True Story

Today was my last day of Jane Austen class. We had to present our final papers, thus read a shortened version of it to the class. It went really well, and I'm all of the sudden extremely grateful for my innumerable public speaking opportunities in my job. It was SO much less scary than my first in-front-of-the-classroom experience 3 1/2 years ago.

Well, on days when I go to class, I typically eat a bagel in the car on the drive down. Today, though, I was distracted by my paper presenting thoughts and wasn't hungry. I left the bagel in the car during the 3-hour class, knowing it would be nice and warm upon my return. What I found, to my great amusement, was that not only was it warmed, but it was slightly toasted, as if I'd put the toaster on level 1. It was delicious, and I cannot believe the combo of the sun and my car actually toasted a bagel over a 3-hour time frame.

Oh, the little things.

Oh, just a few pictures

We think Quincy is great. We really do, and he's lucky he's so precious, too, after this last week of his inadvertent misbehaving (or at least it appears that way to us). I'm sure pet owners deal with these things all the time, but it's just...wow.

We have fun with him, though. He encourages us to do sprints around the house with him during his crazy evening phase, and he will most definitely chase us around, attacking us from behind door jambs, etc. Yesterday, he actually flew at me, from 3 feet in the air, when I walked around the corner. Slammed into my hip, slid down my leg, bit my ankle and ran off. That's how much fun he is. It's awesome.

He got to meet a baby this week. Liz was in town and brought Ada over for a few hours. Quincy wasn't sure about the smells and the noises--boy was she talking up a storm (she's about 5 days older than Jackson, so still very small). She is very precious, though. And, eventually, Quincy got used to her, watching her with a wary eye from across the room.

Just to show you how much personality he has, even when sleeping or relaxing, here are a few of his poses. Soon, I hope to snap a shot of his favorite reclining pose, but every time I see it, I just laugh and forget about photographing it.

He loves to sleep in random spots. A few examples:

Oddly enough, he uses pillows like a person.

Video game kitty.

Look at his bleary eyes from watching too much TV!

(Obviously, I did not train him in this way.)

Burrito kitty. He really is asleep.

Look closely. Yes, that's Quincy holding Kyle's wedding ring,

on a Bible, while sleeping.
Multi-talented kitty.

Very protective of the things that matter.

But you might also call him:

Bible-Thumping Kitty.

Below you can see him using my laptop as an armrest.

He truly does these kind of things on his own.

And this is why we love him.

Currently, his favorite thing in the house is an airplane pillow that I got several years ago. He fights with it -- biting and wrestling it, but also loves sleeping on it, or next to it. It's like a little friend to him, I think.

A true picture of contentment...on his favorite pillow.

Isn't he just beautiful?

Oops, one other thing

I forgot to mention that while we were home last weekend, I woke up early in the morning to my husband punching me in the back with his fist.

It hurt.

He claims he was dreaming that he was saving me from someone and the punch was part of a series of blows that landed on the culprit who was attempting to do us harm.

Really?

After this, and the early-in-our-marriage night terror that he had, in which he woke up yelling and fighting, ripping the covers completely off of myself, and out of my tightly clutching hands, and our bed and pounding them into the ground...

it's a wonder I can sleep in the same bed with him at all.

Is someone trying to tell us something?

You decide. Your comments and suggestions of who or what is going on are welcome.

It's been a series of small things that are driving us insane. One full week of this, and we're not really sure what to do.

Started with the fact that we were very tight on time and we found:

• 14 people in line inside the pharmacy, and
• 5 in the outside drive-thru area. We'd already turned in the prescription and just needed to pick it up. Should have taken 5 minutes max; it took 25.

We were supposed to pick up the pizzas for dinner for the whole fam before graduation that evening in Rochester, but we also can't speed because of the number of moving traffic violations that exist between us. We encountered on the road:

• 2 combines driving 15 mph on different highways,
• 1 giant Ford truck hauling a flatbed of 6 smashed cars and going 20 mph,
• 5 people going significantly (5-10 mph) under the speed limit on a highway.

We ended up grabbing the pizzas, only 10 minutes late, and heading over to the party. Graduation itself was in a hot gymnasium on bleachers, so there's nothing fun about that. However, we sat behind:

• 1 very broad-backed and wide (front-to-back) old man with poor posture who took up at least half of the space behind him designed for someone's legs. We had to sit sideways for the entirety of the hour+ long event.

The next day, we planned to spend with the Bartons. It was lovely--a great pancake breakfast at the new fire station, seeing an old friend, Kyle got a tour of the pristine building, etc. We were having a great time. Then, Kyle and Allen tried to install Kyle's new (to him) emergency personnel lights on his rear view mirror. Ended up with:

• Allen's installed perfectly, and Kyle realizing he needs an electrician in order to get his hooked up. 2-3 hours wasted.

We arrived home exhausted that evening. In the middle of that night (1:45am), Kyle gets a call on his walkie that we're having bad storms and tornadoes in the area. He headed off to the fire station and I headed over to the library...all by myself. Terrifying place in the middle of the night. And then:

• the electricity went out on my way back from the bathroom...alone, dark basement, torrential downpour and possible tornado outside, huge building...terrified.

After returning and falling into bed at 4am, we decided to see when the alarm went off if we could drag ourselves to church.

• We woke up at 12:30p. Half of the day gone, and obviously no church. Although this might seem like a brilliant Sunday of rest, it was foreshadowing of the things to come.

