A trip to the vet

Posted on March 17, 2023 by Tessa

Today I had to take Jasmine to the vet. She HATES her car carrier and wails like a baby (really!) the whole way there. In an effort to make her trip more comfortable, I bought one of those “cat bags” like you see in Instagram and Facebook ads. They say that cats are calmer and happier in them. So I figured I’d give it a try.

Jasmine exploded fur everywhere as we tried to get her into the bag, then promptly pulled her head in like a turtle. LOL. We had a good laugh.

She stayed in the bag, mad but quiet, while I sat on the couch holding her for a few minutes, but when we passed her around a few times so Eve and I could get our shoes on, then brought her out to the car, she found her voice again! Once in the car she also found her bladder and peed in the bag, which leaked right through onto Eve’s lap and my car seat! Eve put her on the floor, still in the bag, while she went to change. I went inside to get cleaning supplies and came back to find Jasmine with her two front paws out through the neck hole. I grabbed the old carrier and Eve and I managed to get her out of the bag and into the carrier, despite the fact that she was covered in pee! Ewww! We took her to the vet, listened to all the compliments (apparently she is very strong and muscular), held her down for a vaccination, paid a ridiculous amount of money for it all, then went home.

Jasmine promptly went to the end of the hall to clean herself off. Huxley was very interested, so she had to bat at him for awhile too. That’s probably why she’s so strong!

All is well in the end, but it was an eventful afternoon!

Presents for the pets

Posted on January 13, 2022 by Tessa

Eve took her pet store gift card and spent it all on presents for the pets. :) She’s so cute. She loves it there too. We had a really fun time shopping. The staff is so friendly and the girl helping us had hot pink hair. Eve will be working there some day!

Thanks for the gift card, Mema! We had a lot of fun with it.

Life and such

Posted on May 22, 2020 by Tessa

It is a beautiful day and it’s Friday and I’m in the mood to post a few pictures. :)

This was yesterday morning. I took the picture and sent it to my colleagues, saying “Sorry, I can’t work today. The cat has claimed my computer.” :)

We are all still in school, though the high school seems to have given up so starting next week Lex will have no more assignments, while Eve and I will continue plugging away for three more weeks. :(

His birthday is Monday. The world was nice enough to give us all the day off. We have plans to continue socially isolating at home. There might also be a birthday world being built in Minecraft. I think Eve has been working on that the past few days. We were joking (kind of) about having a birthday party in Minecraft. It would be fun if that worked out.

Today the Vermont National Guard did a fly-over with four fighter jets. It was part of an event honoring “essential employees” and first responders in the state. The flew over all of the hospitals in the state, plus, I think, that big one right over the border. :)

We forgot until we heard a rumble in the sky, then we ran outside to see. It was still a few minutes before their scheduled time, so we hung out outside for a little while, hoping that we hadn’t missed them. Apparently we were too late though. :( We did enjoy some time in the sunshine at least! I figured I should take a few pictures to prove that we do leave the house on occasion. :)

The backyard neighbors have a lilac tree that is starting to hang over our lawn. We might help ourselves to lilacs later this summer!

Eve tried to climb the tree and decided she is too big and/or the tree is too small.

Waiting for the planes on a sunny day.

The karate dojo has been doing Zoom lessons (like everyone else in these quarantine times) and the also post challenges or special activities sometimes too. This week they posted the SHOE-do-in challenge. Eve saw it and said, “That’s easy!” Then proceeded to do it successfully on her second try! She was super proud of herself! Not because she worked hard at it, but because she’s naturally flexible. :)

We sent it right off to the dojo for bragging rights. :)

Finally, I started with the cat so I’ll end with the dog.

If I stay in one place for too long (like a few seconds), I ended up with a foot warmer. :)

Photos from the week(s)

Posted on March 26, 2019 by Tessa

Lot’s going on here, yet nothing that feels terribly blog-worthy. I have a few minutes while the kids are getting ready for bed, so here are a few things from the past week (or few). I just took a spin through my phone gallery for inspiration. :)

Mini-golf
DBS PTO set up a mini-golf fundraiser again this year. It was even better than last year because I didn’t have to organize it or clean up! Whoo hoo! I did help set up on Thursday (no school Friday) because it was in the library and the parent volunteers needed help, but I didn’t have to plan the whole thing like I did last year!

Eve had no interest in playing, but the boys were happy to play a round!

Jasmine
I came home from school one day and found the cat had claimed a pot holder as her own. IF I FITS I SITS.

She also helped Eve decorate for Easter. :)Barnaby
We babysat Barnaby last weekend while his family was out of town. It was fun to have a dog around the house again. Eve loved the cuddles. Not so much the farts though! He’s a stinky boy! LOL.

Sun
The sun is starting to come out again! Hallelujah!

I just realized that I never did a post for Lex’s spring concert. Oops. I’m going to put that in a post of it’s own right now. I love watching him in the drums!

Pets

Posted on February 24, 2018 by Tessa

We are pet sitting an adorable 9wk old kitten this weekend! She belongs to a neighbor and classmate of Eve’s. They just got her and didn’t know what to do for their previously scheduled vacation. Eve to the rescue! We go over twice a day to play with her and, you know, feed her. We may or may not have taken many (many) pictures of her!!

Eve and Luna

She loves her toys. Kitten are so very playful.

All the kitten love inspired Eve to take some pictures of our pets too. Right now when I look at my camera roll I have nearly 200 pictures of these three animals. LOL!

Jazzy loves sleeping in the coat cubbies.

Arlo says “put away the dang camera and take me for a walk!”

Oh, there she is again!

We’re only a little crazy around here!

