Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays

I’ve loved that so many bloggers have been sharing their Christmas and holiday trees and decorations this week, so I thought I would join in.

Let’s start outside and work our way in.

First up is our inflatable sloth in a Christmas sweater.  Nick loves sloths, so we’ve added some sloths to our Christmas decorations.  This one is named Stuart.  Apparently, not everyone immediately recognizes Stuart as a sloth.  When I posted his picture on Facebook, my aunt messaged me asking if we really had a drunk raccoon inflatable.  No drunk raccoons here.

I know inflatables can be somewhat polarizing; people seem to love them or hate them, with no middle ground.  I love them.  I think they’re fun and cheery. 

Next up is the Christmas flag.

Then, the wreaths, matching wreaths on the front door and carport door.

Inside the house, we have the Christmas tree with lots of ornaments. 

The house we were renting when we bought the tree had a huge living room, so it’s a little big for our much smaller living room here.  I really don’t care.  It’s the only Christmas tree I’ve ever had, and I love it.

Nick loves sloths, so we added a sloth ornament this year.

We bought this ornament at an antique store when we were first looking for a house.

I’m a huge Friends fan, so we have some Friends ornaments. 

I put off buying a dumpster fire ornament until this year, but after a few dumpster fire years, I gave in and bought one.  It’s not year-specific, so it will work for any dumpster fire year.

Nick’s mom, Susan, gave me this book lover’s ornament last year.  I love it.

This one is self-explanatory.

Since we met on E-harmony, I was happy when I found this.

Nick gave me this butterfly ornament our first Christmas together.  It was also my first Christmas ornament.  It’s one of my favorites.

I love this cute little gingerbread house ornament.

Our friend Martha gave us this ornament the first Christmas after we were married. 

Our friend Alex gave us this one.  I call it the Thanksgiving ornament, so you know I like it.

The tree skirt has sloths.

Before we move on from the tree, 2023 isn’t the year Caroline stops climbing the Christmas tree.  

It’s a good thing she’s cute!

Moving on from the tree, we have a Winter Solstice candle this year.

And a Yule log candle holder.

One more winter candle holder.

I think this pink gingerbread house is adorable.  (The shelf isn’t dusty; I promise it’s glitter!)

I found this little winter house on Etsy and thought it was so cute.

Finally, we have the Christmas decoration my old coworker EJ gave me for Secret Santa several years ago.  The skiers move down the slope.  It was a great Secret Santa present.

I hope all of you have a very Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a joy-filled time in whatever your chosen celebrations are.  

A Few More Things

First, I think this picture of Mortimer is just too cute and must be shared. 

He has decided that this particular chair is his spot and spends most of his resting time in it.  He definitely doesn’t have a couch potato personality, so he still spends plenty of time running around, playing, and getting into things. 

Since there were some questions about the Bethlem journey experience from my last post, here’s a little more information about it:

The church that holds it is huge.  When you go inside, there’s a little foyer where they find out how many people are in your group, and you’re given tickets (it’s entirely donation-based) with a family name.  Then you go into the main part of the church.  This year, it was crowded, so everyone sat in pews.  They had someone playing Christmas music, and there was a big screen at the front where the family names came up.  When your family name comes up, you go to the back of the church, and they take you down an elevator.  Someone in modern clothes greets you, gives a brief spiel about what to expect, and encourages you to open your heart to the experience.  Then you walk down a hallway, and that’s when the Bethlehem experience begins.

You’re greeted at the city gate by a census taker and a Roman guard and asked how many people are in your family.  Then you go into the city and walk through it.  There are various market stalls, and you stop at each one.  They also have real herbs and spices, so it smells incredible!  There are also a couple of beggars along the way, which is where you can make a donation to the fundraiser.  Each stall is a little different; some of them talk about how crowded the city is because of the census, some of them talk about prophesies and strange things happening, a few mention seeing a young couple and that the woman was heavily pregnant (as you walk through, you learn that she had the baby the night before), and some are really funny with couples bickering or someone being determined to make a sale.  When it’s time to move on to the next one, either a Roman guard comes and yells to move along and clear the street, or the person at that stall says you have to see what the next person has.  The props and costumes are incredible.  Almost at the very end, you stop at the inn, where they tell you that they can only offer you food and drink because all of their rooms are full, and that they even have a couple who had a baby in their stable.  The last stop is the stable, where there’s a couple with a baby, and they tell you a little about Jesus.  After that, there’s one person collecting alms for the poor (one final opportunity to donate), and then you exit to outside. 

