Wednesday Workday

Do any of you know where your people go during the day when they go to work ("go hunting")? Mom has never taken us to her office, but we would often wonder about a place that takes her away from us every day. She finally shared with us some photos that she took there last week.
She said that this is the entrance she uses every day. Unfortunately, this lovely red maple tree is naked this week.

There are lots of red maples around the front parking lot.

Mom is always telling us about the wonderful walks she takes at lunch time. Her office has lots of trails through the woods out back.

With all the leaves on this trail, it looks like our yard!

Mom said that there are two ponds and a stream behind her office building. This is a view of the building from the back. Mom's office is on the front side facing west. She can see awesome sunsets from her fifth floor windows.

This is the view from the lower pond. Beavers have a dam just out of sight on the right. It makes the water flow over the trail a bit. For the first few years after the building was built in 1992, when Mom walked down here she could imagine that she was way off in the country. Unfortunately, a few years ago, a road, townhouses, and condos were built near this end. It's still rather peaceful, but there is no escaping the fact that development surrounds the area.

This is the view coming around the side of the building. The trail away from the building leads to a shopping complex that bills itself as an urban town center. There are many good chain restaurants, such as PF Chang, and fancy stores like Ann Taylor, that are just a short walk away.

We will begrudging admit that Mom works in a pretty campus setting, but we'd still rather have her home with us all day.

~J&B

Tolerant Tortie on Toesday

I was napping peacefully on the bed when Mom rudely starting snapping my photograph.
It's hard to sleep when there's a flash going off in my face. But I endured.

She found me irresistible and had to pick me up and hug me. I DON'T like to be picked up, but I do try to be a tolerant cat sometimes. I know that Mom needs lots of comforting lately so I put up with more than my usual limit for hugging. My annoying brother doesn't mind hugs at all, so I realize that I need to step out of my comfort zone, so to speak, to compete with him. He's been trying very hard to charm himself into first place in her heart. At least I have history on my side because I've known Mom longer.

~Bathsheba

Anastasia's Dare: DUYS

Anastasia returned to issue her final dare and we were eager to participate.

Here is Anastasia’s last Dare in her own words:“I Dare You All to Dress Up Your Staff. Dress up your humans in the most ridiculous, silly, weird, comical, insane, funny, humiliating, splendid, outrageous outfit you can imagine, post their picture on your blog.”

As some of you may remember, Mom went to New Orleans in May. She bought some Mardi Gras masks there. You may also recall that she has a pink wig because she made us wear it for the Pink Wig Challenge.
I made her dig deeply into her drawers to find an old T-shirt from the 1970s. (She keeps things forever.) So here she is in blue and pink.

I decided that she should try on some other masks too. Here's a green feathery one. Green is her favorite color.

And here's a bright orangey/red one!

And get a load of this animal mask.

Unfortunately, I think that the point of this exercise was lost on Mom. We were supposed to humiliate her, but I think she was having entirely too much fun.

Which one do you like the best?

~Bathsheba

Flower Friday for Mom

Mom's been kinda down in the dumps lately and we thought that we'd better help cheer her up with flowers for Friday. Here is the Virginia State insect, the tiger swallowtail, extracting nectar from one of our butterfly bushes.

Mom had what she thought was a minor fender bender on Wednesday night. Unfortunately, it caused her car's radiator to crack so it leaks when the engine is running. This happened to her old beloved 91 Camry for which she had dropped all collision coverage. She has another old car, a Buick, that Grandpa (her dad) bought shortly before he died ten years ago. When she went to use that car, the battery was dead because she doesn't drive it very often. She knows she needs to buy a new car, but she hates the hassle, and no car out there really "grabs" her. She could get the Camry fixed, but she knows it's time to move on. She's a rather practical person and doesn't really want or need all the expensive bells and whistles that cars come with these days. And she's so disappointed in the gas mileage of most cars out there. Maybe she should go with a Prius, but even it comes with so many extras.

Then there's grandma. She's now under hospice care in a nursing home, and continues to deteriorate. It makes Mom sad.

Then there's the termites. When Dad took down his big picture over the mantel as he was preparing to move, they discovered termite damage. After getting some estimates from exterminators, Mom had the house treated for termites today. She's using the bait method. The technician told her to wait a month or two before she has the drywall and mantel repaired or replaced.

And, of course, she misses Dad as we do. She plans to visit him in California for a week starting August 13 so we won't get to blog then. She's worried about Grandma during that time, but the hospice nurse urged her to stick with her plans.

