Not quite Jekyll and Hyde, but...

Freya had her dental surgery on Monday and came through just fine.  Well, a little ticked off at The Hubby and I, but otherwise fine. 

When I picked her up, I was thrilled to have everyone in the office tell me what a lovely cat she is.  This is a new vet, so they are just getting to know my feline girls.  I happen to think my kitties are wonderful and appreciate hearing that the people who take care of their medical needs think so, too.  So it was wonderful walking into the office to pick Freya up and have everyone from the receptionist to the vet tech to the vet tell me that she is such a sweet and wonderful kitty.

 Why, yes, I am a sweet and beautiful princess.

I happen to agree that Freya is perfection in feline form.  She is a sweet, beautiful, clever kitty with a sparkling personality wherever she is.  It's just that how she demonstrates these qualities differs depending on whether she's at home or at the vet's.  Let's take a look at how they are different:

Picking up Freya at home:  This can go one of three ways.  (1) The "best" is if you pick her up and she is relatively agreeable.  She likes to be held so she can put her paws on your shoulder.  You may pet her for 3 or 4 seconds before she decides she has had enough.  Put her down instantly or you'll be sorry.  (2) You pick her up, but she prefers not to be held.  You are immediately scratched or bitten.  (3) You pick her up and she prefers not to be held.  Though you also prefer not to hold her, you need to because she has to get in the cat carrier or be otherwise confined.  Grab Freya and with one hand hold the back feet and with the other hand hold the front paws.  There is an art to this, as you need to hold her in such a way that she can't get free AND can't bite you to force you to release a hand.  Only The Hubby has managed to master this hold so, lucky him, he gets the job of putting her in the carrier.

Picking up Freya at the vet's:  Pick up Freya and put her on the table.

Clipping Freya's nails at home:  The Hubby first has to pick up Freya with the third option mentioned above and transport her somewhere suitable.  He then puts her down and straddles her so she can't move.  Once immobilized, he takes a paw and quickly clips the nails on that paw.  Then he moves on to the next.  The entire time, her tail is flashing back and forth and her eyes are black.  This is not good.  He does the front paws, but never bothers with the back.  Then, this is important:  he gets up and jumps back so he is out of immediate scratching range.  This must be done quickly because once she is released, Freya will spin around on and attack whoever is responsible for the indignity.  The adults of the house have somewhat mastered this evasive maneuver.  I say "somewhat" because sometimes we are not fast enough and it ain't pretty at all.

Clipping Freya's nails at the vet's:  Take paw and clip.  Take other paw and clip.  Take back foot and clip.  Take other back foot and clip.

Petting Freya at home:  This can be tricky and entirely depends on her mood.  If she comes up to you and sits on your lap, then it is alright to pet her until you notice any shift in mood, however subtle.  If she has not approached her, but you have decided that you would like to pet her, then you do so at your own risk.  She may either allow you a maximum of 5 pets before she is D.O.N.E. or she may run off to avoid handling.  If you are allowed to pet her, then you are responsible for noticing when she has reached her limit or you may lose a hand.  Don't say you weren't warned.

Petting Freya at the vet's:  You may pet at will.

So, see, there are some differences.  But wherever she is, Freya is my sweet kitty with a little, shall we say, moxie, and I love her to bits.

What Happened?

So the weekend before last, we drove up to Maine to spend a nice week away visiting my parents.  I love going up there, even more so now that The Little Girl is old enough to get what it means when we say we're going to Maine.  She loves it up there.

We set off on that Sunday with a stack of DVDs and our portable DVD player for the four or so hour drive to Portland.  Confession time:  The Hubby and I used to scoff at the very notion of putting DVDs on for kids in the car.  There is plenty of beautiful scenery to look at, books to read, pictures to draw, and so on. I didn't need videos to keep The Dark Knight (aka, my 20 year old son) happy in the car, so I shouldn't need them for any Little Girl.  Turns out, we do.  She is, after all, only 2 1/2, and the happiness that fills our car as she quietly watches an episode of Curious George is worth any amount of humble pie.

