Buttercup loves . . .

1.  The printer.  Any time I'm printing anything out, she has to sit right there and watch it.  Today, I was scanning materials for my class, and she was so fascinated -- the noise, the moving light, turning the next page of the book -- she was spellbound.  I decided to see what she would do if I ran the scanner without a document on it, and here's what she did:

Couldn't resist trying to catch that green light.  I'd love to get a video of her but haven't gotten there yet.

2.  The sound of birds -- any time she hears a bird outside, she makes a beeline for the window closest to it.  Really, if she's in the living room and hears a bird toward the back of the house, she races back there and leaps to the windowsill.  If it's outside the living room, she will run over anything that's there, including me, galloping over me like I'm just some other piece of furniture.  It's fine now that she weighs about 5 lb., but when she hits 10 or 15, I think she will leave black and blue marks all over me.  If we let her go outside, she would be a mighty hunter.  Which is why we don't.

3.  October.  She adores our older cat.  She follows him around, sleeps with him, and periodically stalks and ambushes him.  He is very tolerant -- she other day when she was biting him, he was licking her.

4.  Little mousies.  Her favorite toys are these little 59 cent mousies that have a little rattle in them.  Whatever she's doing, if she hears you rattling one, she comes a' running.

5.   Anything that goes "boing-boing-boing."  This little toy with streamers, a peacock feather, the strings on the blinds, a little ball on a rope -- she jumps so high, she could get a job with Cirque du Soleil (which, if you've never seen it, go).

6.  Anything, really.  She has such curiosity and joie de vivre, she's a constant delight (and a constant sweet aggravation, because she is always into something . . . ).  Here she is, exploring . . . calamine lotion.  And, she has become a Scotch drinker, after a fashion -- if my Loved One leaves an empty glass with melted ice and a teeny bit of Scotch in it, she's all over it.  She just loves it.


So, there it is for today.  She fills my life with joy, this little creature, and makes times like right now -- when I am up to my ears with work, school starts Tuesday, I'm a bit of a basket case -- bearable.  Again, not a cat person, but boy am I a this cat person.


Hope you're having a nice Sunday -- will get around soon --

More on Little Buttercup

Buttercup is thriving -- here she is playing with one of her favorite toys:

See the yellow ball by her paw?  She bats it one way and watches it go around (through an opening on the side), then she bats it the other way and watches it go around.  Must be kind of like meditation.  :)

We've been having some success with the clicker training -- kind of a hiatus while we were on vacation, but now we're starting again.  She has so far learned that to get a treat, she touches her nose to the end of a chopstick, and when she does it, we click the clicker.  She's really good at it.  Next step:  to get her to stand on something like a placemat -- basically, "stay."  It's interesting how she really gets it.  Who knew that cats were trainable?

We've started giving her the run of the house at night -- when she first came to us, she was so tiny that we were afraid to let her run around at night, so we kept her in the (pretty big) crate we've used when fostering small dogs.  She seems to be fine now, except for the part where she comes in to snuggle up with me at 5 or 6 AM.  She lies close to my head (or on it, sometimes), she purrs like a machine (very loud in your ear), and worst of all . . . she periodically farts.  Seriously.  But still, it's pretty sweet.  Except for the part where I'm awakened at 5 AM . . . .  But still, I love her.

Here are a couple more pictures from the vacation:

It's a little dark, but I like the tree silhouetted against the sunset.  I like the way this one came out, too -- the light was nice.

 

These were processed with Nik Software, which I'll talk more about another day.

Hope you're having a nice weekend -- oh, and welcome, hoppers, from Say Hi Sunday!   

Family --

(Linkup to Pink Saturday)

I love my family.  We hardly ever get together, but when we do, we have a wonderful time.  Two years ago, my brother, sister and I met in Phoenix for my cousin's 50th wedding anniversary (way to go, Marianne and Jack); my brother's girlfriend (now wife) came, but no other spouses or kids.  Before that, I took my son and daughter to Minnesota to stay with my sister, but my brother and my Loved One weren't there.  This time. my only niece was getting married, and we decided to get all siblings, spouses, and my kids together (of course we saw niece and nephew).  So only my brother's kids weren't there.

