March already!

Time's not flying by quite as fast as it did last year, but it's still moving past at a pretty good clip.  It's March already!  Addy's still doing well, eating and drinking plenty and demanding attention whenever I'm in the house.  And getting it too, I might add.  She definitely rules the house.  And occasionally she even goes outside and wanders around a bit, checking out the patio.

Two of my three peach trees are blooming.  The biggest tree - the one I got the great peaches from last year - isn't showing any signs of blooming yet though. It's also the one that was cut back the farthest, so I hope cutting it back that far didn't damage it.  The little tree by the back fence is fully in bloom and the middle tree will be soon.  

I got my sprinkler system working on Saturday - pretty much just in time for rain this weekend.  It was my lawn guys who motivated me to get the system running, although I had been thinking I needed to do it soon.  They treated my lawn on Thursday and left a note for me to water within 48 hours.  So I checked it out and started up the system.

My big African violet at work died finally.  Between the abuse and then me over-watering it, it just gave up the ghost.  Luckily I still have 7 leaves from it in little pots.  One leaf is already growing a new plant as you can see form this picture.  I suspect most of the other leaves will grow plants too since they're all looking healthy.  I should have a replacement plant and at least one for Monica.  The rest I may have to give away on street corners if they all live.     

Plants I put outside for wintering over are also showing signs of life.  Toward the end of last year, the little crepe myrtle that I'm going to try to bonsai dropped it's leaves and looked like a tiny dead stick stuck in a pot.  I put it outside, hoping for the best, and last week I  discovered that new leaves are coming out of the top of the little stick.  I brought it inside for some attention while it gets going again.  Now if I can just not kill it with my attention.

Another thing that's growing in my kitchen / greenhouse is a grapefruit tree!  Mom and Dad always give me 12 grapefruit as a delicious Christmas present.  One weekend in January  when I was planting things, I threw one of the seeds from the grapefruit I was eating into a pot, and I'll be damned if the thing didn't sprout.  I'm not sure what I'll do with a grapefruit  tree, maybe see if I can turn it into a bonsai.  It's amazing that I'm trying so hard to start red maple seeds and sakura seeds, with no luck, and this silly grapefruit seed is just growing. 

Last month I went to a board of directors meeting in St. Thomas.  Beautiful place!  This view is from my room.  Despite working most of the time we were there, we did get a few hours beach time on Saturday afternoon.  I spent mine on the beach, either in a lounge chair or in the water with a rum-based drink in hand. These iguanas live on the resort premises and have no concerns about passing humans.

Coming back I had a tight connection in Miami, less than 30 minutes between flights, and somehow I managed to actually make it.  They were nearly finished boarding by the time I puffed up to the gate, but I made it.  Probably it wouldn't have been a disaster if I had missed it because flights between Miami and Dallas are pretty frequent, but I was glad to make it.  

I thought about putting out at least one of my hummingbird feeders this weekend, but decided to wait another week.  I usually put it out in mid-March.  A couple of years I had hummers at it as soon as I hung it, but last year the hummers didn't show up until early April.  It's been such a warm winter though.  I'm going to hang it next weekend.

I think that's all the news for now. 

Day to Day

I almost lost my little old lady Addy a couple weeks ago.  She started vomiting on a Monday and wouldn't eat.  Tuesday afternoon I took her to the vet, which turns out probably to have been a mistake.  I thought that like last time she just needed subcutaneous fluids and a shot to break the vomiting cycle.  But her kidney tests were actually normal!  Better numbers than I've seen in a long time.  Her amylase was sky high, which is a marker for the pancreas not functioning well.  It turns out, pretty much any major organ failure she goes into will have pretty much the same symptoms, vomiting, refusal to eat, etc.  They gave her sub-cutaneous fluids anyway, and an anti-nausea shot and an antibiotic shot.  

I took her home but Tuesday evening she was worse, and Wednesday she was obviously hurting so much that I almost took her back and asked them to put her to sleep.  There is no 'right' or 'wrong' decisions when you get to that stage.  I just held and gently stroked her for long periods on Wednesday (I was out sick too) and hoped for the best.  That was all she wanted - to be where I was. 

