Surgery

I had a minor surgical procedure done today. It was a voluntary thing, I wasn't sick, so don't worry. It's actually kind of amazing - this is a thing that at one time they would have had to cut a whole big incision for, and all I have are two small cuts, which don't hurt at all. I didn't even need the pain medicine they prescribed me (although I filled it anyway, since that's good stuff to have around).

This morning I was up at 4:30, and got showered and dressed and took care of the animals. J had a little trouble with his car (which he has now fixed), but it's a good thing we didn't take it anyway - it snowed like an effer here today, and we needed the 4wd on the truck.

We were at the hospital at just a few minutes after 6:00. I was in surgery by 7:30, and waking up before I even knew I was asleep. Apparently I puked while I was under, and the anesthesia made me feel horrible, but the surgery itself went fine, which I was happy about, obviously.

And then J and I were on the way home by 11:30, after a stop at my work so I could pee (they must have pumped a LOT of fluids into my IV, because I couldn't make it all the way home) and a stop to fill my prescription. Since then I've mostly been in bed, but I'm feeling so much better already than I did when we got home. Napping is a good thing.

And now I think I'm going to go back to relaxing and healing. Happy New Year, everyone. I will probably not be awake to see it in, but I hope you all enjoy it. And here's hoping that 2009 brings great things for all of us.

Pretty Kitties

Wow, I sure do lose all track of time when I'm on vacation. I posted the Happy List a day early this weekend, and I almost forgot it was kitty picture day today! But I remembered, and since I've been having so much fun playing with my new camera, I didn't even have to run around trying to get pictures of them all, because I already had a decent amount to choose from (mostly of Sable, because I love that this camera can capture her so well, even though she's all black).

So, here we go!

Pretty Kitties

Vacation Monday

Wow, you can tell it's vacation time when I don't update this until 10:15 at night.

So, first day of vacation is just about over! And okay, it's not the first day, tecnically, but it kind of feels like it, somehow, I guess because it's the first day that hasn't felt like it was Christmas related. I mean, I'm home all day on a Monday, J is at work, and I'm sitting at my desk watching Gilmore Girls episodes all day.

I think some people would think I kind of fail at vacation in one way, though. I was up at about 7:00 this morning, and I will be again tomorrow. Our handyman/contractor person is coming over to check out my roof (which was leaking on Saturday, blah), and he said he'd be here between 8 and 9. I'm not letting him see my in my PJs with bedhead, so I'll be up, showered and dressed before 8. Sigh.

But that's okay. Just cross your fingers for me that he can patch my roof up cheap, okay?

Okay. I really need to get to bed now. Happy Monday night, people. Talk to you tomorrow.

Bonus Doggy Day

J gave Willow a piece of gum when he was done with it today. He's given Rosie gum lots of times, and she chews it six or seven times, and then swallows it. Willow, however, chewed it for probably half an hour before she swallowed it. And it was hysterical! And what do you know, I got a camera for Christmas, that takes videos. :) Enjoy.

(I don't know why the image is showing up twice. Sorry.)

Willow says: "I make my people laugh because I am FUNNY! Shoot, I crack myself up." :)

Happy List, 12/21 - 12/27

Christmas week was a good one for me. Here's what made me happy over the last seven days.

Sunday: Watching DVDs and TV most of the day, while knitting (although the knitting took too long). Seeing J when he was finally able to get home from work. Woo!

Monday: Christmas party at work! Gifts and food, including lots of cookies, yum. Wrapping J’s presents. Spending a good couple of hours with him when he got out of work.

Tuesday: Seeing almost all of my sister’s family at a Christmas get together. It was so nice to see them all, I loved every minute of it. I’ve missed them.

Wednesday: Last day of work before Christmas break! Spending Christmas Eve night with J. :)

Thursday: An absolutely fabulous day with J and his family. I got a new camera! But mostly I just loved spending the holiday with the man I love, and with his family.

Friday: Another day with J, before he had to go back to work. It was mostly a quiet day, but we managed to have some great together time.

Saturday: Seeing my great–niece eat her first birthday cake, and open her presents. Seeing my sister and her husband, plus most of their kids and my great–nieces and –nephews.

Doggy Day

Doggy Day! I've taken so many pictures since yesterday that I had a lot of doggy shots to choose from. So let's get to it!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! Today was an absolutely great day. I got a new camera! And oh man, it's so amazing. I've only played with it for a little while, but it is great. I am in love with this camera.

I got lots of other great gifts, too, and we spent the day with J's parents and siblings, which was fun, as always. They're very generous.

And now I kind of want to get back to my Christmas evening, but have a couple more pictures from my amazing new camera.

