I like to pretend that I'm a woodworker, just like my grandpa. Only, I hardly ever get around to actually working with the wood. I just think about it. But I think about Grandpa more. 

This is a picture I took at my grandparent's home. I don't know which of these pieces of furniture Grandpa made. But I wouldn't be surprised if he made them all. 

Stop and Smell the Roses

One of the things I learned in photography was to see things in a new way--to notice the unnoticed. But seeing requires looking, which is something I don’t often take the time to do. I’m not alone in this, I don’t think. Yet there are people who make it a practice to look, to smell, and to enjoy.

Take a college friend of mine who worked with me in a nearly window-less office. One day she swept through the door ten minutes later than usual. “I stopped to smell the roses,” she gasped as she threw down her bags. The fluorescent light overhead cast a ghoulish tint on her pink cheeks. She had literally stopped to sniff the sweet fragrance of summer on her way to the dungeon, before she would spend four hours under the watchful, harsh light created by humans. I retreated to my small office, turned off the lights, then yanked the window blinds open. They screeched up the glass and hung at the top, squenched together like a smashed accordian. It was afternoon, and the sun was hidden behind our building. All that came through my window were the leftovers. Consequently, the room was dim, illuminated only by the sunlight reflected from the tall white library across from my office. But it was enough. I stared at my hands, my arms, my legs. The clear light wrapped around them, molding them. It produced deep shadows and highlights on my skin. I was three dimensional. I felt illuminated, luminous—alive. I bathed in the quiet natural light until my employer came in and carelessly flicked on the fluorescents again. “Why’s it so dark in here?” she asked. I could hardly tell her that I had been figuratively skinny dipping in the afternoon rays. I looked at my hand, two dimensional once again, like a cardboard cutout of a human. In the flat and lifeless light powered by wires and cords and switches I answered, “Just stopping to see.”

Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

“Be Good, take care of yourselves, and don’t leave the path.”

--Gandolf (from The Hobbit)

 

What is it with women? Why do we feel the need to do everything perfectly and all at once—to bite off more than we can chew, as the saying goes? I say “we” but might as well admit that it should be “I.” Unfortunately, I’m one of those people who figures that if ten crunches a day are supposed to flatten my stomach, then two hundred must be even better. (Not that I’ve every really tried this, or that ten crunches would actually flatten anything except for maybe my chest, or that I could find the motivation to do 200 pseudo sit-ups for more than a day.) When my kids were younger and I read about a plan to get them to help around the house, I went for it full throttle, designing complex chore charts that even I couldn’t understand but which I enforced like an old codger of a PE coach counting down the days to retirement. In a matter of weeks I reduced our house to a juvenile detention center rather than an oasis of love and learning. (Remember that movie Mommy Dearest? One of my biggest fears is that my kids will one day see that show and turn to me and say, “Gee, Mom, that lady reminds me of you.”) For a while I was into a program conceived by a woman who calls herself Flylady  to reduce my clutter and clean my home. She advised newbies to her program to take “baby steps,” meaning that we were to learn one new skill a week (or maybe it was a month).  But I was not into baby steps, having too many babies at the time causing their own kind of clutter. I wanted a leap frog program, kind of a big bang theory of house cleaning that would magically transform my house and me into model citizens. I scoffed at Flylady’s suggestion that merely making my bed and getting dressed—neither of which I was doing on a regular basis—would be enough to start. But I have to admit she was right. The moral of the story is (and always will be) if you bite off more than you can chew, you might just choke. And if there’s no one around who knows the Heimlich, it’s very hard to rescue yourself.

This is why, when I went to a church program last night about slowing down and taking care of ourselves, I not only listened, I took copious notes. Because summer’s coming, my brain has been hard at work making a list of goals to accomplish with all the free time we’ll have (which is just a lie my mind tells me every spring. You will have hours more in each day without school in the way, it says. But it never seems to work that way.) Yet, intuitively I know that if I don’t watch it, I’m going to end up flat on my bum, literally sick and tired. As of Monday, my summer goal list looked something like this: start teaching again, amp up my photography, post something brilliant on my blog every single day, run a half-marathon in the fall, refinish an old dresser that’s been sitting in the garage for years now, sell granola at the farmer’s market, learn how to cook, plant a flower garden, visit my family in California, read a book every week, play with my kids, teach my kids to cook, take the kids swimming every day, read scriptures every day as a family, read a book with my kids every week, run a summer reading program, write articles and take pictures, learn how to make French pastries, learn how to eat French pastries every day without looking like the Michelin Man or the Pillsbury Dough Boy, improve my ability lead music, paint the bathrooms and the laundry room, and learn how to not only play basketball but to like it too.  Mind you, this is just the short list. If you give me a minute, I’m sure there are about twenty more things I could add.  

