Cat people.

I hosted a book club at my house this week. We read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, and then my friend Karen, from high school, and her book club came here for dinner and discussion. It went well. It was only my second book club experience, and I had a good time. I was amazed at how much we actually talked about the book. In my previous book club experience we talked about the book for about twenty minutes before we moved on to other subjects. This time, we talked about the book for about an hour. Wow! That was a hard thing for me, all that talking about the book. Not because I hadn't read it, because I had (and I had a few things to say about it, namely that it was too long and too many loose ends were not tied up), but because I wanted to eat all the food that we had there! I made a tossed salad, a chick pea salad (that reminds me, Summer-Sweater, I owe you that recipe), and roasted banana cupcakes, and it was the banana cupcakes that I really wanted to dig in to. They were SO GOOD.

The recipe was not that complicated, but it was time-consuming. They took about three hours to make. First you had to roast the bananas (and I do not recommend using over-ripe bananas, as they just turn to a sugary mess) then sift all the dry ingredients together, and then you were ready to add in the cooled roasted bananas. Looks appetizing, no? (One of the reasons why I am even recounting the tale of these roasted banana cupcakes is so that I can showcase the above photo, which is about the most disgusting display I've ever seen.) They turn out very well, though, and they taste even better. I highly recommend them.

One of the things I learned at book club was that most people I know are dog people and not cat people. No one except me out of the whole group have cats. They all have dogs. Doug and I have been on a dog kick lately; we've been so many places of late where dogs are prominent, and that just makes us want to get one all the more. So today, instead of going to the second day of the Design 4 Drupal conference that Doug's company is co-sponsoring, Doug and I headed off to our local shelters to see about adopting a dog.

In our post-Wyatt world, we have often visited shelters to look at the animals, and a couple of times we have been close to pulling that adoption trigger. We never did, though. Either we weren't in the mood, or one of us liked the animal more than the other, or we felt that we would be disrupting our little feline duo that bonded more than ever before now that Wyatt was no longer around. But I've always said that we'd adopt another animal when we found one that we really wanted, that we really connected with, and that we just couldn't leave behind. And today was that day, only not with a dog. Yes, with a cat.

We went to the Animal Rescue League of Boston's Dedham location, mostly on a whim. It was the last shelter that we visited. When we got into the shelter we walked by this friendly orange cat that was in a cage right outside the dog room. The poor guy was wearing a lampshade. The sign on his cage said that he was a sweet and lovable boy, and was he. I am drawn to the underdog, to the down-trodden, so I stopped to stick my hand in the cage, and he put his body into such a contortion to reach my hand that he fell off of the ledge he was perched on. I felt badly about causing him that fall, so I quickly went into the dog room. The dog room was filled with pit bull mixes, none of which could live with cats, so we left that room. Once back out, we stopped and said hi to our lampshade friend again. He was trying desperately to rub his head against the cage to say hello, but the lampshade made it pretty impossible. Doug and I nicknamed him "Conehead." We petted and loved Russo (his actual shelter name) for a little while, but then we headed into the cat room, just for yucks, where Doug became instantly smitten with Daisy Wick, a 9-month old long-haired black and white girl. She had a pretty face, and she was sweet enough through her cage, so Doug and I started talking about taking her home. But Conehead was on my mind. I had never met a friendlier, more sweet cat, and I have such a thing for orange cats. I told Doug that if we were considering Daisy Wick then we had to consider Russo. So, propelled by the momentum of the moment, we went to the desk and told the girls working there that we wanted to play with both Daisy Wick and Russo.

We played with Russo first, and wow. He was even better out of his cage than in it. He was bright, inquisitive, and super sweet. He let me brush him, he ate the treats we fed him, and he cared not one bit that all the other cats were hissing at him. He just went about exploring. When I picked him up and he was purring I knew that I wouldn't be able to leave without him. We played with Daisy Wick, just to do our due diligence, but there really was no question. Russo had won us over. We filled out the paperwork and packed him up and he's now ours.



He was found by a couple of people in West Roxbury, who noticed him wandering the neighborhood. This was in early April. They picked him up and saw that he had a huge gash going from the top of his neck between his shoulders to around the underside of his neck. Who knows how the poor boy got it. When they brought him to the shelter in Dedham the people there didn't think he'd make it. They bypassed their normal vet and brought him straight to the Tufts Emergency Vet clinic, the very same place we brought Wyatt to just about one year ago. The amazing vets there gave Russo great, great care and he is alive and well and as happy as can be now. In the past few months he's been through major surgery, spaying (he was not spayed when found), and an ear-mite treatment. He's on the mend, just about 100%, except that his scar on his neck itches him, so he wears the cone to keep from scratching at it. He's a wondercat.



