Welcome To My House Tour!

 This Christmas, our third in this house, it is actually starting to feel more like a home!  Every Christmas I seem to find one thing, be it baking, finding special gifts, something, that is my favorite part of that year's holidays.  This year, it seems to be decorating my house!  My favorite thing has been to be at home in the evenings, with all my Christmas lights on, and even better if there is Christmas music playing! 
So come on in.  If you were here, I would serve you some sugar free cocoa and healthy cookies when you came to the front door.  And you'd be greeeted by this snowman.

 And some birds of different species.

 Come on in to the entry way...

 This is the "formal" living room, still not entirely furnished, but fun to decorate as my "vintage Christmas" room!  Sporty Spice has set up his Disneyworld monorail set at the bottom of the tree there.

 My chairs I got last summer...now if only I could find a matching setee...sigh.

 Glittery ornaments from Big Lots!

 And ones I made from yard sale goodies!

 Possibly my favorite thing is my light up vintage village.

 Got that whole bowl of vintage beads at a yard sale for four dollars last week.

 And into the dining area...snowmen on the buffet...

 And on into the living room...come on in and sit down for a bit.

 I love this little white feather tree and sure wish I could get a better picture of it.

 The big tree is being circled by a remote control lego train this year.

 And welcome to my kitchen..

 And my bedroom...

 Bedroom tree.

 It's even Christmas on the nightstand.

 I have a fireplace in my bedroom.  How decadent is that?

 A nod to the tacky.

 And finally, what self respecting flock of chickens and a duck wouldn't want lights on their house as well?  The feral kitty house also has lights this year.

Hope  you enjoyed your stay and you are invited for New Year's as well...

November....and Into December we Go!

I finished the Cal International Marathon last Sunday!  5 hours and 45 seconds, including the 7 minute (I timed it) Porta Potty line at mile 10.  Not a speed record by any means (I did it in just under 4 and a half 3 years ago), but I was really happy just to finish and to know I never walked.  I had gotten a cold earlier in the week that really settled in my lungs by Sunday, so I was on the fence whether I should even go or not, but I really didn't want to miss it.  So I took it slow and enjoyed the new scenery and people and their dogs (so many dogs!) along the way.  It was warmer than 2008 and the horrible winds we'd had last week had died down.  And they had pancakes, beer and tomato soup at the end!

To back up, we had a great Thanksgiving week, with Sporty Spice out of school and The Mister off work.  We went to Arnold and enjoyed a quiet couple of days, did some training (my last long run!) and watched the last 2 Harry Potter Movies.  The only oddity of the weekend was finding this:

under our deck.  No collar, no microchip, and UNfixed!  Her name is now Jane and she is a sweet little thing with a coat as soft as a rabbit.

We came home the Tuesday before Thanksgiving so Lance could get to his chemo treatment on Wednesday.  It's been a tough month and the doctor is changing his drugs, which has made him feel a lot better this week.  Every day with my sweet boy is a gift.

 

As a follow up, Bobette the last little rescue cat is doing wonderful and she is the "squatiest" little ball of cat with a funny little corkscrew pig tail!  This week I rode through the meadow where I trapped her and there was this mangy looking coyote just sitting out there staring me down.  I SWEAR he was saying, "YOU took my meaty little cat morsel, you b&#@h."

Thanksgiving morning we woke to rain, but undaunted, the Schaefer family set out for our local Turkey Trot!  There was some whining from the small man, but he was all smiles when he finished the 5K and wants to go back next year.

And yes, that is his special Turkey Trot Hat, which came in handy with the weather.

I made the entire Thanksgiving meal from my favorite Clean Eating Magazine, including this healthy Pear Pomegranate Pie:

It was very good.  I also made the Spice Rubbed Turkey, Apple Fig Stuffing, Souffle'd Sweet Potatoes, Cranberry Apple Sauce, and  Roasted Brussel Sprouts.  All healthy and delicious.  LOVE that magazine!

We spent the weekend after putting up our Christmas decorations!  This year we've finally made the big move to a fake tree! 

