New Baby in the house!

The kind of babies that show up in my house are not the kind that show up in most... LOL!

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Pocket Pets were up at Hubbard Park last week for the big daffodil festival. It was in the 90's, sunny and a perfect day for working in the yard. So Shelby and I got in the Jeep (darn, still has the hardtop) and actually found a parking place on a sidestreet about 100 yds from the entrance to the park. By the time we actually found the display for Pocket Pets, it was half a mile and I was sweating, but it was worth it.

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We showed them all the correspondence from when we lost our dear Pancake last year and they were sympathetic and wonderful. What does all this mean?

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Pictures, of course!!!

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Her name is Bacon and she's our newest addition. Now, before you think she's quite big, you can check the Pocket Pets website and see other little babies. The towel that she's moving across is a hand towel, not a big one. If I pick her up, she can literally wrap her entire body around my thumb.

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I do wish I could have gotten a picture of them together so you could see the difference in size, but they were still cautious of each other. Bacon is a true little sugar bear. She stands right up on her hind feet and will swat at you with her paws, crabbing the whole time. Course, I just talk slow and even and tell her that I know it's all a big show and she's nothing more than a tiny, little scared baby. She hasn't tried to bite at all, which I think is a good sign. Waffle, our big girl? The first time I picked her up, she fought like a tiger, biting every bit of skin she could get between her teeth.

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Speaking of Waffle, we have a picture of her also. This is her inside in her little dining room. I have no idea how this picture was achieved and without being fuzzy. (Most of the pictures came out quite fuzzy...) The nice thing is you can see just how big and dark her eyes are and you can also see her "hands". Yup, just like us, she's got 4 fingers and a thumb. She'll grab a bit of glider chow in her hand and gnaw away at it. Then, look down at her back paws. The thumb is really offset because she spends most of her life hanging upside down like a sloth. Only, she's no sloth. she's quick and loves to jump about the cage.

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I can't wait until work is done for the summer so I can finally have time to bring her out of the cage and let her explore more of the house. She's very curious and can't wait to come out. Let's face it, she's bored with her cage. But I still get nervous about the cats, so I don't want anything happening at a time we can't supervise.

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Last night was a break-through with the girls. I'd noticed yesterday morning that, while I was in cleaning out dinner debris from the night before from Bacon's cage, that she started crabbing. Making quite a fuss and Waffle popped out from her nest and hung onto the cage beside Bacon to make clicking and chirping noises, almost as if to reassure her that we humans are okay. So, after Dee came home from work and we'd finished dinner, she took Bacon from her little traveling cage and put her in with Waffle in the bigger cage.

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They spent the next two hours just playing with each other. Bacon is still discovering how to get into the wheel, but she's learning how to run on it. The only funny thing is that, once in a while, Waffle would pop in and show her how it's done. This never went well with Pancake either. You've got one glider running and the other tends to slip and slide around the wheel. Well, once, Bacon was sort of peeking out from one of the holes, hanging onto the sides of the opening, and Waffle takes off. Think of hanging onto a Ferris wheel and suddenly it turns all the way around. She's straddling this hole and whirling around. Needless to say, she chirped in alarm and Waffle stopped to see what was going on and you could swear poor little Bacon's knees were wobbling as she decided to sit out this ride... LOL!

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So, new baby in the house!

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Other good news: After a bit over 4 months, I'm finally done with the dentist. His work is complete. At least for now. Very strange to look in my mouth and see all kinds of white instead of lots of metal. So 4 crowns and 14 fillings (mostly replacing old cracked fillings), I'm finally done. I don't have to go back for 6 months. Whew! I wondered if this day would ever come... LOL!

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Insurance companies. Yup, we've passed the first year anniversary of Shelby's accident and they're still negotiating. I made my position clear. They've made offers and I've rejected both. So the ball is back in their court and I'll be out of work soon. I have all summer to file in small claims court if they don't get moving. I'll have lots of time to finally get this monkey off my back and get Shelby the compensation she deserves. She's given me permission to settle affairs for her so she can concentrate on her studies. And that's working well. She's should make Dean's List again (even with Organic Chemistry Pt Deux) and she was inducted into the Beta Beta Beta Society for the Study of Biological Sciences. IOW, she was recognized for her interest and study in the area of biology. Only 20 students from the university were chosen and she's just ending her second year of study. Pretty good to get this kind of nomination before your senior year.

