late

Well I, for one, am glad the humidity has broken some. It was getting to be pretty standard to go into the bathroom and find both cats crashed asleep in the bathtub. Max has always loved the tub - it is cool and you can also play with water - and has past this love on to the Little.

I am on holiday right now - at the beginning of week two of three weeks off - and am just now feeling like I can decompress. I'm still having trouble actually falling asleep (thus the writing in the middle of the night), but once I'm there I can stay asleep like a champion. The cats are now used to getting fed in the middle of the morning when I finally stagger out of bed.

There is still a little too much whirring around in my brain. And too much of it is not nice. Like, don't say that in public if you ever want people to talk you again not nice. Vitriol. Hoorah.

But here, look! Cute!

It has been good to get to spend some quantity time with the Little over the last week or so. He's getting crazy big for someone who's still so young and his colour is changing as he gets bigger. He started out quite dark gray with some suggestions of tabby markings. Those are now becoming more pronounced as his body gets larger - the dark gray is fading to a light charcoal and you can see more of his tabby markings. I am still kind of amazed by his totally white belly. I am used to the Max - with his orange creamsicle swirls, boldly displayed as he sleeps, completely upside-down.

dead cat, with belly

The other thing I'm looking forward to with the lessening of the heat is using my oven again. This is the first apartment in a long while that didn't have a crazy powerful fan over the oven. Man - the fan two apartments ago was so powerful that I made an entire wedding cake in the middle of August humidity without raising the temperature in my apartment. The fan just sucked all the hot air up and out of the apartment. It was tres cool. My current apartment has a fan but it somehow missed getting all hooked up with electricity. And my landlord, while very nice, has yet to actually get around to hooking it all up. So I am baking-free right now as using the oven will overheat my poor little kitchen as well as the rest of the house.

I hadn't really realized how much I use the oven until I'm forced (forced!) to give it up. It helps that I visited Harbord Bakery today - with eyes bigger than my stomach - and came back with a bounty of baked goods. Empenadas, bagels & cream cheese and two different kinds of jam cookie. (I am completely unable to resist the jam cookie.)

So today dinner was homemade iced tea, bagels, cream cheese and smoked salmon. All chilled. I must wax lyrical about the iced tea for a minute - just look at that colour!

It's African Queen tea from the Tea Emporium. A fruit tea that is delicious both hot and cold. This was six cups of water and just less than half a cup of tea steeped for five or so minutes. I added a tiny bit of honey to the mix but I might skip it next time. It's pretty glorious all on it's own.

It makes me happy to have something that is not water to drink in my quest to avoid drinking juice. I mean, I actually kind of like water at this point but sometimes it's nice to have an option.

Possibly I should attempt to get some sleep now. I've spilled some of the words spinning around in my brain here. That should help. Yes?

teachable moments

desperately in need of a caption

It's kind of amazing how the presence of a third being in the house has changed things. The little bug has very quickly incorporated himself into our lives chez Rosemount.

Things we have learned recently:

• Orange cats are not automatically killed if they remain in the bathroom when the shower is running.
  
• Little gray cats do not learn that when they fall into the shower when it is running that it will be too slippery to get back out themselves.
• Max has a special meow that means "We are trapped in the bathroom because the door has closed".
  
• The best cat food is Max's food - being especially delicious if you can eat it out from under Max's nose.
• The best way to get a look at something high is to launch yourself at my leg and climb up - which is fine when I'm wearing jeans and not so fine when I'm wearing pajamas.
• The best place to sleep is with your head murfed up against Max's tummy. Actually, if you can sleep with at least some part of yourself on top of Max - that is pretty good too.
  

I sure there's more... It's kind of nuts - the little bug is about twice as big as he was when he first arrived. It's noticeable when he's able to jump up on things that he couldn't before or when he tries to squish himself under the couch and he's getting just a little too big to do it. Ah, the passage of time.