Zen Cat Art

The power is on!

The weathermen said we would probably lose the electric because of the amount of snow that would fall with the leaves still on the trees.  And sure enough as I took a few pictures as I was getting ready for bed and with in minutes the lights went out.

By morning the lawn chair was almost indistinguishable as a chair.

Coming down fast and hard.  The railing is only about an inch and a half wide and look how it piled up.

The last picture before the lights went out.  Beautiful chaos Denna called it.  I agree and the chaos part was just beginning.  We went three days without power.  About half of CT still doesn't have power.  We'll be hosting friends for hot food and hot showers later today - just like friends on the shoreline did for us yesterday.  I found out that I wouldn't have made a good pioneer woman.  After three days of not being warm or washing my hair I was pretty snarky!  Thank heaven for Phil pumping out some BTUs in bed at night - better than the three quilts and the down comforter. 
This is the same shelf by our back door as in the last post but the next morning.  Quite different!  This was just after sun up - I had lost electric by then and when I woke up it was cold!  The cats were little round islands of fur between the folds of the quilt.  Have you ever noticed how a ten pound cat can turn into a 500 hundred pound cat when it's sleeping on your legs?

And I took on the porch.  I was heading for breakfast!

When we treated ourselves to a gas grill this summer, even on sale, we hesitated thinking it a bit extravagant.  It was worth every penny.

Toasted bagels and water boiling for coffee and tea!  Yes! 
So how deep was it?

19 inches!  It was deeper in some places but more than the 19 inches was the down trees.

It didn't get cleared until the crews came on Monday but once they moved the tree and picked up the wires the locals had cut it up and hauled it off to fuel their wood stoves within hours.
On Tuesday we were headed for friends on the shore, a hot shower and a fabulous meal.  Thanks Robin & Rick!  And now I have to chance to do the same for others.  

Time to start some bolognese sauce and bake some foccacia...   

 

Good news and our anniversary...

The first good news is that sweet Katie cat had a lump removed from the inside of her mouth and tests say it is NOT cancer.  Yea!  She is healing nicely and has decided to spend her time celebrating by taking a nap with her paw over her eyes. 
 
The second bit of new is that Phil and I have been married seven years today!  Wow, has it gone fast!  I got lucky, he's definitely a keeper!  The champagne is chilling in the fridge.  We were thinking about going out to dinner but this is what the porch looked like at 5:30 this morning...
 
Yes, that is hail and snow. 

Here it is close up.  Our stone circle with fall leaves and what the weather channel calls a "wintry mix."  
 
Even at noon, the ice is still on the trees.  Winter has arrived. 
 
"Hear! hear!" screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, where I had heard a tittering for some time, "winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel, if you know where to look for it."  Henry David Thoreau, 28 November 1858 journal entry

Thoreau in 1858 - 150 years ago.  My NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month) novel takes place in Victorian England just a few years before Thoreau's journal entry.  Here is a little perspecive on 1850.  There had only been a police department in London since 1829 and the detective department (for investigating crime) only since 1842.  The first telegraph line came in 1843 and in 1844 the Factory Act limited the work day to twelve hours for people under the age of eighteen.  Tell that to your kids!  1845 brought the Irish potato famine and 1848 brought a Cholera epidemic.  Carriages were still used as a mode of transportation, mail which started in 1840 cost one penny and was delivered several times a day.  Charles Darwin had not yet published On the Origin of the Species, Louis Pasture had yet to postulate his theory on germs and its 1876 before women could become licenced physicians.  And 1879 before the first telephone exchange is open.  I wonder what they would have thought of cell phones. 

PS you can see if I'm writing or not on the left hand side bar...I should be at about 12,000 works.  Time to get back to work... 

The Comfort of Old Clothes...

The first time I saw the shirt it was hanging in my boyfriend's (now husband's) closet.  It was a light (I think they used to call it stone washed) denim - the perfect color, heavy but not too heavy, big but not too big, and it looked good on me, everyone said so.  I just knew that this shirt and I were going to have a love affair. 
 
