Out with the old...

...the old month, as well as some old party decorations. How in the world did we get to the end of February already?  And wasn't it just yesterday that I said the same thing about January?  I have a feeling that the rest of this year is going to just disappear.... especially because one of my cousins is in the midst of planning a Christmas wedding. Up north, no less. I never did understand the reasons behind a wedding during a month when you could be hit with snow, ice, slush, sleet, and all things connected to a blizzard. If you live in the south, or in Hawaii, then by all means... have a Christmas wedding. But living on Long Island.... or anywhere else in NY... I just cannot get into a wedding frame of mind when the temperature can be below freezing and snow can be falling from the sky and piling up around your prettiest high heels.

All that being said.... my cousin has been shopping on-line this week for wedding favors, and has looked at 'more favors than anyone should be faced with during one lifetime.'  As of yesterday, they found the one and with the cute little pouch and the engraving, they're still within budget. I have to admire a bride who wants to stay within a budget.  I asked my cousin if her daughter will be on "Say Yes to The Dress" when she goes shopping for her wedding gown but she may have thought I was joking.  A wedding is always nice to look forward to, especially when my generation of cousins can remember all the big family weddings of years ago. But.... in December?..... up north?.... (My cousin's daughter must have nerves of steel.)


BooKitty comes and goes around here.... right now, he's sleeping on the porch, not too far from Mickey, who plowed into BooKitty this morning as if that stray cat was about to steal the last bit of cat food on the planet.  To his credit, BooKitty did not fight back... it's as if he knows that Mickey was here first and is indeed King of the Feline Porch out there.  I've tried to explain to Mickey that if he's nice to BooKitty, he will have a buddy outside and not always be by himself outside, but Mickey doesn't seem to care. I intend to keep feeding BooKitty for as long as he chooses to be here, but I've decided against getting him fixed.  Because of all the days that BooKitty is not here, I'm thinking that he could belong to someone else.... and I don't want to be fixing someone else's cat. Even though I think all cats (and dogs) should be fixed, it's not up to me to make that decision for someone else's pet. So I will just hope that BooKitty doesn't show up on our porch one day with his Kitty Mama and seven kittens.

I recently went through my boxes of decorations for St. Patty's Day and Easter.... I saved a few of my favorite things, and brought the rest to my booth at the antique shop.  All those little porcelain leprechauns and pretty shamrock plates... and the porcelain eggs and the collectible Lefton chicks... they're all sitting on my display shelves now with price tags on them.  So, along with Valentine's Day celebrations, St. Patrick's Day and Easter parties are now history.  We'll still do the Halloween parties, and of course the Christmas party. Speaking of Halloween, I've already started making the invitations for that party... and with the way these weeks are going by, October will be here in a heart-beat.

I've been reading a lot lately.... a lot.  Book after book from my shelf filled with 'books to be read.' The number of books on that shelf is ever-growing because I keep finding books every week that are either on my to-read list or should be on that list.  When I read during the day, I'm usually on the sofa in the TV room, and Savannah is almost always right next to me, with her head either on my arm or in my lap. As soon as Sweet Pea sees Savannah curled up with me, he walks over and squeezes himself on my lap also. It's getting so that turning a page is a challenge when I have a 75-pound dog on my right arm and a 15-pound cat on my left arm.  As a result, being propped up on pillows and reading in bed at night is a joy.

Pouring rain....

...and it's been raining since one o'clock this morning. Thankfully, we haven't had any problems with the roof since those repairs were completed a few months ago. Every time it rains, though, we do check the windows in the kitchen to see if anything is dripping down. Not a drop. There is a roof-god after all.

Boo-Kitty is still hanging around the porch, getting very friendly and enjoying cans of Fancy Feast and bowls of Meow Mix. I have made an appointment to get Boo-Kitty fixed, and ever since I phoned the vet and booked that appointment, Boo-Kitty has been disappearing from the yard. He is here on most days, but if I had to bet, I would say that on Wednesday morning this week, that cat will not be here. I've already told the vet that I may have to cancel the appointment and re-schedule if Boo-Kitty goes AWOL on that day.

