Hello Monday, The Week of The Cats

Happy Monday!!! The last week or so is what I have been calling “The Week Of The Cats”.Remember that song by Al Stewart back in the seventies called The Year of The Cat? You may be too young for that song. This has been our Week Of The Cats. Yes it’s that time of year again. This past week was the week we, over the course of several days, take all five kitties to the vet for annual vaccines. Plus Gus actually had to be shaved because his long hair had gotten so matted in places. We can’t take all of them together it’s just too hard. Luckily the vet is only about a ten minute drive from our house. This is how it went down:

Allie (mama) cat went first. She is still a bit feral and I was afraid she would tear my face off. But she actually did great. Well as long as I was right with her that is. The vet got me a long pair of gloves and I just reached into the crate and lifted her out. We weighed her and then she got her shots and she was just an Angel. She made Mark and myself look like liars because we had told the vet how wild she still is.

Next was Izzy I took her early one morning hoping to get both her and Sadie but I had no luck with Sadie. She saw immediately what was happening and ran and hid. She has been rescheduled. Izzy did great. She even let the vet pull her out is the crate. Again, my little feral girls surprised me. Of course there’s still Sadie to be taken.

Next was Kitty Kitty and she is so sweet and tame Mark was able to take her by himself. Everyone at the vet clinic fell in love with her sweet little face.

Gus was scheduled for last Friday morning so I dropped him off at 8:00 AM. He also had to be shaved. He hates being brushed and his hair has gotten so matted we couldn’t get a brush through it. He had to be put to sleep to cut his hair. And I felt just terrible having to do that. When I brought him home he was out of it and not himself for about thirty six hours I will never put him through that again. I told him he would just have to adjust to the brush. We will work with him until he isn’t afraid of it.

Sadie, or I should say Houdini, is scheduled for this week. The problem will be catching her and getting her into the crate. I think it will be fine after that. I hate tricking her to get her into the crate but she has to have her shots especially the rabies vaccine. My three outside kitties, Allie, Izzy and Sadie are out during the day. We bring them into the garage at night because of coyotes. So being out they could come in contact with another animal.

So that has been my last week and a half. The Poison Ivy is finally disappearing. Work has still been a bit hectic but that is expected this time of the year.

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!

Weekly Catch Up & Memorial Day

Hello and happy Memorial Day to everyone. Especially our veterans who gave all for us. Let us never forget them and what they have given for our freedom.

The weather here has been chilly. I’m not sure if this would be considered Whippoorwill Winter or as some of the old timers call it, Woolen Britches Winter. Whippoorwill Winter usually occurs middle to late May so that is what I think we are actually experiencing these last few days. Woolen Britches is the last winter we have before late spring or summer temperatures hit us. I know my jacket felt really good this morning.

Being in tourism the days leading up to and including Memorial Day is very busy for me. People have started vacations and traveling is on everyone’s mind. My work has been so incredibly busy. I actually worked part of the weekend. Memorial Day is our kick off to summer and the Labor Day sort of ends the busy tourist season. All of the days in between are busy.

Because I only had one day off I had to cram a lot into it. This included visiting my mother in law and taking her supplies, buying groceries, doing laundry and trying to get some time in to chill and do a few fun things.

I had a few minutes to catch up on a book I was reading and have some coffee and a muffin.

I made a blueberry cobbler. I love to make one of these on Sunday and have it for the entire week.

I also wanted to try these lasagna cupcakes that I had been seeing all over Facebook and TikTok. These are made like lasagna but instead of using pasta you use wonton wrappers. This makes them very calorie friendly. I will trim the wonton wrappers on top next time because they stuck a little bit. I used a muffin pan. I made my usual lasagna sauce for regular lasagna. You can use whatever you want. You can also use grilled veggies or anything you might want to chop up and use. But you don’t have a lot of room in the muffin tins. I used ricotta cheese, parmesan cheese, and mozzarella cheese. I layered a wrapper then ricotta cheese then my sauce, then mozzarella and parmesan. I then added another wrapper and repeated the layer. For the sauce I used marinara sauce with ground beef but you can use ground turkey or whatever you would like. Basically you can make them just about any way you want to. They are delicious.

I finished the sock I have been working on a cast on the second sock. The second sock is never as much fun to knit as the first one. I can see the striping will be off a little but that will just make it interesting. Nobody will notice when they are inside my shoes. HA!!!

Other than working all I have had time to do is SCRATCH!!! The poison Ivy is slowly starting to dry up. I told you about the IVAREST I had been using. It really does the trick. It is so soothing. I think it has calamine lotion in it or something like that. I listed it on my Friday Favorites last week. If you missed it you can catch that blog post here But the problem was the biggest area affected was on my wrist and it easily spread to a few other areas.

So how was your weekend? Did you do something fun? Have a wonderful week!!!!

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!

What Is A Mother?

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. Happy Mother’s Day to everyone who is a mother in whatever way you are. I was not blessed to be a mom, mama, mother, ma, mommy or any form of the word. Not technically anyway. I do believe that Mother’s Day is for many different types of mothers. Aunts, sisters, grandmothers even friends can be a mother figure in your life. And though I have no children of my own, through the years I have had the pleasure of mothering many many people. If you have your own children you are going to tell me it’s not the same. That is okay. That just means that you know something I don’t and I know something you don’t. How do I know this? My nieces and nephews for starters. I babysat for many of them when I was barely a teenager. I also took care of my great nephews quite often. So I have never been without baby snuggles and cuddles at just about any given time.