We were having a wonderful vacation; things were going well until I heard about the earthquake.  The Dark Knight did not join us on this trip, so I called him to make sure all was well.  It was, although I think he was disappointed that he didn't have the opportunity to break the news in some dramatic fashion designed to scare the living crap out of me. 

In the background, we knew a hurricane was coming.  All along, The Hubby and I planned to leave on Saturday, but we decided on Saturday morning to make sure we were home before the storm hit.  As the week progressed, we got more worried about it.  We wanted to be home because we didn't want The Dark Knight all by his lonesome during the storm.  Also because my parents were all but certain to lose power at their house.  Five people + one toilet + no power = disaster.  So there was no way we were sticking around, for everyone's sake.

We left for home Saturday morning and got home as rain from the very outer edge of the storm was starting to fall.  I invited my sister over to hunker down with us as we waited out the storm.  It started to pick up Saturday night and Sunday morning we woke up with no power.  Wait, what was my equation again?  Five people + no power + three toilets = not such a great time.  The extra toilets helped, but when you have well water and no power for the well to actually run, well...then you have to be very diligent about water usage to conserve what water you have.  In a total burst of extra awesomeness, The Hubby filled the bathtub with water on Saturday night for just this kind of emergency, and the tub slowly drained the water.  We still had some on Monday morning when we woke up, but not much at all. 

Considering how others fared, though, I'd say we did OK.  Sure, it was a pain to lose power on Sunday morning, but it was back on yesterday morning.  We lost a few large branches (one narrowly missed my sister's car) and a tree in the back, but no property was damaged and, more important, no one was hurt.  I had to take Freya to the vet yesterday for her dental surgery and when I picked her up there was an elderly lady there to board her cat.  Turns out that a 75 foot tree crashed through her house during the storm and she and her kitty are displaced until her home is repaired.  I can't imagine how horrifying and stressful that is for her. 

So it has been a whirlwind of a week and weekend.  But I am very grateful that everyone is safe and sound.

Mangia Monday!

I am exhausted after a long day, so the eloquent post that I wrote in my head on today's topic is going to stay there for the time being.  Instead, I'm going to share a few pictures of the amazingly luscious vegan cheesecake (I know...I'll explain) that I made last week.  It was a new recipe and looked wonderful from the start.  It's from one of my new favorite cookbooks, American Vegan Kitchen by Tamarin Noyes, and it did not disappoint.  We all loved it.

This is the cheesecake after sitting in the fridge overnight.  I should have done a better job of spreading out the sour cream mixture and wound up putting too much in the center.  I'll be more careful next time

Here's a slice of the cake.  I thought it looked pretty good, but needed a little something something.

Blueberries!  I had some blueberries in the fridge and cooked up a little topping by combining the blueberries with some raspberry jam.  It was the perfect accompaniment.

This is my new go-to cheesecake recipe.  I like it because it only uses the vegan cream cheese, not a combo of cream cheese and silken tofu.  It was so much richer.  I have no idea how much it tastes like real cheesecake since it has been a long time since I had the real thing, but it was a lusciously decadent dessert and I think that's always a good thing.

Friday Is Off To A Fun Start!

I've been up since 4:15 this morning thanks to, in order:  The Hubby, The Little Miss, The Cat Formerly Known As Fluffernutter, and The @$#! Birds Outside.  I have a date with the Starbucks drive-thru just as soon as I can get myself moving. 

In honor of the bright and early start to my day, I thought I would share a little glimpse into my first few minutes of consciousness on this fine Friday morning in August.

A few months ago, I taught The Little Miss to knock on Daddy's office door before just barging in.  Now, whenever she wants to go through a closed door, she knocks first.  This is true even if she is opening her own door.  So at 4:30 this morning, as I'm trying to drift back to sleep after being awakened by The Hubby's trip to the bathroom, I am jolted back to full consciousness by BANG! BANG! BANG!  Then the sound of her door opening, little feet shuffling to my bedroom door, and a tiny whispering voice announcing that she needs to hit the bathroom pronto.  Off we go. 