So this wise woman by the name of Zella told us about how as a young mother she had tried to take care of everyone and everything except herself. Sleeping and eating well were last on her persnoal to-do list. Being productive and perfect were her focus. After years of this, she ended up sick, unable to do much of anything. “I was compelled to slow down,” as Zella put it. But in her stillness, she felt closer to God. She enjoyed her children more when she wasn’t constantly spinning in circles. “I had been so busy doing things for them, that I forgot to do things with them,” she said. This sounded familiar to me. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if instead of signing our kids up for little league sports with all their practices, games, and sports camps, we went to the park and played with them. They might not end up in the NBA, but chances are they might not end up in therapy telling their doctor all about my Mommy Dearest episodes either.

The point is, Zella discovered that “the quieter [she] became, the more [she] heard.” And what she heard was that she didn’t need to spin through her life like a tornado. There’s something to be said for taking it slow. For one thing, you develop sensitive ears that can detect a note of sadness in a child’s voice when you ask how school went and he answers only “Fine.” And you will find truth to a line in Jamie Lee Curtis’ book Is There Really a Human Race? : “There are beautiful things to see when you come in last.” Tornado living is like riding the TGV, the fastest train in Europe that zips you through the countryside so fast you hardly know you’ve been there. The TGV is all about the destination. But when you take the slow train, it’s about the journey as well. You can see and enjoy what you move through to get where you want to end up. Writing this makes me feel better about how slowly I have to run through the neighborhood nowadays. Though I’ll never be speedy, by keeping a snail’s pace I’ve seen things and heard things I might not otherwise. Just today I ran (or slogged, to be more accurate) past a house with dozens of blazing red tulips in the front yard. This is the same route I’ve run for the last five years. But this is the first time I’ve seen the tulips. Suddenly, my summer list looks a bit…unreasonable. Crazy, even. 

And so it goes with the process of living. Zella quoted The Hobbit when she said, “Be good, take care of yourselves, and don’t leave the path.” The path may be different for each of us. But the need to take Flylady baby steps applies to all. And of course, we should all listen to our mothers and remember our manners, or rather, what matters: Take small bites, chew, and swallow. Or at least learn the Heimlich. 

Snow White

I admit it. If I were a Disney character, I'd be Eeyore. I like to putter, complain, and generally wallow in self pity. But my sister Julie is another story. Though we grew up with the same mother in the same house, somewhere along the way Julie found her inner princess. (Photograph by Gary Barnes.)

Earlier this year, Julie sent me this picture of her all decked out like Snow White for her pre-school's carnival. Yep, you heard right. My sister is a talented preschool teacher with a genuine love for every child in her classes. And, while I too did some time working in a preschool as a classroom aide, I never got to the point of actually enjoying it. In fact, by the end of the year I had gone completely bonkers. But Julie has been teaching little kids for years, loving every minute of it. All right, maybe she doesn't love every minute, but every time I talk to her about a bad day, she always says, "Tomorrow will be better." And she means it. And inevitably, tomorrow is better for her, mostly because she believes that it will be so. 

Oh sure, I know what you're thinking about this princess costume thing. Or, at least I know what I was thinking. I need to get me one of those dresses so everyone will treat me like royalty, I said to myself. Because I'm a princess. I'd also like some dwarves to run this household so I can get some more reading done.

But when I talked to Julie about it on the phone, royal subjects and housekeeping dwarves never even entered the conversation. "I love making everybody happy," she said. I was speechless. Inside I was thinking, "Are you for real?" At that moment, it seemed quite likely that I was really adopted, just as I had always suspected. Could it be possible that she enjoys being a princess so that she can make other girls feel like princesses? Julie went on. "Seeing everyone smiling was the most fun, I think." At this point I was groaning inside. There's one thing I know about me and my sister, and it's this: the only way I'm getting into heaven is if Julie (or any of my other sisters for that matter) smuggles me in via her suitcase. Otherwise, seeing as how Hades might be my eternal vacation spot, I better get used to my least favorite things: extremely hot weather,flip-flops (eternal blisters between my toes), wearing a bathing suit, and mustard (second pregnancy nausea trigger). 

Julie's voice roused me from my visions of the afterlife. "My coworkers told me, 'Your face must be tired after three hours of smiling,'" Julie said, and giggled. I could picture her at the carnival, smiling in a genuine way to everyone who passed by. I could see her leaning down to talk to the children,hugging them, looking at them like they were the most amazing person she had ever met with the most fascinating things to say. I can picture these things because that's they way she talks to everybody, dressed as a princess or not. "My face did hurt," Julie admitted. "And my feet, too. But I like to make kids happy." 

