Chicken Pox!

For you doubters out there. :) A picture of part of my back and a picture of my neck, from last week. Scratch scratch.

May I introduce you to the newest members of my family, Dylan Charlie Mischka and Oona Lily. They were adopted from the ACSPCA shortly after Treble passed away. The name they had given Dylan was Barkley and Oona was named Pride. They were from two different litters of kittens and all their siblings had been adopted already. Dylan was about 6 months old and Oona was about 4 months. They are both tabbies, but Dylan has a bit more brown in his coat and Oona is more dark grey.


Dylan is the leader, usually. If he goes upstairs, Oona will follow, and if he goes into another room she will be right behind him, but she will wander in by herself to check things out. Dylan is more laid back and took to Logan faster. Dylan is also a pip because he will come and lay on Oona if she is on my lap and he’ll act all innocent like he doesn’t realize she’s there. He will also jump on her and start biting and playing, even if she is asleep.


Oona loves to crawl around my neck and rub against my face and she thinks the best resting place is on my chest. I keep telling her it’s not going to work much longer, because she’s getting too big now, but she still tries. Oona has the most marvelous tail. It's a little poofy and when you pet her, it curls over her back and touches the back of her head.

They both stretch across my neck when I’m laying down, or curl up beside my head and purr. They LOVE to be held. You can pick Dylan up and he’ll just let you flop him around any old way. (Dylan)
Mom called him a lap slut because one morning she was holding him and got up to leave and he came running to me and plopped in my lap before I could get up. He just wants a lap, anywhere.

Dylan is more talkative and does that cat thing where he’ll go into another room and meow plaintively until you call him or go get him. Oona does her little chirp when she wants your attention, but is pretty quiet otherwise.

She also loves to be held or curl up beside you. This is a picture I had to take with the flash off because when I had the flash on, she would close her eyes too fast every time!


And how did Logan handle it? At first he was sooooooooooo excited. I kept him on a leash once I started letting them wander and he would wear himself out whining and shaking and watching them. Now he’s in jealous puppy mode and wants to make sure he gets his share of attention. Though today Oona and Dylan were playing and a couple of times Logan went to inspect their activity. I think he might eventually play with them and I can tell Dylan wants to, but Oona doesn’t seem as keen on it yet. :)

This is the third Harry Potter trailer, to be released with the movie Twilight.

I want to see the movie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



It looks to me like they are keeping in some things I worried they'd cut, like Ron being a quidditch hero. I noticed in past movies a lot of Ron's lines were given to Hermione or other characters, the effect being that they kind of turned poor Ron into a quivering goofball nincompoop, which he isn't as much of in the books. Hasn't had a truly brave moment in the movies since his chess match from book 1. So hopefully they will keep intact some of the cool stuff he does in books 6 and 7 (especially book 7).

My former next door neighbors!

I wonder if living in close proximity to me makes people turn into criminals?

* * *

From the Journal Gazette
Posted on Tue November 4, 2008

Foreclosure prompts arson, divorce, sentence By Rebecca S. Green The Journal Gazette

Setting his house on fire in an attempt to prevent foreclosure led Tuesday to an eight-year prison sentence for a 36-year-old Fort Wayne man.

Kevin J. Griffin, of the 500 block of Dayton Avenue, pleaded guilty to arson in October, admitting setting fire to his home in April.

On Tuesday, Allen Superior Judge Fran Gull sentenced Griffin to eight years in prison and two years on probation. She also ordered him to pay $20,477 in restitution, according to court documents.

On April 15, fire crews responded to the one-story house in which Griffin lived with his wife. The fire was centered in an area near the living room fireplace.

The couple was inside the home at the time, and Griffin’s wife told investigators she awoke to the smell of smoke at about 1 a.m. She woke up her husband, who got out of bed and told her the living room was on fire. They got out of the house, but Griffin went back in to rescue their pets, according to court documents.

Days later, Griffin’s wife said that when she called their mortgage company after the fire to check on the insurance, she found out the house was in foreclosure because no mortgage payments had been made for 20 months. Griffin was in charge of paying the bills and never told her about being behind on the payments, according to court documents.

The house was to have been sold April 17 because of the foreclosure, according to court documents.

Griffin’s wife filed for divorce in June.

New Harry Potter Trailer!!!!!

AIEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

Faerie Houses with Sarah

Mom and I went on our annual trip to Columbus, Ohio to visit our friend Sarah, who Mom used to work with at AEP. The traffic was super heavy for some reason, but the foliage was gorgeous.