There is something about wearing your boyfriend's shirt.  Women I don't have to explain it to, men I probably can't - after all they rarely want to wear out clothes.  Wearing your boyfriends shirt implies intimacy, ownership, belonging, and care.  It's sensual and sentimental.  It's makes you feel good.
 
The transfer of ownership isn't necessary, it's always his shirt, but you have claimed it, you have exclusive rights to it, and eventually it lives only in your closet.  A permanent borrow. 

Nine years later and it's had an illustrious career as a fashion statement and passion statement.  It's traveled to 3 foreign countries and logged many hours by the painting table in the basement.  It doesn't owe either of us a dime.  I was thinking that it was just about time to retire it.  And even thinking about what I could make if I cut it up and used it's fabulously soft threads in a sewing project...

but I don't know.  It's so comfortable and comforting, maybe a patch or two, a zig zag here or there and I could wear it just a little longer...just a little longer... 

Graduation Day...

ARC (Alternate Route to Certification) teacher "boot-camp"is over and it's graduation day!  If anyone was meant to be a teacher it's Phil.  He worked so hard and did so well!  

Graduation was at Conard High School, where Phil did his student teaching.  We got to meet his cooperating teacher, Mark Dursin, and see the classroom where Phil cut his teaching teeth on summer school students.  The ceremony was marked by some interesting speakers and a fire drill.  Since the speaker at the time was a Physical Sciences teacher, Glenn Couture, an actor in local theater, we thought for sure it was part of the fun.  But, since it was the last day of summer school, and most likely a departing student's idea of fun, we filed out and used the time for photo-ops, then filed back in for the rest of the ceremonies. 

We (Phil, Richard, & I) rounded out the day with a wonderful dinner at the Max's Oyster Bar in West Hartford, a spectacular restaurant for a special occasion and a real treat for us.  The oysters were superior!  Thanks, Richard!  

It was a wonderful day and the beginning of a whole new life for us.  A big thank you to everyone who has cheered us on!  And a special thanks to Tracy who told us about the program and Jimmy, who made it possible.  The universe has given me the world's best kids!

Phil's first week...

Phil started "teacher school" this week.  The Alternate Route to Certification program to teach High School English.  Here is the promised picture of his first day.  I was voting for a Roy Rogers lunch box but Phil went fo the forty pocket backpack. 
 
The backpack is so heavy that if you tossed it overboard attached to a chain the Queen Mary couldn't leave the dock.  I staggered back just trying to pick it up but Phil trotted off with it - strength coupled with adrenalin is awesome. 

The first day a great big guy walks into their classroom to lecture and the first thing he says is "everyone stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance."  So everyone stands up.  Then he asks "why are you standing?"  The lifting of eyebrows circles around the room.  He explains that in 1943 the Supreme Court ruled that kids did not have to stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance if they didn't want to.  He also told them that in a 2002 decision, it was ruled that teachers HAD to stand and say the pledge, even if they didn't want to.  Then he told them that this was just a fraction of the things that they would have to know just to get through the first day!

Yesterday's lecture was about the difference between the adult vs. child, and male vs. female brains.  And how they are indeed different.  Very different.  Like we didn't know.  He said, girls are generally more verbal, more easily insulted and hold a grudge longer.  Guys don't talk too much and identify more with "tribes" (whatever group that might be - but sports teams and armies come to mind) and insulting or hitting one another could mean that they are firends.  Kids, in general, operate more from emotion than logic.  And sometime, even if you ask them to sit still, kids just have to wiggle around.  Yeah!

Just to make it more interesting Phil has been doing all this with an incredible case of poison ivy - all over his face no less.  And when he went to the doctor to have that looked at they also found a bulls-eye rash from a Lyme tick bite!  So much for mowing your own lawn in CT.  So he is munching prednisone with a doxycycline chaser.

And here is the best part, when Phil went for his meeting this morning with the ARC Counselor who reviews and makes recommendations on everyone's resume and cover letters, they told him he was the best writer in the whole program!