I am sooooo not the only one obsessed with my pests...i mean pets

Check this out:

http://urara1117.blogspot.com/

Cute lil' buggers. Sebastian would accidentally step on one, and then cry, because he really likes playing with dogs that are 1/2000 of his size. He likes to roll over onto his back and let them hang on his jowls. Bella would probably look at them like they were the super hyper wind up toy dogs that they are and then wander off and ignore them. But man, they sure are cute.

To Anyone who knows more than me - so - Everyone:

How do you change the sizes of pictures? Is there a program that can help with that? Any suggestions? Hmmmmmmm????

Lunatic

Awwwwwwwwwwwwww!
That is my little Lunatic aka Luna aka Scratch Fury Destroyer of Worlds.
She is finally feeling better, and back to her bitchy self.



The vet we went to see will not be getting a return visit. After several more days of frothing, and general illness, I called her again. The vet refused to acknowledge that anything was wrong, and kept insisting that my cat must repeatedly be licking toads, or some such. When I described Luna as being affectionate, the vet said "That's sounds normal" and when I tried to explain that for this cat, it certainly was not normal, she said I should welcome the new development, regardless of the fact that she was frothing at the mouth and not eating or drinking. So, now I have a standoffish crank-monster, who runs around like a crazy thing, and eats and drinks plenty. And has received many lectures about the evils of ingesting amphibians.

Upon Request

Upon request, here are pictures of the house. There is Christopher and Bella, and the tiny maple tree that Christopher is growing.

And this is the rock wall / drainage ditch that I spend an entire Sunday rebuilding. I am trying to decide if I should keep weeding it, or let it get all over grown....


That bottom rock wall, constructed by Joshua, and home to my 'experimental' plants. Surprisingly, the teeny succulents are doing well, and some of the other creepers are not. At All. But - miraculously - the lavender is going like gangbusters.

'Cause one view isn't enough.

So. That's the garden. We has poppies and irises for about a week. And there are some new purple flowers after all the rain. Maybe more pictures are needed. Hmm...I also didn't add any of the vegetable garden, which was beautiful. Until the deer. They even ate the artichokes. It is terribly depressing.

Self Indulgence of the Literary Kind

I love books. I love reading. I love books so much that I love reading reviews of books. But, I have this problem...I rarely really remember what I read. Sucks, no? And I read way too much way too early, and didn't really get it. Kudos to the parents for having skads of lovely things to read. No kudos to me for trying to read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" when I was 10. Sure, I read all the words, and understood maybe the 'ands' and 'thens' - but that's it.

Now, here is the big dilemma. Do I go back and re-read all the things I have read and did not retain? Or focus on the millions of excellent things I have not?

This list makes me feel stupid and hopeful ; all the books I have read are bolded. Doesn't mean I retained a damn thing, but I have looked at every word between the covers. But, there are a few I remember. Mostly modern books...I feel like I should reread some classics? Geez.

(photo courtesy of elearningstuff.wordpress.com)
"106 books of pretension" at
What Would Jane Austen Do?

1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
2. Anna Karenina
3. Crime and Punishment
4. Catch-22
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude
6. Wuthering Heights
7. The Silmarillion
8. Life of Pi
9. The Name of the Rose
10. Don Quixote
11. Moby Dick
12. Ulysses
13. Madame Bovary
14. The Odyssey
15. Pride and Prejudice
16. Jane Eyre
17. The Tale of Two Cities
18. The Brothers Karamazov
19. Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
20. War and Peace
21. Vanity Fair
22. The Time Traveler’s Wife (okay - this i remember, and love)
23. The Iliad
24. Emma
25. The Blind Assassin
26. The Kite Runner
27. Mrs. Dalloway
28. Great Expectations (and i remember this one, but hated it)
29. American Gods
30. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (this one was great)
31. Atlas Shrugged (okay, I love Ayn Rand)
32. Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
33. Memoirs of a Geisha
34. Middlesex
35. Quicksilver
36. Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
37. The Canterbury Tales (in high school, for class - does that count?)
38. The Historian : a novel
39. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
40. Love in the Time of Cholera (yeah, not real impressed with Mr Marquez...)
41. Brave New World
42. The Fountainhead
43. Foucault’s Pendulum
44. Middlemarch
45. Frankenstein
46. The Count of Monte Cristo
47. Dracula
48. A Clockwork Orange (i have an excuse; tried to watch and then read after having wisdom teeth extracted - heavily medicated, barely remember anything)
49. Anansi Boys
50. The Once and Future King
51. The Grapes of Wrath
52. The Poisonwood Bible : a novel (this was excellent)
53. 1984 (love this one)
54. Angels & Demons
55. The Inferno (again in high school)
56. The Satanic Verses
57. Sense and Sensibility
58. The Picture of Dorian Gray
59. Mansfield Park
60. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
61. To the Lighthouse
62. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
63. Oliver Twist
64. Gulliver’s Travels
65. Les Misérables
66. The Corrections
67. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
68. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
69. Dune
70. The Prince
71. The Sound and the Fury
72. Angela’s Ashes : a memoir (college)
73. The God of Small Things (beautiful, beautiful, beautiful)
74. A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
75. Cryptonomicon
76. Neverwhere
77. A Confederacy of Dunces
78. A Short History of Nearly Everything
79. Dubliners
80. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (read it, liked it, still felt like I didn't get it) 81. Beloved
82. Slaughterhouse-Five
83. The Scarlet Letter
84. Eats, Shoots & Leaves
85. The Mists of Avalon
86. Oryx and Crake : a novel
87. Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
88. Cloud Atlas
89. The Confusion
90. Lolita (read it for a women's studies class - totally different take - loved it)
91. Persuasion
92. Northanger Abbey
93. The Catcher in the Rye
94. On the Road (hate kerouac - Chris loves him, so maybe I'm missing something...)
95. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
96. Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
97. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values (yup - there it is)
98. The Aeneid
99. Watership Down (i don't know which i love more about this book - the bunnies or the bunny-language dictionary in the back)
100. Gravity’s Rainbow
101. The Hobbit
102. In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
103. White Teeth (genius)
104. Treasure Island
105. David Copperfield
106. The Three Musketeers

