April Vacation

I've been on vacation for the past three days. Whoopee! I haven't taken time off since the holiday season, so it was much needed, and it was good planning on my part because we were able to go down to CT to visit my father (who was in the hospital having surgery for abdominal hernias - don't worry, it was a planned surgery, but hospital stays are no fun for him so we wanted to go down to visit him to try to cheer him up), catch a Hartford Symphony Orchestra performance, hang out with Adam pre-Marathon, finally watch the Boston Marathon (first time ever, and I think it will have to be an annual event - too much fun!), and get some chores done around the house. Doug went back to work today, but I am still off, about to check my work email one last time before I'm back to the old grind. I'm kicking myself for not taking the whole week off. I have the time to use, but I didn't think it was appropriate for me to take a whole week off. Why not? I don't know. I have this silly idea that work will fall apart if I'm not around, but if I'm really being truthful I'd say that everything runs just fine without me.

Anyway, here's a peek into some of the things I've been doing over my vacation. You'll see here that there are a lot of photos of the cats (though none of Sasha, surprisingly. She's really the most photogenic cat, but I guess she wasn't doing anything noteworthy these past few days). I think that if I were to create my blog all over again, I'd have it focus on two things - the food that I eat (since I love to eat food, or at least seem to eat a lot of it) and the crazy things the cats do. I have more photos of food and cats on my computer than I really should, and maybe I need a blog to properly showcase both loves. Here is Meg, trying to stow away down to Connecticut. She loves the basement there, which I'm sure was her motivation behind the stealthy move. Then we have a couple of Wyatt. The first is of him doing this new behavior that he's turned into routine - humping. Not that humping is new for him, but humping arms is very new for him. His favorite new past-time. He likes to hump my arm the most (ha ha, Doug! My arm's more sexy than your arm!), but he does try to get it on with Doug's every once in a while. He'll start to yell really loudly before making his move, then he'll bite my wrist, hand or forearm to get a good grip. Once his teeth are in place he begins the thrusting action, but I rarely let him get to that point. It's not that I mind being humped by my cat - for him I think it's some sort of reflex - but I certainly don't want to encourage the behavior, so I throw him off of me before the action gets too far along. One of the reasons I am not too upset about his humping is because he's just so cute at other times. Like when he hops into the laundry basket. I just can't resist the camera when he pulls this trick.

Other than being entertained by the cats, we've been slowly doing little things to the house. Doug fixed our shower door on Tuesday morning (I helped, but then cut myself with a razor blade so was not allowed to help anymore), and we moved the fish tank down to the sun/cat room to get it out of the bedroom. We then moved Doug's dresser over to where the fish tank was and put the TV on a taller table, so that when we're watching TV at night we can see all of the screen (and read the captions and/or subtitles, which we couldn't before and that was really bothering me). Again, photos: I also put up our new shower curtain today (no more vinyl fish in the first-floor bath): and gathered more stuff for our upcoming tag sale. I decided that these canisters should go into the tag sale pile, as I was never really crazy about them. They were functional and cheap, so they served their purpose, but I found some that I liked much better. Don't you agree?
Old:
New: I also planted some flowers this afternoon, right before it started to rain, which actually worked out well because then I didn't have to rummage through the garage looking for the watering can to water these babies. I wanted to put new flowers into both of our window boxes, but I ended up having only enough for one (guess I'm not too good at a) remembering just how big these particular window boxes are, and b) judging how many flowers should go into each one). No matter - I planted the few remaining plants I had in these flower pots that the former owners of the house left us, and will tackle the front window box this weekend. For now, I'm happy with my small gardening accomplishments for today and will proudly show them off here:
As for the rest of the day, I plan to check my work email and then wash some dishes, getting the place ready for when I make dinner tonight. That's another reason why I love to be on vacation - I can actually make dinner at home and eat at a reasonable hour. I wish I could be on vacation at least one day a week. That would be nice indeed.