And though it was way too early in the morning, I still find it hilarious that she always knocks on her door even when she is leaving her own room. 

T.G.I.T.

Today was Sitter Thursday.  I have a college student come over to play with The Girl on Thursday mornings while I do things around the house or run errands.  I felt a little guilty about it at first because it seemed a bit luxurious to have a mother's helper when I'm a stay-at-home mom, but I'm so glad I moved past that because it has been awesome.  The sitter is terrific with her and it has been nice for me to get some time to do rather mundane things alone.

Today's little slice of heaven was as follows:

- Swing by Goodwill and drop off several bags of clothes and old toys.  I finally got rid of the infant toys that have been sitting in our garage for close to a year!  On this point alone, I would call today a roaring success.  But wait, it gets better.

- A quick trip to Michael's to get some random craft supplies.  Rain is in the forecast and I'm starting to run out of ideas.  I am ready for a few days of crappy weather now!

- Walked next door to Office Max and stocked up on school and office supplies at their killer sale.  Notebooks for a penny?  Check!  Two boxes of crayons for $.20 a piece?  Check!  Glue for $.50?  Yep!  The Little Girl lurves her some glue!  Storage containers at buy 2 get 1 free to hold all of the crap I keep buying at Michael's?  Hello Dolly!  I practically floated out of the store.

- Bed, Bath & Beyond was a bust.  I'm hunting for a step stool that is tall enough for The Little Miss to turn on the bathroom sink faucet without having to hoist herself up onto the counter.  The stool we have is not tall enough and the one at BB&B was even shorter.  The search continues.

- Made a deposit at the bank.  Who doesn't love that?

-Stopped at the flooring store to look at the showroom.  We'd like to replace the hideous flooring in our sunroom and entry way.  I had a lovely chat with the owner and left with 4 floor samples to check out at home.  Which in retrospect was a little stupid because I really need my mom's advice and she is away for the next few weeks.  Mom, if you're reading this, I'll need to do this exercise all over again when you get home.

-And, finally, bliss. 

I cannot resist your siren song, vanilla soy latte.

I also had to buy the awesome sitter a Starbucks card because *sob* this was the last Sitter Thursday.  We're going away next week and then she goes back to school.   But it was awesome while it lasted.

Call of the Wild

My cat Muffin had a big day yesterday.  Let me stop for a moment and backtrack.  Muffin is everything her name suggests:  fluffy in both body and mind.  For example, she still hasn't fully mastered the concept of up, as in:  look up and make sure Freya isn't on the table waiting to jump down in front of you so she can start a good game of chase.  Freya is our other cat.  She would rule the world if only she had opposable thumbs.  Alas, she is stuck in our house ruling over our family and "playing" with a companion cat who is an idiot intellectually challenged. 

There's not a lot we can do about Muffin's fluffy little brain.  The body, however, is a different story.  Two of Muffin's more charming qualities are her ability to cough up hairballs the size of small infant and the nauseating aroma that regularly wafts from her nether regions. 

The hairballs are a lot of fun (I say, because my husband is in charge of clean-up).  In a perfect world, Muffin likes to cough them up at 3:00am, taking care to be as loud as possible so she can wake us up.  There's also the matter of location, location, location (we all know how important that is).  It is critically important that the product of her dead-of-night hacking be strategically placed along the path from the bed to the bathroom, so that a sleepy person getting up with a bright-eyed little girl at 6:02am will step inadvertently step in it.  Muffin is shockingly good at picking the precise location.  Fortunately for me, that location is almost always located on the hubby's side of the bed.

With the aroma, however, we all suffer.  Particularly when it's humid, as it has been lately, the stench can be rather unpleasant.  I'm not even going to get into the random things that get stuck because 1) you don't want to know and 2) this is a family blog.  Let's just say that when I thought about how cool it would be to have a long-haired cat, these were not the things that crossed my mind.