Cows!

(photo courtesy of Katie)

Welcome to Post 1 on The Parade to End All Parades: Brattleboro's own, Strolling of the Heifers.
That there cow is named Sassafras - and she is being strolled by Katie, my lovely co-worker.

This parade was excellent; cows! Trucks! Kids dressed up like organic broccoli - god I wish I had a picture of That one! The only real downside was that it was 90+ degrees. That's right, it was hot, in Vermont, in June. It is rather early for heat of that magnitude, and it has continued - with 100 degree days ever since. Insane. I think the locals are going to start melting any minute now.

Oh - and did I mention there were over 60,000 people in town? Brattleboro is usually only about 11, 000 inhabitants. It was udder (ha!) chaos. I got to see a cop slap - and I mean SLAP, hard, hard enough that hundreds of people went silent for a second - a car (with out of state plates) as it did some stupid driving in a crowd of people.

But! Wait! there will be more! I haven't even started on the night BEFORE the parade!

I get presents, too?

SO.
Apparently along with this whole bloggin' deal-thingy, is presents.
Like commeents and links to cool stuff. The web is a big place, and you need help to find all the good stuff.

Like this:

http://www.neticons.net/music_life/

From my cousin Zachary. Enjoy!

Tired but prolific.

I have a camera full of photos.
Tales of a busy weekend.
And the desire to take a nap.

Things I Should DO, Not Just Think About

Kids are neat. They are so guile-less and pretty much just focused on having a good time. It is always good reminder that - oh yeah! - life is supposed to be fun. It's easy to get really bogged down in the trappings of adulthood; work, cooking, laundry, scrubbing the toilet, walking the dog, weeding the garden, and then work again. But all of this - at one point in time - was fun. Okay, maybe not scrubbing the toilet...but I did get a perverse sense of satisfaction out of doing a very good job of cleaning my first apartment.

In fact - all of the things I do were once 'fun';

Laundry was a blast in college, and the one time that was free from classes, or work, or crazy stress. Two hours of peace and quiet.

(photo courtesy of www(dot)persalts(dot)com/)

Work was once exciting - and when I think about it, I love my job, even when it is crazy and ulcer-inducing busy, I love what I do.

(photo courtesy of biojobblog.com)

Cooking was once an adventure, not an obligation. And when I stop worrying about and enjoy the process, it is relaxing and satisfying.

(photo courtesy of http://www.glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com/ - check it out - she is my hero!)

And the garden. It can be so much damn work, but I do get lost in it. And being able to stand back at the end of the day and be able to see and touch what I did all day - something missing in the esoteric world of computers and papers at my job - there is a sense of accomplishment.


So. Life is supposed to be fun. Get your nails painted blue once in a while, like my lovely nephew.

(photo courtesy of Kay)

Bad Blogger!

Geez. This bloggin thing is harder than I though it would be. I keep saying "Oh! That would be great to post!" But do I do it? No. Instead I wander down to the garden and putter, or take a nap, or play with the dogs, or try to find a new gluten free way to make banana bread, or mindlessly stare at the horizon.

Or. OR! Spend way too much time slapping at these incarnations of pure evil.

Absolutely, pure, unadulterated evil. Spawns of satan. Scum of the earth. I HATE Mosquitoes. I am covered in bites, way earlier than usual this year. If I am standing in a group of people, no one else gets bitten, because they are visually swarming all over me. They leave scars. I have resorted to covering myself with some deet-based bug repellent if I want to leave the house after 4pm in the afternoon, which I am sure will cause cancer in my old age, but I don't care! Okay, I do care, but I really like being outside....