So she didn't eat from Monday through Friday, although she continued to drink water.  I tried tempting her to eat with everything I knew, but no go.  Saturday morning about 2:00 am, we were both laying there awake and I was contemplating taking her to the vet for the final time.  Just drinking water, she was losing strength and could barely totter around the house.  I was carrying her around.  As we lay there, she got up and headed for the cat box.  I got up and put down fresh wet food and tried again - carried her to where it was.  And she ate it!  Not a lot, but she voluntarily ate for the first time since the previous Monday morning.  So I started putting small amounts of dry food on the bed with her and fresh wet food down regularly.  Over the course of the last week, she's steadily been increasing the amount of food she's eating, both wet and dry, and she's steadily gained strength back

I don't know why but once again she's come back to fairly stable.  She gets around the house as well as she has been this last year, and doesn't seem to be in any kind of discomfort except for her usual arthritis.  And she's 21 years old this month.  I know she won't live forever, so I'm incredibly grateful to have some additional time with her.  If she didn't keep beating the odds, it might be easier to think that she won't keep on doing it.

The quince is in full bloom in my back yard, about a month before it bloomed last year.  And the honeybees are happily going to town on it.  If you look closely at the picture above, you can see a bee in the middle of the flower in the center.  Nothing else is blooming yet.  I had my peach trees cut way back so they may not bloom for awhile.  Yes, I broke down and paid someone to do it.  It wasn't that expensive and it took him an hour to do what would have taken me most of a day.  I did finish trimming back all my roses and cleaning the vine out of the quince myself though. 

My african violet at work is still not looking good, although the center is still holding.  I now have 6 leaves from it planted in soil though, so hopefully at least one of them will grow a new plant.  Hopefully more than one, so I can give one to Monica too.  I've also planted two other violets for her, a frilly purple one and a regular purple one.  I still need to plant her a cutting from my maroon violet.

On other "growing things" fronts, various flowers continue to bloom in my aerogarden that has flowers in it.   I like it because I love blooming things.  I'm not even sure what these flowers are that I have blooming.  I just like flowers, so I planted several different kinds.  the bad news about that is that not all of them grow at the same rate.  That means I am cutting back the fast-grower a lot to give the other access to the lights.  Oh well.   I'm still getting flowers.

The other aerogarden, which I'm using to try to sprout some stubborn tree seeds, is growing a couple of little pines but not much else.  It's more in the nature of an experiment to see what I can get to grow in an aerogarden.  As you can imagine form all the things I've been planting lately, my kitchen counters look more like a greenhouse than a kitchen.  Good thing I'm not much into cooking.  I currently have more plants in this house than I've had all together since  . . . actually since ever.  Most plants ever.  Some of them will go outside when the weather warms up for the year, but then some of the plants I have outside will come in when it gets hot, so I guess it balances out.  

That's all for today. 

Starting 2017

Hah!  Surprised you, right?  Didn't think I'd post again so soon, I bet.  Actually I'm kind of surprising myself, but I do want to keep up with this blog more this year.  

2017 is starting out good so far in most ways.  I'm sticking to my exercise schedule, despite having pulled a muscle in my lower back some time last week.  So I'm sticking to it a bit gingerly this week, but I'm sticking to it.  And the diet thing is better.  I actually have fruit and veggies in my house.  Definite moves in the right direction.

Work is going well too.  My new faculty member continues to be awesome, and I'm nearly caught up!  Yes, that's correct.  All those many things I had on hold because of association duties last year, are almost all done.  And the book that I'm senior editor on is at the printers!  What a chore that was.   So I'm quite happy with work and how it's going.  

There are two things I'm less happy about.

One is that I lost my renters on my old house.  They left at the end of the year with no notice.  So they don't get the deposit back, but the deposit won't cover the repairs on the house.  It has to be completely repainted (which should be happening this weekend) and the carpet has to be replaced (which I've arranged to happen as soon as the ordered carpet arrives). There are also lots of other more minor things like the kitchen faucet needs to be replaced, doors need re-keying, fence in the back needs to be repaired, plus general cleaning, etc.  Luckily my agent is dealing with all this (except I went and did the carpet arranging) and just sending me the bills.