This was taken in macro mode. It works really well, except I was doing it with the flash off (to get the light from the tree lights), and I couldn't hold the camera still enough to keep it from getting a little blurry.

The Grinch is set up in front of the garage tonight. :)

Look how much better the picture of Sable is! This camera handles her all black fur much better.

Our front porch is all lit up tonight, too. :)

Christmas Celebrations Starting

Last night I went to my sister's house after work, for a Christmas get together. I couldn't stay long, because I had to get home to let the dogs out (they had been inside since 8:00 in the morning), but I was so happy to get to see everyone who was there.

I've lived back in this area since 1994. When I first moved back, my nieces and nephews were still kids, for the most part. The youngest one used to come running up and hug me whenever I came to visit, and his head only hit my abdomen - now he's over 6 feet tall! And every single one of them is living their own adult life. I have three great-nieces and a great-nephew in that family already (plus two more in my brother's family), and a third baby is due in this family in May. Time certainly doesn't stand still.

So last night was pretty much focused on the kids. The five year old left early to go be with her dad, but there was an almost one year old to make faces at and play with, and then the other two came over a little later. It's so fun seeing the new generation come in and make themselves known (although it's a little weird to see the people I still think of as my kid nieces and nephews in their roles as spouses and parents).

Tonight I'm hoping for a nice night with my man. He's off today, while I'm at work, which is kind of killing me, but what can I do - I need the time on my paycheck. And anyway, I'll get to spend the evening with him. We're going to go to Long John Silver's for dinner, I think, because that is our new traditional Christmas Eve dinner. :) And then we're going to come home and watch Christmas DVDs, with all of the dogs around us. And then we'll be stuffing each other's stockings (this is not a euphamism for anything dirty, even though it kind of sounds like it, :D) and going to bed, with visions of a great Christmas Day running through our heads.

Tomorrow we'll be opening presents and eating cinnamon buns in the morning, and then heading off to his parents' house to do the presents and dinner thing there. And then I'm hoping to fit in another visit to my sister's house in the late afternoon/early evening, to say Merry Christmas and maybe have some dessert. Christmas is such a great family day.

Merry Christmas Eve, everyone. I hope you have a great holiday.

Kitty Picture Day, Yay!

It's Tuesday! And it's almost Christmas! But Christmas doesn't really have anything to do with this entry. Except that Zelda is sleeping on Santa's face, but that sounds dirty, so let's just go to the pictures, shall we?

Cat Cuteness Overload

See? Right on Santa's face. :)

I have no idea what this face was all about. (Click the image for a much larger version, if you want to see the weird face she's making.)

I love when Kate comes out of her house long enough to cuddle with the other cats. And Gracie loves to cuddle with any cat that will allow it.

My Sable is so beautiful, isn't she?

Still beautiful.

See? Gracie cuddling with Lucy. She loves to cuddle.

Kate! Out of her house!

Gracie always lays with her right leg straight out like that, since she broke it. :( She gets along really well on it, but she must not feel comfortable bending her elbow like she used to.

Kate on the treadmill. If it wouldn't have freaked her right the heck out, I'd love to have turned it on and got her walking on it. She's so fat! Sometimes I think I should give her to someone who would love her, and who could put her on a diet to lose it. Poor fat Kate. She's such a sweetie.

Mrs. Miniver

I watched Mrs. Miniver yesterday morning, while I was home knitting a scarf and trying not to feel the cold I'm catching.

Mrs. Miniver
1942
Greer Garson
Walter Pidgeon
Teresa Wright
Richard Ney

I popped this into the DVD player on my laptop, and then went to the kitchen to make myself a cup of hot cocoa - I didn't have any orange juice, and the cocoa seemed like the next best thing to make the cold feel better. Or that was my justification - really, it just sounded like a good idea on a cold winter day.

So I get my cocoa nice and hot and come back out to the living room, and the movie is already playing on my laptop (it started itself automatically). And who do I see on my screen? Clarence, the angel from It's a Wonderful Life! Which I had just finished watching before putting this DVD in, by the way. So I was all, "Hey Clarence! Congratulations on your wings! I didn't know you were in this movie, too!"

I like Clarence. I always have bells on my Christmas trees now, because of that movie.

Anyway, back to Mrs. Miniver. It's the story of a family in England during WWII. (Okay, I just wrote that, and then doubted myself, because the movie came out in 1942, so WWII wasn't exactly a long ago historical event at the time, but I remember them mentioning Nazis, and buying a car that was from the late 30s or early 40s, so it had to be WWII. Okay, doubting moment over.)