It's a lot of fun.  I absolutely love doing traditional Christmas activities since I didn’t get to do them growing up.  Nick’s family went almost every year when he was a child, so there are a lot of good memories associated with it for him.  I can’t imagine the time and effort that goes into making it all happen.  Nick looked it up online, and there are hundreds of volunteers, usually about 15 families with a baby up to three months old (I’m no baby expert, but I’m assuming at that age, dressed in a plain white outfit, they can probably use boy or girl babies), and various farms that bring animals.  It seems very appropriate for Christmas time that so many people work so hard to make it happen and that so many people give generously to the fundraiser. 

Finally, in case you’re wondering about the chickens, since I haven’t posted about them in a while, they’re still getting their snacks from me.  They’re eating more now that it’s cold (not just snacks; our neighbor said they’re going through a lot more chicken food since it has been cold). 

The free-range chickens are very persistent in making sure I remember their snack every day.  Here’s a video of them enjoying some tortillas.  

Some More Catching Up

I’m still working on catching up from my blogging break, so here are a few more recent happenings.

Let’s get the not-so-good news out of the way first.  Frankie is having some health problems.  At 14, he’s an older kitty, so it’s concerning.  He had an abdominal ultrasound in January due to some unexplained vomiting.  It showed some minor thickening of his intestinal lining, which could be indicative of lymphoma.  After talking with Dr. D, we chose not to pursue exploratory surgery and biopsies; the outlook for treating cats with lymphoma isn’t great, and we’d rather give Frankie a good quality of life.  Dr. D put him on some different medication, and the vomiting stopped. 

Last month, the excessive vomiting started again, so we took Frankie back to the vet.  Dr. D did some x-rays and a lot of bloodwork and determined that Frankie is in the early stages of kidney disease, lymphoma is still a real possibility, and he also has thyroid disease.  Out of all of those, thyroid disease is the easiest/least invasive to treat, so Frankie is now on thyroid medication.  Dr. D also adjusted his dose of some other medications, and the vomiting has stopped.  Frankie goes back on the 27^th to have his thyroid levels checked again.

He has lost some weight, but he’s eating and seems to be happy.  Frankie still plays and likes to get into things, so as long as he’s happy and has a good quality of life, we’re happy.  We’ll continue to treat his thyroid issues and go from there when he has his appointment later this month.  With any luck, he still has quite a few good years ahead of him.

In other news, it has been cold and insanely windy here.  Everyone at work has been running space heaters, and this morning, there were lots of trashcans blown over when I was leaving for work. 

One of the local animal shelters has been asking for extra blankets since it has been so cold.  It has been nice to see people step up and drop off and/or ship blankets.  It just shows how much people working together can do.

Our local sheriff’s office did a women’s self-defense class last week.  It was a great class!  They did it at a community center, and several female deputies taught it.  It was a good mix of teaching situational awareness and teaching and practicing specific self-defense techniques.  I definitely learned some things. 

One of my coworkers is retiring this month, and we had his going away party last week.  We did a potluck and ended up with tons of food.  I brought macaroni and cheese. 

We’ve also managed to squeeze in some Christmas fun.  One of the churches does a fundraiser event that’s a journey to Bethlehem.  They have people in costume, live animals, and tons of props to recreate walking through Bethlehem.  Nick’s family used to go every year.  I went for the first time last year.  This year, our neighbors went with us.  It was a lot more crowded this year, but we got to listen to Christmas music (which I love) while we waited for our turn.  It was fun going through with a bigger group this time.  We also drove around and looked at Christmas lights.  There’s a subdivision where almost everyone goes all out on the lights and decorations, and it’s so fun to drive through it.  This is a Pixabay picture since I don’t think I’d be able to get good pictures from the car.