There are two good things about this.  The best one is that my agent does not think the house will be empty long.  He says the housing market is good for rentals and we don't have much competition.  The other good thing is that an honorarium I got for speaking last year arrived this month, and it is enough to cover a big chunk of the repairs.  So the timing on that was perfect. I do hope it rents quickly though so I'm not paying two mortgages for very long.

The other thing was something that happened this week at work.  An IT guy repairing my computer on Monday was bumping into my big African violet which has been blooming in that corner of my desk for almost 2 years now.  Tuesday morning when I came it, it was lying on it's side!   I re-potted it, but even when I left on Friday it's not clear whether it will survive or not.  The center seems to be holding it's own, but all the outside leaves are drooping and I've been removing the increasing number of leaves that are obviously not going to make it.   I hate to admit, I have put about 10 leaves from that plant in water, to make sure I can restart it if it doesn't survive.  The two pictures here are two angles on it's poor damaged self from Thursday and it looked about the same on Friday.  We'll see what it looks like when I go in to work on Tuesday.  The African violet picture earlier in the post is one of the other ones in my office - blooming happily.

I haven't done any yard work beyond cutting back the roses on New Year's weekend.  Last weekend I was "stove up" as they say, with my back problem, and the weather was sucky.  This weekend the weather continues sucky - drizzling or raining and temps hovering around 50.  Maybe I'll try the inside chores I didn't do last weekend due to the fact that mopping and sweeping doesn't work well when you're back is bothering you.  We'll see how motivated I am - or am not.

Addy continues well.  I hope I am able to make that particular statement for a long time yet in each blog post.  Hang in there, baby.

That's all for today.

Old year!

Wow!  I did not manage to post one single post in 2016 after my initial post last January 3rd.  I knew I was going to be busy this last year, but it was extraordinarily more busy than I even imagined.  I am soooooooooo looking forward to a normal year in 2017.

Okay!  It's indeed New Year's Eve, and I'm going to try to do a year retrospective, as well as comment on next year and some resolutions.  And I'll intersperse the blog with pictures taken during the year.  Just to break up the monotony of all the talking about this last year.

First of all, Addy is still with me!   She will be 21 years old in February, and her health is increasingly fragile, but she's holding her own so far.  As long as she continues to eat and drink fine, she's still doing well.  But anything that throws her out of balance is going to be more and more difficult to come back from.  The day after Christmas we went to the vet because Christmas night she started vomiting and was still vomiting at noon the next day.  So of course, not eating and drinking.  We went to the vet and had blood work done and her kidney function tests were the same as a few months ago, but her white cell count was up a bit.  So they gave her subcutaneous fluids, and three shots, one antibiotic for the possible infection causing her white cell count to be up, one anti-nausea shot so she'd stop vomiting, and a B12 shot to give her a bit of a boost.   I really think the subcutaneous fluids to get her back on an even keel with her fluids, and the anti-nausea shot to break the vomiting cycle, are what put her back to status quo.  She's again eating and drinking fine.  And being a demanding and cranky old lady.  On the day we go to the vet and her kidney function tests are getting worse rather than staying the same, I'll have different decisions to make, but so far so good.

So, the Presidency.  Man, what a ride.  It was way more stressful than I expected, and required way more of my time than I expected.  A LOT of crazy things happened this year, requiring me to learn a lot about things I didn't expect to need to - like how to handle people who you don't agree with, and how whatever you say is coming from the association not from you, and how to talk to reporters. I never expected to need to know how to be interviewed by a reporter, or how to tell them the exact truth while not telling them everything.  Crazy.   I had 17 interviews this year, including with the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CNN and CBS, to name some of the major ones.  

I ended up giving 25 talks over the course of the year, not counting the on-stage stuff I did for the Annual Meeting.  I made 5 international trips:  Birmingham, UK; Copenhagen, Denmark; Seoul, South Korea; Taipei, Taiwan and Beijing, China.  The rest of my talks were scattered across the United States, starting with Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle last January and ending with Baltimore in December.  Needless to say, I have a ton of frequent flyer miles available right now.  And thankfully the long international trips were business class.  14 hours on a plane to Seoul or Beijing is much better in business class.  