Mrs. Miniver and her husband go through the war years, their oldest son enlisting in the RAF (Royal Air Force) and fighting in the war, as they stay home and spend nights in a bomb shelter with their younger kids and their son's cat, Napoleon. It was a very enjoyable movie, that I feel like I'm doing a bad job talking about. It's hard to talk about a movie without giving too much away!

But I can tell this much more. The son falls in love with a girl from town, and her grandmother is a nasty old woman, but Mrs. Miniver and her son totally win her over. And there is a flower show every year, and Clarence, whose name is something else in this movie, but I'm still calling him Clarence, grew a red rose that he named after Mrs. Miniver, because she was so nice to him all the time. He entered this rose in the flower show, against the old lady's rose. And this is a competition that the old lady has never lost. Ooh! Exciting. :) It was sweet, though, actually. It gave the old lady's character room to grow in a nice, heart warming way.

And there are bombs and people getting shot, and a wounded German ending up in the Miniver's kitchen, and just all kinds of excitement. It was a very good movie, and an enjoyable one to watch while I was sitting home knitting on a snowy Sunday. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

Happy List, 12/14-12/20

I'm knitting my fingers to the bone today, getting a scarf finished for the person whose name I drew in our Secret Santa thing at work. Here's a tip, from me to you - don't leave things to the last minute. Oy.

Anyway, here are the things that made me happy this last week.

Sunday: Another really enjoyable Sunday with J. Went to a late lunch/early dinner with his family to celebrate his Mom’s birthday, which was fun. Relaxed and watched a movie at night on my laptop, while J sat on the futon and watched his shows and football. It was a very relaxing, enjoyable Sunday night.

Monday: Having a great night with J. We watched Christmas DVDs, and laughed and just enjoyed the evening watching TV together. :)

Tuesday: Bleh. I was in a mood. But we watched two episodes of Sarah Connor, which was nice.

Wednesday: I got a very cute calendar from my secret Santa at work! Getting my shopping done. :) Spending the evening with J, while making cookies.

Thursday: Mushy J. :)

Friday: Playing the Sims on my laptop! Getting home safely on a very snowy day. Sable purring in my ear.

Saturday: Taking pictures of the dogs outside in the snow. Having a snow fight with J when he got home. :) Watching the end of the SU basketball game with J, and spending a few good hours with him before he went to sleep.

Snowy Saturday

We got about six inches of snow dumped on us yesterday afternoon. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it came hard and fast for a while, and it was pretty messy out there. I left work early, mostly so that I'd have a chance at getting into my driveway without having to shovel out a spot. I made it home, after having to stop twice to clean snow off my windshield wiper, and then I relaxed at home, happy to not have to go anywhere the rest of the night.

After all of that, today was rather quiet. The weather was calm, the sun was out, and I had a day at home. I went outside and shoveled in front of the mailbox, and then I brought the dogs out and got some pictures of them. It was so nice out - really cold, but nice and sunny.

Other than that, it was all the normal Saturday stuff. I did all my usual Saturday chores, and I played the Sims, and I took care of the dogs and I petted the cats. It was a pretty decent day.

And then J came home from work, and cleared the driveway with the snow blower, and then somehow he talked me into going out there with him to shovel a little, and we ended up having a snow fight. He was throwing it at me, I was throwing it at him, and somehow I ended up butt first in a snowbank. :D It was the first time snow had been fun in years - it was a nice feeling.

Tomorrow we're supposed to get even more snow. I'm really excited about Christmas coming, but I'd be just as happy if Christmas Day could be immediately followed by April. :)

Although I think I do want to make a snowman at some point this winter. Maybe. Especially if I can get J to help me with one. :)

Willow isn't a fan of the snow - she'd just as soon be back inside, on the futon, thank you very much. :)

Wet Duff

It's doggy day! And actually, it's Duffy day! The other night J gave McDuff a bath, because he has some skin irritation going on, and has a medicated shampoo to take care of it. He was getting a little red around the eyes and in a few other places, so bath time it was!

Of course, I missed the best shot, of Duff in the bathtub, with his hair shampooed up into a mohawk. D'oh! Sarah pointed this out to me, and I couldn't believe I missed it. Oh well - I'll get it next time.

Now, for pictures of a just bathed, still wet McDuff!

Isn't that a great hairdo? :)

Why do dogs feel the need to rub themselves on the furniture or rugs after a bath? I don't know, but it's pretty darn cute when they do it.


He needed a good rest after the trauma of a bath. The pillows on the futon were a great place to take a nap.

Dogs Who Aren't Duff

We had a heck of a snowstorm today. It was bad enough that I left early to make sure I'd be able to get home safely and get into the garage, and it's just all around crappy outside. So we're all hanging around the heater tonight. :)

J and I were sitting on the futon watching TV. The dogs wanted to be on the futon with us, but there isn't really enough room - well, Willow found a space behind J. :D Silly Willow.