This was too much. Suddenly, thoughts of lounging on the couch reading novels while my dwarves scurried about taking care of things seemed downright selfish. And lazy. So I determined right then and there to be more like my sister. I decided to think of others before myself. I decided to sing and laugh more. And I decided that even if I never become a real princess I can still treat everyone else like royalty. Just like my sister, Snow White. 

The Substitute

At the beginning of the school year I signed up to be a substitute. It seemed to be the thing to do. After all, I do have a teaching certificate. And now that my youngest is in school full time, my days are more flexible. And extra money is always nice. And there's that thing about always wanting a career, a place to go, something to dress up for. Yet, whenever the phone rang and I heard the computerized woman's voice say, "This is the School District with a job for Susan" I just wanted to roll over and go back to bed. I have my routines, my own little schedule, my projects and my photography. Leaving the house for seven hours would have really cramped my style.

But one day the phone rang at 5:30 am and that old familiar voice said she had a job for me. "What the heck," I said to myself, "I'll try it." As I'd been helping out with music at church, the thought of subbing for a music class didn't frighten me. But it should have.

Everything went well until second period, when a boy walked up to me and said, "Are you the sub?" 

I shuffled the papers at the conductor's podium where I stood with importance. "Why yes, I am."

"Oh, man, is our teacher depressed again?" the kid said. I wasn't sure if he was making a joke or asking a legitimate question. I told him his teacher merely had a stomach ache. "I know because I talked to him this morning," I said.  

"Well," the boy mumbled, shuffling his feet and looking down. "He's been out a lot. For depression problems." He looked me in the eye then, maybe to check my expression to see if I was telling the truth. When all I could say was "humm" and started shuffling papers again, he went to the back of the room and meandered through the music stands until class started. 

It wasn't until later, when I talked a teacher's assistant, that I learned this teacher had indeed been out for most of the year for depression. After seven hours of finding kids hiding in instrument cupboards and congregating in instrument rooms, nearly necking as they sat on each other during orchestra practice, applying makeup and brushing hair during choir, sitting with their back to me while they chatted with their girlfriends,refusing to take off sunglasses, and playing music that would make even their mothers cringe, I was close to a nervous breakdown myself. And did I mention the huge mutant ninja turtle ninth grade boys who stepped so close to me when I asked them to please stop opening and closing the windows that I could smell the Doritos on their breath? And then there was the girl with stringy brown hair who stood clutching her notebook in the doorway at the end of class. "Just to let you know," she said to me--which was an instant tip-off that I wasn't going to like the rest of her sentence--"there's some kids in the hall having a staple fight." Sure enough, the same ninja boys with a window fetish were in the hallway with staplers extended, shooting staples at each other. When I came back from tugging the staplers our of their hands, I found three other boys in a heap on the floor in what appeared to be a friendly wrestling match. That was when a woman from the office appeared. All she had to do was give the kids the evil eye and they straightened right up. It was like she unplugged the whole room. I wondered if the classroom was bugged or a secret camera relayed the chaos to the front office, just in case the police needed to get involved. Or the mental health practitioners.    

When I got home that day, I kissed my dirty kitchen floor. I rejoiced in the piles of dirty laundry. I picked up my cat and nuzzled my forehead against hers. I squeezed the stuffing out of my kids. "I love you so much!" I told them. And facing the horizon I said, "As God as my witness, I will never substitute again!" 

 

Running Meditation

I'm a fan of running. But now I'm kind of injured and can't run as far as I'd like, or as often. So today, I revisit my former self, the one who used to run all the time.  Here's a link to an essay published in Runner's World.  Tomorrow I'm posting a long piece about Princess Di. Stay tuned!  

In the meantime, here's the link to the Runner's World piece 

www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-369-374--12329-0,00.html

Enjoy!

Grandma Love

Who Loves you? Grandma!

Like I said in the Hearty Breakfast post, my mom knows how to make things special. Now that she's a grandma, she has turned her powers towards making things for the grandkids. She's always sending cute holiday things, usually handmade.  She is so creative. (She made me a complete Barbie wardrobe for Christmas one year--and I mean complete.  Jeans. Leather coat. Evening gown. The works.) I think my need for creative expression comes from my mother. Thanks mom! 

Aren't grandmas the best?  We look forward to packages from Grandma in California.  Thanks, Mom.