The kind of sad thing about those international trips is that I had no time to take extra time and do sightseeing while I was over at the various places.  The only place I managed to get any sightseeing in was Beijing.  I went with a colleague to see the Forbidden City.  Which was awesome.  I'm glad I at least got that in.  We were also lucky with the weather in that it wasn't as smoggy as Beijing usually is at that time of year.

One of the good things that happened this year is that we hired a new junior faculty member at work.  I do think it helped that I was gone so much.  Someone realized they needed additional coverage help and probably also realized that I'm not going to be around forever.  They need to start doing some succession planning.  The new faculty member is amazingly awesome.  She's such a go getter and so smart.  We hired her in August and I have been amazed at how much time I gained back, just from her fielding the daily stuff that comes up, and saving me from having to deal with it.   She's really great, and has a great personality too.

Let's see.  Around the house.  *laughing*  Well, I've hardly been here enough to know what's going on around here.  I think Addy thinks the pet sitter, Martha, is her Mom.   But after being up at Monica's in September and seeing her Aerogarden at work, I came home and bought one.  Sometime this Fall I started flowers in it, because I love to grow things and I love blooming things.  Luckily, once you start it, it's self-sufficient except for adding water and occasional nutrients.  It is great to have flowers blooming in the house. Actually I have flowers blooming everywhere.  My four African Violets at work are all blooming, and I put the one here at home near the Aerogarden where it gets the light from that, and it started blooming also.  I may try starting bonsai in another Aerogarden, since I have been unable to get sakura or red maples to sprout. 

I did manage to take two weeks for vacation this year and Monica and I went to Utah with Yasmeen and Jake.  It was the usual great Utah/Colorado vacation, but too short.  I'm going to take a long one this next year. 

Things I haven't been able to do this year include exercise.  I never could get a routine established, especially the back half of the year when I was traveling every week.  So high on my list of things to do for 2017 is get back on an exercise program.  And second on the list is revisit my diet.  I managed not to gain a bunch of weight this year - still holding below 140, but my diet is horrible.  I'm back to fast foods and processed foods.  It's hard when you spend so much time at dinners and receptions and banquets and in hotels.  It's probably amazing that I didn't gain weight to speak of, but I need to eat better.   So that's # 2 on my list.  I also need to put some work into the house.  I haven't cleaned it well for a good year now.     And I need to trim the peach trees.  Today I started by cutting back all my roses. I want to basically just spend some time on the house. 

I had to pull all by bird feeders down though because I had rats.  Which then moved into my garage (where the bird seed was stored) when I pulled the feeders.  So now all the seed is in sealed plastic containers, but I won't be putting any back out until I'm pretty sure the rats have moved away.  

I had peaches from my trees this year!!!  Two of the three trees produced peaches, and the ones from the biggest tree were awesomely delicious.  This was the first year since I planted the trees that I've had peaches.  Let's see.  I moved in here in summer of 2012, planted them in 2013, and the one that's now the biggest got buried by the foundation repair team in Fall of 2013.  So it came back and they all grew through 2014 and 2015, and produced peaches this year.  Not bad.  The trees are badly overgrown though, so I do HAVE to get out there and trim them soon - before they start blooming this year.

I did have kind of a sad thing happen in late May through July.  A feral momma cat took up residence in my back yard with her three kittens.  I fed them for awhile, figuring they were safe back there with my wooden privacy fence, but they started disappearing.  Finally only one orange kitten was left and he seemed so lonely and scared.  I ordered a night camera and it came the day I found only orange fur in the back yard.  The images from that night showed what looks like a bobcat!  And his image shows up about 15 minutes after I put cat food out before I left in the morning. (Yes, I leave well before sunup.)  So I suspect the cat family may have become bobcat food.  I never saw them again after I found the orange fur. 

So overall, it was a pretty good year, but I'm glad to be over being President.  I feel like I've gotten my life back.  I'm glad to have done it, and glad to be through.  So tonight I'm lifting my glass in a toast in honor of all the people who supported me and helped me make it through this year.  They have my undying gratitude, and they know who they are.  And I also toast to a year well spent, and a new year of possibilities.  

I can't wait to see what 2017 has in store.

Happy New Year!!

New Year!

Hmmmm.  I'm not sure how well it bodes for my keeping up with things this coming year, since it's three days into the new year and I'm just now doing the post of my old year musings and retrospective.  Sadly I won't be any less busy this coming year - probably will be busier - but I'll try to get an occasional post in.