Meggie and Sasha have not yet met him, though they know he's here. We will introduce them tonight, but will have more integration each night this week. My great wish is that this kind and sweet boy gives Meggie all the love and affection that she needs and used to get from Wyatt, and that Sasha ignores them both and lets them be. That's what I want. But for now Doug and I are content hanging with him and getting acquainted.



He's already burned a hole into our hearts, and we don't even have a real name for him yet. It feels nice having three cats again, especially when one is as sweet as this guy. Will we ever get a dog? Maybe. It's pretty clear, though, that for right now we are cat people, and that's just fine with us.

2011 is the year of the rule of three.

I can't let a New Year's pass without writing a little about what I have to look forward to in the coming year. So here's my requisite New Year's post, and I want to direct your attention to the title. 2011 is the year of the rule of three. I've been blogging intermittently with my "three things" theme, and I recently had a discussion about focusing on three things and only three things in order to make one's life more manageable (a variation on the "jack of all trades, master of none" idea). I follow the time-management three things rule, too. So, in an effort to live a consistent life, I've decided to carry over my rule of three to the new year, and instead of making resolutions or declarations on this New Year's Day I'll simply talk about the three golden rules I will strive to follow this year.

Rule 1: Practice a commitment to physical and mental health.
This rule is something I try to do each and every day, but, as with lots of things, sometimes I fall off the wagon. And I've accepted that I'm going to fall off the wagon. And, I'll admit, sometimes I even plan in advance to fall off the wagon if I know a special day or event is coming up, such as last night when Doug and I had Five Guys for our New Year's Eve dinner. Classy, right? But the point is that even with these little deviations from my first golden rule my ultimate goal is to stay healthy. Eat well and get plenty of physical exercise. Not necessarily hours at the gym, but just an active lifestyle. Walking, biking, hiking, yoga, the gym... all of that. Because all of that helps me stay calm and balanced, alert and able to focus. And able to be on the path to follow my other two golden rules for 2011, the second of which is:

Rule 2: Live my values. Do I sound like Real Simple or Self yet? Bear with me if I sound a little new age-y. This rule has much to do with me having confidence in myself, in what I believe, in what I want, in what I know, in what makes me comfortable, in what makes me happy and content, and in doing it. If I think it's important to spend more time with my family, or to remain connected to friends, then I'm going to do it. If I think that sitting on my couch and quilting my way into the New Year is a viable activity for a thirty-one (good god, almost thirty-two!) year-old woman, then I'm going to do it. Because I want to, because I can, and because it's okay for me to live how I want to live.

All of this brings me to my third and final golden rule for the year, which is my Rule 3: Less thinking, more doing. The more I sit and think about being healthy and active, the less I'm actually out there being healthy and active. The more I sit and wonder what my values actually are, and if they are actually viable and realistic and accepted/acceptable values, the less I'm actually living them, or even knowing what they are. So... less of that. Less of that stuck in my head and more of going out there and doing. Like this morning, when I woke up on this fine and relatively warm first day of the new year and told Doug that I wanted to stop off at Minute Man State Park to walk on one of the trails there on our way back from selling a couple of his speakers to this guy Doug met on Craigslist. I could have (and probably would have) debated this idea with myself in my head before asking Doug what he thought we should do, because I would have been concerned about having enough time to do all the things that I wanted to do that day, but instead of all of that headgame I just said, "Let's do it." So we did it. And I felt good because I was practicing rules number one and two - and rule number three. I started the new year off on the right foot. And spent some time with Doug, who got to practice rule number three with me today. I think I might get him to practice my rules this year, too. Or might get him to make three rules of his own. Or, more appropriately, might inspire him to make three rules of his own. Because 2011 will be a year of good things, just as 2010 was, and being able to inspire each other to live these lives that we know will lead to good things will just lead to more good things.

Okay, I've gotten a bit too John Tesh-y for my own liking. Time for dinner, for more Netflix, and for more quilting. Time for living my three rules. I could really get used to this, and I hope I do.