I realize I haven't posted in a while. Things have been rather hectic around here lately...between spring planting and children getting excited about school ending soon, plus hubby working extra hours (we need a few extra days worth of income to make it to my sister's wedding at the end of the month) - it's just been crazy around here.
Insanity - but the good kind of insanity.
James had an American-themed concert at his school earlier this week. I tried taking some video...not sure yet how well it came out. If it's clear, I'll post a clip or two to this blog. Jacob has a concert himself next week - I'll try to take video of that as well. Jon doesn't have any concerts, but he's getting excited about summer break.
Gardening has become much more difficult than I had anticipated. The neighbor who was going to loan me her rototiller has had some problems with the machine, so I have to dig the entire garden by hand. When you consider that I was planning over 400 square feet in the backyard and another 200 square feet in the front...well, suffice it to say that I've been remarkably busy. All that digging has to occur in between rain showers and laundry, dirty dishes and cooking, baking bread and trying new recipes. It's a madhouse around here, but a fun one.
Now, can someone pass me the Tylenol? Digging a garden out by hand is killing my lower back!
05 May 2011
19 April 2011
Death
I'm going to make this post brief, as Sean is on his way home to rush me to the vet's office. At midnight Alpha, the little tortoiseshell kitten, went limp. She was still alive, but obviously in a bad way. She couldn't swallow her food and didn't show much interest in anything but curling up and getting warm.
Oddly enough, Gryphon responded to her need. While her siblings ran around and played on the floor, Gryphon hopped into the cat bed and curled his body around her. She seemed to relax with the big cat so close.
This morning I thought she was dead - her body was completely limp. But no - she opened her mouth in a pitiful attempt to meow. I washed her gently with warm water (she had messed herself in the night), wrapped her securely to avoid a chill and called Adopt-a-Pet for authorization to bring her in.
Once the authorization was given, I turned my attention to the other kittens. Three of them were up and active, meowing for breakfast and attention...but another kitten was stretched out limp. I scooped her up and realized she was still clinging to life - she still had some activeness but not nearly what I was used to seeing with her.
I called Adopt-a-Pet back and insisted on authorization to bring the entire litter back for examination. Authorization was given.
I turned my attention back to the sickest of them - Alpha. She wasn't breathing. At some point while I was on the phone getting authorization, she had passed away. Delta, the other female who had gone limp, is barely breathing - and the healthiest of the males, Beta, has grown ominously quiet.
I don't think Delta is going to survive...and I'm seriously worried about the rest of the litter. Please keep these little kittens in your thoughts today.
EDIT: As I was preparing the kittens for transport, I noticed Ayla acting odd. She's normally a very graceful cat, but it took her three tries to get up on the bed. My Adopt-a-Pet rep called me after I saw this, and when I told her she said to bring her in as well - AAP will cover her medical bills since she seems to have caught whatever the kittens have.
It's weird - Ayla wouldn't have anything to do with these kittens. It was Gryphon who showed an interest, you would think he would be the one to get sick. But he's fit as a fiddle, snoozing in the top perch of the cat tree.
EDIT: Delta had a series of seizures on the way to the clinic and passed away in my arms.
EDIT: 20th of April. Just heard from the vet clinic...Beta passed away last night. Now only Epsilon and Ralph are left. Ayla and Gryphon still appear to be in good health, but I'm watching them closely.
Oddly enough, Gryphon responded to her need. While her siblings ran around and played on the floor, Gryphon hopped into the cat bed and curled his body around her. She seemed to relax with the big cat so close.
This morning I thought she was dead - her body was completely limp. But no - she opened her mouth in a pitiful attempt to meow. I washed her gently with warm water (she had messed herself in the night), wrapped her securely to avoid a chill and called Adopt-a-Pet for authorization to bring her in.
Once the authorization was given, I turned my attention to the other kittens. Three of them were up and active, meowing for breakfast and attention...but another kitten was stretched out limp. I scooped her up and realized she was still clinging to life - she still had some activeness but not nearly what I was used to seeing with her.
I called Adopt-a-Pet back and insisted on authorization to bring the entire litter back for examination. Authorization was given.
I turned my attention back to the sickest of them - Alpha. She wasn't breathing. At some point while I was on the phone getting authorization, she had passed away. Delta, the other female who had gone limp, is barely breathing - and the healthiest of the males, Beta, has grown ominously quiet.
I don't think Delta is going to survive...and I'm seriously worried about the rest of the litter. Please keep these little kittens in your thoughts today.
EDIT: As I was preparing the kittens for transport, I noticed Ayla acting odd. She's normally a very graceful cat, but it took her three tries to get up on the bed. My Adopt-a-Pet rep called me after I saw this, and when I told her she said to bring her in as well - AAP will cover her medical bills since she seems to have caught whatever the kittens have.
It's weird - Ayla wouldn't have anything to do with these kittens. It was Gryphon who showed an interest, you would think he would be the one to get sick. But he's fit as a fiddle, snoozing in the top perch of the cat tree.