And I'm already thrilled about it!  Every year, we finally go pick one out, and then it sits in a bucket of water until the Mister can get time to put the lights on, and then we have to find busy mid-week time to decorate it, and it is a constant source of stress for me because it doesn't get done entirely until the week before Christmas and I never get to enjoy it.  NOT this year!  Oh no.  Ten luscious feet of pre-lit goodness was up on Friday morning and completely decorated by Saturday.  This left time to get all the rest of the decorations out and lights up and we've been enjoying them immensely every night!  We even have lights on our chicken coop. 

And in the Christmas spirit, I took 2 classes at one of my favorite shops in Berkeley, Castles in the Air.  SO fun.  In the first one, we made this:

I wish I knew the official name of these things, but it has all these movable parts, so that when you move that tab at the bottom, the guy turns into a one man band.  It took a surprisingly long time to put together.  But my kid thinks it's cool, so that's all that really matters.

I think I enjoyed the second one even more.  We made Victorian Christmas Dioramas:

Each person's was similar, but different, as we could choose the images and embellishments we wanted to use.  Mine features cats a little heavily.  But again, my kid thinks that's hilarious.

I have made a big move this "off" season.  (Drum roll)  I've up and hired myself a professional coach!  I met with him for the first time yesterday.  He's a level 2 coach from Australia and a very nice guy.  Stay tuned.  It's gonna be an interesting 2012!

OFF-SEASON: Bring It On!

Time to check in on my crazy-monster-training-experiment!  Came up just slightly short of my big  5 100-mile ride goal when I woke up in Arnold yesterday to see THIS.  I had even packed some pretty heavy duty winter cycling clothing, but it was 30 degrees out when I left.  I tried.  I did.  I'm pretty tough.  But I made it 15 miles and my toes hurt so bad I was crying.  So I had to scrap it.  Turned out we had to scrap the whole weekend pretty much when the dog started barfing (he had his chemo treatment 48 hours earlier, and it usually doesn't cause him many problems at all) and we came home early just to be sure we were nearer to the vet.  (He is eating thismorning and seems to have stopped vomitting.)  I made pretty much all the rest of my goals in the swimming and riding and running departments, and am happy to declare it Officially Offseason!  Of course the Cal International Marathon is in four short weeks, so running will not slow down much until then.  It is also time to pay some serious attention to cleaning up my diet!  Yikes, it veered off course after Vineman, what with all the animal fiascos, scheduling and crazy training.  I'm actually excited to have the time to start cooking "cleaner" fall meals and do more prep so that I have food with me and don't have to improvise, which never turns out well for me.

My monster training also took a brief week "down" (to about half hours-wise) as we had a spay/neuter clinic on October 23rd.  It went really really well, and left me with a good feeling for the first time in awihle.  We fixed 79 cats in just under 3 hours surgery time!  And it went safely and smoothly.  We also admitted four cats that turned out to be already fixed, but they received medical attention and one big boy got some much needed dental work in addition to a foxtail being removed from his mouth, which I'm sure he appreciated.

Sleepy head waking up after surgery.

Volunteers watching cats in "Recovery", making sure they are waking up after surgery without any problems.


And of course, there was HALLOWEEN last week!  This is Luke Skywalker.  We had a good Halloween, although I feel like I didn't do it justice at all.  I barely got any Halloween decorations up.  We didn't go to any "activities", like in past years.  But Sporty Spice had a good time with his class party and parade and trick or treating with friends.  I'm thinking I'll just hang little Christmas wreaths on the giant spiders I've got out and call it a day.

THIS was my major project of Halloween week!  Meet Bobette (she has no tail).  I happened upon Bobette in one of our East Bay Parks last weekend while doing my long trail run.  Now, this isn't a park you can just drive up to, like a kid park.  No..this one is out in the middle of nowhere, far from any kind of houses, and she was way far from the access road, down near some picnic tables.  I see these abandoned cats often on the trails, which KILLS me, me being me, and usually I can tell they are too feral for me to get near or I'm in a place where there is no way I can schlep a trap in to catch them.  Bobette wouldn't let me closer than about 20 feet, but kept looking at me and meowing.  I knew my fate for the week was sealed.  For the next three days, I drove back and forth, an hour each way, to the closest entry to the meadow where she was, carried traps, up and down a hill about half a mile, and SAT in the meadow waiting to see if she'd get in the trap(s).  Finally, on day 4...I got up and headed out there at dawn.  Set my traps, brought my coffee and a book....figured out which bushes she was hanging out in that day...and about 4 hours later, I caught her!  I did my little victory dance in the middle of the meadow, and drove her straight to the vet to be checked out, spayed, vaccinated and "de-bugged" (she had earmites).  I wasn't really sure how friendly this cat was going to be, or how much socializing I was going to have to do.  But when I went to pick her up from the vet the next day, the technician brought me this purring, headbutting little bundle in her arms! 