We had a quiet Valentine's Day here.... went out for lunch and that was that.  I didn't even bother to put up the little decorated Valentine trees, and I will probably ask Miss C if she would like those, or I will just sell them in my booth at the antique shop. I went through my box of Valentine decorations and picked out some pretty things to send to my cousin's daughter in Chicago... she loved them, and sent me a long eMail when she opened the package.

My cousin F will be the mother-of-the-bride this coming December.... her daughter got engaged on Valentine's Day. Phone calls and eMails have been flying back and forth among the cousins... no one except the bride wants a winter wedding. Well, the bride knows what she wants, and that's that... and I doubt very much that we will fly up to NY in the middle of winter for that wedding. Well, we'll see... it's a long way off, and invitations aren't even in the printing stage yet, so we'll wait and see which date the bride and groom have chosen.

It doesn't look like the rain is going to quit anytime soon. Savannah gets highly insulted when I take her out in the yard and her paws get wet on the rain-soaked grass. She either stands there and looks around the yard, or she will find a puddle and splash into it. I guess she doesn't mind soaking-wet paws as long as its her own idea to get them wet. This morning when I took her outside, she looked at me with such a pitifully pathetic stare, as if to say "You woke me up for this?"  Savannah is very much the doggie-diva of this house.

Spring in February...

...that's what the recent weather has been like-- a beautiful Spring. After four or five days of clouds, the Texas sky has given us a glorious sun. Now this is the sort of 'winter' we enjoyed when we first moved to this state in 1993. I'm glad that the weather gods have been smiling on us.

The cat-gods are also smiling. In the last couple of weeks, we've seen three or four stray cats on our porch. Two of the cats looked identical, so I'm not sure if we saw two different cats, or the same cat more than once.  The mottled gray cat of a couple of weeks ago (who reminded me of Boo Radley) has decided to travel on, but one of the striped cats has stayed on our porch since last week. He suns himself in the yard during the day, waits for his dinner on the back porch, and he's there in the morning when I come down to the kitchen. This cat looks identical to our Sweet Pea, except he's a bit smaller and has brown fur on his chest. We even tried bringing him into the house one night, but he plowed himself into Sweet Pea like a dervish, and we quickly put him back on the porch.

Our outside cat Mickey is now getting acquainted with the new striped cat, who I've been calling Boo-Kitty... for the simple reason that some of his meows sound more like boos, just like that mottled gray cat. This cat is very sweet with me, very tolerant of Mickey (I guess he knows that Mickey is king of the feline kingdom out on the porch and the property). Boo-Kitty follows me down the driveway to get the mail and then follows me back to the porch, but he's careful to stay out of Savannah's way when I take her out into the yard.  Savannah is tolerant of both Sweet Pea and Mickey, but they were both here when we first brought Savannah home, and I don't think she wants any more cats to call her own.

We keep saying "No more cats!" but there always seems to be room for one more, if the 'one' is a good cat. Regardless of Boo-Kitty's bullishness with Sweet Pea, he is a good cat, and he clearly made it known that he's an outside cat and that's that.

As I type, the latest handyman is outside power-washing the porch of the guest cottage. This handyman shows up on time, works well and works quickly, and he's knocking chores off the to-do list every day he's here. Wonder of wonders... there is a handyman god after all.

I've spent the last week making invitations for our Halloween party.... which will be in October, of course, but who's to say one can't get an extra-early start?  I had taken out all the supplies for those invitations last week, when the ladies in the community came here for our First Thursday Of The Month Tea And Crafts. Well, there were so many ladies here last Thursday that no one was really interested in crafting... we all just talked and caught up on what was new with the world outside our own properties. And a lot was new since we all saw one another at our Christmas party, so the ladies who brought crafts just set them aside. So every morning since then, I've  put together a few Halloween invitations. In a month's time, I'll have them all finished, and then I may start making invitations for this year's Christmas party. (Don't laugh... Christmas will be here in a heartbeat.)