I was so excited to be at my niece's wedding.  She's a lovely person -- a pistol, actually -- full of fun and kind and smart and all of the things you'd like a kid to be.  Her new husband is a wonderful man, sort of quiet until you get to know him, but so kind and patient and hard-working.  I sent them the picture above, printed on canvas, as a wedding present, and it came out very nicely. which made me so happy. 

The wedding was lovely,   The color scheme -- white, red and black -- was terrific, and Aubree's dress was gorgeous -- white with dark red embroidery around the train, bodice, and veil.  It was so pretty.  And the wedding had nice personal touches, readings and especially the music, which was non-traditional, lots of old love songs from the 60's and 70's.  The best moment came when they were pronounced man and wife, and from the speakers came "Ooga shaka, ooga, ooga, ooga shaka, ooga, ooga" -- B.J. Thomas singing "Hooked on a feeling."  Suddenly any solemnity was gone, and Aubree gave a whoop and they danced down the aisle to applause from everyone.  The reception was great -- good food, good times -- all in all, a wonderful day.

The next day, we all -- bride and groom, sister and her husband, brother and his wife, and me and my Loved One with our two kids -- headed north to Mille Lacs Lake, a big beautiful lake in northern Minnesota for the next three days.  The house we had rented was gorgeous, with a private dock and beach, and we settled in for a good time (the newlyweds stayed a short distance away, in a place of their own).  We played a game where you throw beanbags into a hole cut in wood (I can't tell you the name of it), had a real tournament, which my brother and my daughter won.  One night we sat outside until midnight, laughing and laughing (I never laugh so much as with my brother and sister).  We went to a casino for prime rib, and a local restaurant for walleye pike. 

(Linkup to Fabulous Friday)

Of course, we took lots of pictures.  The sunsets were terrific -- I hadn't brought a telephoto lens, just my 50mm, so I knew the sunset was going to look pretty teeny, far away across the lake.  I liked this one I took of my son, taking his own picture.

I like this one too -- so many beautiful clouds.  We really had a wonderful time, no squabbles or disagreements, just lots of laughter and silliness and fun.  We're all really glad we went.

Ah, Summer Vacation --

We're off to my niece's wedding in Minnesota today -- I'll take lots of pictures and be back next Wednesday!  Have a great time, everyone!

The Continuing Adventures of Little Buttercup

We are gaga about this cat, just crazy about her.  She makes us laugh all day, she sleeps in my arms like a baby, she cuddles up with our big cat, plays with him -- she's such a joy to have around.

She really likes to go outside, but I can't imagine just letting her out, and when we go sit on the porch with her, she's down the steps, under the car -- it just doesn't feel safe to me, that she could dart out if a car is coming down the street.  So . . . we're trying the harness route.

 (Linkup with Camera Critters)

Doesn't she look spiffy?  She didn't protest too much, when we first put it on, just rolled on the ground a little to see if it would come off.  Now we're taking her out a couple of times a day on a long leash, letting her explore for 15 minutes or so, and she seems to be doing fine with it.  A little cautious, but that could be the strange environment, too.  When we come in, I immediately give her a spoonful of canned cat food, which she loves and which we're saving for treats at this point.  When she's finished with the cat food, she goes right over to the door and cries to go out again.  Here she is exploring an empty box.

I think she's going to like it, eventually.  I also got a book on clicker training for cats, which we're going to try, because going the spray bottle route to keep her off the tables doesn't seem to be working.  She waits until I walk over and pick up the spray bottle, then she jumps down before I can use it.  There must be a better way.


Any tips on cat raising, much appreciated.  My Loved One, who has a very laid-back attitude toward cat raising, is very dubious about any of this working, but we'll see.

Bummer . . .