She is sweet as sugar and cannot believe the turn her life has taken!  From coyote bait to this!  Full tummy, warm "shnuggy" blanket; she fell asleep the first night home purring.  SO nice to finally have a happy ending to something!

So, with that I declare it OFFseason.  If you need me, I'll be in my scrapbook room!  I've finally started scrapping our Hawaii Ironman trip (from 2 years ago!).

A Little Bit of Training...and A Little Bit of Crafting...

Hello October!!  In a moment of probable insanity, I have decided to wrap up this disappointing triathlon season with a really solid, if not completely demented month of training before the inclement weather sets in.  So, we have:  Swimming!  Masters always goes on hiatus from about November to March, SO, I hereby decree that I shall go to both Tuesday and Tursday workouts all month. 

Next up, Riding!  As planned, I finished the Foxy's Fall Century in Davis yesterday.  One of my favorite rides, it was beatiful this year, no wind!  The Mister and Sporty Spice actually did the 50K on the Trail-a-Bike.  We are pretty impressed with a six year old who can ride over 30 miles.  Must be all that training I've been doing with him, riding that Trail-a-Bike back and forth over the hill to and from school a couple of times a day.  Oh, and that's not all on the riding front.  One century-great!  Five--even better!  How about one a weekend (the other four self-supported)?  I've already knocked out three.  And how's about a trip to the summit of Mt. Diablo every Tuesday this month?  Bingo.  We have a winner.

And last but not least, Running!  With the Cal International Marathon coming up the first weekend in December, it's time to step that up.  Running at least some five days a week.  Long runs inching up.  Last weekend my long run consisted of running to the start line of the Primo's Half Marathon about a mile into town, ran the race (with amazingly even 11 minute miles) and then shunned, shunned I tell you, the shuttle bus back to the start, and ran in true Forrest Gump fashion, all the way back home!  21.5 miles.

Some might look at this as late season training.  But no!  I see it as EARLY base training for next year!! 

And believe it or not, despite psychotic training, I completed a couple of crafting goals!  I'm participating in the Christmas ABC swap and I finished my 27 cards!!  Doing anything with a deadline these days freaks me out a little, but I did it and they are in the mail.

 I also took my second class at Castles In The Air:  Vintage Crepe Paper Decorations and Garlands.  Not the greatest picture, and I definitely need practice, but it was fun.

I Didn't See This One Coming.

Well, no wonder I hardly have any followers--my little blog has been downrigt depressing lately! After that last post, I was sure Priscilla would be the next cat of our crossing the rainbow bridge, but I was wrong. We had to say goodbye to Peet this week, rather unexpectedly. And Peet, being one of our "original" (pre-crazy-cat-lady) cats, this one hit me hard. To make a long story short, he'd been looking like he had been losing weight, but otherwise seemed pretty fine, and I took him in for an exam on Monday. Within 24 hours he was diagnosed with renal failure and a kidney infection. An ultrasound and biopsies also revealed lymphoma in his kidneys and liver. The decision to let him go did not take a lot of thinking.

Peet was one of our first rescues way back in 1998, which meant he was 13. We had volunteered to be available to foster kittens at our local shelter and that Father's Day I got a call, went up to the shelter, and was handed 2 litters of kittens, 15 in all, and a surrogate-mother cat who had just weaned her own kittens and might possibly still keep lactating and feed some of these kittens. That whole thing was a pretty rough introduction to bottle-baby-fostering, but we ended up with one kitten from each of those litters, Peet, and our dear sweet Starbuck, who is also gone now. We were told to bring the Momma cat back to the shelter to be adopted or more probably to end up "euthanized" after all her heroic work, and there was no way that was going to happen! We still have her, and she is hands-down the most affectionate cat we've ever had.

