Categories
Family

Felis catus – first in a randomly recurring series

We currently have two cats living in our home: Silly and Panda

Silly is a ragdoll. The Cat Fanciers Association sums ragdolls up pretty nicely: large, laid-back, semi longhaired cats with captivating blue eyes. I usually say Silly is part-dog. He comes when called and loves to play catch/chase the ball. We got Silly at about 10 weeks old in November 2013:

Silly's first day
Silly’s first day
Early snuggles with Q
Early snuggles with Q
Silly about to pounce
Silly about to pounce

Panda – well, Panda was a rescue. She was described as a ragdoll but we’re not certain that she is. Someone suggested she might be a birman – which would fit her quite nicely.

Here she is when we first introduced the two together:

Why won't she come out to play!?
Why won’t she come out to play!?

Silly was not quite a year old and had been with us about 9 months when we adopted Panda.

And now:

stair snuggles
stair snuggles

So there are the four-legged creatures that live in our house full time. We also occasionally dog-sit for my parents and so this is Lindsay (It’s an older picture but one of my favourites):

IMG_5665

Just felt like she needed a picture too. So of course, now here’s my favourite picture of their cat, Steve. (Blame Toby for his name!)

stealthy steve
stealthy steve
Categories
Diversions

The end of summer…

So it’s officially fall now. Autumn. Heck. Where has the time gone?

Trying to get a first day of JK photo...
Trying to get a first day of JK photo…

It’s Sunday though so I’m sitting here singing Maggie May to myself “It’s late September and I really should be back at school.” No more school for me 😉  but now Q has officially started JK! And I’m all for new beginnings, new starts, setting small goals. Medium goals. BIG GOALS.

So small goals – this week:

  • go through Q’s clothes and figure out what I need to buy him. He needs pants but I think we have pants. But I cannot find his pants. He is my child but I think he will not be wearing shorts outside in November like I often do.
  • run 4 times; 5 would be great 4 is the minimum; also yoga once.
  • practice French every other day for a minimum of 20 minutes. I am taking a beginner’s French class at work on Mondays. It’s an hour a week but I need to practice! So class on Monday and practice (read the book; listen online) Wednesday, Friday, Sunday.
  • write two blog posts. I might not post them because I cannot find the little doohickey to transfer the pictures from the camera card to the computer….wait – that’s a goal for the week. Go buy another doohickey. Also – learn what the heck the doohickey is properly called.
  • brush the cats every other day and look up ways to help Panda deal with the hairballs.
  • go through all the bathroom stuff – this might seem silly but we’ve got “stuff” in three different bathrooms. I need to figure out what we have, what we’re running low on that sort of thing.
PandaCat from Instagram
PandaCat from Instagram

Medium goals – by the end of October (about 4 weeks):

  • I am running a half-marathon on October 18. That’s in three weeks. My honest-to-goodness goal for this half-marathon is to finish it without hating running and vowing to never run again. I’m also fundraising for the Canadian Children’s Opera Company if you’re so inclined.
  • read 3 books; spend a bit of time each day reading with Q.
  • stick to my keto diet 90% of the time. SO I can have Thanksgiving Saturday and Sunday off but that’s about it really. Between now and uhm Hallowe’en of course 😉
  • run 4-5 times a week. Go to yoga once a week.
  • 20 minutes a day on the piano. Contact the piano tuner to see if he can come back to tune the piano before the end of November.
  • write two – three blog posts a week. I should be able to do that! 1 general babbly post like this one. 1 whisky related post. 1 baking/keto post. See. Easy peasy right? Sigh.

Medium goals – by the end of November (so about 8 weeks):

  • follow through on my plan to hire a friend for some running/fitness training. It’s a three-month commitment to start. Then monthly. I figure it’ll come out of my allowance until I’ve proved myself, well, to myself. The second part of my medium goal is to commit to doing whatever the heck she gives me to do for the three months (if not longer). I adore her as a person and completely respect her as an athlete so it should be good. Oh here’s a link to her website.
  • maintain the other medium goal posts from October. Two to three months of those and they’ll be habits right?

Long goals. Big Goals. I’m thinking about this part. Maybe I’ll add that to the short term goals for this week. Thing about the big goals. What do I want? How do I get there?