R.I.P.

2 December 1992 – 10 August 2009

I found him in the snow when he was about 10 months old and my daughter was 10 months old, and so he acquired my daughter’s birthday. He was mewing pitifully and the white on his fur was completely black. He was so starved for affection that he happily allowed me to give him a bath. At the time, we lived in an apartment complex that was mostly students, and we asked around and put up signs if anyone was missing a cat. It was pretty obvious that he hadn’t had company in a while, though. We figured that someone moved out and left him behind. For the first few years of his life, he followed me around like he was a dog, because he couldn’t bear to be left alone. When we moved out of that apartment, he got really stressed out, and didn’t calm down until we got to the new house that we were renting.

At the new house, he started sneaking outside to hang out with the neighbour’s dog. The two of them would play inthe driveway (the houses were really close together). He never got along with other cats, however.

The last two places we lived were old houses with plenty of woods nearby, and both had mouse problems. He was an excellent mouser, and never actually shared his mice with me (thank goodness!). He usually ate them, or if he didn’t want them, he would put them in his litterbox for me to dispose of. One time, he chased a mouse into a trap, and was very upset that now his treat was stuck. Sadly, he also liked to go after birds. My sister and I rescued an injured finch in my garden that may have been his victim.

He would usually sleep with us and watch TV with us, except when he was mad. If we went away, he would sulk and sometimes pee on the duvet to show his dissatisfaction, and then he wouldn’t sleep with us for a month or so in protest.

When Siggi was born, he jumped up on the bed and sat right between my legs to protect me, and he would lay next to Siggi when he was very small.

About 3 months ago, he started living under our bed and didn’t really come out, except to the edge of the bed to drink or eat. We had to move the litter box under the bed (ick!). He was walking with a bad limp. We took him to the vet and she remarked that he couldn’t really see out of one eye, and ran a battery of expensive tests, none of which resulted in anything useful. Maybe a month and a half ago, he started coming downstairs again. He dragged his back right foot and had no feeling in his tail (Ingi accidentally stepped on it and the cat didn’t feel it at all), so it was obvious he had some kind of nerve damage. He was managing to get around OK though, so we thought he was improving.

Then he stopped being able to use the litter box… he would try to urinate but nothing would come out. He was making pitiful yowl noises. We took him to the vet, and whatever nerve problem he had was making him unable to pee or poop. His bladder was completely full, but he couldn’t do anything about it. The vet could show me how to squeeze his bladder to make him urinate, but there was nothing we could do to help him poop, and squeezing his bladder was uncomfortable for him (he cried and tried to bite me), as well as possibly dangerous for him (squeezing too hard can rupture it). We decided to put him to sleep. It was the most difficult decision I have made in my life. I have had pets as a child, but they were never “mine”, so my parents would have that decision to make. The kids hadn’t wanted to go to the vet (knowing what was likely to happen), so Ingi, Siggi, and I sat there with him when she injected him with a sedative to make him go to sleep, and then another medicine to stop his heart. They took him away to put him in a box for us to bury him, and Siggi started to cry. (We wondered if he somehow understood).

We buried him in the back yard next to a maple tree, where he used to chase birds and mice. We miss him very much.

Tongue-tied

Siggi has a problem called a tongue tie where his tongue is anchored to the bottom of his mouth. This makes it hard for him to nurse properly, which means he nurses long and frequently. He had it clipped but it needs to be clipped again, that procedure is next week. In the meantime, I don’t get much computer or knitting time. I do get reading time since it’s the only thing I can do while nursing, so I have read:

Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan (started when pregnant)

The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs

Cities of the Red Night: A Novel by William S Burroughs

Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun

A Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown: Essays for a Scientific Age

Dead Until Dark (Southern Vampire Mysteries, No. 1) by Charlaine Harris

Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert

Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel (P.S.) by Barbara Kingsolver

A Stroke of Midnight (Meredith Gentry, Book 4) by Laurell K. Hamilton

The Dogs of Babel: A Novel by Carolyn Parkhurst

I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley

The Autobiography of Donovan: The Hurdy Gurdy Man by Donovan Leitch

Siggi

With proud big brother

Getting Ready

I am making sugar-free cherry sauce for the rice pudding tomorrow so that I can have some, sewing the wings on felted angels, and finishing sewing a dress for tomorrow. When I was younger, I felt like I needed a new dress every Christmas. Now I am over that, but I don’t have a nice maternity dress… so I decided to sew one, and start it this week. It’s not Christmas without me doing crazy crafts things at the last minute. Ingi and B went out to the bookstore to get last-minute gifts for K (we talked B into the fact that yes, he really DID need to buy something for his sister).