I'm surprised we haven't received condolences from the construction industry. Peet was the most prolific behavioral urinator I've ever come accross. Peet peed on everything! Sometimes even us. He was responsible for the building of our first cat-patio at our old house, as well as our old bedroom being tiled. Our cats are 100% indoors, and we did what we had to do. This also led to the construction of the whole cattery in the new house. Peet allowed many contractors to feed their families and I'm sure he will be missed. In heaven, Peet can pee on anything he wants.

So, I've been having myself a pretty good pitty party this week and basically checked out of life. But the upside is that even during a pitty party, I'm pretty productive.
We finally found the bedroom furniture I wanted in June--I LOVE IT! But I hadn't been able to find a duvet cover I liked anywhere. So, I had bought two sheets I was going to stitch together, but could NOT find time to do it, until this week.

This is the fabric closer up.

And this is the giant armoire that goes with it. The nightstands match too. And my new little bedside lamps are from Target. This is pretty exciting because we slept on our mattress on the floor like starving college students for 2 years after moving into this house. I feel like a grown up again!

Cats, Crafts, Quilts and Swimming...My Cup Runneth Over

The animal travails continue here, as can probably be expected with a largely geriatric population. This is Priscilla Birdbreath. She showed up at one of the locations where I was feeding cats during the time I was unable to drive with my broken leg and the Mister was the primary dinner server to all my feral cats. I went along with him one night and there was Priscilla, sitting in a planter box near our feeding station (in a somewhat rough neighborhood), waiting for him. I said, "Who is
that?" and he said, "I don't know, I just feed 'em. I thought she was part of the group." Poor Priscilla had been abandoned and managed to find our food and water and had been showing up every day for weeks. Shortly thereafter we moved, and I trapped up all the cats and we brought them with us. Priscilla is a very social friendly girl, and adjusted to living with our indoor cats just fine. She was by no means a spring chicken, the vet guessed at over ten years, and shortly after we rescued her she developed skin cancer on her eyelid and had her eye and that lid removed and all has been well. Last week she was drooling and the minute I looked in her mouth I knew I was looking at mouth cancer. The vet confirmed it. Unfortunately, mouth cancers are almost always a lost cause to treat, and always extremely painful when messed with. She is still eating well and not in pain so we will give her these last few weeks as best we can. I'm so glad we found her when we did. Who dumps these animals??...it is my eternal "big question". The day I figure it out will probably be the same day my family has to come bail me out of jail.

On a brighter note:

Even though 2011 has been a fairly low-quantity craft year, I decided to sign up for some classes at one of my favorite art stores, Castles In The Air on 4th Street in Berkeley. I took the first one this past week, a quick Monday night class on making crepe paper flowers! It was fun and I will have to spend some more time practicing at it. These are my initial attempts, a rose, a daffodil and a carnation. The carnation was last and made past my bedtime and it shows.

Training has just been weird. Schedules have been messed up with unanticipated emergencies and I'm still nursing the mental wounds of a very disappointing triathlon season. My goals for these last few months of this year are really thinly disguised attempts at starting my 2012 base training a little early.

Yesterday was the Folsom Lake 2.4 mile swim. It was a beautiful day and I actually had a friend to go with! My swimmin' veterinarian friend, Joy Hollenback came over and we had a Friday night slumber party, got up at 5am Saturday and headed out. This race was put on by a high school swim team and so the crowd was heavily weighted on the very young and the very fast. Most of them were actually swimming a 5K/3.1 mi race. About 25 of us were doing the 2.4 mi. My goal was under 1.30. Not lightening pace in the swimming world, but I've only made that time once before, 9 years ago. I came in DFL--but I did not cry, which was a HUGE growth step for me! And I was only about 4 minutes over my goal. I went non-wetsuit, so it's actually not that bad!

Rare is the Saturday when I don't have to spend all day training, so even with the two hour drive each way, we got home from the swim around noon! I scurried through animal chores, grabbed the kid, got in the Miata and high tailed it for a quilt show I've wanted to go to for years! The Alden Lane Quilting In the Garden Quilt Show is held every fall. They hang the quilts, clothesline-style, all through the Alden Lane Nursery. It was so beautiful, and they had started to put out some Halloween decor. Very festive. Both Sporty Spice and I enjoyed it. And THEN we were lucky enough to just hit the right show time to see Lion King 3-D at the I-Max on the way home! That was the best day I'd had in a while!

