Of Weddings and Feasts and Cats

I've been a bad blogger lately, so this post will be an amalgamation of a bunch of stuff we've been doing.

First off, I've been out getting a job(s) as it were. My career keeps taking new turns and new directions and reinventing itself, and that's good. 2010 is the year I took to be completely engaged with my family and especially my mom; I'll never forget it. It shaped me like no other year has. 2011 will look different (not that I'm taking off from my family or anything) with regard to work. I'll be moving more into the higher education field--both teaching and coaching writing at a community college as well as developing and teaching Media Writing courses at a university. I'll be gone either in the mornings while the girls are at school or at night while they're asleep. And I'll still keep my freelance writing and editing contracts, too.

Then, there's this, that we are so, so excited about (sorry, Laura!)

When I met with Lucy's teacher at the end of October, she gave Lucy a new reading goal for the quarter. By week two, Lucy had completed 215% of her reading goal. Oh-kay. Her teacher said that she should get to read whatever she wants for fun, but we need higher level books and non-fiction. So imagine our excitement when a royal wedding is announced, and she and I can do an entire reading project together on royal weddings and CLOTHES and customs and jewelry and SHOES and traditions and CLOTHES and history and SHOES. Not to mention, I can now retrieve from my attic my exhaustive library on Princess Diana (see! Kate has her ring! Excited squeal!) Then we will both get up at some ridiculously early hour the day of the wedding and watch coverage of it for hours and hours, just like I did in July, 1981.

I'm not positive that's what her teacher had in mind when she said non-fiction, but it works for us.

Then there's more cat news. Bear with me. Remember Miss Cleo Marple, our unsocial Siamese who hated us? Alas, she is with us no more. Don't worry--she's in a good home, not a cage, where there are no children or other cats. Her behavior just got too awful, and I started referring to her as Mrs. Rochester, since she was like our insane first wife who stayed locked in an upper room. Lucy didn't even object to her leaving, since we have Yo-Yo. Darren was sad (keep remembering this is the person who never wanted a cat in the first place) and wanted me to contact the shelter where Yo-Yo came from to see if they had another nice cat we could get to replace her. So now in addition to Yo-Yo, whom we adore, we have a little stripey tiger tabby named Tuppence (after another of Agatha Christie's girl detectives, natch). I would post a picture of her if I could ever get her to sit still long enough. She zooms around and plays hide-and-seek with Yo-Yo and washes his face for him and stands at the top of the stairs and mews until he comes up, just like a domineering little sister.

Lastly, there's Elaine who had a pow-wow at school and a Thanksgiving feast. Her class all dressed as Indians and invited the other junior kindergarten class who dressed like pilgrims. My friend Kay Lynn and I went to the pow-wow to see them play their tom-toms and sing their harvest songs. Each child had an Indian name they picked themselves, and they were then introduced to the audience. All the little girls had names like, "Princess Sparkle Rainbow" and "Princess Blooming Flower."

But here is MY girl:
Here is Princess Fuzzy Cat with her best buddy Kay Lynn, aka "Miss Kittie." See how they are wearing matching leopard print, too. (And isn't Miss Kittie a dead ringer for Beth Moore? Just saying.)

Those have been a few of our doings lately. Tomorrow Joseph flies in from Tennessee, and I made the mistake of telling the girls last week that he was coming. Now I get to hear every few hours of every day, "Is it today that Uncle Joseph is coming?"

I have written about three different endings to this post, and nothing works. Obviously I better brush up on my cyclical writing skills before I start teaching them to others in January. But our household is a little more stream-of-consciousness than cyclical, so there you go, not to mention I need to ditch my computer and get going on the holiday/guest-arriving-imminently cleaning. I'll just end this with: The End (for now).