Whoa!

I got a Christmas card from my oldest brother today. For this news to hit you the same way it hit me, you should know that said brother is 50 years old right now, turning 51 in January.

The card is nice, and he wishes me a very Merry Christmas - oh and, by the way, his new wife is pregnant, and due in May.

Whoa!

I'm going to be an Aunt. For the 14th time (17th, if you count my middle brother's three ex-step-daughters). I'm already a Great-Aunt four times, with a fifth due around the same time as this niece or nephew.

Whoa!

All I can say is, I'm happy for him, and I hope the baby is healthy and whole.

Also, better him than me. :D

Christmasy Night

It's been a Christmasy kind of night. I left work, and was just going to go to the local P&C in town to get some cat litter, a card for J for Christmas, and a few other small things, but somehow I talked myself into going to Walmart instead. I kind of hate going to Walmart, especially alone, so it took a lot of talking.

I'm glad I did it, though. J had told me not to buy him anything for Christmas, once we found out how much work my car was going to need. In fact, he didn't just tell me not to, he forbid me to. But recently he said that maybe it would be all right if I bought him this book from Walmart, about AC/DC. :) So I picked that up (after calling him to find out where he had seen it, because it wasn't in the book section), and I got a couple of small things for the person whose name I drew for the secret Santa thing at work. And I got some stocking stuffers for J, too. So it was a good thing I went.

Then I came home, and I rolled, cut and baked the sugar cookie dough that I made last night. I love these cookies (made from Sarah's Mom's recipe), but man are they a lot of work. I was in the kitchen almost an hour and a half rolling them, cutting them, baking them, making the frosting and then frosting them. It's tiring! Once the holiday season is over, this recipe is going in the file until next year. (Here's a game for you - can you find the non-Christmas shaped cookie in this picture? Can you tell what it is?)

Once I finally had them all frosted, sprinkled and put away, and had washed the flour off the counter, I came in to the living room to start to write this, and J called me into the bedroom, where he is watching TV - we caught the last five minutes of the Grinch. :) Just enough to see his heart grow three sizes and for him to find the strength of ten Grinches - plus two. I love the Grinch.

And now I'm going to ignore this mess that is now in the kitchen sink, and I'm going to relax. For 45 minutes, and then it'll be bedtime already. Sigh. Where does all my free time go? Really, it goes away much too quickly.

(p.s. Sarah, does this count as my Christmas thing to be made, for your assignment? :)

Cats!

It's cat picture day, woo! I love cat picture day. I need to get better about taking pictures during the week, though, and not just on the morning of cat (and dog) picture day. I'd get a wider variety that way.

But I didn't take them during the week for today - I took these all this morning. Which is why there aren't any pictures of Kate, because she hides in her house while I'm getting ready for work - everyone else, though, comes out for loving. So, no more talking from me - it's picture time!

Cats!

I went out to the kitchen to get fresh batteries for the camera. When I turned around, this is what I saw - three cats, all lined up. I'm not sure why, though - they had already gotten their morning treats.

Waiting for Heat


The cats all seem to like to sit in this little corner in the bathroom, hoping for heat to come out of the vet. Zelda was there while it was running this morning - I don't think Gracie got that lucky.

Cats Being Cute

Lucy likes to get into this laundry basket in the morning, for some poop loving of her very own.

It's so hard to get pictures of Sable that I really love. Which is a shame, because she's such a love bug, and so freaking cute.

Gracie is always around wanting loving in the morning. Here she's on the back of the dryer.


Zelda is an attention whore. While I was brushing my teeth, she was rolling around on the floor. :) She's so cute.

How Green Was My Valley

How Green Was My Valley
1941
Starring:
Walter Pidgeon
Maureen O'Hara
Anna Lee
Donald Crisp
Roddy McDowall

I loved this movie. Okay. My hormones might be a bit messed up. Am I PMSing? I have no idea. My body has no idea. But I don't think the hormones are the only reason I loved this movie, even though I did almost cry at the end (teared up, but the tears didn't fall).

This is the story of a family in a small coal mining town in Wales. They're a large family, full of men who work in the mines, plus a daughter and a young son. It follows their stories as the miners strike for a union, and then as the mine starts laying them off. It follows the daughter as she falls for the new preacher. It follows the young son as he and the mother recover from an accident, and then as he goes to school.

It's a story of relationships, of love, and of circumstance that change their lives. By the end of the movie, I loved them all. I laughed with them, I cheered them on, I cried with them. I'm so glad this was a Best Picture winner. Otherwise I might never have seen it! I highly recommend it, and I give it 5 out of 5 stars.