Like today's post.  Tomorrow I go back to work after being off about 10 days.  I spent six of those days in Colorado at my sister's place.  I intended to spend five, but the weather socked in and convinced me to hang out up there for another day.  I've driven the Texas panhandle in white-out conditions and if I can avoid it, I will.  I'm glad I did too.  A day later I had mostly smooth sailing, unlike the people trying to travel on Sunday and Monday.          

Other than keeping me in Colorado an extra day, the weather was pretty cooperative.  It snowed all day on Christmas.  Beautiful!  And we got out and played around in it a bit, "helping" John get his plow working.  Which basically means we tried to stay out of his way.  Then late in the evening it completely cleared off and we had a huge full moon on all that new snow.  Gorgeous!!  We went back out and took a short walk.  Short because it was damn cold.  At least just above zero feels damn cold to this Texas girl.  All the snow pictures in this post are taken around my sister's place on Christmas or the day after. 

2015 was a good year for me.  I stayed busy and stayed healthy and had no major financial crises come up.  That's what I call a good year.  Addy is still with me.  She'll turn 20 years old in February, so each day she's with me is a good day.   She's still doing well, as active as can be expected for her age.  She sleeps a lot but also eats and drinks well, so she's holding her own.  For her sake, I kind of hate that I'll be gone so much this year, but that's the way it's going to work out.  At least she likes my pet sitter, and Martha is really good with her. 

So.  In 2016, actually starting January 1st, 2 days ago, I'm President of my national professional association.  That's why I'll be gone so much this year, and be so busy.  I already know of 13 speaking engagements I have.  Luckily only two of those are outside the US at this point - one in Taiwan and one in England.  There's a good likelihood that that will change as the year progresses, both number and locations may increase.   

And all this is in addition to my regular job too.  So I will be busy.  In honor of that, I'm not making any New Year's resolutions this year.  I've managed to keep my weight in the 135 range for two years now and last year I managed to stay healthy and keep up exercising for a good bit of the year.  I'd like to do that again, but traveling, meetings, receptions and dinners - none of that is conducive to a good exercise routine, nor to a good balanced diet.  So my intent for 2016 is to do the best I can, with no resolutions that will no doubt get broken quickly.  I'll just be as moderate as I can be in my eating and drinking and try to do healthy things whenever I can.  My goal is to end the year not having gained any weight or having been sick.  

I put away all my Christmas stuff yesterday.  I felt kind of sad about that.  The tree was so pretty and festive, I almost left it up longer.  But I like to start the New Year with the place all clean and ready.  And I really can't bring myself to put it up before Thanksgiving, so it gets to be up for only a month.  I have some ornaments that I've had for a long time that I like to hang every year.  Like a woman in a white lab coat carrying a clipboard that someone in my family gave me the year I got my doctorate, back in 1986.  And a little Coke machine with mice running up it and drinking Coke.  I think that one also came from the family.  I wish I could remember who gave it to me.  I also now have 17, no 18, of the Hallmark Mischievous Kitten ornaments.  Yup, all of them from 1999 on, plus the 15th year celebration one from 2013.   I think my sister Caryn may have given me my first one of those, maybe in 2002, and then I went back and collected the first ones, and the rest for myself.  It's a little sad that they're only out of boxes for a month out of the whole year, but maybe that makes them special too.

I'm not sure I'm ready to go back to work tomorrow, but it's about time to leap into the New Year and hit the ground running.  Best of Luck for the New Year! 

Zoe - one year later

It’s been exactly one year now since I had to have Zoe put to sleep.  One year that my sweet, lovable, big round calico cat has been gone.  Sometimes I still imagine her waddling across the room for her share of strokes, or treats or play time.  And though I don’t burst into tears anymore at the thought of her, I do still miss her soft, soft fur and her demands for attention. The good news is that I remember the good times more and more.  I still wish I could have spared her that last week of fear and pain, but that’s not the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of her any more.  More often than not, I remember the fun things now.

So perhaps it's now time for that "good time" post on my girl, Zoe.

