Bored with mere mice, Ninja has moved on to killing time.

OK, it's not the snowmageddon some of you are getting right now, but, still we're snowed in! Sad how little it takes to make the road disappear and the little hill impassable except with chains (which no one here has).

Today's the first time I've faced the conundrum of shovel a couple of inches of snow every couple of hours or do all ten inches at once at the end of the day. Advice?

I finally granted Ninja, our teenage cat not yet wise in the ways of the world, access to the cat door. She's so excited about this development, she's gone out and come back in about 75 times in the last two hours. I'm giving it until nightfall until she wears out the batteries!

Although, I'm not sure if this is because they took the day off or because at this point there are no mice left within a 200 meter radius of our home.

Yay! We've made it 24 hours without the cats bringing any mice, dead or alive, into the house.

The downside of the cat door: in just the last 36 hours, the cats have brought 5 dead mice and one live mouse into the house.

Needing to recover from On the Beach, I am now slogging through The Night Circus, which is turning out to be all tell and no show and all stage and no action. I mean, seriously, how many words does one need to go through to describe nothing that actually happens?

Sometimes, you have to mow the cat grass.

O.M.G.... On the Beach turned out to be the most depressing book I have ever read. And I have read a lot of books.

Just started reading On the Beach, because I hadn't before and haven't seen the movie(s) either. It's a lot of honorable people behaving honorably while living out humanity's last doomed days. Not terribly realistic yet also fascinating, but ultimately really depressing.

Ah, for the heady days of youth, when there was a reasonable gap between the sugar rush and the sugar crash.

The final thing I learned in 2025 is that that grey, bean-shaped thing that cats leave behind even if they eat everything else about the mouse, including the fur, feet, and tail, is the gall bladder. As you might imagine, it's really bitter.

Somehow it's fitting that it took me a couple of decades to read Momo from start to finish.

Yesterday I heard my other neighbors calling Chairman Meow "Sancho", because CM's official name is a Chinese expression for "long life" (because they've lost several cats already to deadly streets here), which I guess vaguely sort of sounds like Sancho.

I know it's probably totally unoriginal, but I'll never not find it funny that my neighbor's named their cat Chairman Meow.

Yay! The house is ours again. MIL and cousin/boyfriend left yesterday after 72 hrs, which was long enough for her to throw a tantrum about me, but not long enough for me to have a meltdown about her. I think this means I won. :)

Reading War of the Worlds for the first time and, it's weird, I keep having to reach for a dictionary!

Spouse is going down with the awful cold going around. If I manage to hold off long enough before I catch it, I might be able to quarantine myself for the 4 days MIL and her boyfriend are here (they invited themselves) for Xmas.

So, I made the rum raisin pie. It turned out exactly as expected: so rich it could only be eaten in 1:1 ratio with vanilla ice cream.

I was having a bad baking day yesterday, but "Who? Me? Measure?" Spouse, after mansplaining my mishaps (which at least resulted in yummy, if wonky GF cookies), killed the yeast in his stollen dough because he'd soaked the raisins in too much rum. Though this is partly my fault. I bought Stroh.

Sometimes you need the weekend to recover from the week, other times you need the week to recover from the weekend.

I was today years old when I learned there is such a thing as rum raisin pie. The pictures looks terrifying. Are there people out there who actually like this kind of pie????

From us (Spouse most especially) to all who celebrate, a very happy Turkey Day to you.

We've got a dogs and cats, living together situation going on over here these days.

Halloween party prep = vacuuming up real cobwebs before putting up fake ones.

Do you know what I have not had in more than 45 years? A 7-UP topped with a scoop of rainbow sherbet.

On the bright side, it's the time of year when while I walk the dog I can eat blackberries for breakfast and bring home a giant puffball mushroom and Mirabelle plums for lunch. On the dark side, zucchinis. At least 10/ per wk from the garden and nooooo I just can't anymore...

50 years ago, I saw the poster for Jaws and promised myself I would never see that movie (because I love swimming in the ocean). I broke that promise to myself on Sunday, on the big screen, in HD. And... it was a surprisingly good movie! And way too cheesy to fire up any underwater paranoia. Phew!

The kittens have reached the phase where I'm glad we don't have curtains.

Had to take Mama Noodle and the kitten that we're keeping to the vet today to get chipped and vaccinated. They were shocked by the whole thing and obviously couldn't understand why they had to go through that. I don't know if they'll ever trust me again.

Having barely survived 6 sessions to help me recover from a big injury I did to myself, um, walking, I have to say I don't want to have a deep tissue massage ever again, not in this life or in any life thereafter. #neveragain

Who on Earth names their cat Meowsolini?

newrepublic.com/article/1961... Down with the #oligarchy #plutocracy The villains in "A New Faith" < tinjar.ghost.io/a-new-faith > are people like them! #solarpunk #hopepunk #bookstodon #amwriting #climate #climatechange #climatecrisis #climateaction #adaptation #migration #justice #humanrights

*heads out to the garden. looks around. sighs* You've heard of Day of the Triffids? Locally, we're having the Summer of the Aphids.

Do you know what's sadder than the tears of a clown? Opening the fridge in the morning and discovering there's no diet Coke inside because yesterday you decided it was finally time to quit (again).

55 years old and I still can't spell rhythm without a dictionary.

I'm actually surprised it wouldn't take more. Forests are great and I'd totally love more of them, but there's only so much carbon they can lock up in biomass before saturating. www.latimes.com/environment/...

I watched Saturday Night Fever for the first time yesterday. I thought it would be all glam disco dancing with a super hot young Travolta, but it was actually a dark film (what a mess the patriarchy makes everybody!) with a maybe possibly slightly hopeful ending.

Stuck on a late, overcrowded train I ended up bonding with the woman next to me over anti-capitalist, pro-community ideas... until she started sprouting conspiracy theories. She wasn't stupid or uninformed, was just reaching wrong conclusions from the right dataset. It gave me hope, in a way.

Vive la résistance!

I love me a good 80s radio station, but what's up with them having weekly countdowns with 40 year old songs moving up and down a couple of spots in the charts? And based on what, exactly?

We had a cuckoo going "Cuckoo!" in the tree in front of our house this morning. First time I've heard one on our street. Seems apropos to the times.

59 seconds of kittens to soothe your weary soul

Happy #Caturday

Today the Jack Russell-Fox Terrier learned a valuable life lesson: never mess with a mamma cat in the same small room where she has stashed her kittens. Amazingly, the kittens slept through the whole altercation. #kittens

Our newfound cat hat 4 kittens yesterday and it's amazing how much that brightens up a day. 😍

Aging, ugh, embarrassing. I've started to totally, painfully miss my formative decade. Sure, it had serious problems and we all thought we'd die in a nuclear war. But we didn't hate each other so much and somehow the future felt wide open and full of promise. www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtIo...

Good grief, could somebody please tell me why the theme tune to Wait Till Your Father Gets Home is running on endless loop in my head. The last time I saw an episode was like 45 years ago.

Went to the florist to buy MIL's 70th birthday flowers the other day and came home with a very sweet, very young, very pregnant stray cat. Don't know why people think driving unwanted cats out to a village and tossing them out of the car is anything but cruel and heartless.