I Heart You

Thanks to Susan for this surprise on my doorstep today.  When the kids came home from school I found this heart and two big chocolate covered pretzels from Chocolate Covered Wagon along with a special note from my special friend.  Thanks, Susan Sudol!  

  

 I love my friends!!

Brother Can You Spare A Dime?

A family in the neighborhood my husband and kids helped move gave my youngest this guitar.  I found him outside doing this:

Busking for money!  Note the cup in front of him, his change box.  I guess I need to up his allowance.

I Pledge Allegiance

You know how exciting it can be when you think that your mom is coming to school to see you say the Pledge of Allegiance in the school intercom microphone, something that you're kind of nervous to do, and then she gets there too late and you think she's the crummiest mom in the world, when just the week before you thought she was the greatest mom in the world because she bought you Pokemon cards that are all the rage in first grade?  And she comes right after you do your thing, I mean like minutes after you've gone back to your classroom, and your teacher, who you're starting to like better than your mom most of the time because she never says, "Pick up your socks!" twenty times a day, says, "Did she come?" and you have to mumble an answer.  "Nope."  And all your teacher can say is, "Oh," and rub your back and then give you a hug.  

Then your mom throws open the door to the classroom and says, so loudly that the kindergarten classroom can hear too, "I AM SO SORRY!"  She hugs you, squishing you so tight you can hear the steady thrum of her heart beating, and says "Sorry!" over and over until you pull away and say, "I hate your stretching video."  You know why she's late.  You saw her doing stretches in front of the tv when you left for school.  But you thought she'd come for this, your fifteen seconds of fame.  Your teacher suggests you say the pledge in the classroom, and when that doesn't seem like enough, she says, "Why don't you go to the office and show your mom what you did this morning for the whole school?"  So you take your mom's hand and walk to the office, explain to the ladies what you want to do and you pretend to speak into the microphone.  You are smiling now, because secretly, speaking into a microphone is about the coolest thing you can think of to do.  That's why you forgive your mom.  You read your special thought for the day, which you wanted to be:  Don't throw yellow snowballs, but which your parents convinced you to change to something about fixing mistakes.  And you say the pledge for the third time that morning.  Only this time, you have an audience of one:  your mom.  Who should have been there five minutes earlier.  But wasn't.  But even if she came late, she did come.  So you hug her when she leaves.  And then you say, "Do you have to do your stupid stretches EVERY day?"

Wonder Cat

I am a cat person.  Always have been.  Sure, I've had dogs before.  Two yappy, jumpy critters that ate my laundry hanging on the line and tried to mate with my leg.  Recently I tried to have a dog again.  Things seemed to be going well until the dog bit me.  And then she ate her poop.  "Ewww," I said, drawing back from her.  "That's just unnatural."  No way did I want a doggy kiss from this dog.  

But I've had many good cats.  And I think it's an excellent idea to always have a cat in your life to remind you how satisfying it can be to stay in bed all day.  

I tried to convince my grandmother of this.  She is, sadly, a dog person.  Recently I tried to convert her, but she won't budge. Listen to this letter:

 

Dear Grandma,

 

I’m writing to convince you to get a cat for a pet.  Here’s why:

 

1. Cats are usually smaller than dogs, save your garden variety of Chihuahua or toy poodle or what have you.  This makes it convenient to carry them in your purse or back pack, or a laundry basket.

 

2. Their poop is smaller.  Sorry, there was no way to put that nicely.  While I must admit I’m not the best at emptying the cat box every day, it’s not that big of a deal.  Sometimes my cat will go outside—I’m not sure where.  I’m taking the same stance I took when I lived in the Ukraine with former Soviet Cockroaches:  as long as I don’t see it, it doesn’t exist.

 

 

3. They have attitude.  Cats will walk around like they own the place, sauntering through the halls like a princess on parade.  My cat Sadie will run when you call her home for the evening—up until the last few steps when she slows to a stroll with a swing to her hips that says, “Hey, I don’t have to come if I don’t want to.”  And she actually gets mad at us sometimes, unlike dogs who seem to have no self-confidence or self-respect.  Dogs will be your friend forever, even if your name is Wild Billy and your favorite game is Kick the Canine.  But not cats.  Cross a cat and you’re liable to get the cold shoulder until hell freezes over—or until you produce some fancy squishy cat food from a can.  A cat will love you when they feel like it.  Hum…maybe I like cats so much because they share many personality traits with me.    

