The Champagney-est First World Problem Ever

You remember Polly, right?

who can forget polly? look at that schmoopie face!

Seriously - a sweet, sweet cat. Especially appreciate her snuggly and loving personality given that I chose her in the worst way possible - (shelter friends, LOOK AWAY I'M HIDEOUS) - I picked her out of a photo. I saw a calico kitten on Happy Paws Kitten Rescue's website and the phone was in my hands before you could say boo to a ghost. Calicos are notoriously nutty and remember the first night we had her being slightly nervous and a bit scared, because I was the proud new owner of a teenie tiny cat about 20 minutes after meeting her for the first time.

But she's proved to be consistently loving and adorable. She went for her booster shots yesterday, and after three sticks with a needle to get blood, a boohiney shot full of medicine, and a mouthful of de-wormer, our vet commented that she was still purring and asked if she was always this playful and loving. Yes, she is.

What's the problem you say?

She was taken from her mother the day she was six weeks old and was in my house less than six hours later. Polly never was weaned from her mother, and I foolishly thought the worst part of that would be getting her acclimated to solid food immediately. Wrong. And when she fell into the habit of nursing on my neck and purring into my hair I thought it was absolutely adorable. So sweet.

Then she started doing it at night and waking both me and Tommy up. Combine that with that itty bitty kitten mouth turning rather rapidly into an itty bitty CAT mouth, and you have:



cat hickies. i can't make this stuff up people.

  

it seriously can get bad

 The first time I got visible hickies Tommy was out of town *nervously giggles, "the cat did it! I swear!"* and when it didn't stop, I sought the advice of cat-loving friends. Suggestions ranged from cat pacifier to cold water sprayed in her face. I didn't want to scare her, and still besides, it's really stinkin' sweet. So, this is the solution that is working (for now):

yup, i'm sleeping in a scarf

 Verily, it is the hottest summer on record, and I get to sleep in a scarf. Fortunately for my reputation as a lady (ahem) it foils her long enough for her to get bored trying to find a way through the scarf and leaves to go suck on Olive. Usually then I can take the scarf off for the night - she usually only tries once a night, anywhere from right when I go to sleep until about 4 AM.

She's a sweetie though, so I'm keeping her despite her vampiric ways. I ain't got nothing to complain about.

Off to go play with my kitties!

Mt. LeConte 2012

This past weekend, I hiked Mt. LeConte with my parents! We had a great time. I always think I'm in such great shape... until I do something like a 10-mile hike.

For those of you who haven't hiked LeConte, think of this like camping lite. There's hiking, but at the end of the day there's a real bed, a hot meal (someone else has cooked), and a roof over your head. There is NOT running water or electricity, however. It is a great experience, and I'm glad I had my fun Mama and Dipsey to enjoy it with.

Here are my cute Mama and Dipsey at the trailhead - we went up Alum Cave Bluff Trail.

look how nice and clean we are!

and here are mama and dipsey crossing the bridge into arch rock

going through arch rock - precarious footing!

the three of us at inspiration point - very inspirational, but also very hot day.

itty bitty mama and dipsey at the alum cave bluffs

One of the first times I hiked this with Mr. Smith, he slipped off the trail and fell down the mountain. Don't worry; his fall was broken by a patch of vegetation - stinging nettles, I'm afraid, though. They were, in fact, quite owie according to Mr. Smith. I look for that patch of nettles every time I go on this hike and thank them for saving my husband's life.

dipsey fixing to nose dive into the nettles

After the last pull up the mountains, before you get to the lodge, there's this beautiful copse of trees you walk through. I swear, one day I'm going to see a white knight atop a charger there and I won't even bat an eye because it will look so in place. Dipsey calls it Cold Beer Corner because that's where you can crack a coldbeer and enjoy it on the last steps to the lodge.

me, mama and dipsey with our coldbeers. daddy's recipe is - freeze the beer the night before, then hike up with the slushy beer wrapped in foil. by the time you get here, the beer will have melted, but still be ice cold. dipsey forgot to ice the beer. DIPSEY. so we had lukewarm beer corner.

on the way up, mama and dipsey ran into some old friends. they got married up on leconte two years ago, and they visit every year on their anniversary. they day hike it to celebrate with their children up top. it was a sweet story, and dipsey wrote about it in his column. this year, to thank him for the nice column, they hiked up a nice bottle of wine for mama and daddy to enjoy. wasn't that nice of them? 

after supper, at clifftops. the view was GORGEOUS! it isn't always; sometimes the mountains smoke and you can't see doodley doo. not this weekend! you could see for miles!

see? great view!

me on the hike back to civilization.

i don't know how i missed this on the way up - it was the prettiest stump ever! it had all these cute toadstools all over it. i was taking a picture of it when three hikers crossed my path and we all four stood there and marveled for a minute about how pretty this stump was. 

