All in a row

Everyone attempting to sit still for the camera. 

Rain, rain, go away

Auntie Nessa and Nora brave the rain to look at "monkeys". 

No goat, no!

Attempting to feed the goats at the zoo... 

Giddy-up Uncle Eric!

 

Nora and Ruth at the Zoo!

 

Right over Bubba's head

I can't remember what happend on this play, but it looks like Bubba Franks wasn't quite ready for the ball.

Packer Game

I went to the Packer game on Saturday night. It was a lot of fun, even though it was only a pre-season game. The Packers ended up winning, which will probably be the only time that happens this year. 

Eric and Zoe Cuddle Time

Zoe's Chair

Although it may seem out of place in our living room, somehow this camping chair has become Zoe's favorite place to nap. If we put it away, she walks around in the spot that it was and gives us dirty looks.

In a recent comment, Lindsay was wondering how Zoe managed to get into her "noodle" position. The truth is, she lays like that all the time. Even on the arms of our couch! So, we decided to document her settling "into position" for our blog. Enjoy!







As for the sock monkeys, whom we fondly refer to as "her babies", they were given to Ruth's brother and sister as a joke by a friend of the family. They were terrified of sock monkeys as children, and apparently still are because they gave them to Zoe when she was a kitten.

Now Zoe drags them around the house when she is lonely and wants attention. It scares us half to death because she tries to meow while she has a sock monkey appendage in her mouth and it makes this strangled "werrrble errble errble errble" kind of sound. If they are seperated, she'll drag one to where the other is and plop them on top of one another.

And... we're done.

 

Expensive Cat Bed

OK Smidge, if you get off of the laptop I promise I won't write about how fat you are on our blog. 

A Little Observation....

I just have to draw everyone's attention to that frickin' guy that they arrested in connection with JonBenet Ramsey's murder. Have you seen that guy? If not, here is a picture of him. I was just thinking about this, because Eric and I were watching a documentary on serial killers that ranked them on this new "scale of evil" depending on mutilated and tortured their victims were. I know, I know, the excitement never ends at our house.

Anyway, we were watching the segment about Ted Bundy, and the disembodied narrator was commenting on how people didn't think he could be a serial killer because he didn't LOOK like he would kill someone. I think we all are at a point where we realize that you can't judge someone by how they look, but it is amazing how often people DO. For example, I saw a picture of John Mark Karr (remember that name. It will be on every pop culture trivia quiz from now until the end of time) and I thought to myself: "That guy looks like he would molest and kill a child." !!! Amazing. I even thought it TO MYSELF. I know that is crazy. Unless the police have some sort of solid connect, like DNA evidence, there is still a large chance that this guy is not guilty. And yet, based on looks alone, my brain jumped ahead and made a decision. Strange....

Smidge is fat

Demon Cat

For some reason Zoe loves to lay like this.

Professor PJ Cornucopia's Fantastic Foodmagorium and Great American Steakery

Today Ruth made sauce out of (you guessed it) millions and millions of tomatoes. Despite the quantity of tomatoes, there was just enough sauce for both of us. It was a disappointing day for tupperware everywhere (well, I guess mostly just the tupperware in our house) as we had no leftovers at all. Mmmmm.

Yesterday I took the cats outside for a while, and Zoe got stung by a bee. I was a little worried about it yesterday, but looking back on it I think it was actually kind of funny. She was walking near the neighbor's garden (which mostly consists of grass, just like ours) when all of the sudden she jumped about four feet straight up in the air and then bolted to the driveway. She seemed annoyed, but it wasn't as big of a deal as if I would have been stung...

Vintage Bug

If anyone is interested, I started a new blog the other night. It is called Vintage Bug. In it I am going to be posting scans of things from the 1930's and 1940's that I found in boxes full of my grandparent's stuff. Some of it is pretty crazy and fun, so check it out!

The Circle

Wow, how strange. This weekend is the first time in a month that I skipped checking out everyone's blog every day. I really missed it. It is weird how soon you become addicted to these things.

WEDDING!!! Is that a scary word? For some guys it is pretty terrifying. I thought I was pretty numb to it. I used to think, "Hey, no problem. I've done that already, and Eric and I survived. I can't be anymore terrified of it than I was right before I got married." Turns out I was wrong.

