Little Miss Scout It was a Valentine’s Day spay for my brother’s mini-cat, Scout! As our local Humane Society’s slogan has it, “If you ♥ your cat, have it ♠!” Since we do ♥ Scout, it was time to do the deed, before some amorous boy cat showed up. It’s unlikely in the depths of [...]

The worst thing about getting up at 5:30 in the morning – other than, you know, the getting up at 5:30 in the morning thing – is that it takes so long to get light enough to let the boys go out and play. Audrey, as the undisputed winner of “Survivor: Hooterville”, is allowed to [...]

On Saturday, Jessica woke up later than Audrey: about 7:00, when the sky is thinking about daytime but hasn’t really woken up yet. I let Audrey out and started coffee before I heard Jessica’s voice wishing me good morning. We took our time waking up, Jessica looking through my jewelry collection and asking the occasional [...]

It’s been hard getting back into the swing (or routine) of things. I took New Year’s week off, and although I worked five days in a row starting on Boxing Day (which doesn’t exist here – as soon as Christmas is over, it’s back to work for you!), I only worked from 11 to 4. [...]

It’s a Hooterville morning Well, I’m pretty sure the kitties missed me. Clyde climbed on me and purred, Audrey sat on my lap, and Roscoe cuddled up to me on the couch on the evening I got home from the city. They all slept with me that night, and in the morning, Audrey, for the [...]

Farewell, 2012 It’s really fun going back and seeing what happened during the year, even if it wasn’t that great a year, like this one. Pay cuts and grand jury summons do not make for a good year. Hopefully the new one will also be improved. Power outages: 6, including one in October due to [...]

Weather’s comin’ It was a winter wonderland this morning, Northern California style: hard frost on the grass by the road; the Ridge glittering with frost and puddles frozen. The ocean was shades of pewter and lavender, and the wild, white-crested waves told of storms to come. It looks like we will get another series of [...]

Jarrett and Archimedes The day after Thanksgiving, Jarrett met his new puppy, Archimedes*. Monica met us in the Village, with the puppy, his crate, blankets, a leash, and a package of information. Everyone who adopts a dog from Daisy Davis Pit Bull Rescue gets a package of information about the breed – misconceptions, history, facts [...]

It’s a blustery day here in Hooterville – the kind where the wind chimes sing merrily of power outages, and you wake up to find that your purple honeysuckle has been swept off its feet. I will need to borrow a cup of Rob, like I did a few days ago when the sliding glass [...]

Waiting for the light to change I arrived at the clinic at 4:40 yesterday afternoon, but I didn’t see the doctor until after 6:00. Fortunately, I had the latest Ruth Rendell (“Really, Megan, have you ever known me to be without a book?”), and the hell trip to Detroit this summer has made every other [...]

Well, today is going to be a lovely day. I woke up to find that the kitties had been romping in the garbage and recycling under the kitchen sink during the night. I waited until I was caffeinated before dealing with that. Then I drove to the jobette in the pouring rain. We are going [...]

I woke up yesterday to sunshine and Roscoe cuddled up against me. It was the rare and delightful teddy bear cuddle, too, where he has his back to my chest and my arm is around him. For a while, I just lay there enjoying the purring and the fact that it was light enough to [...]

I woke up to a 54 degree house this morning. I’m beginning to take the birds seriously. First the migrating cranes have indicated that we will have an early winter – and unlike human weather forecasters, the cranes have never been wrong yet – and then there have been alarming reports of robins sighted locally. [...]

Things have been busy in Suzy-land since I last checked in with you, faithful readers. My blog was hacked, though I can’t imagine why, unless there’s a severe trivia shortage somewhere. The wonderful Candi of the appropriately named No Hassle Hosting solved the problem for me, restored everything, and implored me to change my password, [...]

I slept in until 7:15 this morning! Audrey complained bitterly about the terrible service around here, but the boys decided to have breakfast before bounding out into the foggy morning. Speaking of the boys: I may have solved the mystery of Roscoe’s head wound. The other day, I saw Clyde getting ready to pounce on [...]

Sprucing up There seems to be some kind of bug that is making it impossible to comment. I have notified the Blog Doctor and he is on the case. And now back to our irregularly scheduled program… As I mentioned earlier, the jobette is moving. It’s only about three blocks, but as everyone who has [...]

Well, I didn’t let the Bad Day get me down. Not completely, anyway. On Friday night, we had a BBQ at the property with my siblings’ land partners, Jennifer and Dave* and our dear friend Lu, who brought her dogs Marco and Harlow, who is Star’s BFF. Marco has suddenly gone blind, so it was [...]

Convalescing Fun fact: This is my 2,000th post! Is that an amazing achievement, or kind of sad? It did take me 11 years to reach this milestone, so maybe it’s more lame than amazing. Faithful (and even casual) readers know that my sister really is amazing. On Sunday, she happened to be here when Roscoe [...]

Well, I’m back on the foggy Coast. I left the jobette on Wednesday afternoon and stopped off in Willits to bring the Chamber of Commerce some brochures. I had never been there before and I was charmed by the fact that the Chamber is in an old train depot, which is still in use by [...]

Oh, those kitties! The other evening, I saw Audrey trotting toward the open sliding glass doors with something in her mouth. I hastened to close the doors before she came inside with whatever it was – I have a firmly closed door policy on things like that – but she got in before I could [...]