A Standing Stone

It’s New Year’s Eve and I’m waiting on the plumber to unclog the drainpipe coming from the washing machine.    He was supposed to be here yesterday, then this morning.  Now we have people coming in an hour and a half.  At least I bought myself some new music (finally).  I can get happy again listening to my two new Brian Setzer Orchestra CD’s.  If you’ve never listened to Brian Setzer, go check out his stuff.  Absolutely great!

Can’t believe we’ll have to get back to business as usual in a few days.  It seems like Christmas break just started.  I was sick in bed all day Christmas, but at least I had new pajamas!  I’ll have a hard time adjusting to having my husband go back to work after having him home for 2 weeks.  Now I will have to make my own breakfast and coffee.  (Supper, too!)  He’s a gem!  I don’t deserve him!

Our cat Jack is feeling much better these days.  In fact, so good that he’s picking fights with Gracie.  It never ends around here! 

Hope everyone has a Happy New Year!  There are 359 days until Christmas!

Oh my, it’s me, Rae Lyn.  I am in the blogging mood for the first time since I began this blog.  I think I’m just using it as an excuse to avoid the many things on my to do list.

We have had a busy and eventful school year so far.  We have managed to pretty much keep up with schoolwork, but are not getting to do all the extras I would like.  I am, however, planning on making a Gingerbread House for the first time ever.  Elizabeth has been learning how to use decorating tips for icing so this will be good practice for her.

I’m teaching a poetry class at our homeschool co-op this quarter.  That is going well and I’m enjoying preparing the lessons.  “Purple penguins are paving the way to my pantry.”  That’s alliteration for you.  The kids seem to be enjoying writing their own poems and I’ve been enjoying their creativity.

Please come and visit the new Sperry nursing home for old cats.  About a month and a half ago, our oldest cat, Grace, was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism.  She is doing very well on daily thyroid medicine.  She will turn 16 in February.  We almost lost our Jack cat a couple of weekends ago.  He got sooooo sick and lost sooo much weight.  For a cat who normally weighs in around 14 pounds, he had gotten down to 10.  I took him to the vet and he treated him with antibiotics.  Over that same weekend, he dropped two more pounds.  Come to find out, he is diabetic.  So now we are having to test glucose and ketones with urine strips and give him dialy insulin shots.  He is making much improvement.  I caught him terrorizing squirrels this morning.  Please come visit the nursing home this Christmas season!  (I was not aware of this before, but cats can actually go into complete remission for diabetes.  Pray this happens with Jacky.)

It’s been a hard week and I’m looking forward to sleeping really late in the am.  I was in the proverbial doghouse earlier this week after breaking an expensive bottle of Jack’s insulin. (No, our insurance doesn’t pay for the cats’ medicine.)  As the week draws to a close, I am happy to say I am no longer in the doghouse (at least I think so).

The Men in My Life

Our front bathroom is finally remodeled!  Now, we only have to take care of the foyer and paint the living room(oh and the yard still has quite a way to go!).  The front bathroom is now my fav room in the house!

Here are the layers of wallpaper Jonathan had to take off.  From looking at the orange flowers do ya think our house was built in the seventies?

Here’s the new bathroom.  I was going for a 1940’s theme:

My husband found our cat, Jack, taking a snooze on the patio.  He looked so funny that I just had to get pictures!

Elizabeth has been taking swimming lessons the past two weeks. Today was her last day so I decided to take a day off work and go watch her. She said she was going to jump off the high dive for the first time, so I definitely wanted to be there.

I guess since it was the last day, everyone else in her class decided to skip, so she had one-on-one training with her instructor today.

Here are a few photos…

But did she jump off the high dive???

Yup, did it three times without hesitation.

Here’s one with her in mid air.

And here’s a video clip…

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We had to have one of our cats, Lucy, euthanized last Friday. She had developed what the vet believed was a large tumor on one of her lungs, making it very difficult for her to breath.

Lucy became my cat before Rae Lyn and I were married. The way she became my cat is an interesting story. In the summer of 1995, Rae Lyn had just started a job as assistant manager at the Jacksonville public library. On the first night that she closed the library on her own, she returned to Conway and I met up with her. She suddenly became worried that she had forgotten to lock the side door of the library. Finally we decided to drive back to Jacksonville (about a 50 min drive) and verify that she locked the side door. We got to the library probably around 8:30pm or so and found that she had locked the door after all. So we headed back to Conway, feeling that we had driven all that way for no reason. About halfway back, driving in darkness in a remote area on a low trafficked highway, I suddenly saw a small cat in the middle of the road and swerved to miss hitting it. I turned around and slowly drove back to where the cat was. She was maybe a week old, and had a little blood on her but otherwise seemed to be in good health. There was only one house nearby, so we took her there to see if the cat belonged to them. Nope. So we decided to take her back to Rae Lyn’s apartment to decide what to do with her. Rae Lyn already had a cat, so she decided she would put an add in the paper to give her away. The following day I decided I would keep her.