My sister got engaged two weeks ago to Eric's friend, Nick. I realized as I was looking through our blog this morning that I hadn't posted anything about that. I am thrilled about it, even though it has kind of an strange, assimilation quality to it. For example, now all my friends are my sister's friends. Which isn't a bad thing, because my sister is my best friend and I love to hang out with her. It is just kind of....strange. Another thing is that Eric's friend dating my sister produced this weird phenomenon that we call "The Circle". If you tell one of the other three anything it is pretty much guaranteed that the other two will know about it in less than 5 minutes. Honestly, less than five. We are all connected by emails, text messages and cell phones. And sometimes it seems like mental telepathy. "Hi, am I crazy or did you just think about calling me? You did? Great. Because I have something to tell you. Wait...what do you mean you already know?"

But seriously, I am really excited for them to be married. And they are excited too. So excited, in fact, that they are having the wedding in January. Of 2007. This is due to the fact that Nick is being transferred to Arizona and Sarah wants to go with him. But there are no jobs. So that means that they (i.e.: me and my sister) have about 5 months exactly to plan it. Can you say, panic attack??? This weekend was the first of many planning weekends that are going to take place in the near future. We made some progress, but mostly at the expense of any an all free time. Including the freedom of our thoughts. I think I thought about wedding things more in this weekend than I did the whole time I planned my wedding. And I thought about them HARDER too. Eric had to shake me awake from more than one nightmare on Saturday night because I was yelling things in my sleep. "What do you mean you need the deposit now? And you promised us red napkins! Red!" But the church is taken care of (I have to give props to Nick for that one) and my sister has decided on a hall and a caterer. And I think we made some good inroads with invitations. All the rest of it is still looming over them, but it should prove for some interesting weekends in the future.

Children's Programming

Emboldened by Patrick's post, I thought it might be time to confess something: I am a huge nerd. And not just a regular Star-Wars nerd like Brian, or a computer nerd Eric. I like cartoons. I know, its freaky. I mean, what other 26 year-old suburban wife would confess to that? Probably not many.

In any case, I have to give Patrick and Lindsay props for watching Fraggle Rock. I think it is really neat to watch old shows and movies that you watched as a kid. Sometimes you watch and are really disappointed with their suckiness, but sometimes the old stuff is almost funnier when you watch it as an adult. Your whole frame of reference is different, and you GET things that you didn't get as a kid. For example, The Muppet Show. I LOVED that show as a child. Now that I am an adult watching the Muppet Show I love it for a whole different reason; the puppets look real. I can't even imagine how someone could take a pile of cloth and googly eyes on a stick and give it a personality. And not just any personality, but that of Kermit the Frog, one of the most recognizable pop-icons in the last twenty years, by both children and adults.

That level of respect doesn't extend to...oh...say...THE SMURFS! Man, does that cartoon suck...

But anyway, enough of rapsodizing about the Muppets. I actually have been "collecting" hard to find cartoons and shows that I like. That's how far my nerdiness extends. So far my favorites are The Tick, Family Dog, Eek! The Cat, He-Man and Sifl and Olly (which is newer). If anyone would like a copies, I would be happy to make them for you....

Oh, and for my pop-culture reference of the day:

"Dad, what's a Muppet?"
"Well, it's not quite a mop, not quite a puppet, but man... (laughs, then pauses) So, to answer your question, I don't know. "

Too Many Bunnies!

Eric and I went for a jog (read:fast walk) today and saw roughly...oh...six dozen rabbits along the Menomonee River Parkway. It was a little shocking, because the dumb things weren't even afraid of us. We even went so far as to leap off the trail every now and again to keep them on their toes. It actually made me feel pretty good though, because I am still feeling a little sad from an incident earlier this year where a neighborhood cat made off with the baby bunny that was living under our living room window. I know it is nature's way, but it is still upsetting to see the little bunny that you have watched frolicking and growing up dangling helplessly from a cat's jaws. It made me a little sick for a while.

Speaking of a little sick, we had our second straight day of BLTs today. The tomatoes are ripening at a pretty steady rate of about two or three a day. I am not sick of them yet, but yesterday's BLT was awesome while today's sandwich was just good. The law of diminishing returns says tomorrow's will be okay, Fridays will be so-so and by Saturday I will refuse to eat it. Solution? Have hamburgers tomorrow. We can still put tomatoes on those, right? Problem solved. Cold logic wins again.

Hooray for tomatoes!

