Catch-Up

Okay, I have TOTALLY been neglecting this blog recently. We've been busy busy busy, and a lot of the stuff we've been doing has been quite physically draining, which makes me not want to write for some reason. To catch you up - we've been:

• Working.
• Bottle feeding a tiny kitten.
  
• Erecting ~450 feet of fencing.
• Bottle feeding a tiny kitten.
  
• Driving to Bridgewater.
  
• slinging wood from two giant felled trees with Mark's mom (IN THE POURING RAIN).
• Bottle feeding a tiny kitten.
• Taking a tiny kitten to the vet. Continuously. (She's okay.)
• Taking care of our friends' animals - 21 cats, 4 dogs, and 3 horses - while they are away on a road trip. Add this to our own household full of 6 cats and 2 dogs, and it adds up to hilarity and entertainment! And insanity.

Anyway, it's been mostly the fence and the kitten that seem to take up all of our spare time. Happily, the fence is coming along nicely. The yard is now effectively contained for large dogs, and there are only a few small things left to do to make it small-dog proof. After that it's all finishing touches. We are happy with it and it's very nice to see Arlo joyfully running all around the yard.

Minerva the kitten is coming along as well. Although we are still bottle feeding her, she is getting better and better at eating solid foods and drinking liquids from a bowl. She's using her litterbox now too.

She was featured in the local paper last week (click on it for larger version):


Pretty melodramatic, huh?


Fall has arrived and the valley is full of spectacularly-coloured leaves everywhere. They are all enjoyably crunchy underfoot. We drove to Bridgewater this past weekend and it was just amazing to be on the country roads with the autumn breezes sending whimsical waves of red and orange leaves through the air all around us, with red, green, and golden-coloured hills rolling in the background and numerous farms and orchards in the foreground. Mark and I kept looking at each other and saying "oh, it's so pretty!" Then we would round a bend, see a variation of the same, and say "wow, everything's gorgeous!"


Anyway. We got to Bridgewater and it started to rain. Actually, no, it poured. We'd gone down to help Mark's mom move some wood - she had two giant Maple trees next to her driveway and they became unhealthy and needed to be cut down. Once they were cut, she was faced with a giant pile of wood that simply could not be moved by one person in a reasonable amount of time. We frowned at the rain and started slinging wood anyway. At the end of it all, we were all absolutely drenched, but the wood shed was full and the yard was pretty much empty. There were about 20 large pieces that were so wide and heavy that we were unable to move them off the ground, so we kind of rolled them into a row next to the tree trunks to make them look neat and left them.

It took us all morning and was pretty tiring work, but none of us wanted to stop for a break and either sit around in wet clothes or change into dry clothes that would get wet if we went out again. I think we were all pretty stiff and sore later but man did we ever move a pile of wood.

Then. Then. Mark's mother, to show her appreciation for our efforts, gave us a Wii. For freeeee. It was amazing.

Now we only need a tv.