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.  

Breadsticks, Birthdays, and Fall Weather

Since I missed posting a Thursday 13 last week, I’m doing a list post today. 

We’ll start with a picture of Caroline tucked into bed.  The cats tend to get a little more cuddly when it starts to cool down.

We’re supposed to have warmer weather for the first part of this week, but we’ve had a few days that have felt very much like fall.  It’s the perfect weather for reading in the hammock.

We had perfect weather and beautiful blue skies over the weekend, so we went and walked at a park that’s just far enough from home that we usually only go on the weekends.  It was so nice to spend time outside and enjoy the perfect weather.

We had some work done on the HVAC system.  Fortunately, it was minor.  Yay!  We’ve used the same company for years, and we had the same technician who came out last year when so many things got zapped with lighting.  He loved Duke and spent some time petting him and even rigged up a temporary cooling solution so Duke wouldn’t get too hot.  He remembered Duke and asked where his three-legged buddy was when he came in the house.  In some ways, it was really sad to explain that Duke had died.  But, it was also really sweet that someone who met Duke over a year ago still remembered him and asked about him.  It was a reminder of just how many people that Duke made happy. 

Two of my coworkers had birthdays this month.  I usually decorate people’s offices for their birthdays.  My boss was one of the birthday people, and he likes to tease me about my pink office, so I opted to decorate his office with a lot of pink. 

I’ve still been giving the neighbors’ chickens snacks.  The free-range chickens followed me back and forth while I was carrying in groceries and waited outside the door in between trips to the car. 

I gave the chickens leftover breadsticks one day, which they loved.  The next day, I gave them rice cakes, which they’ve happily eaten before.  Apparently, though, they thought the breadsticks would/should become a regular thing because they were very unenthusiastic about the rice cakes the day after the breadsticks.   They’ve since resigned themselves to not getting breadsticks every day and are back to eating whatever I give them.

I’ll leave you with this picture of Howard and Frankie cuddled up together.  They’re so precious.

What have you been up to lately? 

Thursday 13: Hot, Fun, and Productive

1.    I just want to start off by saying thank you to everyone for your awesome comments on my post about growing up as a JW and leaving the cult.  I appreciate all of your kind words, and you’ve made me feel good about having written it.

2.    I finished with a fairly large project at work.  The deadline got moved up it, so I ended up working late a couple of days, but it’s finished now, and it went well.  The coworker I worked with was very kind and very adamant about making sure my name went on the finished product.  They said I’d worked really hard and deserved credit.  It’s always nice to get good feedback at work.

3.    My sister, Gabby, and her girlfriend, Amy, came to visit.  They arrived Saturday just before lunch and stayed until late Sunday afternoon.

4.    Amy got some good pictures of the cats while they were here.  Here’s one she took of Frankie.

5.    We had a great time.  Gabby and Nick get along well, and Nick and I both get along well with Amy.  Gabby recently referred to me as the founder and CEO of the We Love Amy Club.  She’s not wrong.

6.    We went to an awesome local restaurant for lunch on Saturday.  Gabby had been before and loves it, but this was Amy’s first time eating there.  She says it’s one of her favorites now.  We grilled out for dinner Saturday night and stayed up late talking and playing trivia games.

7.    Gabby and Amy both went out to give the chickens snacks with me.  They didn’t realize that some of the chickens are free-range and thought there had been a chicken escape when they pulled up in the driveway and were greeted by chickens.   Fortunately, no free-range chickens were captured, and Gabby and Amy enjoyed feeding all of the chickens their snacks.

8.    It seems like sometimes, with a long weekend, we end up feeling like we’ve wasted it by not doing anything productive, or we vastly overestimate how much we can do with the extra day, and it feels like the weekend wasn’t at all fun or restful.  This time, though, we actually hit a good balance.  We had a lot of fun visiting with Gabby and Amy on Saturday and Sunday.  We spent Sunday evening reading instead of our usual, getting ready for the week.  On Monday, we went to the gym in the afternoon and spent more time than we usually do, went out for an early dinner, went to the grocery store, and spent some time getting ahead on things for the week.  It was a nice balance. 

9.    Mortimer spent most of the weekend chilling out.  Amy took this picture of him.  He was completely zonked out in this position.  It doesn’t look very comfortable to me, but he was happy.

10. It has been HOT this week.  We’re back in the high 80s and low 90s, with high humidity. 

11. The air conditioning was out at work on Tuesday.  By 10:30, it was 85 degrees in the building, and efforts to fix the air conditioning thus far hadn’t worked.  Since we hadn’t even hit our high temperature yet (and it was hotter in the building than it was outside), my boss sent us all home to work from home for the rest of the day. 

12. It’s supposed to cool down to the mid-70s over the weekend, which everyone is very much looking forward to.

13. The immortal tomatoes (also known as cherry tomatoes) are back.  It has been years since we’ve planted any of these, and we never planted them where they’re currently growing.  Yet, every year, they come back, so I’ve taken to calling them the immortal tomatoes.  

So, how has your week been? 

