In a Western Place

Have a happy, healthy and safe New Year’s everybody! We’re back in San Francisco on East coast time, so who knows if we’ll make it to midnight. After a week straight of visiting family and friends, Matty and I are looking forward to a quiet evening at home with our broken kitty. Talk to you next year!

It’s Christmas Eve and I’m at work where it’s nice and quiet. I’ve barely made a dent on all my work-related to-do’s (why do my deadlines always seem to fall around a period of time when I need to take a week off?) however… I did make our car rental reservation (hooray for a compact in the snow), tied up some loose Christmas ends (like, make a trip back to the mall to have a security tag removed from a present), and checked us in to our flight tonight, which unfortunately:

I wonder if my Dr. will fill me a Xanax script over the phone? It is Christmas, after all… but, the good news is that the exit row opened up on the longer flight. We long-legged, tall-er folk appreciate that.

Matty took Joey to the cat specialist yesterday where another X-ray confirmed that his leg had gotten worse. Frowny face, indeed. On the bright side, he’s been fitted with a cast and look, it’s holiday themed!

He hasn’t tried to fight off the cast like he did with the splint (thank gosh), so we’re hopeful that it’ll heal in about 4 weeks. We leave on a red-eye flight tonight, so one of Matty’s co-teachers (coincidentally, she’s from Buffalo) will be looking after Joey while we’re back in NY. I think that I’m going to miss that expensive little bugger!

Matty and I attended my company-wide holiday party this past Saturday night. It was a very fancy affair… full of good food, drinks and folks. My favorite piece of the evening is this Polaroid a little elf shot of us.

It’s been a rough couple of days for us. Long story short, Joey broke his right hind leg. It happened while we were out of the house on Tuesday and the vet determined that he twisted it after getting it stuck on something. Since he’s young, we’ve been referred to a cat specialist to explore surgical options. It’s a bad, but clean break, and as you can see our stubborn little 15lb critter wanted nothing to do with the splint (which I had to remove to keep him from fracturing the bone further by forcibly pulling it off himself).

Actually Joey is doing fine without the splint; he’s mastered walking without the use of that leg and the pain medication has him purring like nothing ever happened. Now where’s our pain medication?

Well it’s finally Winter. Temps have dropped into the 40s and we had to break down and turn on the heat. It’s been raining and hailing… might I add that there’s nothing more soothing then the sound of solid rain pummeling my drafty greenhouse window. Luckily, with the heat blowing and the tree so colorfully lit, it’s beginning to feel and look a lot like Christmas! Speaking of which, we finally made our travel arrangements and we’ll be arriving into NY on Christmas morning, splitting our time between the Rochester and Buffalo area and returning back home for New Years. Then you know what happens a few days after that? That’s right, I smell a birthday…

The cat has been adjusting well in the new home and I rarely catch him clawing something he shouldn’t (nothing a little spray from the water bottle can’t stop). However, like clockwork, he’s scratching at the bedroom door at 4:30am wanting to be fed. Then again at 5:30am. And again at 6:30am. I’ve found that if I leave him a little snack before bed, that will keep him away till 6:00am. This has not helped his “weight problem.” In other news, there are two neighborhood outdoor cats that like to hang out on our back deck. One we’ve named “Patches” and the other “Snagglepuss” (he’s pure evil). Joey has discovered these creatures and waits for them to appear from the window of our back door. The result is either a fight (through the glass) or a lot of strange meowing. Eh, at least it keeps him entertained… breaking up his daily monotony of eating, sleeping and buzzing off the catnip. What a life.

Since we moved to this side of the city, the Alemany Farmer’s Market has quickly become my new Saturday morning habit. This past weekend I left with a bundle of beets, five tomatoes on the vine, a few hunks of some very fragrant garlic, two enormous artichokes, 2lbs of green grapes, half a dozen kiwis, a jar of honey, two eggplants, a bouquet of yellow daisies, and one homemade cheese Pupusa (I was hungry). I should mention that I only bring $20 cash with me and I always leave with change. Score! I’m presently eating my beets with leafy greens, sliced almonds, goat cheese, and dried cranberries, topped with Amy’s Balsamic Vinaigrette. Delicious!

We got a tree, an impulse buy from Target. Target? Yes, a Target down in Colma had real Christmas trees for sale. After sensing that I was feeling a wee bit homesick during our Thanksgiving break, Matty insisted that we get one. He picked it out, threw it into the rental car, carried it into the apartment, set it all up, then vacuumed up the long needle trail from the car to the dining room. Bear in mind it was still November and 70 degrees out when we picked it up, but I have to admit it did make me feel a little better. We’re lacking in the ornament department, so we strung some colorful lights up to hold us over.

Now if we can only get the cat to stop drinking all of the tree’s water!