We ate our first two tomatoes today, and they were delicious. I'm excited to eat some more, but the fact that there appear to be twelve healthy plants growing in puny pots behind our garage has me a little concerned. Ruth wants to get some bigger pots and shower them with love and fertilizer, but I don't know what we are going to do with all of the tomatoes. Sometimes in my darker moments I daydream about an accident somehow involving the lawn mower, the tomato plants, and lots of rabbits happily feasting on the remains which have been splattered across the side of the garage.

Or I suppose we could try to make some sauce or salsa or something. I guess we'll deal with it when the time comes.

The Real Story

After checking out Eric's post below, I realized I had to tell the real story of the girls visit to the vet focusing on the cats, because it actually was their vet visit!!!!

First off, the girls hate the car, so after spending twenty minutes in the car with a yowling Smidge who was trying to push herself through the slats in her plastic carrier and a screaming Zoe who was panting with fear, we finally arrived at the vet about 10 minutes late. Immediately after entering the vet's office we were shown to the back exam room and given some "calm down" time with the girls. I was trying to keep Zoe from freaking out because sometime during the ride she had moved the floor of her soft carrier sideways and it was collapsing on her. All of a sudden Eric leaps up and says "Is your chair cold?" At that point I wasn't really paying attention to him so I absentmindedly said"No" and kept trying to get the shrieking cat under control. I happened to glance up and out of the corner of my eye noticed almost the entire leg of Eric's shorts were WET in a suspicious splatter pattern. I think I said "Oh my god" and immediately burst out laughing. Eric kept trying to get me to smell it, but I didn't need to smell it. I could see exactly what it was.

Just then the vet tech entered and wanted me to keep my squirming, snarling mini-monster under control so she could shove something up her butt, so I didn't have time to tell her about what Eric had "found". By the time she finished with both cats and it was time for the vet to come in, Eric had calmed down and we decided to not say anything about it. Needless to say, we both stood for the rest of the vet visit and didn't mention anything to them. And Eric made the trip home sitting on an only sweatshirt from my trunk!

In health news, Zoe is a poster child for the healthy, fit, agile, crabby feline. Smidge, on the other hand, is fat and has gum disease. Also, something funky is happening to the fur on her back. She seems, for no apparently reason, to shed her entire undercoat just in one spot. It is pretty weird. So, we had some blood tests done to make sure she is doing ok, and to get her prepped for her sedated tooth cleaning that she will have in the near future. It was heartwrenching to watch the vet take her out of the room to the lab area. He turned around to tell us he would just be gone a second and Smidge took that opportunity to reach her paws out and make a futile grab at the doorframe. I swear, if she would have had claws she would have gotten that thing. But with her stubby, soft little toes her paws just slid right off. And then she looked up at me with this complete look of utter panic in her green eyes as the vet took her from the room. It was so much like a movie I could almost hear the tragic violin music in the background.

Eric's sticky day

Today Ruth and I took the cats to the vet for some standard vaccines. As I was walking into the vet from the car, I stepped on something that didn't come off my shoe right away. I thought I'd play it safe and not step on it more in case it was gum, so I sort of limped towards the entrance to the vet's office.

When we got inside, I put the cats down and started walking towards a chair so that I could assess the situation while sitting down. I took one step and the person behind the front desk told us that we could go straight to the exam room. I paused and looked at the open door. There was an inviting chair just inside of the room that seemed more than adequate for getting whatever was on my shoe off, so I picked up the cats and started in that direction.

As soon as we entered the exam room, I set the cats down and hopped over to the chair. When I sat down and looked at my shoe, I noticed two things; there was in fact gum on my shoe, and I had just sat in some kind of animal urine.

Determined to get the gum off of my shoe, it took me a minute to come to the second conclusion. I thought maybe the chair was just cold, but the fact that my shorts were stuck to my legs when I stood up quickly quashed that theory.

I think I said something brave, like "Ruth, quick! Smell my butt!" but I didn't feel very brave. I was hoping that maybe it was just water, but considering where I was it didn't seem very likely.

Before I could really do anything about it, the vet's assistant was in the room asking us questions about the cats. Ruth politely answered the questions while I continued to stare open-mouthed at the chair, waiting for an opportunity to interrupt. Partly because I'm shy, but mostly because I'm an idiot, I decided that this was going to be a secret between me and the chair. Someone else was going to share in my misfortune today, and somehow that made everything ok.