How can I possibly be in a rut, now of all times? Now that the man is home, with his new animals and restless energy, changing everything that stands before him, how can I sit here and claim that I feel like I keep running up against the same brick walls, over and over? Sure, in order to maintain the strict gluten-free kitchen I developed while he was gone, I demanded that I retain 100% control over the grocery shopping and cooking, so that is one thing that is starting to feel a teeny bit repetitive. He has helped with clean up a few times, and I learned a long time ago that when you have anyone in your house volunteer to load your dishwasher, you don't say no. I am still doing a lot of cleaning that just feels like a high-tide/low-tide constant battle that never gets anywhere. The same goes with the new dog. He has enough sensation below his waist to know when he's about to have an accident on the floor, and he barks to tell us to get up and clean up, but he doesn't have the control to make it all the way outside once he has alerted us to the inevitable. I do a lot of floor cleaning, and the man carries Murray upstairs to the bath nearly every day (twice today). I think the poor little guy's skin is irritated, both from a diaper rash sort of acidity, and from the frequent scrubbing. I know you're not supposed to bathe dogs as often as people, because of their more delicate skin, but you're also not usually faced with a dog who wears his own filth like Murray would have if left alone.
I watched a huge weather front move through this afternoon, bringing strong winds and a tornado watch for most of the day. With each gust, large numbers of spotty brown leaves blew all over the Park. Remember a couple weeks ago when my daughter and I used the leaf blower to make the grass look great, all over the front and back? Yeah, good times. It doesn't look all that tidy today. It's pretty, and it smells like fall, but it's just more work to do, all over again. Low tide/high tide.
Since Thursday, I have been tuned in for most of my waking hours to my 2014 obsession, the Tiny Kittens livestream, from a kitten foster mom in British Columbia. We're on birth watch for Dorothy the cat, who seemed to go into pre-labor five days ago, and has been stringing her audience of over 4,000 along ever since. I keep checking back, keep tuning in to the feed, waiting to see the babies be born. My soft-hearted man, who is almost as enchanted by cats as I, has even started glancing at the feed. I went to bed with a tablet last night, so I could check it when I had my usual pre-dawn hot-flash-based wake up, and as the house started to come awake at first light, the first thing the man asked was, "Are there kittens?" This cat is visually a perfect blend of my two black cats. Her face looks like Jack when she was a yearling, and her tiny body is fluffy with a reddish undertone, like Athena. I can pretend I let one of them procreate, without having to deal with the mess or heartache of rearing and giving away a litter of kittens. Neither of them was really mommy material anyway. Every time Dorothy the cat moans during a contraction, the foster mom reminds her that she only has to go through this birthing nonsense once. She'll be spayed in a few months, and never have to do it again.
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