So in an odd turn of events, I had a cat (along with the dog, Triple, I had at the time). After a few days I decided to name her Lucy, after Lucy Ricardo, because I could tell she was prone to getting into trouble. What kind of trouble you ask (besides being in the middle of the highway at night)? Well, when she was a kitten I was awaken in the middle of the night several times with her screeching because she had been lying in Triple’s bed and he, being quite old, partially deaf, and partially blind at the time, would lay down on her. When she became a little older I would sometimes put her outside during the day while I was at work. Several times I came home late at night and would find her stuck up a tree, crying. Apparently a dog or something had come through the yard and scared her up the tree, but she wasn’t quite sure how to get down. I would either have to get a ladder or call her for 10 minutes until she got up enough nerve to come down on her own.

As far as cats go, Lucy had several interesting personality traits.

1) She had a “foot fetish”. She never cared to be petted much, but she liked to be rubbed on her head and neck with Rae Lyn’s or my foot.

2) She had a “box fetish”. Anytime there was an empty box lying around, she would find it and get in it.

3) She would squeak whenever she was picked up and she could growl like a dog.

Lucy loved her sister, Grace. They were practically inseparable for 11 years. We’re trying to spend some extra time with Grace now so she won’t be so lonely for Lucy. Lucy was really something special! A very sweet, gentle cat. She was always happy to see us when we got home from being gone. She loved living here with us and we will miss her very, very much.

(Posted by Jonathan and Rae Lyn)

This is an invention that Elizabeth created and built herself.  Its purpose is to view bugs and measure them at the same time.

If anyone’s interested I’m sure she could build more for a nominal fee.

Today Elizabeth’s brownie troop took a trip to Blanchard Springs Caverns. Rae Lyn, Elizabeth, and I left Conway at 9 am and arrived at Mountain View, AR just in time for lunch. We ate at a little diner called PJ’s Rainbow Cafe, and then headed over to Blanchard Springs, about 20 minutes away.

After the cave tour we drove a little farther down the mountain, and took a short walk to the spring where water pours out of the lowest level of the cavern.

Here’s Elizabeth and Rae Lyn at the spring.

Then Elizabeth went on a trek of her own by climbing a mountain of rocks.

Jonathan has finished our master bathroom!  Actually this was finished a couple months ago, but I’m just now posting it.  All the walls are smoothed out and have been painted and it looks great! J. did a great job!!  Click here for the before pictures.

Our next project is the kitchen.  We have already begun peeling off old wallpaper.  There are two layers of wallpaper in the kitchen.  We have started, but I don’t know when we’ll get back to it.  (We’re great procrastinators!) 

Today Elizabeth’s Brownie troop took a field trip to Toltec Mounds State Park, and Rae Lyn and I tagged along. We saw a short video on the history of the park, then we were taken on a guided tour. All the brownies were given a pamphlet with some questions for them to answer during the tour (they turn in the pamphlet to get credit for a brownie badge).

After the tour it was lunch time. Rae Lyn had already mentioned that she wanted to go to Cotham’s (home of the one pound “Hubcap burger”), because she had always wanted to try it but had never been. It’s not too far from my work so I had been a couple times before for lunch. It’s in Scott, AR which is only a few miles from the park. Rae Lyn mentioned where we were going to a few other Brownie families, and they had never been either and were interested in following us over there. So all together we had 7 adults and 6 kids.

When we got to the place it was packed. I could tell by looking at the faces of a few of the adults with us that they were a little nervous about entering. One of the Brownies remarked, “I don’t want to eat in a restaurant that’s built over a swamp!” I didn’t have my camera with me, but here are a few photos I found of the place. We crammed inside and waited a few minutes for our table to be assembled.

While we were waiting, we were surprised to find out that entertainment was being provided for the children. Apparently Dr. Wu (provider of “Fabulous Balloons and Prestidigitation”) appears every Saturday afternoon at Cotham’s. The guy was pretty amazing and kept the children entertained the entire time we were there making balloon animals, performing magic tricks, and even singing a little opera. They stood in front of him and watched with amazement until their food was ready, then they came to the table, quickly ate, and returned to Dr. Wu.

The food was great. I didn’t get the hubcap, but I did get the regular jalapeno burger and it was terrific. Rae Lyn had the regular cheeseburger. Elizabeth had the lugnut cheeseburger. For desert we shared a fried sweet potato pie with ice cream on top. Very Good!

Here’s Elizabeth with her balloon giraffe.