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And Dee finally came into her own. She's worked really hard this year to bring her grades up and she made High Honors on her latest report card! Woohoo! I'm so proud of her and that means we'll have to take her to dinner at a restaurant of her choice.

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Speaking of Dee, I have knitting news. I'm almost done with the Mitered Tank from the spring/summer 2009 of Vogue Knitting. It's a Norah Gaughan design and will look fabulous on Dee. It looks pretty skanky right now because it's not finished or blocked or anything. I'm knitting it in KnitPicks' Cotlin. It's knit from the hem up, with mitered corners on the flare below the waist. Then you rib at the waist and then increase for the bust. It's actually coming along very nice and will look great on her. The color is Island Coral and will complement the red highlights in her hair as well as her tan. Next, I'm hoping to knit up the Vacation Skirt pattern from Amy Polcyn in the March issue of Creative Knitting. This will also be in Cotlin, but in a dark purple called Blackberry. Very casual, but I think the drape of the hem of the Mitered Tank above it will create a very chic silhouette on her figure.

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Last week was the CT Sheep & Wool Festival. I was going to update the blog then because, of course, I bought stuff, but it's been hectic and I never got the chance to sit down and blog. Golding had a booth and I bought myself a Golding spindle. One of the ring spindles. Yes, one of his least expensive, but I did give it a spin once I got home. Oh my goodness!!! What sheer joy!! I might have to begin doing some spindling just for the awesome joy of feeling that spindle working.

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And, yes, I bought more fiber. I got a great deal on some Rambouillet. 2.3 lbs for $34.00. It's a beautiful natural grey so it's mixed light and dark fibers. Not a solid color. I'm going to see if it goes well with some gorgeous dark merino I'd picked up a month ago. Between the lb of merino and 2.3 of Rambouillet, I could have enough for a new top-down raglan from Barbara Walker's book. (Yes, part of my brain is thinking Aran again, but let's not even travel that road... LOL) Or maybe I can blend that with the natural creamy Corriedale I'm currently working on and I could do a colorwork of cream and grey. I'll have to see where that leads.

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But I have lots and lots of gorgeous wool to spin this summer and that's the point. I don't want to have to buy. I want to have fiber lined up and ready to go once I'm out of work so I have no excuse for not sitting down at my wheel after dinner each night.

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The other reason for a delay in posting is we moved Aunt Lois into a retirement community. One that has a memory unit so the staff can remind her to do things like shower and eat. That happened last Friday, so it's been almost 10 days. I wanted to give her time to adjust to her new surroundings and we're planning on visiting her on Tuesday. I won't go into details other than she wasn't amenable to a move, so we sort of did it all while I took her out for the morning then I used an excuse to get her in the door to show her her new apt. It was heartwrenching to do this, but it was necessary. And she's adapted beautifully. She's getting along with everyone and the staff has assured me that she's the darling of everyone who works there. They adore her now that she's come out of her shell and adapted to the new experience.

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So that's taken a lot of time because it'll be up to me to get her old apartment packed up and ready for storage. I still have to sort through all the paperwork that was squirreled away in every corner and drawer of her apartment. That job is going to take weeks, if not months. But she's safe now and the care she's getting is everything she couldn't do for herself anymore.

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Final news is that I have 7 days of work left. Five days of classes/finals/move out and then two days of graduations and I'm off for the summer. I've got most of my yard prepared for the summer. I seeded 4 trays of seeds in preparation for Memorial Day weekend. Lots of color and lots of variety. Yup, I can't believe how much I've gotten done, but it's all one step at a time. I have tons of work over at the doctor's office, but I'll have more time for that also once the job at the university is over. Then I can also start on my house, my yard and finalizing Aunt Lois's settling into her new apartment. Lots of work yet to do, but I have lots of plans for this summer. I won't have a lot of money to spend, but that's okay. Most of my plans won't take much.