 

4. If you want to go somewhere for the weekend, you just leave extra food.  I really like this one.  My sister-in-law has to take her dog to someone’s house for dog sitting whenever they leave town.  If they left him home inside, he would chew through all of their furniture and leave messes all over the place.  If they left him outside, he would probably chew through the fence or bark all night and day, or most likely both.  But with cats, all you do is load up a big bowl with kitty kibble, fill another bowl with water (or just leave the toilet seat up, which I think is yucky, but as I live will all boys, others think is quite handy), make sure the cat box is clean and accessible, and off you go.  When you come home, there might be a few hours of kitty cold shoulder treatment.  However, I’ve found that Sadie is actually glad to see us, so the cold shoulder is just a quick formality lest we forget that she is in charge.   

 

5. Cats are a lot of company.  Admittedly, some cats aren’t much company, always skittering off if you so much as hold your hand out to pet them.  But there are some (like mine)  who will follow you around the house like a toddler.  Granted, that includes following you to the bathroom, but sometimes the bathroom is tedious and boring, so the company isn’t always a bad thing.  Another good thing about this argument, which admittedly applies to dogs as well, is that cats don’t talk back.  You can talk to a cat about anything and not worry that she’s going to tell the whole family.  And, if you complain to a cat too long, she’ll let you know when you’ve crossed the line from pity to pathetic with a big long yawn. 

 

6. Cat tongues don’t hang out and drip on you.  My other sister-in-law has a dog with a tongue so long and floppy and soaking wet that we all draw ourselves in when he walks by.  Otherwise, we might end up with a big drop of dog drool on a favorite shoe, or worse, a naked foot.  While Sadie did drool a tiny bit on me once, it was only a drop and I think she had the sniffles at the time.   

 

7. If they jump on your lap, it’s not painful.  Cats just weigh less than dogs, especially if you get a petite girl like my kitty.  There’s nothing better than a rainy day, a good book, a cat curled up on your lap, and a cup of hot cocoa.  The rain allows you stay inside, the book transports you to another place, the cat makes you feel loved, and the hot cocoa bathes the scene in a bit of sweetness.  I’m hoping this is what heaven will be like.   

 

8. In a pinch, cats are good scarves and blankets in the winter.  My cat sleeps with me for part of the night.  She starts out with Paul, then moves to Calvin, and finally ends up with me for the last few hours before twilight.  For some reason, she likes to plant herself on my neck and cuddle there.  She warms me right up.  Rick thinks it’s ridiculous, but I’ve caught her on his side of the bed more than once and he didn’t seem to mind.  Sadie will also sometimes sit on my lap while I’m working on the computer, warming my legs. 

 

9. Cats don’t need to go on walks.  Cats are so low-maintenance, they don’t even require a human to exercise them.  Isn’t that great?  Of course, if you like walking your pet, some cats will walk with you.  Sadie is known in our neighborhood for her habit of trailing behind when we go on family walks.  Just take it from me, don’t ever try to put a leash on a cat.   

 

10. Cats bathe themselves.  I wish my Jake would do that!  Maybe I should train Sadie to lick those in my household who refuse to take baths. 

 

11. Cats are relaxing.  If you like peace and quiet, a cat’s your kind of pet.  They don’t yap like tiny dogs tend to.  A meow--even a loud one--is in no way as annoying as a yappy dog.  Calvin has been begging for a dog for over a year, but let’s be honest, I’m just not up to the task.  The barking, the dirty paws, the chewing on furniture, not to mention the poop issue.  Plus, the kids tear through the house so much that adding a dog to the mix would just make our place more chaotic, which is the last thing I need.

 

12. Cats make a house a home.  I just had to add this because I was thinking about the other day when I came home from picking up the boys from school.  Sadie had been sitting on the front porch all folded up like a suitcase, her paws tucked neatly under herself, when she perked up and ran down the steps to greet us.  No matter where we go, we know that someone is waiting for us to come home.  She meows hello as we get out of the car and weaves through our legs as she purrs her love.  It’s magical.    

 

Cookies

Last year, in complete cookie exhaustion, I vowed I would never make gingerbread cookies again.  But then I got a craving and succumbed.  I lost count of how many cookies I made…and how many cookies I ate in the process.  This time I mean it.  I will not bake cookies next year.  I won't.  Really.  So don't even ask.  

  But at least the kids helped a bit.  

 Even the oldest got into it. Of course, the sprinkles might have had something to do with it.

A Major Award

Earlier this month, my mother sent us a major award.  Thanks, Mom.  This ornament really goes with our decor.  And it's from Italy, too!

human kitty

Our cat goes on walks with us.  She's drawn to the basement when we're all laying on the couch watching movies.  Now she's doing puzzles with us.  We think she's going through an identity crisis.  Does she know she's a feline, or does she think she's just a hairy woman with perpetual PMS?