Love is...

my wonderful honeybunches coming to my rescue when we were getting ready for bed last night and I discovered a spider crawling on one of our pillows and may have slightly freaked out about it because I'd already taken out my contacts and couldn't see properly. And he didn't even laugh at me for freaking out over a spider. 

Daffodils

Here in Southern California, spring seems to have come early this year (sorry, rest of the US... actually, not really). On our lovely mountain, it has only really snowed once, and that wasn't technically even this year (we woke up to 14 inches of snow on New Year's Eve, which, while this winter, was officially last year). 

So all of our plants and animals think it's springtime. The squirrels are acting frisky, and there are daffodils blooming everywhere. 

Let me repeat: EVERYWHERE. 

Now, I don't exactly despise daffodils, but they're certainly not my favorite flowers, either. They've always seemed very plain to me. So why the **** are they in every single yard here? I finally asked one of our neighbors: it's because nothing eats them. Not the squirrels, not the deer, not the gophers. So now I can't decide whether to leave the 20 or so daffodils that popped up unannounced in our yard or to rip them out of the ground and replace them with something useful (which was my original plan). Maybe I'll wait and see if someone else makes the decision for me. Perhaps Roxy will dig them up, even if the frisky squirrels won't touch them.

If You Give a Bonnie a Ladder

If you give me some free time, and if Nick is home but doing homework...

I'm going to want to do home improvements. 

If I want to do home improvements, I'm going to look for a ladder.

If I find a ladder, I'm going to get on the roof.

If I get on the roof, I'm going to see that the gutter needs cleaning.

If I clean the gutter, Roxy is going to want to help.

If Roxy decides to help, she's going to try to eat the leaves and dirt and everything else that's getting chucked off the roof... And she's going to get dirty.

If Roxy gets dirty, she's going to need a shower.

If Roxy is getting a shower, we might as well shower the kitties, too.

If we're going to shower the kitties, we're going to have to find them.

If we're trying to find the kitties, Mr Grey will have vanished.

If Mr Grey has vanished, we're going to have to search for him.

If Nick goes outside to search for him, I'm going to search inside.

If I'm searching around inside, I'm going to notice Mr Grey through the window.

If I notice Mr Grey through the window, I'm going to have to run outside naked as a jaybird to grab him. 

If I have to run outside naked as a jaybird, I'm going to be glad we don't have more neighbors.

Painting

My honey and I have been working on painting our new home. When we bought it, the exterior paint was peeling away like crazy. Not exactly weatherproof. The trim was the worst, so we started there. Scrape, sand, wash, paint. Scrape, sand, wash, paint. Scrape, sand, wash, paint.

There's a lot of trim. 

Finally, we're done with that (at least as much as we can reasonably reach). So we picked out a color for the main body of our home. Before, it was a deep red. By the time we're done, it's going to be what I've fondly been referring to as really f*cking red. 

The color we picked for the house is called Burning Bush. The color we picked for the trim is called Snowbank. Fire and ice. Seemingly opposites that complement each other. Like a lot of things. Including my honey and me. 

NewsPocalypse

In the evenings, my honey likes to watch the news. We watch the news on several different channels in an attempt to get a well-rounded idea of what's going on in the world, and what different channels deem to be of importance. We've noticed an alarming trend spreading across channels. 

The news seems to have lost sight of what News is. The dictionary defines News as "a report of a recent event; information; the presentation of a report on recent or new news" (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/news). And yet, the news "reports" on television try to sensationalize more stories than they actually report. They turn everything into a NewsPocalypse, NewsGate, or NewsAgeddon. At the risk of sounding like NPR, isn't it time to put News back on the news, and get rid of the sensationalist verbiage that is nothing more than a pathetic fight over ratings? 

In other news, isn't "news" one of those words that sounds like nonsense when repeated multiple times? 

The Crud

I typically really enjoy sharing things with my honey. We share the best spot on the couch when we're watching tv. We share ice cream and ideas. We also share germs. Strangely, I'm not as agreeable to this last kind of sharing. Whenever we share germs, whatever kind of crud it is always seems to hit me harder. Maybe next time my honey will find a way to share some of his killer T cells. 

Ninja

When my hubby and I moved from a condo by the beach to a retreat in the mountains, we obviously took our critters with us. Roxy (the dog) and Ninja (the cat) immediately took to their new life--Roxy spending hours digging for gophers and pooping where no dog has pooped before, and Ninja honing the skills that earned him his name: hunting, climbing trees, and (of course) chasing Roxy.

Until now.

Ninja went out on Sunday night, like he's done countless times in the six months since we've been here. Except that he hasn't come home. My hubby, Roxy, and I have all gone out searching for him, but so far without success.

I've been to two animal shelters, but no one has delivered him into their care. Today, as Roxy and I were putting up flyers in the hope that one of our neighbors may have either seen or abducted him, we came across one of the neighbors going for an afternoon stroll. I explained to him what we were doing, and he candidly replied that "your cat's probably been eaten. We have about 200 cats, and they get eaten all the time." Exactly what I wanted to hear--not. Then came his insight: "Is your cat a mouser or a pet?" 

Aha! 

I have been worried sick about Ninja since Tuesday. He is a member of our family, but has also worked diligently to ensure that the mouse population doesn't get out of control. While it is too late for my feelings about Ninja, perhaps this will change my perspective on our feline companions in the future: perhaps there should be a difference between a mouser and a pet, at least on the mountain, where much bigger kitties roam the night.

I haven't given up on Ninja. My dreams have been filled with him coming home nonchalantly, wearing his signature "oh, hi" expression. I'm still hoping these dreams become a reality, and that he's out having the biggest adventure of his furry little life. Until then, we still have Roxy and our two little mousers-in-training for company.