Sarah lives in German Village, a quaint neighborhood with lots of brick and wooden houses, brick-paved streets and sidewalks, flower boxes, trees, and people walking their dogs.


This is the street Sarah's house is on.


And this is Sarah's house!


The front of the house is original, but Sarah and Dan bought the land behind their property and added on to their house and made a lovely garden.



When we went inside, we were greeted by a new member of the household - Nettie!


Nettie had fooled Sarah and Dan at the animal shelter by pretending to be old and feeble, and then when they came to pick her up to take her home she was racing around the place. Turns out Nettie had just been spayed before their first visit and wasn't feeling very well. She's a pip!


Mom and Sarah, neither of whom wanted their pictures taken. In Sarah's defense, she was suffering from a cold while we were there and spent most of the night hacking. This is Mom's fake smile (in case you couldn't tell).


This is the Deaf School Topiary Garden nearby. Matty and I got together and had lunch and then went for a walk there on Saturday before hitting the airport for a round of shopping - really! I got myself a Columbus sweatshirt, my mom a Columbus t-shirt, and everyone some yummy cookies. The Columbus airport rocks, yo. Anyway, the Topiary Garden shows a scene out of a Seurat's "A Sunday On the Island of La Grande Jatte." Can you see it?


This is Mom working hard on her faerie house. We had been collecting bark and twigs and flowers to dry for a couple months before going to Columbus so we could make wonderful faerie houses.


Mom got a little hot glue crazy, but she thought it had a nice sparkly effect. Note the swing at the side of her faerie house!


Sarah contemplates her faerie house. She thought her faerie house was too large in scale compared to ours. She decided her faerie house was for giant faeries or perhaps gnomes.


The finished product - beautiful!


This is the beginning of my faerie house. I started with a relatively flat piece of bark for my base.


I made a little bed, complete with flower pillow and feather blankets, and a little round table and benches out of cut twig. I used dried flowers for my carpet.


Then I added a back wall, to shield the faeries from the wind, and a side wall of a dried mum branch so they could see outside.


This is the front of my finished faerie house. If you look closely, you can see the teeny furniture inside. Outside are dried Russian sage, iris, some variety of evergreen, astilbe, and many other dried flower blooms stolen from public parks and the ground at Lowe's.


We kept our supplies so we can build faerie houses again someday. All of us wanted to do another. Sarah and I would like to try our hands at making cool furniture for inside. I think Mom might want to improve her swing, as it didn't have a lot of flexibility. :)

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my faerie house. I know if I put it outside, it will get ruined by the weather, but I don't know where to put it inside either. Right now it's on my dining room table. :)

Pictures of Gooch, Lily, Hollie, and Treble

This is the old Gooch Pooch, aka MacGuyver, aka MacG, aka Poindexter. I'm sure we had other nicknames for him. He would answer to anything. :)


I'm pretty sure I tossed him in the flowers so I could get a cute picture of him walking in flowers.


Poor, pitiful little Treble after his first bath. He didn't get many more. I could tell he considered it torture.


Lily is in the top left of the picture. My strongest memory of her is when I heard plaintive meowing and went to see what was going on. She had started to climb a lace curtain that blocked off a closet and she'd gotten herself stuck. Treble was sitting on the floor staring at her with concern. They were so itty bitty!


Treble destroys a catnip mouse on the lovely red 1960s shag carpeting in our living room on Hoagland Avenue.


Gooch channels his inner wolf.


Gooch chews on treble's head.


Gooch and Treble on the stairs shortly after Lily died.


Hollie Ann McKitty. How could I resist her?


MacGuyver and Hollie. I always maintained they were having an illicit affair. He would lick her ears and she would snuggle against him to take naps.


Treble, looking very glossy. Before he was neutered, he did not have a belly. After, however, he developed the neutered kitty paunch.


Mom relaxing with the three kids.


Treble and Hollie. They were sweet little imps!


Treble on his post. He was always shiny like this, until the very end. Such a handsome fellow. One thing I loved about him was when I would pet him from head to the end of his tail, he would let his tail fall in slow motion back down to the ground. Most kitties just let their tails flop, but he made it into a very graceful movement.


Yes, that's me, circa 1995. I had gotten my hair permed that morning and the next day all the curl had disappeared (but I had split ends until the permed part grew out).


The cats never seemed to enjoy posing for pictures like this. I also made them wear Santa hats for Christmas, and MacGuyver had a set of reindeer antlers. :)


These were all taken from the photo album from the first year I had my babies. Looking at their early pictures was bittersweet, but it did make me feel a little better. It was such a long, long time ago!