A Belated Weekend Report with Pictures

I meant to post this on Monday, but, well, MONDAY.

This was my weekend:
SATURDAY

I did some spring cleaning, including moving the Minerva altar from the living room to the bedroom (I have altar shelves in both rooms, and the living room one tends to be focused on whatever is going on right now--often whichever book I'm working on--and I thought that since Minerva spent most of her time in the bedroom, she'd rather be there) and changing the comforter cover from the winter one to the spring one. This was actually a pretty emotional endeavor, because it meant washing the last of Minerva's fur and smell off of the other comforter cover. On the other hand, it really needed washing, because the last weeks of her life she had been spitting medicine all over it. (She was NOT happy about taking meds.)
Here's the altar now--that little wooden box with her picture on top of it has her ashes in it. A lovely sympathy card from my friend Karen Rose Smith is to the left.

Here is the gorgeous spring comforter (which was made especially for me, along with the wall hanging above it, by one of the artists at The Artisans' Guild)

The same bed, with cats a few hours later. If you look closely at Angus, the yellow cat, you can see that he is holding his right eye partially closed. He has something going on with it--probably viral, and returned from an occurrence a month ago--and I have to put antibiotic ointment in it twice a day. You can imagine how well THAT'S going.

Lest you think these guys are the only ones getting attention, I also spent some time playing with Luna. I need to do a post about her soon--did you realize I've had her for over a year?

I know the pictures are a little blurry...she rarely stops moving!






SUNDAY

On Sunday, my friends Ellen and Chris and I had a small birthday celebration for Jo, my step-daughter's mom. Some of you may be aware that Jo, as well as being sort-of family, came to Blue Moon Circle rituals for a couple of years before she had a massive heart attack a little more than a year ago. To be honest, no one expected her to be celebrating this birthday (she's since had another smaller heart attack, open-heart bypass surgery, and is in her 11th year of dialysis), but she's tougher than she looks. Or more stubborn. Either way, we broke her out of the nursing home for a few hours so we could celebrate her turning 54. She had a great time.

Chris made these great cupcakes

Jo asked for pizza, so that's what we had.

Blowing out the candle

Opening gifts

Of course, in with all of the cleaning and partying, I also did a lot of writing. Here's a picture from Saturday evening of Magic helping me.

The Red Writing Chair

So tell me, what did you do last weekend? Anything interesting planned for the one ahead?

Cute Kitty in the Midst of A Horrid Week

Those of you who follow me on Facebook may already know that it has been a tough week here. Last Sunday night at 11:15 I got a call from my beloved step-daughter Jenn to tell me that her mom Jo had suffered a massive heart attack and gone into cardiac arrest at the local hospital. After seven minutes of CPR, they managed to stabilize her and send her to the Bassett Hospital in nearby Cooperstown, which is set up for cardiac patients. Jo has been in the ICU there ever since. Jenn flew out from San Jose late on Tuesday and we have been spending most of our days there since she got here. (Hence the radio silence here.)

Jo is also a friend of mine and a frequent guest at Blue Moon Circle events, as well as being my best friend Ellen's other best friend. (Basically, we are a strange modern family.) And of course, this has been especially rough for Jenn. Jo is slowly improving every day and we are hoping for the best, although it will be a long road to recovery.

But in the meanwhile...I decided I needed to do something to cheer Jenn up.

Again, if you follow me on Facebook (and clearly if you don't, you are missing out on all the News), you will know that as I was returning from my visit to San Jose in mid-February, my friend Ellen, who works as a dog groomer at our vets' office, called to tell me about a little cat someone brought in who reminded her of my recently lost Samhain.

This little cat, who they think is about six months old and only weighs 4 1/2 lbs, was found in a snowbank, almost dead. She's apparently pretty tough though, since she made a full recovery. They were looking for someone to adopt her. I fought it...I swear I did! But it kept feeling like Samhain had her paw in this, and eventually I caved and said I'd take her. But I had to wait for her to be spayed, and for a second feline leukemia test to come back negative.

When I called on Friday to see what they thought about me bringing her home temporarily, I was told that the second test had been done, she'd been given her booster shots, and was ready to go! So I brought her back home (I'd had to skip the hospital for the day to catch up with things at work, so Jenn was coming in later with a friend) and surprised Jenn with a buddy to hang out with in the upstairs bedroom at night. There may have been happy squealing :-)

Here's the newest member of the family: Luna (so called because it looks to me like she has a partial lunar eclipse on her face, and when I was trying to decide whether or not to take her, I pulled The Moon tarot card)

What do you think?

For the moment I am trying to keep her upstairs with the intention of introducing her to the other cats slowly. But she is affectionate and full of beans and has already made a break for it once, so something tells me that isn't going to work. I'll keep you posted.

In the meanwhile, I'd intended to do an overdue giveaway to celebrate the four book deal from Berkley, but it is going to have to be a little more overdue, since I'm pretty much on hospital duty until Jenn goes home on Thursday. (And then I'm going to be madly playing catch-up.) But don't worry, I haven't forgotten about it, and soon enough, there will be another fun batch of goodies up for grabs.

Did I mention I also had to replace my furnace unexpectedly? Oh, the joy.

Here is a fun picture from the wonderful Christmas Day we all had together in December.

Jo, Ellen in the back, Jenn, and me on a much happier day

So, that's life, really. Some good stuff, some bad stuff, and always, cats. Thanks to all those who sent their good wishes on Facebook--they were all much appreciated.