So yesterday, she took a little trip to the vet to be groomed.  Some people may take their cats to groomers, but Muffin has to go to the vet because she needs to be sedated.  Have I mentioned that the little fluffball is also the most neurotic cat I have ever known?  Yeah, so. 

Step one is, of course, getting her into the cat carrier.  This is no easy task and stealth is critically important.  It is game over if the cat sees the carrier.  Luckily, this is Muffin we're talking about.  Since she isn't the most observant cat, this was fairly easy.  Getting her in, though.  Not so much.  This is also my husband's job and he did it beautifully.

This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.  No really, it is.

P.S. - Do you just love Freya checking it out from behind the doorway across the hall?

So off we go to the vet's.  I have to admit, I was a little apprehensive but also a little excited.  Although I've had her trimmed before, this was the first time that I was going all out.  Yep, that's right.


Muffin was getting The Lion Cut.

I dropped her off in the morning and expected to pick her up late afternoon.  They called me when she was ready to be picked up and as soon as the Little Miss was up from her nap, we were out the door.  I got there and they brought Muffin out to me in her carrier, ready to go home.  I really wanted to see what she looked like, but it was hard to tell through the carrier.  However, I could tell that she took the whole lion thing to heart because she was hissing, growling, and spitting the entire time.  When she lunged at the office cat (thankfully she was still safely contained in her carrier), I decided it was probably time to put her in the car and hope that she chilled on the way home.

The vet assistant told me to let her hang out in a quiet room for a little while so she could decompress.  So once home, we brought her up to my bedroom and (guess who?) let her out of her carrier.  She jumped out and, rather than acting like a wild animal, she rubbed all of us and was purring. 

Of course, by this time I was laughing.  You'll see why in just a second.  First, so you have a basis of comparison, here is Muffin's "before" shot.

I am a hairball-making machine.

 

Why, yes, I am that beautiful.  Now stop taking my picture.  What's going on?

And, drum roll please...ta da!

I would be plotting my revenge over this indignity if I could remember that there was an indignity in the first place.

Hey, I wonder if I can make a decent hairball with my paw hair.

She's like a third the size of the cat we sent in.  I can't say that she loves her new cut, but she is holding her own.   

Don't gloat.  You're getting four teeth out on the 29th.

Say Cheese!

About a month ago, Living Social had an awesome deal for a studio photography session.  I'm not a huge fan of in-studio photographs, but it was only $17 for a one hour session and more prints than I could possibly know what to do with.  Besides, as my mother likes to remind me, I shelled out $$$ for a fabulous photographer for The Little Girl's one year photos and liked so many pictures that I purchased the CD...then never printed any out.  So 17 bucks for already printed photos for the grandparents?  Sign. me. up.

The photo shoot was yesterday and I'd be lying if I didn't say I was a little worried about how it would go.  Turned out, I had nothing to fear.  Someone was a natural.  The Little Miss smiled away and was happy to try out all sorts of poses.  I even got this gem from the photographer:

"She is so good about following directions."  Hahahahahahahaha.  You are invited to my house around 7:00 any evening to see if you want to stand by that statement.

So after several photos, The Little Miss declared that she was all done taking pictures and we waited around to see the results.  I wondered how many of the pictures would have her classic "camera face."  This is when she scrunches up her face, squints her eyes, and gives a huge cheesy smile.  It is the exclusive pose I get whenever I take her picture at home.

My plan was to just use the deal I bought and resist the push to buy more shots.  Counting on camera face to bolster my resolve, I approached the photo slide show confident in my ability to pick one - and only one - pose.  Camera face did its part...there were quite a few pictures with that cheesy grin.  But then...there was a shot of her lying down just looking at the camera.  Precious.  Then another shot of her with her head in her hands.  Love it.  I felt my resolve crumble and by the time I got to the one that was a classic shot for the extended family, I knew that I was toast.  The classic shot is adorable.  My little girl with her scraggly pigtails and medium-level camera face looks so ridiculously happy in her flower dress against a white backdrop.  See what I mean?  It's classic, but also kind of boring.  So see I needed the other pictures for contrast.