First of all, she was a scrawny, flea-infested scrap of calico when I got her, since her mother was an outside cat.  She very quickly adapted to the apartment and quickly latched onto Addy for companionship.  Addy of course, hated her, and slapped her down whenever she got too close.  But Zoe refused to give up, wouldn’t accept “no” for an answer, kept coming back, and eventually the two became best friends.

 

Zoe was always needy.  She needed to be around others, be they human or cat, and when I was around, she wanted attention.  When she was little she’d climb up to my shoulder and suck on the ends of my hair behind my ear.  She very quickly became too big to do that, but always wanted my lap when I was sitting.  Both girls did, and both became very territorial when it came to me.  Zoe was only smaller than Addy for a short time and pretty much as soon as she became bigger, she’d use her weight to push her way in.  Addy would try to rebuff her, but Zoe was adept at ignoring that .  Almost always, Addy would leave pissed off, and Zoe would claim the lap. 

Zoe loved boxes her entire life.  I spent a lot of time with empty packing boxes in my apartment or house, because I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away when she enjoyed them so much.  She loved hiding in places she could see out of, especially boxes, including coca-cola 12-pack boxes when she was little.  She would even use plastic trash bags as hiding places if I left them lying around.  Later when I moved into my first house, she was absolutely in heaven when I let the peach tree overgrow and the branches hung down to the ground.  She would spend the whole day laying out in the yard, hidden among the peach tree branches.

She never climbed the tree though.   Zoe didn’t like heights and would panic as soon as her feet left the ground when you picked her up.  She never leaped up on counters, tables or furniture, nor leaped across open spaces.  Even getting up on chairs and couches, she climbed using her claws instead of just hopping up.  I often wondered if she had some sort of inner ear imbalance that made her uncomfortable without her feet on the ground. 

One of Zoe’s favorite things was stalking birds.  She never caught one, being too slow and clumsy, but she never tired of trying.  She would stalk them back and forth across the yard all day long, perfectly content being outside and chasing her birds.  She also loved to chase grasshoppers, and many times brought a large grasshopper she had caught into the house to play with.   She inevitably would release it near me so that it would leap at me when she let it go.  And then she’d chase it down all around the house.  Grasshoppers were about the limit of what she could catch, except once she brought in a large praying mantis.  Addy caught and brought in small lizards and snakes, and once a hummingbird moth, which I then had to catch to take back outside.   

Zoe really liked the outdoors, especially if there were places for her to hide out there.  She was a big fraidy cat, running for the house at pretty much anything that startled her.  Often she really just wanted to be able to lie in the open doorway.  She was inside the house, but on the edge of outside in case anything moved out there that she needed to chase.   Lying in an open doorway was one of her favorite places her whole life.   

   

 Zoe liked to play in water, or at any rate to drop her toys in water.  She’d mostly use her water dish for this, but when she was younger she would drop her toys in the toilet.   I quickly learned to look BEFORE sitting down.  Like all cats, she especially liked to drink fresh water and would sit and stare at me until I put fresh water down if I let it get too old.  Then when she was drinking it, particularly from her favorite blue bowl, just the very tip of her tail would slowly wave back and forth.  She especially took to the cat fountains when I began using them.

Zoe liked to curl up in small spaces in which she just barely fit.  I think she felt safe in enclosed spaces.  She was also very set in her ways and changes to her routine might take her weeks to get used to.  When I moved into my first house and then 11 years later into my second house, she spent the first 2-3 weeks each time under the bed in the master bedroom, slowly venturing out in little short time periods to begin to learn her new environment.   She was very definitely a scaredy cat, and a one woman cat, freaking out if anyone but me was in the house.  She would completely disappear if the doorbell rang, until whoever it was was completely gone.  And if she was in my lap when the doorbell rang, She would leap to run for a hiding place, often leaving me with deep gouges.   If people were in her house, she was nowhere to be found.  I began having a pet sitter watch the girls in their old age, and it took her probably 2 years to get Zoe to come out from under the bed when she was at the house. 

Zoe liked toys that bounced.  She turned her nose up completely at soft toys, but delighted in things that bounced and rolled.  A particular favorite of hers was pencil pillows, the foamy things you put on a pen or pencil to cushion your grip.  She loved them because they would get hung on her claw and when she flipped her paw they would go flying for her to chase.  She really liked it if they landed on a bookshelf, giving her an excuse to clear the shelf of books trying to retrieve her toy.  I finally had to stop giving them to her to play with when I realized she would eat them after playing long enough.  Christmas balls were another favorite, so I had to have extra every year.