Thursday 13: Cats, Chickens, Flowers, Freezers, and Work

 It has been insanely busy at work this week, so I wasn’t sure I’d have 13 things for Thursday 13, but I do. 

1.    Part of why work has been so busy is that there have been some changes.  I’m working with some people I haven’t worked with before.  I’m an assistant, so I’m always working with someone else on almost everything I do.  So, I was a little nervous about working with different people. 

When you’re an assistant, the people you assist can be the difference between loving your job or hating your job.

I had a meeting with my boss and one of the people I’ll be working with now, and I think we’ll work well together.  I had a one-on-one meeting with another person I’ll be working with now, and I’m pretty excited about some of the projects I’ll get to work on with them.  I think we’ll work well together. 

The rest of the year is likely to be super busy, but knowing that I’ll work well with at least some of the people is a huge relief. 

2.    Mortimer was not the least bit concerned about my job stress.  Doesn’t he look so relaxed?

3.    The free-range chickens have still been coming over for their snacks. 

4.    The chickens next door arrived in two batches.  The original chickens have been there almost a year and the new chickens have only been there a few months.  The original chickens are the ones who run up to meet me for food.   The new chickens are starting to do that, too.  All of the gray chickens, except the front right one, are the new chickens.  It looks like they’ve caught on that I’m the snack lady. 

5.    The smallest of the new chickens still hangs back some, but I’m determined to win her over. 

6.    Feeding time is always a little bit chaotic in our house.  Most of the cats are on different foods.  ALL of the cats are positive that the other cats get better food, so there’s a lot of trying to eat each other’s food.  Charlie and Howard took it to a new level this week.

I’m not sure if Howard went under Charlie, if Charlie went over Howard, or if it was a joint effort.  I feel like they deserve major points for their efforts to eat each other’s food here. 

7.    We’ve had some slightly cooler weather this week; 70s and 80s, which has been a welcome change, but not cold enough to hurt the plants.  I don’t know what these pink flowers are (GrandDaddy (Nick’s grandfather) gave them to me for Mother’s Day), but I think they’re pretty, and I’m happy they’re still doing well.   

8.    The hydrangea is still doing well. 

9.    The roses aren’t in full bloom anymore, but we still have some roses to enjoy. 

10. The marigold is still doing well.

11. I’ve realized that it’s time to work on getting the freezers at least a little bit cleaned out.  Thanksgiving isn’t that far away, and we’ll need the freezer space for when turkeys go on sale. 

12. Right now, both freezers are pretty jam-packed, and I’m not entirely sure what’s in them. 

13. I thought taking and sharing pictures of them might help hold me accountable and get me to focus on working through what’s in there. 

So, here they are in their horribly unorganized state.  (I promise we don’t actually live entirely on junk food/convenience food; it just seems like those things work their way to the top whenever we dig something else out). 

Hopefully, there will be a future Thursday 13 about the progress I’ve made in cleaning out the freezers.

How has your week been? 

Thursday 13: Cats & Chickens

When I looked through the pictures on my phone from the past week, almost all of them were cats or chickens.  So, that’s my theme for this week’s Thursday 13.  Don’t worry, the cats and chickens are safely apart.

1.    Let’s start off with a picture of Howard and Frankie cuddled together.  These two are such great friends. 

2.    Two different neighbors have chickens.  There are the free-range chickens I’ve mentioned before (who live across the street) and the next-door neighbors also have chickens.  That’s why there are chickens on both sides of the fence in this picture. 

3.    The chickens next door have a pen that’s right up against our yard, so it’s impossible to go in or out of our house without walking past them.  I have permission to feed them as well, and they definitely associate me with food.  They all run up to the corner of their pen closest to our house whenever I walk by. 

4.    I’m pretty sure that chickens never forget a food source.  The free-range chickens know my voice and come running when I call them.  Here’s one coming through to our yard for her snack.

5.    I’m fairly convinced that the answer to “Why did the chicken cross the road” is to get a treat/snack. 

6.    Mortimer is not at all concerned with why chickens cross the road.

7.    Neither is Charlie. 

8.    I had no idea how entertaining chickens could be until our neighbors got them.  They all seem to have such different personalities and they do a lot of cute things.

9.    Some of them like to perch on top of things.

10. Some of them like to sit under things.

11. The free-range chickens like to hang out under the azalea bushes after they’ve had their snack.

12. They seem to always hope for more snacks.  This one followed me back to the door after I gave them their treats, just in case I was going to get more.

13. I think they have an adorable little walk.

How has your week been? 

Thursday, Not Quite 13

It has been a fairly busy week at work, and I’ve had an extra office day this week, so I don’t have 13 interesting things I can share, but here are a few highlights.

Howard seems to be feeling pretty good this week.  He just seems perkier and was very excited about his breakfast this morning.

I ended up working pretty late yesterday, so I only had one chicken visitor when I came home from work.  She seemed pretty happy not having to share her treats with her sisters.

It has been hot and rainy here, which the marigold has loved.  Look how much bigger it is this week.

One lone pansy has perked back up.  I think the rain helped, but it has been too hot for the pansies.

How has your week been?