I'm glad I did it.  They're not the beautiful outdoor shots by a professional photographer that I love, but they still capture everything about who my daughter is right now and I love that.  And the grandparents are finally going to get some pictures.

In the Kitchen

I love to cook.  Before The Little Miss came along, I could easily spend an entire weekend cooking.  It wasn't a chore; it was relaxing.  Baking especially is still a huge stress release for me.  And now that she's a little older, it's something that the girl and I enjoy doing together, too.

This weekend, I was able to spend some serious time in the kitchen.  On Saturday, we went to the local farmer's market.  There's one stand in particular that I love.  It's a father/son duo (there is a daughter, but I seldom see her) and they are just the nicest people.  We've been going there for 3 years now and their stand is always packed with beautiful and tasty produce and a bunch of happy customers.  They are friendly and, as we are loyal customers, know us well.  Which I think is a nice and rare thing these days.  After all, I'm a regular and very good (some - ahem, the husband - might say too good) customer of Amazon, but Mr. Bezos sure isn't sending me a personal message thanking me for my order or throwing in a free book.  Which would be awesome, btw, and I really think he should do that.

Anyway, they often throw in an extra something or just don't charge for something I've already picked out.  Also, they give The Little Miss random things to try - blueberries, cherry tomatoes, strawberries - which is a very good thing because this kid could eat her body weight in cherry tomatoes before we get back to the car.  I tell her we're going to the farmer's market and she is down the stairs getting her shoes on in a nanosecond. 

This weekend, I bought the usual suspects - tomatoes, greens, eggplant, bell peppers - but also went for some gorgeous looking blackberries and summer squash.  I'm not a super huge berry fan (love blueberries and sweet strawberries, but I find berries generally too tart for me), but I've been dying to make blackberry ice cream and they looked so good. 

The squash I bought because I have a recipe for squash pickles that looked really good.  Don't turn up your nose.  I'm telling you, the recipe sounds pretty ho-hum, but they looked really good.  Besides, squash is definitely down at the bottom of the list of summer veggies that I want to eat, but it's fairly cheap and plentiful and I thought it would be nice to try to do something besides roast or grill squash to see if maybe I'd like that better.

So I returned home with my fresh produce and thanks to a particularly dreary Sunday, attempted the new recipes at home.  Let's start with the squash first since dessert should really be last.  All I can say is...OMG, delicious.  These are so good that I will definitely load up on the squash next week and make some more.  Although they're in canning jars, I didn't process them.  They are refrigerated and good for a month.  They won't last that long, I guarantee it.  They are delicious eaten as is, but I think will also be good on sandwiches (hello, we're having paninis this week) or even in a pasta salad. 

Behold!

 First, ignore my crappy phone camera.  Second, look at how pretty the squash and peppers look together, marinating in a sugar/vinegar mixture with chopped onion, celery seed, and mustard seed.  Pure yumminess.

Moving on to the ice cream, this was also delicious.  The recipe is similar to a strawberry ice cream I made earlier this summer.  It calls for blending half of the berries with the ice cream base and then adding the remaining berries at the very end of churning.  I thought the strawberry ice cream was a bit too tart with so many chunks of berry in it, so this time, I blended all of the blackberries into the base, but didn't fully puree it so there were some little pieces to give texture.  Next time I would sieve out the seeds, but this was also a winner.  And, yes, it's vegan.

I know, I know, it looks kind of boring sitting in that white bowl, but believe me it didn't last long.

As a bonus, I also went wild on Saturday and baked bread.  I used to bake bread every weekend, but now it's just every couple of months.  I made Anadama bread...that delicious wheat/cornmeal/molasses combo.  Because we are very crunchy (after all, the hubby is from Oregon), we even ground our own wheat berries for the bread.  There's nothing like fresh-baked bread and I'm inspired to try to bake it a little more often.