Gratuitous Cat Photos Illustrating Anticipation of Slow Progress Week

(Harry stalking the neighbor's hyacinths on Sunday.)

HomoDommi flew home this afternoon after spending the morning cleaning up his tools and work area.

Tomorrow, after watching a school play starring Girl-Child in a speaking role, he and the children will drive back to Portland for a week.  FemmeDommi, who still has limited vacation time, will fly in mid-week, and she and her husband will take a belated anniversary trip to the coast (Happy Anniversary, you guys!), while I get to play with the children.

(Tasha watching warily, March 21, 2010.

I love her expression, but you'll have to click on the photo to see it better.)

We hope to get some work done next week, but don't know how the presence of juniors will affect our progress (unfortunately, Portland's Spring Break is on right now, so all their friends will be in school during the day when they are here).

A new look

We've been away for most of July, and it has taken a bit to get the energy up to post since we got back. To reassure those who didn't know, the upper midwestern states of USA are fine, lush and warm (not over-hot). We visited Minnesota (central, lakes, and southern), Wisconsin, and even drove about three car lengths into Iowa, just because we could.

Aside from getting back on the blogging horse, it's time to update our look. I realized about a month ago, with a shock, that I had the same template as Bride of. This Should Not Be. It's a nice template, but, like all cats, we must retain our individuality.

Therefore, I'm adopting another template, so at least we won't be mistaken for anyone near and dear to us. As you can see. I'll probably change the photo in keeping with the season.

I'll be blogging more later -- perhaps even tonight. Meanwhile, it's good to be back.

Previously on Cattus Dommus

For those viewers who haven't read the blog entries I haven't posted over the last month, here's a short summary of what has happened.

Shortly before I last posted, FemmeDommi accepted a job in another state. The job starts next week; she'll be able to work in the Portland office for another month or so, and then she will move to Idaho. The Nuclear Family Unit of Cattus Dommus will follow her mid-summer, after school is out and after various family vacations around the USA. The extra bits of our extended family (the Texan, myself, and all the cats, because the rental in Idaho won't accept cats) will remain behind. The Cattus Dommus domicile, with the mural and the bike cellar and the gardens and the studio -- well, that's for another entry.

During the hiatus, Nuclear Family Dommus took a trip to Idaho to check it out. Many fears of the unknown were allayed -- the children will each get their own room (Girl-child a large, meandering Little Princess space on her own floor under the dormers, Boy-child a small, snug chamber with his very own bathroom) and the neighborhood they will be living in is a little piece of Portland in Boise, complete with a nice used bookstore, youth soccer, and liberal thinking.

HomoDommi being artistic on the trip east

The day they left, as I was writing an email message, between two wo





My computer died. I may write an entry about this later, but for this Previously on... segment, suffice it to say that it's been three weeks and a bit, and I'm still straddling critical gaps in information due to learning a new OS, updated -- and therefore strange -- applications, insufficient file organization, and feeling all around pissy about supposedly "user-friendly" technology.

I do, now, have a shiny new laptop but it only occasionally brings me a moment of pure happiness (for instance, I have iSight now, which is fun, and a great new trackpad -- but nothing is where I expect it to be, and the computer is significantly bigger than my old one). Like the woman said to the younger, more-puppyish brother of her dead fiancé, "Marry me. My heart is constant, but my needs are constant, too." I did manage to carve the heart out of my old beloved (i.e., rescue the hard drive intact with all data) but because of the age and uniqueness of the drive, that took an additional week of frantic scrambling to achieve.

Continuing our story, I was stumbling back towards computerized normalcy when I was invited to house-sit for Bride of COG (and COG) while they visit the scene of their early married life. Happy to oblige, this left me a mere six days to file and pay my taxes (all financial data carefully kept on that old hard drive) and prepare for three weeks on the other side of the country.

A Canada Goose on the pond in the COGses garden

So that brings us to today. After an unusually long jet-lag recovery period (4-5 days), I am comfortably ensconced in the House of COG, still learning the ways and needs of the resident household -- Dog of and Cat of. While I speak fluent Cat, my Dog is worse than my French (usually involving a raised voice and much gesticulation -- both Dog and French, actually). Dog of is missing the COGses, and is not interested in learning the vernacular of strange west-coast Humans. She sits frustratingly still, head cocked on one side, tail down, uncomprehending of anything but dog treats. So we communicate largely by dog treats.

The COGses return a week Sunday. During my time here, I plan to take full advantage of my opportunities. Yesterday I was treated (by Neighbor of) to a day in Boston, during which we attended a marvelous performance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Tomorrow I drive down to the Cape to visit Son of. Crane Beach is just a couple of miles away. When Bride of has returned, we hope to get to the Museum of Fine Arts, to the Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese exhibition there.

There is also the blessed solitude. This house is comfortable, with a marvelous garden popping into Spring, birds by the dozens, a rollicking wood-pellet fire, wireless internet and oh glories of glories a 60-inch HDTV with an unlimited Netflix subscription and complete control of the remote. And an equally unlimited supply of books, owned by the very woman who serves as my book-pimp, so reaching out at random is all I need to find one of interest. I'm going to pester the COGses to build an ofuro, the only thing wanting in my spa vacation.

It has been a somewhat stressful and strained six weeks past, and I am hoping that this coming week by myself will be restorative. I have a lot of thinking about what's to happen next in my life, and this is a good time and a good place to do so.

Slower Blogging

A friend wrote a blog entry about the trend towards "slow blogging" -- that is, blog entries dated longer apart than 10 breaths. I guess I am, as usual, at the cutting edge of the latest trend.

Let me sum up the last month's non-blogging, nor blogged, activities: sick girl-child, sick me, sick boy-child, sick girl-child again, realization that 38,000 additional intelligible words for Nanowrimo was completely beyond me, utter doom of staring into the darkness of failure, Thanksgiving, preparation for Glänsa Party 2008, Glänsa Party 2008 itself, recovery from Glänsa Party 2008, and latest, sick cat. A couple of these events I will blog about shortly.