Finally, I’ll leave you with this funny picture of Charlie.  He seems to have no concept of his size, and yesterday, he spent quite a while trying to stuff himself into this box.  I don’t think he ever figured out why he couldn’t get in the box.  He definitely looked cute trying!  

Catching Up

Thank you all for your kind comments about Howard.  I love that people who never met him enjoyed his pictures and personality.  He really was a very special cat.

Since I didn’t blog at all in October or November, I’ll share some highlights to catch you up.

Our neighbors did tons of great Halloween decorations, including a miniature cemetery in their front yard.  There were “tombstones” for everyone on our section of the street.

Here’s mine:

Caroline is definitely our most temperamental cat and takes tortitude to a whole new level.

And here’s Nick’s:

We also did a neighborhood Halloween event on the last Sunday in October.  It was surprisingly warm that day, so we sat outside by one of the neighbor’s fire pits.  I made a huge batch of chili, and our neighbor Lori made jalapeno popper bread and desserts. 

Three of the adults (including Nick) and two of the older kids went to a haunted farm.  The other three adults (including me), one of the older kids who wasn’t feeling well, and the two younger kids stayed behind to watch Hocus Pocus. 

Everyone had a great time, and it worked out well that some people wanted to do the haunted farm while some of us weren’t into that kind of thing at all.  We’re talking about making it an annual thing. 

I’ve struggled some with getting into the holiday spirit since we lost Howard, but I knew I wouldn’t be happy skipping Thanksgiving, so we had our usual huge Thanksgiving.

Since our fridge is a little bit smaller than the old one, I had Thanksgiving food stashed in four different mini-fridges at work the week before.  The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I took several things we wouldn’t need over the holiday weekend and left them at work to make sure we had room for all of the Thanksgiving stuff. 

I took the day before Thanksgiving off to do all of the baking.  I couldn’t fit all of the desserts and sweet potato bread on the table, so there are two pictures. 

As usual, Nick did a lot of cleaning.  I’m a very messy cook, so helping clean up when I do that much cooking is a massive job.  At one point, he was dashing into the kitchen with the vacuum or Swiffer every time I left it.  And one of the neighbor kids very sweetly came over and helped out with some food prep and cleaning on Wednesday night. 

The day before Thanksgiving is always my highest step count for the year!

We took Thanksgiving dinner to the hospice house for lunch.  As always, they were so kind and made me cry.  There’s a nurse we’ve seen for the past several years, and she hugged both of us and was just incredibly nice.

After we dropped the food off there, we went home and finished getting ready for our Thanksgiving dinner that evening.  I almost forgot to get any pictures of the food until someone else mentioned taking pictures, so I only got two not-so-great pictures of the food.  We had food and desserts on nearly every available surface.

We had a total of 14 people: all of the neighbors on our end of the street and some friends from Nick’s job.  Everyone ate, talked, and played games.  It was everything I love about Thanksgiving.  As usual, we had tons of leftovers, so no one had to cook for the next couple of days.  After everyone left, Nick and I were talking about how you can always tell whether or not it’s someone’s first Thanksgiving at our house by whether or not they bring storage containers for leftovers.  No one does the first time, but everyone does the next time. 

We also had an inflatable Thanksgiving decoration this year.  I bought him on sale after Thanksgiving last year.  His name is Gregory.  Good for you if you get the reference to the Doris Day movie, “By the Light of the Silvery Moon.”  I’m hoping to add more Thanksgiving decorations every year. 

Frankie absolutely loves the box that Gregory came in.

I’m not sure how he managed to stuff himself inside the box, but he happily hung out in it for hours at a time. 

So what about you?  How were your October and November?  And how were your fall holidays?  