Zoe was not very bright and fairly clumsy.  No usual cat grace for this cat.   She rarely just laid down, more like flopped over on her side when she was ready to lay down, and she loved laying on her back with her feet in the air.   She never did grasp the idea the claws were not to be used always.   And she loved to pull things down and lay on them, towels if she could reach them, clothes in the clothes basket, things I left laying in chairs.  I used to leave small fleeces on chairs specifically for her to pull down and lay on.   

  

Mostly what I remember about Zoe is that she was sweet and good-natured almost always.  Her fur was really soft, and she loved getting stokes and brushings.  She would lie still for as long as you were willing to brush her and pet her and then always wanted more when you stopped.   I miss her a lot still, but I now remember the good times more often than the final times.  You're loved and missed, Zoe, my big girl.

So overdue!

Yes, I know.  It's been almost 3 months since I posted.  What can I say.  Sometimes life interferes.  I've been traveling a bunch for my professional association, and that's not going to get any better.  Still, I'll make an attempt not to go three months between posts.

So much has happened.  Let's see.  Where to start.  As you can see, my little old lady cat, Addy, is still hanging in there at 19 and a half years old.  She likes warm spots and occasional forays outside.  She also likes attention and gets increasingly demanding, especially when I've been traveling.  I'm glad to have her still and try to spend as much time as I can giving her that attention.

Things around the house are doing well.  No house issues!  Yay!  I feel like maybe I should knock on wood when I say that.  My growing things are doing better than I have any right to expect.   The Russian sage nearly drowned in May when we had that 30 days of rain, and I thought it was a goner.  It's made a nice comeback though and is currently blooming, although not as vigorously as the ones I saw on my vacation trip to Colorado.  I have no idea if that's because they don't do as well in the Texas heat, or because I tried to drown it a few months ago.

I tried AGAIN to kill the poor little pine tree.  I really thought it was gone this time.  After being out in all the rain we had, I simply forgot to water it once the rain stopped.  It went completely brown and lost every one of it's needles.  I had my pet sitter water it anyway while I was out of town on one of my trips, and I know she thought I was crazy for having her water a dead mini-tree.  But the silly thing has come back.  I told myself I'd bring it in the house if it showed signs of reviving yet again, so I did when I began to see tiny green buds. That tree will now live in the house in the summer and outside in the winter.  I would have saved the poor thing lots of trouble if I had stopped long enough to figure out that it happens to be a deciduous tree, called a dawn redwood.  It's supposed to drop all it's needles in the winter.  If I hadn't tried so hard to keep it green when I was first growing it, it probably would have done better.  It amazes me that it's still trying to survive and coming back again.

The peaches are thriving also.  The one that was struggling is happy as a clam this year since I had the big live oak in my back yard trimmed up and that peach now gets lots of sun.  The smallest one originally is now the largest and it absolutely overgrows every year now.  I wonder if it will blossom next year and have some peaches.  Those peach trees are four years old now, although they've only been planted in the ground about 2 years.

I haven't seen the hummingbirds around lately, but the level in the feeder keeps dropping so they must still be around.  It's so hot still (hitting 90s) that it's hard to remember that it's almost October.  Nothing is showing any signs of Fall yet.  No leaves turning colors or looking brown, no lawns going dormant.  It'll probably be another two months before it begins to look Fall-like here.  When I was in Colorado early in September the aspens were already showing signs of turning. 

My hoard of sparrows is definitely still around, eating me out of house and home.  Some of them stay over winter, but most of them move on to wherever they go to winter. Interestingly, I don't go through anywhere near the volume of birdseed in the winter that I do in the summer.

Since the last time I posted, I've had trips to Atlanta, GA, Philadelphia, PA and Washington DC.  Plus I took a vacation with my sister, hiking, camping and playing in Utah and Colorado.  I'll post on that trip separately.  It was a blast.

Anyway, that's pretty much caught up on the day to day stuff.  Things are going well, so hopefully that'll continue.  Next post will be about the vacation trip.