I once stopped at the ATM on the way to work, on a morning in which I had about five errands to run before I got to the office.  I was flustered and in a hurry and somehow managed to walk away from the ATM without taking my card, without even closing the transaction.  When I got to work, I realized what happened, that I didn't have my card, and so looked immediately at my account online.  The person behind me in line had taken $200 (the maximum) out of my account.


This bewildered me to no end.  If you or I found someone's card still in the ATM machine, we'd be running off down the street after them, saying "Excuse me!  You left your card!"  I don't understand the mentality of someone who sees such a thing and immediately says to themselves, "Whoa -- a golden opportunity."  What kind of person is ready to just take advantage of someone instantly, if the opportunity arises?  I wonder how that person is brought up -- certainly not the way I was, because I feel guilty finding a $20 bill on the floor in a store and even thinking about keeping it.


Of course, we can always be wrong about people.  I had a student once that impressed me -- the wrong way -- on the first day of class.  Wife-beater t-shirt, tattoos all over, my immediate thought was oh, this guy's in class because he's not doing well with his writing and was told he'd better do something about it . . . here's where stereotypes can be wrong.  He turned out to be a wonderful writer, the best student in the class, one that I would from time to time have to say "John (pseudonym), please give someone else the opportunity to answer."  I ran into him in the parking garage one day, and said hey, what's up, and he told me he was going over to the corporation yard to return a wallet he'd found, one that had $200 in it.  When I saw him in class later, I said, did the guy give you a reward?  And his answer was well, he offered me $60 but I didn't take it -- I just wanted to do the right thing.  


So all of this is apropos of what?  The other night, someone went into my car and stole my iPod.  They went through everything, left the car doors open (the policeman says they always do that -- closing them makes noise).  They also stole our daughter's bike, but abandoned it when they found out one of the tires was flat.  Luckily, for some reason, they didn't go into my loved one's car, because they could have had a Kindle, in addition to his iPod.


Unfortunately, our daughter has some rather unsavory acquaintances, and I suspect it was some of them.  These kids stole a $5000 custom-made bike from a guest of the guy across the street, in broad daylight.  The guy eventually got some of the parts back, because the bike was broken up, and they went to juvenile hall over it.  But what I don't understand, if it was the same kids who stole my iPod, is how you can steal from your neighbors, people who say hello to you and would help you any time you needed it.  And their parents defend them.  I just don't get it.


Here's a flower to brighten up a gloomy post:

Trying out some new textures that Evelyn at Within My Focus alerted me to -- two of the textures I used are from Pixel Dust, the other from Flypaper, my favorites.

Have a great weekend --

Oh, P.S., the bank gave me back the $200, and I think they caught the guy.  And I have a new iPod -- I can't live without my audiobooks at this point.  I hope they enjoy the 27-hour biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer I was right in the middle of.

Oh, and I thought I'd hook up with Camera Critters,  with a picture of our Little Buttercup, who is growing by leaps and bounds.  Four pounds, now!

Oh, to be able to sleep so sweetly!

It's almost over --

When school gets out at the end of May, it seems that the summer will go on forever, and is full of endless possibilities . . . But it's not even August 1st yet and I'm already getting emails about the beginning-of-semester meetings, and reminders that for all intents and purposes, my school year will start on August 15, rather than on the 22nd when things really start.  And I'm way behind on planning my class . . . so what else is new??


I'm participating in the "Friday 56," in which you pick a quote from page 56 of whatever book you're reading.  Here's the book:

 

 And here's the quote:  "The most emotionally compelling of those private obligations was protection of men's dependents.  Thus wars were increasingly explained as being fought for hearth and home, most especially 'to protect our women.'"  This is a very interesting book about the American family, especially myths that have grown up about it -- for example, that it's evidence of our country's decline that so many teenagers are having babies these days, when in fact, the rate of births by teens 15-19 is actually half of what it was in 1957.  In this quote, she's talking about what happened as a government could no longer count on the fact that people had an obligation to be obedient to the state (i.e., to fight for it in times of war), so they began arguing that people had private obligations, to protect their women and children, in order to get them to enlist.  It's a very interesting book.

Happy Friday!