EDIT: Delta had a series of seizures on the way to the clinic and passed away in my arms.
EDIT: 20th of April. Just heard from the vet clinic...Beta passed away last night. Now only Epsilon and Ralph are left. Ayla and Gryphon still appear to be in good health, but I'm watching them closely.
12 April 2011
Kitten and kid photos
This morning, I let the kids play with the kittens a bit - and pulled out the camera. Here's the result:
11 April 2011
Another foster experience
We got an email today asking if we could take in another foster kitty or two. At that point, we have no foster animals at all - Brewster went to a different foster home that had another terrier, so now he has a playmate and from what I have heard, is much happier there. It was kinda quiet and lonely around here, so I asked Sean if he thought we should take in another foster animal.
He looked at the request, which stated that there were two litters available for fostering. He shrugged and said "Yeah, sure - we can take in a litter."
A whole litter - which turned out to be five kittens. They are five weeks old and very very small.
We went and picked them up earlier today. Two of the kittens have a siamese appearance, one is gray, one is black, and the last is a tortiseshell. All of them are sick, and so will be kept separate from our own kitties for the next day or two until the antibiotics have taken effect.
They don't have names yet. Sean joked that we should name them Alpha, Beta, Delta, Epsilon...and Ralph. The man cracks me up!
I'll have photos in the next couple of days. I want to let the little guys get settled in first.
He looked at the request, which stated that there were two litters available for fostering. He shrugged and said "Yeah, sure - we can take in a litter."
A whole litter - which turned out to be five kittens. They are five weeks old and very very small.
We went and picked them up earlier today. Two of the kittens have a siamese appearance, one is gray, one is black, and the last is a tortiseshell. All of them are sick, and so will be kept separate from our own kitties for the next day or two until the antibiotics have taken effect.
They don't have names yet. Sean joked that we should name them Alpha, Beta, Delta, Epsilon...and Ralph. The man cracks me up!
I'll have photos in the next couple of days. I want to let the little guys get settled in first.
03 April 2011
Planning (yet another gardening post)
I've been itching to get outside and start working on my garden - but the weather hasn't cooperated at all. Friday it snowed - only a little, but it was still too cold to work outside. Saturday was perfect, but we had guests coming over so garden work was not a possibility. Today? Rain which turned to thunderstorms in the evening. Tomorrow? The ground is going to be waaaaay too muddy (thanks to said rain).
I really needed to do SOMETHING related to my garden. I remembered that the landlord didn't want me to break ground until he saw what I was planning...I had thought to outline the areas I planned to use with sticks and string, but I decided that I was going to do something a bit more impressive.
I decided to chart out exactly what I planned to do with the backyard.
Last year, Sean and I had gone out and measured the entire property in order to get an idea of what kind of space I had to work with. I still had the measurements - and I had graph paper. It took hours, but I finally managed to come out with something I am proud of.
Here's the graph showing the available space in our backyard (the shaded areas are areas that can't be used for planting - sidewalk, central air unit, entrance to crawl space, etc.:
The sketch is to scale - the four garden beds measure 25 feet by 4 feet, so each bed is 100 square feet. As you can see, they should not be visible from the street (which is something the landlord requested).
Then I decided to draw out each bed in more detail, to figure out what I was going to plant in what bed. This one was harder, because I couldn't just draw plants in there willy-nilly - I had to check with each seed packet and find out how much space was needed for each plant, and which plant needs full sun and which needs partial sun...it was a nightmare. I also had to sort the seeds by height - the taller plants needed to be north-facing, the shorter plants on the southern side of the garden. This prevents the taller plants from shading the shorter plants and stealing their much needed sunlight.
Now, I know this will probably bore a lot of people, so feel free to skip the next part if you want to. I'm going to post pics of each garden bed individually - this way, even if I lose the paper I drew this on, I still have a readable record of the work.
If I have any gardeners reading this blog, please comment and let me know what you think of this.
I really needed to do SOMETHING related to my garden. I remembered that the landlord didn't want me to break ground until he saw what I was planning...I had thought to outline the areas I planned to use with sticks and string, but I decided that I was going to do something a bit more impressive.
I decided to chart out exactly what I planned to do with the backyard.
Last year, Sean and I had gone out and measured the entire property in order to get an idea of what kind of space I had to work with. I still had the measurements - and I had graph paper. It took hours, but I finally managed to come out with something I am proud of.
Here's the graph showing the available space in our backyard (the shaded areas are areas that can't be used for planting - sidewalk, central air unit, entrance to crawl space, etc.:
The sketch is to scale - the four garden beds measure 25 feet by 4 feet, so each bed is 100 square feet. As you can see, they should not be visible from the street (which is something the landlord requested).