But Sunday was cleaning day, and we both enjoy that. As we began the process of cleaning our tiny house, Kyle got out the vacuum and:

• 1 cat peed on the carpet b/c he's scared of the vacuum.

In the process of cleaning that nast up, we tried to move cat to a new place in the house, away from the vacuum, he:

• freaked out while being held, clawed Kyle's chest through his shirt and tore holes in Kyle's shirt: twice.

I think after a close call with a nervous break down, we called it a day. I can't remember the beginning of the week. I don't remember anything else going wrong until yesterday...

Kyle was home sick from work and so slept in. When he finally got up (I'd been up for hours doing school work), we went for a lovely walk in the perfect 70 degree sunny weather. When we return we saw:

• 1 cat rubbing his furry little behind all over the carpet and then on the lower level of the coffee table. When he got up, we saw there was...well...poo hanging in his fur back there.

This was very disturbing. Between myself holding the cat and Kyle armed with some scissors and paper towel, we fixed that situation, and then crawled around the house smelling the carpet. Thankfully, the poo was dried, and the only place is got was the lower part of the coffee table. That was quickly disinfected.

Shortly thereafter, Kyle began dishes, and I helped intermittently as I was reading more articles for school. When I sat back down in the computer room, I heard a commotion in the kitchen--"What is going on with our lives. Honey...NO!" I kept calling out to ask what was the matter. No answer for two whole minutes. I walked around the corner to find:

• 1 husband squatting on the floor attempting to capture a flood of water pouring out from under the sink. And I hear, in answer to my previously unanswered request for information: "FLOOD, honey, FLOOD!"

I grabbed some towels and we mopped everything up, had to move the fridge, brought out our two fans and just stood there, utterly confused. We called the maintenance guy, who has a day job, and thus could not attend this problem until after 5pm.

I left for class around 3:30, praying Kyle would have a break from these moments of absolutely unnecessary insanity. I found out later (after class around 9pm) that a few minutes after I left, while Kyle started a load of laundry (the towels from the floor mopping), he heard gurgling in the kitchen and entered to find:

• 2 sinks filling up with nasty water. (At this point, we don't even know if those kitchen sink pipes are sound.)

He called the maintenance guy again, and stopped the washer. After some applications of drain-o, the maintenance guy left saying--let me know if it works. Well, it didn't.

And now we have:

• One 1/2-washed load of dirty towels steeping in foul water, unable to drain, and it's a Friday.
• Two kitchen sinks that don't work, or, they do, but they will flood.

And it's the weekend. Cooking? Washing dishes? Washing clothing (I'm desperately in need of at least one load of laundry)? Anything? I don't even KNOW what to do with this.

So tell me what you think is happening to us...

June, and few months back

How is it June already? And yet, it's only June 2nd and I feel like it should be June 23rd. Kyle says my date confusion is due to the heat. These are July or August temperatures, not June. How does that bode for the rest of the summer? Maybe I'll take a new interest in the campus lake (I'm so not a fan of swimming in lakes).

I don't think you're supposed to say stuff like this but I love my class. It's been really challenging to get all of the requirements done over the last three weeks, but class last night made it all worth it. It's as if I'm attending a book club and writing papers, but there aren't any tests, and we sit around discussing books and movie adaptations...wow. It is fantastic.

Ironically enough, the final three weeks or so will show a significant drop in the amount of work we have to do, just as I'm out from under the strain of working full-time (it's summer break, you know, for those of us who operate on school calendars). Oh well. I'll have more time to enjoy the sunshine and maybe come up with a few new summery dishes for eating.

I'm enjoying my first few days off work. My summer will consist of meeting with a personal trainer twice a week, meeting for class twice a week, doing homework, reading books (which is actually part of doing homework), working out on my own three times a week, and then standard household stuff -- cooking (which I've been so negligent about since the beginning of May), cleaning, de-hairing, and, of course, playing with Quincy. He's quite the charmer when he wants to be, but he is also a giant pest when he wants to be (and that's usually when I'm making dinner or trying to type up some sort of paper for class).

I don't know where May went. I was nervously awaiting the start of classes all winter and POW! now it's gone. It went out with a BANG on Monday, celebrating my grandpa's 90th birthday with most of our ginormous family. He had 5 kids, they each had between 3 - 7 children. And now there are children and babies everywhere. It's insane. We meet in a park because the outdoors is the only thing that will hold us all.

At any rate. We have a big summer ahead of us. No plans to migrate south (sadly), but many plans to head home to see our various siblings and parents -- birthdays, holidays, family pictures, visiting relatives, etc. We also have several friends getting married this year, but those weddings don't start until the end of July and go through the final day of October.

Mostly, this summer, we're hoping for a financial reprieve from the multitude of crises that have hit us since January. A majority of the issues have been vehicle related, but it's not just the cars. My eye issues continue to be a financial drain, and that's frustrating, as I had hoped the surgery in February would decrease the amount of money I was spending on my eyes. Apparently, I'm still one surgery away from being glasses-less until my 40s. And that isn't entirely true, is it. I will wear reading glasses for the rest of my life. Oh joy! As long as I can get rid of these that I wear all day, every day, I think I can manage reading glasses for computer / book use.

Hello, Summer! Welcome. I've been looking forward to you for over a year. Thanks for being mostly sunny thus far.