Goodnight Sweet Daisy Bean

or, "The Animals Ate My Week--Part 2".

Last week started with one of our Tri-Valley Fix our Ferals clinics. 42 cats fixed, a lower number than usual, due to many of our veterinarians and volunteers being on vacation. But 42 is 42, and I know that every single cat fixed saves lives SOMEwhere down the line that is overpopulation. But it was an exhausting clinic to pull together.

Sporty Spice headed north to grandma and grandpa's for clinic weekend, and I have to admit, it is easier to have him there during all the chaos and stress. And it nice to have just a bit of quiet when we get home that evening. The mister left Monday to get him and to do a little fishing and I had 48 hours of blissful "hookey playing". I really let myself do what I wanted, put together some scrapbooks I've been meaning to get to, napping, and (ssshhh...) I went to see The Help all by myself and did just a bit of shopping and even more napping. And soooo glad I did when on Tuesday night stuff started going sideways.

Wednesday was Sporty's first day of school and so we all went to bed early, and I was so eager to get back on SOME kind of schedule (any kind...please!). Lo and behold my cell phone starts going off about 11pm and it's one of the caretakers of a cat who came to Sunday's clinic. I'll spare you the gory details, but this kitty was in dire shape and they were at the emergency clinic. It didn't end well and not much sleep was had that night. Wednesday morning I get up all ready to be Super-Mom and make Sporty a really special breakfast before his first day of 1st grade. But before I get him up I go about my animal chores.

I get to the goats and there is no Daisy in the pasture....if you remember, Daisy is the old, lumpy, lopsided goat who was delivered to us on 4th of July. She looked so bad, I truly didn't know if she was going to make it through the weekend. With some amazing veterinary care, love and good food, Daisy has had a truly amazing 6 weeks. She perked up and spent her days hiking about the 2 acres, sitting under Oak trees enjoying her view, and head-butting her friend Isabel. And if I didn't get her hay to her fast enough in the mornings, she'd be hollering at me, with her front hooves up on the gate. That is until Wednesday. I found her on the far side of the pasture, "down", but alert, and happy to have food and water I offered her. I scrambled to get Sporty to school and immediately called the vet. She came out and we administered fluids and tossed about theories of what was going on. The vet had already uncovered "issues" with Daisy, including a large hernia that made her lopsided, but also signs of a really bad goat disease where they can get abscesses not only on their skin, but they are actually internal and can infiltrate the organs. The vet postulated that this might be the underlying problem, but her ultrasound machine was not set up to see those internal abscesses, but that they could do that at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. OR we could assume that's what it was and send her over the rainbow bridge directly. I'll tell ya, was SO exhausted by that afternoon, and Daisy was so alert and her usual sweet self lying there, having to make that decision I sat in the pasture and cried for half an hour. Finally I made my plan, the Mister came home to help me lift her into the car, I picked up Sporty and the three of us set off in rush hour traffic for a 90 minute drive north to Davis. Just me, a six year old and a goat in a Volvo. They were so kind when we arrived and the veterinarian on staff suggested we leave her for the night and they could do the ultrasound next morning. Not every kid gets a tour of the UC Davis Large Animal Emergency Clinic the first night after school starts; mine did.

The next afternoon the vet called and gave us the report: all bad--abscesses everywhere, including her liver and spleen. So I knew there was no choice and that we had done all we possibly could for her. Since she was happy, alert, eating, and not in pain, we decided to keep her there until Friday, when I could pick Sporty up from school early and drive back up there so we could be with her for her euthanasia. It is truly the one last gift I believe you can give and animal and part of Sporty and my "No Animal Left Behind" policy. We bought her her own box of animal crackers, her favorite, and she was so happy to see us. She passed away very peacefully, with the taste of cookies in her mouth (personally, it's also the way I'd like to go) and with us telling her we loved her. Contrasted with a cold shelter death she was looking at 6 weeks ago, it was all worth it. She had that and she had us and she knew it.

Goodnight Sweet Daisy Bean. You've left a hole and you will be missed.