Random Updates

The school year is over! Really, it was not a moment too soon. We’ve been ready to be done with this one for a while now. J is enjoying her first break in a while as well as some creative pursuits. M is starting her job as a camp counselor and the Schenectady JCC. If you are looking for things to do this summer, stuff is already happening again, and you can find ideas on KidsOutAndAbout, especially the camps and free summer stuff pages.

Here are a couple of other random updates.

Recently, J said to me, “I’m really loving what’s happening with your hair right now.”

I was surprised, because I hadn’t done anything special, and pleased, because my hair is pretty much always the same, and I love a good compliment. I decided I had to go to the mirror and see what she meant.

And, then, it turns out that I looked like this:

“This?” I asked her, perplexed. “You’re really loving this look?”

“I am!” J said. “You look like a Dr. Seuss character.” Oh, okay.

In other news, our kitty Ruth has been a mighty adventuress lately. She managed to hunt down a bat inside our house, which, hey, good for her, but she got “rewarded” with a booster shot. She and Dave were up-to-date on their shots, but the vet just wanted to be extra-safe. Because bats. Ruth has also been going outside quite a bit, on a leash because she is an indoor kitty.

This started in part because M was bored and would take her outside for the heck of it (Dave is just way too scared). While Ruth finds nature very interesting, she mostly just likes to stand around and munch on grass. But she is also easily terrified, like if she hears a dog bark, and then she gets a little panicky, which is stressful. After going outside a few times, Ruth had started to “ask” to go outside by standing at the back door and meowing plaintively. This is sort of a bummer because she can’t just be unattended, and it is pretty boring for us humans, actually, to stand around and watch your cat eat grass. Although one time recently, I “helped” her hunt a chipmunk. I thought she was just after a bug until the chipmunk squeaked and jumped out of our strawberry patch. Anyway, recently M was outside with Ruth and our very nice neighbor approached to admire our kitty. No way. That was super-duper terrifying, and while the neighbor wisely backed off, Ruth started bucking and leaping wildly at the end of her leash and didn’t stop even when the “danger” had left. I heard M trying to calm her through our open window, and I opened the back door with the plan to help. Just at that moment, Ruth managed to get herself out of her harness and there she was, completely freaked out and running around, naked and leash-free, in our backyard. M and I were beside ourselves — there is no way that we would be able to catch her, she’s just too fast and wiley. Luckily, she spotted the open back door and remembered that that was the escape hatch to safety from the many times she’s fled from scary dog barks. So she switched directions and streaked past me into the house. M and I were like, “That’s it, she can never leave the house again. That was terrifying and traumatizing.” Luckily, it appears that Ruth came to the same conclusion, because she hasn’t been meowing at the back door since.