Back to Flower Friday, Mom tried to catch Mr. Swallowtail with his wings fully opened, but she could not get him to cooperate with her inexpensive camera.

Here's a native plant, cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) that Mom put in a pot for the deck. It had seeded itself outside the flower bed and Mom wanted to rescue it from the path of the lawnmower. This flower is a great nectar source for hummingbirds.

I did give Mom some good news today. I had blood work done at the vet's (I was a good boy unlike some sister who shall remain nameless), and my thyroid level is 4.0. "Normal" is 1.5 to 4.5. That means that my medication dosage (1/2 a pill with each meal) does not need to be increased. Hooray! More meds would probably make me lethargic.

I told Mom that if things go really bad, she can run and hide like I do. She replied that you can't hide from problems because they will still find you.

~Jake

Thursday Thirteen - Our Mom

Mom is a little upset with us because we're fighting so much. She had hoped that sharing a blog would make us learn to get along a little better. To placate her for now, and since some of the other cats have recently featured their people, we thought that we'd dedicate today's Thursday Thirteen to her.

13 Things About our Mom:

1. Her favorite color is green, which is also her eye color. She loves the green vegetation of Virginia.
2. She shares a birthday with Dragonheart's Mom, but our Mom, at nearly a half century, is much older.
3. She is a chocoholic and especially likes dark chocolate (like Jack).
4. She went to college in the colonial fairyland city of Williamsburg, Virginia.
5. She loves to go hiking and has hiked and camped with Dad in many western states and Canada.
6. She has worked for more than 26 years for a large local government in Northern Virginia and is a native of the area.
7. She loves nature and gardening and was president of the local chapter of the Virginia Native Plants Society.
8. Despite being 15 pounds heavier than when she was 16, she now fits into smaller sized clothes.
9. She was a "dog person" when she was a little girl, then became more of a "cat person" when her family adopted Tony the cat at the urging of her little sister. (Thank goodness Mom wised up!)
10. She loves to bake--especially cookies and pies from scratch. (Hmm, we've never tried baking after we've scratched.)
11. She is thinking about retirement in the fairly near future and cannot decide WHERE she would like to retire. Any recommendations, anyone?
12. Her favorite novelist is Jane Austen, but besides Pride and Prejudice and Emma, one of her favorite novels is The Catcher in the Rye, which was recommended to her by her big brother when she was a young teenager.
13. She is a terrible procrastinator and may have to leave us high and dry on this blog for a while because she has several projects to complete this month including her taxes.

If anyone wants to know what Mom looks like you, can find her here. Just scroll down and look for the woman wearing a cat shirt and a fleece jacket in her favorite color. You can also find her here on pages nine and ten.

That should gratify Mom's vanity for now and get us off the hook for whining and fighting.

~J&B

Kiss Me, I'm Irish!

Kiss us, we're Irish, at least for today!
Actually, Mom doesn't think that she needs an excuse to kiss us. She smooches on us all the time.





Can you tell that Mom's favorite color is GREEN?

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

~J&B

P.S. SHHH! Monday, March 19 is Mom's 49th birthday! She shares a birthday with Dragonheart's mom.

Hanging Out with Mom

Weekends can be great for relaxing and hanging out with Mom. The weather has been bitter cold lately so Mom and I prefer to just cozy up inside on the bed. Jake knows that this is my domain so he doesn't bother us. Life is good . . . .

~Bathsheba

Late Thursday Thirteen

13 Reasons We Need a New Secretary

We love Mom, but we need a new secretary because:

1. Mom isn't available when we need her. Like just last night, when we wanted to visit our friends and Valentines DaisyMae Maus and Bubbles, she and Dad were busy.
2. Mom censors, er, edits our dictation.
3. Mom spells funny.
4. Mom doesn't know HTML code.
5. Mom can't seem to put badges and photos on the right side of our blog.
6. Our blog posts are always too late. How can you post a Thursday 13 post past 11:30 p.m?
7. A new secretary would have her own computer so we wouldn't have to share a computer with Mom and Dad.
8. A new secretary would have Photoshop so we could post better quality photos.
9. A new secretary would not have another job and would be available early in the morning to help us visit early bird friends.
10. A new secretary could search the 'net and find interesting tidbits of information for us to share with our friends.
11. A new secretary would know how to make movies of us and post them on YouTube.
12. A new secretary would clean up the messy papers in the computer room.
13. We could have Mom for more snuggles and playing if we freed her from having to blog with us at night.

~J&B