Mal is home!

Here's the little guy last night, with his Elizabethan collar (that's seriously what they call them) and his bald belly: http://diabolis.net/gallery/albums/pets_and_random_animals/malandjayne/normal__MG_2327.jpg

The stitches come out in 10-14 days, and no roughhousing for him for a month . . . which means we need to keep him shut in the den without Jayne. Its kind of driving him crazy (as is the E-collar), but its for his own good. He was SO snuggly last night, and his cuteness was so overwhelming that Brian ended up sleeping in there on the couch to keep him company.

We've also been making a great effort to give Jayne plenty of attention too so that he doesn't get nervous. He knows Mal is home, because we put Mal in the carrier in front of him, and let them loose in the den together for a tiny bit. You could tell that Jayne was nervous around him, and thought he smelled funny (we could still smell the antiseptic vet smell on him, so it must have been really strong for Jayne). At one point Mal moved suddenly at him out of interest and Jayne freaked out and batted his face. OK, no Jayne in the room with Mal for a while - poor kitties!

His incision is looking good, so lets hope it stays that way. Overnight he managed to get his arm into the collar and Brian readjusted it, so lets just hope that the thing stays put while we're not at home (and if he does get it off somehow, he doesn't irritate his staples.

Painting

The painter is at our house today scraping our porches! Which means that they will soon be freshly repainted (white with gray steps).

At some point when we feel like it, we'll paint details with a couple of other colors in the decorative front woodwork. We'll also paint our silly BLUE front door to match, and will replace the storm door with a full screen one (its stinks that its an old size that's larger than today's standard, so we'll need to order something rather than picking it up off the shelf). Our ugly red/brown shutters will come down and there will be less ugly on the outside of the house.

We decided to replace the storm door to give the cat's a window for air and a visit, rather than screening in the whole porch. Given other things we should focus on and how silly the mickey-moused screening kit could potentially look we figured this was best.

Yay!

Some perspective

Brian was having a very shitty day yesterday. I talked with him over the phone at work at one point (something we normally never do, but we had mortgage stuff to discuss) and he sounded like he was ready to kill someone. I'd be lying if I said that things going on with me lately weren't overwhelming at times too.

But yesterday was also the first anniversary of Katie Johnson's death http://www.heartofanempire.com/Katie/ .

Please hug and kiss your loved ones and keep them close. Let the good that does exist in the world keep you moving when things just don't make sense and keep going wrong.