215 - A Barn Trip

Stacy's here!!! We've been chillin' and grillin and catching up and having fun.

My cousin got me the perfect door mat. I. Love. It. I saw it somewhere and posted it on Facebook so she got it as a housewarming gift. :)

My fascination with dead white flowers continues.

Stacy!

Top of a tree across the way.

Today we decided to take a walk to the barn and see what's going on... lots of weeds to wade through.

Our barn. Very rustic. I like it.

Bo exploring.

There was an unfortunate price to pay for this journey... stickers and spines all up on me. Yowsers. Fifteen minutes later I'd cleaned them all off.

And now for more grillin'. Non-Apricot Chicken with coconut rice and leftover garlic bread. Mmmmm. And definitely more chillin'... it's supposed to get down to 19 tonight which probably means 11 (they always predict about 8 degrees too high). Guess the kittens stay in the other room instead of the basement tonight.

Gracie update: She's eating again!!!! I got a Fancy Feast Appetizer and set it in front of her, I figured she'd turn her nose up at that too (she never really cared for them in the past) but she sniffed it and settled in, eating about half of it over a 20 minute period. She even ate the meat, not just the juice. So... so far, so good, she's been eating whatever I put in front of her and has been drinking water as well. I keep the door to the cage open until we go to bed so she can come and go as she pleases. Sometimes she does, in fact, crawl back in of her own accord. Bootsie seems to have a crush on her, he comes up and tries to reach her through the door and lounges on the table in front of her. It's cute.

214 - The Beauty of Monochrome

Fall is my favorite, but the color has come and gone. Still... there is beauty in winter when you can see the architecture of the trees and the landscape becomes monochromatic. Today as Bo and I took a walk I noticed that the sun shone on the skeletal remains of some flowers/weeds growing alongside the edge of the road and it looked like ice sculpture.

But first... a pretty layered sunset of pastel blue and pink

Which morphed into a blazing pink sunset

And later the moon came out. It looked pretty cool.

Bo was oblivious, but beautiful.

The next day, Gracie got some time to roam around a bit. She likes the window. We had a minor setback the last couple of days where she stopped eating again. But last night she started drinking water on her own and today I enticed her into licking more gravy. So we're *hopefully* back on the road to recovery. Again.

Went for a walk this afternoon.

And here are the flowers I mentioned so long ago...

Nice windy road

But Bo's favorite thing is to chew on a stick in the yard.

So now it's time to get the grill going and make some space in the freezer.

Oh! Speaking of... Our brisket was heavenly. Mike and I came up with a dry rub. I doused the brisket with a simple pre-rub, then covered it with several layers of the rub we made, Mike smoked it all day and then (because we miscalculated the amount of time a 12 lb brisket would take to cook) put it in the oven to finish overnight. It was one of the best briskets I've ever had. Made some potato salad to go with it and we had leftovers for a week plus what went in the freezer. Bo also got fat cubes for treats. We even gave some to Tom and Jeff at the hardware store.

I also came up with a pizza sauce and finally got the crust to work out like we want. Progress. We had pizza night the last couple of nights since it was raining, but it's not raining anymore. So it's grillin' time.

213 - Snow (and other things)

The bluebirds are really spectacular this time of year (bluejays, whatever the case may be).

This calf is so pretty. He's almost like those blue-grey cats. And the way the weeds lay it almost looks like he's been appliqued.

The kittens in their Charlie's Angel poses

So this is how our morning starts, although I typically wouldn't let the kittens in until I was ready to put the food down...

I start making bowls of food... mixing Bo's bowl of two cups dry and half a container of wet food. We have to mix it really well or he snarfs down the wet and leaves the dry. Then I refill his water pitcher. After that I move on to the kitten's food, mixing whatever wet food Gracie didn't eat the day before with some kitten chow. All the while the kittens are weaving between my feet, trying to climb the cabinets and generally milling around in anticipation.

 

Then Bo gets to lick the spoon. You can see by his crazy eyes that this is a task he enjoys.

And then all hell breaks loose: http://youtu.be/Jg2fm9Xh7tY

You may notice that Bo is wearing his sweater today. That's because we had a small snow flurry this morning. The upside is that it didn't stick AND it's so cold that Bo is uninterested in lingering outside to play, he just wants to get it over with and get back inside. The downside is that it's gonna be a cold day to smoke some brisket.

Yesterday we took Gracie back to the vet. TMI time... her doodoo is sticky right now and she is covered in fur, so things had accumulated back there. It was no more than a couple of days, but it was beyond my abilities to clean without hurting her. I tried. Because of the acid content of her urine, and the dampness of the poo, some of her skin was peeling away and I felt that they had the tools to do it more quickly and painlessly than I was able to... she's been through enough... The vet was excited to see her again, apparently she'd called and left a voicemail checking on her progress. She said she rarely gets to see improvement like this and was really happy to see the yellow going away and the brightness returning to her eyes. She said when she left to come home, Gracie was about 5 lbs, when we weighed her again she was 7.6 lbs. Still has a way to go, but that's good progress. I'm proud of my girl.

On the way home we stopped by WM because not a day goes by that we miss a trip to WM... or so it seems. Anyway, that's when we got the smoker. It was inexpensive, and bbq out here is just not cutting it, we wanted to smoke some brisket. And Mike got a video game he's been waiting for. And kitten food.

Also, we had more fun with Bo. He is an endless source of entertainment... he is afraid of straw noise:  http://youtu.be/s77fF-UIGXA

And he gnaws his paws: http://youtu.be/gs94dzkj4IM

212 - Woodpecker

Mike and I were in the living room with Gracie while the other paw walkers slept in the mancave. Gracie was exploring a little, getting some time out of the kennel, which is new. She settled on the arm of the couch and we were just relaxing when we heard a loud bang... another bird hit the window. I told Mike I saw it sail off to his left and it was probably still on the ground, so he looked and it was there... a little woodpecker.

We got a towel and he picked it up and held it until the shock wore off and it could fly away. In the meantime we snapped a lot of pics because when do you get the opportunity to hold a woodpecker?

We didn't know if it was dying, stunned or had a broken wing at first.

It started to get a little more active so we started to hope it would fly

Sharp claws... they didn't hurt until you start trying to pry it off and then the little needles start to dig in

Beautiful bird

Feathers on the window

And then when Mike started to put him on the birdhouse, he took off. A happy ending to the story. :) I wonder if he'll remember us. He was terrified at first and then he got a little more comfortable, but I'm sure he'd really rather have nothing to do with us.

By the way, woodpeckers eat magnolia seeds. Ask us how we know. ;)

Gracie is a lot less yellow and has started to spot clean. Mike went after her with the Furminator, which was not her favorite thing. She was conflicted... purring and growling at the same time. She tolerated it and she needed it. She looks strange with bits of her fur still short from the hospital stay. She's eating with gusto and a little bored of the kennel so I've started letting her out for little bits of time to explore but have to keep an eye on her so she doesn't find a hiding spot.