The Howard Post I Never Wanted to Write

We knew for a while that it was coming, but that didn’t make it any easier.  We had to make the unbearable decision to say goodbye to Howard on November 1^st. 

His health had been declining since December of last year, and we said from the beginning that we’d do everything possible as long as Howard seemed happy and like he had a good life. 

He was wobbly on his feet and lost a lot of weight, but seemed happy and not like he was in pain.  Then, he just started to seem like he was never comfortable, and he cried and meowed in a new and different way. 

We took him to the vet, and Dr. D said that even with heroic measures, we wouldn’t buy him much time, and that it wouldn’t be quality time.  She was concerned that if we tried to do anything to prolong his life, Howard would die alone in the hospital.  The one thing Howard hated was being alone, so we knew we were never going to do that to him.  We made the decision to let him go.

Howard drifted off to sleep with Dr. D and the vet tech telling him that he had always been everyone’s favorite and with me and Nick petting him and telling him how much we loved him.  We fed him a chicken churu treat and part of a tuna churu treat right before.  He was purring, and he was loved.  I just hope he knew how much.  Our hearts are broken, but Howard isn’t in pain.

It's hard to capture everything that Howard was in a blog post.  He wasn’t at all what I was looking for when I went to the animal shelter, but he was exactly what I needed.  I went with the intention of adopting a dignified middle-aged cat to be a friend for my dignified middle-aged cat, Edison.  Howard was so many things, but dignified was never one of them.  And he was six months old when I adopted him, so he wasn’t the middle-aged cat I intended to get.  But, when he bounced to the front of the cage as if to say, “Hi, I’m your new best friend,” I knew he was mine. 

Howard’s first year was quite an adventure.  He nearly died from an upper respiratory infection, he ate an earring that had to be surgically removed, ended up in the cone of shame after the earring surgery, experienced an apartment fire, and moved three times, including the move to NC after we met Nick.  Howard wasn’t phased or upset by any of it.

Howard adored his siblings and was always the first pet to welcome any new foster pets or newly adopted pets.  It didn’t matter if they were dogs or cats, young or old, healthy or sick.  Howard loved them all, and cuddled with everyone.  His ashes are next to Duke’s because he loved Duke so much.

Howard loved people as much as he loved other animals.  He greeted everyone who ever came to the house and loved being brushed and petted.  Everyone loved Howard.  Even people who don’t like cats loved Howard.  People would always ask to take pictures of Howard; people here to trick or treat, delivery drivers, repair people.  There are lots of Howard being a meerkat pictures out in the world.  One of the neighbor kids brought his girlfriend to meet Howard because he was the “coolest cat.”  Howard loved people and loved posing for pictures.

It's so weird not having Howard in the house.  You’d think with five other cats, it wouldn’t seem empty, but it does.  I think, of all the other cats, Frankie misses him the most.  They were good friends and liked to cuddle together.  

He was a constant presence in my life for almost 17 years and a constant presence in Nick’s life for almost 16 years.  It’s still weird not having him.  Christmas looks different this year, too.  As you know, I’ve always loved the song, “I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas.”  We changed it to Howardpotamus and would sing it to him.  The song makes me cry now, instead of smile.  All of the hippopotamus ornaments are packed away because I can’t look at them without crying.  Maybe next year, they’ll make me smile again. 

I know that everyone says the best way to honor a cat you’ve loved and lost is to adopt another cat, but we’re not planning to adopt anyone for now.  We still have five cats, and we actually never intended to have six.  Remember, Charlie and Mortimer arrived as short-term fosters. 

We’re also dealing with some health problems with Frankie.  I’ll post more about that later, but we need to be able to focus on him, not on bringing another cat in the house. 

I have no doubt that we’ll end up with another cat eventually.  We’re always going to have cats, and they have a habit of just coming into our lives (we weren’t looking for Carloine when she arrived in our lives), but now isn’t the right time. 

For now, we’re giving Frankie the extra care he needs and giving all five of the cats extra love and cuddles.  A purring cat is good for the heart and soul.