Recently, I bought a pair of Chacos to wear while riding my bike. Since I only wore them while biking, I pretty much never walked anywhere in them, so they were all pristine and new. I thought I'd gamble on blisters because I really hate wearing closed toed shoes in the summer, and hey, that's what Chacos are FOR, is for hiking. So, without knowing how my feet would take ten miles in Chacos, I bravely faced the mountain armed with just the one pair of sandals strapped to my feet. I'm pleased to say, they did GREAT. The barest smidge of blisters (which I likely would have gotten from boots anyway) and no hot and sweaty feet. When I made it back to the parking lot, I was very proud to take a photo of:

my muddy, sweaty, filthy legs and appropriately broken in chacos! they were initiated!

Yea! Good hike, great fun time with my sweet Mama and Dipsey!

Girl's Slumber Party

I am a firm believer in slumber parties not being just for little girls. I like having fun too; why should they hog all the good times?

Recently, Jenny Mowrer hosted a slumber party in honor of Shawn's last few nights that would baby-cry-free. I took a bunch of photos, but then forgot they were on my camera! I've been using my phone more and more to take photos, but had to shoot a few shots at work today and found these little babies.

Food is a must - we have a homemade pizza bar! Look how fresh and yummy everything is:

it does not help that i am starving and supper isn't ready yet but is upstairs and smelling amazing - shrimp creole tonight! thanks for the recipe, suzy smith!

cutie pies jenny and shawn. she had eli about two days after this photo was taken.

Three ladies, two sleeping babies, wine... well, you know shenanigans were employed. New work friend Cathy showed me how to DIY mustaches, and buddy, I was all over that. Here you have us sporting lip 'do's.

we are all very distinguished

We also discovered that the mustaches could also double as eyebrows!

masters of disguise, we are.

Seriously, I'm starving. Gonna go find some nachos or something.

FCHS Represent!

Saturday night, Tommy and I got to attend his 20 year high school reunion!

We got to spend all day on Saturday on the lake in a turtle - filled cove (I sat in a floatey that sort of acted as a cage to protect me from wayward turtles and minnors) and dared anyone to pinch my bottom. No one did, fortunately (for THEM).

It was a fabulous time - got to see many many old friends and meet a whole cadre of new ones. Guess what impressed me the most?

The decor. It was... interesting. To say the least. Um... chainsaws were involved. And this:

whoa. i don't even know what this is. and are the eyes crossed? it was just a head. sitting on the ground.

and here we have a stuffed coyote sitting in a copse of christmas trees

RAWR. i sent this picture to jenny and she suggested i run for my life.

Fun times. We will be back in Winchester before the summer is out!

me and the fchs class of '92. REPRESENT!

Do Over

Depression is an odd thing. If you’ve never experienced it, you can’t know that it’s not a choice, it’s not a decision. It just is. For me, it started slowly with a few blue days, and snowballed rapidly until I had to be pulled physically out of bed in the morning and put in the shower and would cry uncontrollably any time I was alone. My mantra became “I’m scared. I’m just so scared.”

Lucky for me, I have an amazing circle of friends, a warm and loving family, and the resources to get help. Life is much better now; I sing songs (badly) when I’m alone and am going back to the gym in the morning to get rid of the excess baggage I picked up from too many mornings dreading the day. I’m happy again, and I know I’m happy, and I’m happy that I’m happy. Sometimes you have to walk through the valley to really enjoy the summit.


Here’s the big kicker though: I lost a whole year. A whole summer, gone; spent in fear and terror. I’m not mad about it – there was nothing I could do about it. I just hate it though. The worst was last year’s hike to Mt. LeConte. I looked forward to the trip for months, hiked to the campsite surrounded by just about every human on the planet I love the best, and spent the evening quietly crying in bed while everyone enjoyed each other’s company. That was no fair.

So – this year is my Do Over. I’m going to do it bigger and better, I’m going to go more places and have more fun since it was taken away last year. It’s starting already; good things are already happening. We had a fun Low Country Boil recently and hosted for the first time ever, our friends JD and Amy:


it was goo-ood. thanks for coming, all!

I'm enjoying being goofball again.


me and lucy covered in face stickers



see note re: goofball. i'm a giant eating a normal size hot dog!

 Oh and perhaps you heard I have two new kittens?

me, polly and olive the other evening

They are so super sweet, and we are just loving getting to know them better and better. Olive is my smart girl, but for some reason she prefers to drink out of the toilet.


i preeefurrrr the toilet water, s'il vous plaît


And Polly is a handful.

i have an ipad cat game i let them play - i came across this after leaving her alone with it for like two seconds - that baby tried to buy an app! good thing i'm on to her...