I have also mothered lots of my younger coworkers. Some of them I just felt needed a little more coaching and mothering. I remember a young worker came to me and said he was sorry his shirt was missing a button but his mom had just died and she had always taken care of his clothes including sewing on the occasional button. I couldn’t imagine being without my mama at that age or any age for that matter, and because I always kept needle and thread and safety pins in my desk I was able to fix him right up. I also showed him how do do it himself the next time. I have attended their weddings, birth of their babies and sadly a few of their funerals.

My pet babies have also given me an opportunity to love and be loved unconditionally. I am proudly their mama.

In life I feel like we are put in positions of mothering or taking care of people at the exact time they need it. That gives some of us a chance to reach out and help in any way that we can. I think God puts us exactly where we need to be at times like this and helps us to be what we need to be.

I can’t let Mother’s Day slip by without telling you about my own mother. I happened to have been blessed with the best mother in the world. I always called her mama. I know you may think your mother was the best and she may have been to you, but my mama really was the best. She was an amazing woman. I have been without her since 2003. She died on Valentine’s Day. My dad died in 1998 so we always like to say he finally got his Valentine back. They were married for 52 years.

I miss my mama every day. These are just a few of the special things I love to remember about her.

She had unconditional love for all of her seven kids. Yes I said seven. And she thought we could do anything in the world.
She wore red lipstick and face powders and smelled of Jergens lotion.
She loved to read and could read a book in a day.
She cooked meals every single day for all of us.
She could fix anything around the house when it was broken.
She loved Bob Ross and loved to watch him paint.
She worked really hard crossword puzzles with a pen.
She played games with us and was never too busy to make us a treat.
She (when I was in first grade) carried me to the school bus in the winter wrapped up in a quilt. She knew the bus would be cold.
She was the best cook in the world.
She babysat for many of the kids in our neighborhood. She was always in demand.
She was very thin and loved to wear skirts and sandals in the summer.
She could whip up a meal in the blink of an eye.
She hated having her picture taken. We were always sneaking pictures of her.
She loved orange slice candies.
She was a lady through and through.
She could grow any plant. And had them all over the house.
She was so much fun!!! She loved to laugh and lived to be with her family.

This is a picture of my mama when she was only 16 years old.

Me and my mama a couple of years before she passed away.

I hope your day was wonderful no matter what type of mother or mother figure you are.

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!!

What A Weekend!! (Two Wonderful Things)

Hello friends how are you? How was your weekend? Another long weekend for me. I took Friday off to take my sister Sandy to the doctor and to get her sixth and final Chemo treatment. Her appointment was at 8:00. We left out early around 7:00 AM. Her doctor is in Knoxville and that is about forty five minutes from us. You never know what the traffic is going to be like.

We got to the hospital right at 8:00. She had to check in and get blood work and then see the doctor and then start her chemotherapy. All of the testing and seeing the doctor often takes over two hours. Then it can take a little while for the pharmacy to get the chemo cocktail to the infusion room. She didn’t start the chemo on Friday until almost 11:00 AM. It takes about an hour and a half to two hours for the treatment. Because this was her last one and she “graduated” she got to ring the bell signaling that her treatments are over. We were so happy. We even decided to stop and have lunch and then do a little shopping. I remember when she started the treatments back in January if felt like this day would never come. Here she is doing great!! So this was the best thing that happened this weekend or all year I guess I should say.

As we were leaving the stores we had a little issue with my sister’s car. I was driving and as soon as I pulled onto the road the dash lit up like crazy with several warning lights. We pulled over and she called someone she knew from the dealership. Luckily we were very close to the dealership and we took it in. One of the service techs looked at the lights and said it was a faulty sensor. He said it was completely safe to drive and for her to bring it back Monday and they would replace it. Wow, that was a little scary.

Saturday I pretty much chilled. I picked up groceries, Mark and I went to visit with his mom. She was very confused as she sometimes is now. We picked up dinner on the way home. I went back to Granny’s flower market in town and bought a few more small flowers for some flower pots I have. I love this little market. Every year she has the most beautiful flowers.

The second great thing that happened: On Sunday I finished the temperature blanket!!!!! I have been working on this for so long. I actually started the blanket last year. You can read about it here I recorded the temperature every day. Usually I did the average temp for the day. Each crocheted row indicates a color pertaining to the temperature. I have never been so glad to finish something in my life. I got really behind last fall. I still recorded the temperature every day, keeping the figures in my phone’s calendar. I will have to be honest with you I got really sick of this blanket it grew and grew and grew. It was so heavy I couldn’t really take it from room to room to work on I just left it in one spot. I guess I just didn’t take into account just how long that many rows would be. I only did a single crochet for each row but man it is massive. It will be great when winter comes and I can snuggle under it. But for now It is finished and I am so happy about that. I felt like I couldn’t get into any projects until this one was finished. Well nothing big anyway. I have done a few small things. But now I can’t wait to get to some of my other projects. You know how it is when you finally finish something that has been hanging over you. This is how it felt with this blanket. I’m glad I did it but I am so glad it is finished.

Here are the different colors for the daily temperatures. It started at the top with the darker blues and then the orange and reds as we got into summer temps.

Here are the different colors of yarn I used for the blanket. I did have to have two colors of each skein of yarn for most of the colors.

That is what I have been up to. I have a full week coming up. Five days in a row. I love having the three day weekends. I think all work weeks should only be four days. I am sure people are more productive that way.