Then I decided to draw out each bed in more detail, to figure out what I was going to plant in what bed. This one was harder, because I couldn't just draw plants in there willy-nilly - I had to check with each seed packet and find out how much space was needed for each plant, and which plant needs full sun and which needs partial sun...it was a nightmare. I also had to sort the seeds by height - the taller plants needed to be north-facing, the shorter plants on the southern side of the garden. This prevents the taller plants from shading the shorter plants and stealing their much needed sunlight.
Now, I know this will probably bore a lot of people, so feel free to skip the next part if you want to. I'm going to post pics of each garden bed individually - this way, even if I lose the paper I drew this on, I still have a readable record of the work.
(Bed 1 - northernmost bed)
(Bed 2)
(Bed 3)
(Bed 4)
If I have any gardeners reading this blog, please comment and let me know what you think of this.
23 March 2011
Kitty video
The kids asked me to post this video...it was taken a few hours before Lewis was adopted out. He had just discovered that the screen was climbable:
22 March 2011
Parenting is an ongoing lesson...
...as I learned this evening.
The kids were remarkably well behaved this evening, and when they act this well I usually reward them with a little something. Tonight I decided to let them watch an extra hour of television, and the kids voted to watch a show called "Survivorman".
For those not familiar with the show, Survivorman is a show that pits a survivalist (Les Stroud) against nature in a unique way...he's dropped off in the wilderness with a few basic supplies and his cameras. For seven days he is completely alone - filming the entire episode himself with no camera crew. The kids have watched this show before and have really enjoyed it (as well as another survivalist show called "Dual Survival").
This episode had him dropped off in the middle of the Ecuadorian rainforest. This ended up being one of the few episodes that "failed"...he didn't make it the whole seven days. He had stepped out of his shelter to pee before going to bed, and came face to face with a jaguar - who showed no fear of him even when he yelled. This understandably freaked him out, and he decided to grab his pack, his spear, and his night-vision camera and hoof it to a nearby village.
The whole way to the village, you could hear the barely controlled panic in his voice; the jaguar had decided to follow him and it was very close. You could hear leaves crunching under its paws as it trailed him; every so often the jaguar would growl and the sound was picked up, quite clearly, by the camera. Les barely made it to the village in time - after he arrived he videotaped a small segment in which you could hear a very frustrated cat pacing back and forth outside the hut he was hiding in. A very scary ending to the show - and the kids were FREAKED OUT.
I had to reassure them that there were no jaguars here - those big cats like rainforest, and there is no rainforest near Illinois. I had just gotten them calmed down enough to sleep when Jacob remembered he had seen some big cats at the zoo nearby - and what if they escaped and hid in the woods near our house and GOBBLED THEM UP WHILE THEY WAITED FOR THE BUS????
And then, of course, I had a couple of panicked kids on my hands again.
And so, another lesson learned - if you are going to let the kids watch Survivorman before bed - make sure it's an episode you've already seen and know it will end well. And if the kids want to watch one of the scarier versions of the show? Make sure it is on a sunny afternoon so they don't go to bed scared.
The kids were remarkably well behaved this evening, and when they act this well I usually reward them with a little something. Tonight I decided to let them watch an extra hour of television, and the kids voted to watch a show called "Survivorman".
For those not familiar with the show, Survivorman is a show that pits a survivalist (Les Stroud) against nature in a unique way...he's dropped off in the wilderness with a few basic supplies and his cameras. For seven days he is completely alone - filming the entire episode himself with no camera crew. The kids have watched this show before and have really enjoyed it (as well as another survivalist show called "Dual Survival").
This episode had him dropped off in the middle of the Ecuadorian rainforest. This ended up being one of the few episodes that "failed"...he didn't make it the whole seven days. He had stepped out of his shelter to pee before going to bed, and came face to face with a jaguar - who showed no fear of him even when he yelled. This understandably freaked him out, and he decided to grab his pack, his spear, and his night-vision camera and hoof it to a nearby village.
The whole way to the village, you could hear the barely controlled panic in his voice; the jaguar had decided to follow him and it was very close. You could hear leaves crunching under its paws as it trailed him; every so often the jaguar would growl and the sound was picked up, quite clearly, by the camera. Les barely made it to the village in time - after he arrived he videotaped a small segment in which you could hear a very frustrated cat pacing back and forth outside the hut he was hiding in. A very scary ending to the show - and the kids were FREAKED OUT.
I had to reassure them that there were no jaguars here - those big cats like rainforest, and there is no rainforest near Illinois. I had just gotten them calmed down enough to sleep when Jacob remembered he had seen some big cats at the zoo nearby - and what if they escaped and hid in the woods near our house and GOBBLED THEM UP WHILE THEY WAITED FOR THE BUS????
And then, of course, I had a couple of panicked kids on my hands again.
And so, another lesson learned - if you are going to let the kids watch Survivorman before bed - make sure it's an episode you've already seen and know it will end well. And if the kids want to watch one of the scarier versions of the show? Make sure it is on a sunny afternoon so they don't go to bed scared.
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