 Tommy and I travelled to Asheville with the Jomacs (thanks for inventing the Johnson/Womac mashup, Jenny!) recently. A colleague told me about doing her hair up in pin curls to make it wavier and I was intrigued. She went so far as to buy me a set of pins to sleep in, and here we have the result of my pinned hair:


not so much



one hair washing later, and we're off to the asheville beer festival!

Good times involving friends, beer and food:



this is a pitcher full of tater tots



And of course, more parties... last weekend me and some other lovely ladies had Kristina over for a surprise bachelorette brunch!



cheese!

 Her fiance, Monty, and I came up with quite an elaborate plot to create in her a sense of urgency to get over to my house. We had agreed that Monty would make plans to take her to brunch after church on Sunday. I was to call and convince her that I needed her at my house instead.

Here is a list of the lies I told her:
1. Tommy's computer crashed and he lost all his files.
2. I went to check on upset Tommy, leaving the dress I was making for Monty's daughter for her to wear to the wedding alone on the ironing board.
3. A cat bumped the ironing board, causing the iron to fall on the dress, ruining the fabric. I even included this photo:

nice touch! seriously it took me about five minutes to burn it this much. the iron kept turning itself off.

4. I didn't have enough material to make a new dress.
5. After the dress fiasco, Tommy and I got in a fight.
6. Tommy got mad and huffed out of the house.
7. When huffing away, he inadvertently let Polly out of the house.
8. I couldn't find Polly, and she's lost outside somewhere.

Needless to say, Kristina came by. Monty said he was giving her a hard time the whole way over about skipping lunch with him to go help me look for my cat. He also said he was hungry and stopped at a gas station and made her wait for 15 minutes while he found something to eat. HAHA.

the blushing bride, ready for the big day! thanks for being a good sport!

Oh, and in addition to getting to do over my summer, I have also felt more and more like doing more sewing projects. I mentioned Monty's daughter's dress?

unburned!



kristina's garter - it's something old (a penny from her birth year), something new (a 2012 penny) something borrowed (it's on an open-ended loan to her), and something blue (a ribbon from Granny Helen).

 In summary, be prepared to see more of me. A lot more of me. A happier me. Laughing is my favorite thing in the world, and I plan do be doing a whole lot more of it.

It's about time.

Polly the Pirate

I should call this post "kittens having kittens."

After we had to put Loki to sleep, we were faced with a big decision. Do we get a kitten for our kitten? Olive answered the question for us. Not having time to mourn the loss of Loki was tough, but we also had a 10-week-old ball of energy who was taking a toll on our couch and my hands. When we were looking for Olive I kept saying all I wanted was a calico kitten, a calico kitten. A few days after Loki left us, I was looking through photos at a shelter near our house and found...

my kitten. please meet polly the pirate.

It's hard being sad with two kittens in the house. Polly and Olive took to each other immediately and are as I type racing around the basement chasing each other. The other morning Olive and I made it downstairs for poop scoop and food and heard Polly start crying upstairs when she realized she'd been left behind. Olive heard her, ran upstairs and led her back down to the food. It melted my heart on the spot. They are officially thick as thieves.

a rare moment resting together on the couch

In other news, work BFFs Cathy and Regina and I were lucky enough to be taken on a personal tour of the Clarence Brown Theatre! We went to go get props for table decorations, but you know we had to work a quick trip into a visiting spree. When are you lucky enough to work that out? New friend and seamstress extraordinaire Amber showed us the costume room which I could have spent hours in:

cathy and i examining handmade corsets

I saw this and was instantly smitten:

just like rosemary clooney in white christmas!

And now, over and out. I have to go play with my new kittens.

You know that "life isn't fair" thing? I hate when it's true....

Oh how ironic this should be my very next post.

Mr. Smith and I had to put our big boy Loki to sleep this afternoon. It's just not fair. We didn't have enough time to be a family of four. I volunteered for years at an animal shelter in Sarasota for years and would tell grieving pet owners that society as a whole underestimates the value of a pet and relationships we form with our four-legged fur babies. But today when I slunk out of work to go bury Mr. Loki, I found myself making excuses for my tears and calling myself a baby for not being able to stay at my desk.

This morning I picked up his dish and cried while I washed it and put it in cupboard. It's not fair. Just a few weeks ago, I was so happy to take the dish out, blow off the dust and present it full of kitten kibble to Olive.

I have a set of rules I try to live by, and one of them is "Never expect the world to be safe or life to be fair." It so totally sucks when it's true. Another rule is "Always buy clothes that make you feel like doing a small dance." I like living by that rule more often.

He was a good boy. He lived longer than we thought he would. He wasn't in pain or uncomfortable long. I am confident we made the right decision, but I hate making decisions that make me sad.

here he is when i was sick last winter. he didn't leave my side.

we both are a fan of naps

a pic of all of us in bed when we were still a family of three

It's just not fair.