Last year when we were in Iceland, I saw some really neat Christmas decorations at IKEA, including this, which I liked to call the Jellyfish Light. When we came back, I got it here on crazy cheap clearance, along with another thing that is like a circle of electric candles. It was fun to have brand new Christmas decorations when we got them out. Also, because I have the best husband ever, Ingi went out to IKEA yesterday to buy one of these, in red of course, because he knew I have been wanting one. I came home from work and saw it in the window, it was so sweet of him to do that.

Now I am back to my sewing and cleaning and cooking and we had better get the tree decorated soon.

Hlýr

Before:

After:

Truce

It takes a plate of spaghetti for the bitterest of enemies to be able to overcome their differences.

Friday night, the kids and I were grocery shopping and we had Ingi’s BMW, because he had taken my car to work. It decided on the way back from the store that it was all done with the clutch and it was a good time for it to die. I ended up stuck on a major road in not-quite-first-gear, so I couldn’t really go anywhere. Luckily, some guy who was hard up for gas money came along and helped push the car into a spot where we could sit and wait for the roadside assistance to come (and I gave him some money for gas).

Now this morning, our well stopped working. Well, there was no water, but the pump was running, so we shut off the electricity on the pump. Then Ingi tried turning it back on, and we had water, but the pump only goes up to 20 PSI and keeps running and running and running (it should be at about 50). So there is something horribly wrong with it and it could be very expensive to have it fixed. I’ll know more tomorrow when the guy comes to look at it.

Santa Claws

The air is getting colder, Wal-Mart is playing Christmas music, and Santa Claws came down my chimney Sunday morning. Ingi saw this little squirrel clinging to the living room wall (I couldn’t find the camera Sunday). When he tried to catch it in a box, it ran around the living room and up the chimney again. A few hours later, the dog was chasing something, so I went into the living room and saw it clinging to the curtains. The dog jumped, and it ran around and up the chimney again. Later in the evening, we decided to have a fire, figuring the smoke would scare him away anyway. The squirrel jumps down, steps on the hot coals like someone out of a cartoon, jumps out of the fireplace and onto the living room floor, runs in a circle and then jumps back up the chimney again.

We decided to put a catch-and-release trap with an apple inside in front of the fireplace.

We may need to put the trap back in the house until the stove guy installs our new wood stove.

Stalking the dangerous leeks

I pulled the leeks out of my garden because frost is beginning to become a regular thing and they were looking like they weren’t liking it all that well.  They may have been able to handle it outside a little longer, but I wanted to grab them just in case.  (So now I have to figure out what to do with all these leeks).

I was standing at the kitchen counter, cutting the “hairy” root ends off and rinsing the dirt off, when my 15 year-old cat decided that dangling leek leaves were very exciting to hunt.  He was amused for about 5 minutes by trying to attack the leek leaves that were hanging down.

I have really been knitting, but I don’t have any good pictures to share.  My free time has been spent cooking.  Even my not so free time.  I went to a naturopath last Friday and she wants me off of: wheat, coffee, peanuts, eggs, sugar, dairy.  It is amazing how many foods have these things in them.  So I am baking spelt bread, muffins, making granola, and trying to come up with interesting meals that are easy to make on a work night and don’t have any of the “forbidden foods” in them.  (Friday night, we had homemade pizza with real cheese, I figured I’d wait until Saturday.  This week I will be making spelt crust and using goat cheese, because goat milk is OK.)  I actually started a separate food blog, partly just so I can track what I am making and what is working for me.  I have to do this for the next month and then I go back to see her and then I guess we figure it out from there.  I am very lucky that my neighbour has milk goats, so I will be able to make my own yogurt and cheese (I think I might do goat milk mozzarella for next week).

Rag Rug

A friend sent me an email with a picture of phone cord sheep

Aren’t they great?

I am trying out making a crocheted rag rug

I am not sure what I think of it so far. I am using true rags: sewing scraps and bits of clothes and fabrics that I had from old sewing projects. Maybe it would be more colour coordinated if I used purchased fabric because there could be larger bands of one colour. But that defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?

There is a tutorialhere.

I have a hole in my living room

Ingi is re-doing B’s room, and the ancient wiring had to be replaced. It came down into the living room, so the wiring had to be replaced in that wall too.

So now we have a big hole there. At least now it will be better insulated (note the complete absence of insulation except where the new window had been installed).

I saw this cardigan on the KnitPicks site. I wonder if it would make a good maternity sweater, since it is open over the belly. Or would it just be too open and look weird?

Everything is going just fine with my pregnancy. My sister-in-law is asking for belly pictures, I am not sure it’s that exciting to see yet, although it is starting to look more obvious, depending on what I wear.