The House of Mouses

It’s been quite a while since I last posted, but I haven’t been particularly busy. I just haven’t been in the mood to write, I guess.

So, what’s been happening? In major news, my gorgeous niece Evie turned 2 years old on April 1. She’s a bright little thing, both intellectually & in her personality. Every time we go to visit, she’s at the front door when we pull into the driveway, waving furiously & shouting, “Come in! Come in!”. Then she runs around the house laughing, because she’s so excited that you’ve come to see her. She’s not big on sharing at the moment. Any request for a piece of her food (crackers, strawberries, etc) is met with a “no” and a “shorry!” (sorry). She LOVES her DVDs – the Wiggles is her favourite, closely followed by Bob-pants (Spongebob Squarepants) and SHEEP! (Shaun the Sheep). We were visiting this weekend & watched a couple SHEEP! DVDs, and I must admit, she’s got good taste in that regard. That show is FUNNY. I mean, anthropomorphic claymation sheep, what’s not to like? She’s just got the sweetest temperament, and I love her to bits.

In other news, Andrew has been on a “work” trip for the last week, so it’s just been me & the kittehs, who, contrary to popular belief, are not stunning conversationalists. Expellers of hairballs in the middle of the night? Yes. Champion eaters of kibble? Sure. But conversationally? Not so much. Still, we’ve been having a un-eventful, quiet week, and that’s okay. And tomorrow, one lucky kitteh will join me in watching the royal wedding. Perhaps I could rig up some tiaras for us, to be festive. And some cucumber sandwiches & tea. Hmmmmm. He gets home tomorrow night, though, which is good since I haven’t slept well since he left. The zombification of my brain has been happening for the last 4 days, and it’s not pretty.

In other, grosser, news, we’ve been fighting a war with the mouses in our basement. That’s right – we have/had mouses in our basement. Our first clue was a bag of birdseed with a hole in it, then Pippin’s capture & display of a mouse (it was displayed prominently in our front hall). Our next clue was the mouse poop around the rack where we keep excess foodstuffs & such. Yuck. So we bought some mousetraps – a humane trap, and some snappy ones (not the old-fashioned wood-and-wire snappy one, a la Tom & Jerry – plastic ones with less bite). We have caught 6 mice, including Pippin’s, and there hasn’t been a mouse in the trap in the last 6 days. Hopefully we’re on top of it now, because EWWWWW. One good thing has come of it, though. We’ve made a real start on cleaning the basement, which has been accumulating assorted stuff since we moved in 7 years ago. It’s looking a lot better already.

Hmmmm, what else has been happening? Andrew went on another “work” trip to see a practice round of The Masters golf tournament. He had a great time. I stayed home. Are you starting to see a pattern here? Yeah – guess where I’ve been the last several months? Home. And work. Ooooo, so exciting. Bah humbug.

In adoption news, we received provinicial approval of our dossier last week, so now it gets translated & authenticated or something like that, and sent to Ethiopia. Hopefully it’ll be there soon, and we can get back in line for a referral. There haven’t been any referrals since the “new” agency took over. A lot of people have had quite a problem with the new agency, communication-wise, but it hasn’t been a problem for us, at least not yet. We’ve put off deciding whether to put our file in with CAS for 3 months or so, just to see how things are moving along with the new agency. If April is anything to go by, referrals are not going so great. Oh well, there have been slow months in the past. We just have to be patient, I guess.

And now you’re up to date.

Ain't that the truth

Heh, this reminds me of a small furry someone

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Doro What?

Now that I'm done recounting my riveting UK holiday, I can now get back to the minutiae of my everyday life. It's not all champagne wishes & caviar dreams, you know. While we haven't really done much since we returned (this is especially true for my more-than-lardy arse), this weekend was actually eventful. Friday was quiet, but the early hours of Saturday brought us that most precious of gifts - the hairball. We don't even get up to try to get Pippin onto a tile floor anymore, we just let her let it rip & do the damage control when she's done. She's now on hairball control food, so hopefully that will help her pass them in a less spectacular fashion. After that fairly rude awakening we were off to Ethiopian cooking class with our fellow Milton adopting couples (at least, the ones that are with our social worker). This class was organized by Alicia, with one of the presenters of our agency's class presenters, Mibrak (I seem to recall her hosting the Ethiopian culture class, part 1). We all met up in a church in a nearby bustling metropolis, to learn how to cook doro wat, a beef stew (the name of which escapes me), a lentil stew & a vegetable dish. We didn't do much of the cooking ourselves, but we were given recipes & were able to see what the food should look like at various stages of preparation. The lentil dish used the same base (onions, garlic, ginger & berbere) as the doro wat. The beef dish wasn't spicy, except for the large chunks of chili added at the end. The veggie dish was onions, carrots & cabbage, stir-fried with ginger & garlic added later. Then we learned how to make injera (on a big circular griddle). It was sooooo yummy, especially the injera, which was made properly, with a starter (something I haven't done yet). We each got some starter to take with us, so we can try making injera at home (once Andrew & I get a flat griddle with a lid). We always have fun with those 2 couples, so it was great to see them again. We're getting together this week for coffee/ chicken wings, and the next day for the local multicultural festival.

After our class we headed down to my parents place, to take my dad out for Father's Day. He picked the restaurant - one of the local steak places - and we had a great time. I think it's the first time he's been out for dinner since his surgery (though he's been out to breakfast a few times). He's doing really well, but he still tires very easily. For his gift, we got him an apron for barbequing (emblazoned with Big Green Egg - that's his fancy BBQ/smoker) and some BBQ rub. He was really impressed with the apron, it had the funniest/weirdest sticker on it - see operators manual for applications. Like you couldn't figure out how to operate an apron? Heh. Good times. I think he was really pleased that we came down. I'm sure he would have also liked to have seen my brother & his family - Evie (the first grandchild) is only 2.5 months old, and Mom & Dad haven't seen her in 3 weeks, which is a lifetime when they're that young. Hopefully they (my brother & his family) will motivate themselves to go see Dad soon. I know it's tough when you've got a little one, but your father also just had major, life-savng surgery & can't travel yet. Not that he visited that often before Dad was diagnosed. Rant over.

That's about it for today. Be well!

2 for 1 - not a good deal

5am this morning - wake up to kitteh barfy noises. Not surprised, since Pippin was grazing on a fair bit of grass the evening before. We think she's half kitteh, half cow.
6am this morning - wake up for good this morning, shift foot to the right to stretch & put said foot in cold puddle of kitteh pee. AWESOME! Turned out to be 2 medium sized puddles of kitteh pee. Good thing we changed the sheets 2 days ago. Let me tell you - mattress protector + new mattress = best investment EVER.

Darn cat.

My kittehs

This photo is from the first 5 months we had Willow (the black cat). That's how long Pippin (the grey cat) tolerated her before she (Pippin) decided that the house wasn't big enough for the 2 of them. Pippin believes that Andrew & I are her people, and that's enough for her. She tolerates other people in her presence, but is likely to hiss or swat if they get too close. The cats remain separate at all times, but they spend an equal amount of time with us. It's not the ideal situation, but we are reluctant to find either of them a new home, because we love them both. Sigh, I wish you could reason with cats....