What I’m working on…

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Tessa

Life is busy. So much for the lazy days of summer! I’m working on:

Getting our house ready to sell. Suddenly, out of nowhere, we have four showings and one of them has already made an offer! I have spent the past few days cleaning, straightening, taking things down, filling holes, painting, sweeping, etc. Our house is looking spic and span and sparse!
Coordinating contractors. The upstairs bathtub started leaking, through the floor and through the bedroom ceiling! A project which wasn’t on any list suddenly jumped right to the top! We have a contractor here now who is doing the work, very well, but very slowly! I’m also trying to line up someone to hang drywall and someone to fix our bulkhead door.
Keeping up with the new house. They are behind schedule (of course!) because of all this dang rainy weather we’ve been having! The foundation is pour and at this point they are planning to start framing on Monday. They are also hoping to pour the garage and pour concrete on Monday. We have been eagerly awaiting that so we can try to put hand prints in fresh cement on the porch. I started a shared Google album where I’m putting pictures of the house project. I’d like to make it into a book when it’s all done. Feel free to check it out. I’ll add photos as the house is built.
Finishing up my two grad courses. I have a project a week due and a big one due on Sunday. I worked hard to get ahead of the assignments before leaving for California, but then was behind by the time I got back. One more week and all the assignments will be due and done! Then I get a break before the next round of courses start. :)
Inventorying the library collection. I got approval for summer work to conduct a full inventory of the library, which hasn’t been done in over ten years! That was great news, however now I’m trying to get those hours in before heading to Franklin next week. By the time I get back from Franklin they will cleaning the carpets in the school and very shortly after that we will be back at work! Where is my summer going?!?
I was trying to make a Snapfish book about our vacation because they had a great promotion running, but I missed that deadline so now I have a half finished book. I’ll try to finish it soon so it’s ready for the next time they are running a special. Also, this blog. :) I think I’m a few blog posts behind.
Ferrying kids back and forth to camp this week. Ignoring the dog. Ignoring all my healthy eating and exercise efforts.

Last week I got last minute tickets to see Beauty and the Beast, but put on by the theater company who is running Eve’s theater camp. I took Eve and one of her classmates. We had a great time! It was a fun little break from the busy chaos.

Eve and her friend with Belle. Eve’s friend got all decked out in her pretty clothes and high heels. Eve grabbed a stuffie and flip-flops.

Also, Lex loves the cat. I love Lex.

They are adorable. <3

And my fish at school had babies! Surprise! I was there doing inventory and a summer school teacher (they are using the library) came over and asked if the fish were mine. Umm… who else’s would they be?! He said, “Did you know you have babies in the tank?” Ummmm… nope! I had five cichlids, one died (or was killed by the others) and the others are two mating pairs. Surprise! I didn’t even know the females were pregnant. I don’t even know which ones are females!! (You’d think as a librarian I would figure these things out, but really, who has time for that?!?) So now there are lots of little babies swimming around. I hope one or two survive to adulthood. :)

Babies! Fries? :)

A lemon of a cat?

Posted on March 28, 2017 by Tessa

We got this sweet new kitty last month. She is little and crazy and so cuddly. We knew that she had some problems, but whatever, she’s cuddly. I took her to the vet last week and the vet confirmed our suspicion that she is a little cross-eyed, apparently common in Siamese cats. She also had a polyp in her hear when she was young (removed before we got her), which explained her drunken sort of movements. I told the vet that Alan and I joked that she was a drunken kitty and the vet said, “yeah, her world probably does feel a little shaky to her.” She also has allergies, to what we don’t know, and bad teeth. Mostly this was not a surprise because most of it was written on the form when we got her. The cross-eyed thing was new to me and the fact that the polyp affected her vestibular system (balance). I’m telling Alan all of this later that night and he replies with, “So, we got a lemon of a cat?” I cracked up! Now every time I look at her I think she’s a little lemon. I just told Lex the story tonight too, explaining what “lemon” meant. We gushed over our sweet little lemon cat. :)

Meet Jasmine

Posted on February 21, 2017 by Tessa

One afternoon last week Eve came into the library crying. Life was rough, bad day, missing the kitty, sob, sob, sob. I did what any loving mother would do and tried to distract her with birthday party plans. We’ve been talking about having a party at the local humane society, but they don’t do parties, so with Eve on my lap we pulled up the website for the next nearest humane society. Of course, once you’re on the website you need to browse the adorable animals too. Eve came across a brother/sister pair that she fell in love with. The listing said they were kind, gentle, and the girl was named Daisy! Eve was smitten. Then I saw a “February Special” on the front page saying if the cat had been at the shelter for over a year you could get it for free! I was smitten! Two sweet cats for free?! We decided to go visit on Thursday.

That morning I called to ask some questions and learned that Daisy and Kashmire (brother and sister) were pending adoption. Sigh. The kids decided they wanted to stick with the plan and to visit the humane society anyway. We’ve never been there before so it seemed like a good thing to do.

We met lots of cats (and laughed at some pretty entertaining dogs), but when we saw this little girl we were in love.

Miss Jasmine

The kids were ready to take her home, but it turns out that place doesn’t do “same day adoptions” so we had to put in an application and wait. And wait. And wait. Four long days of kids wondering if we would be approved, wondering when we can get the cat, and hoping, HOPING, no one else took her first.

Today we finally got word that she was ours. The kids were thrilled!! They set up all the cat stuff (food bowls, litter box, toys) and we headed down to pick her up.

Lex can’t get enough of her. He even said, “Sometimes when you cry it’s because you’re happy.” :)

Paperwork done and ready to go! Just one quick photo for the adoption website (and mom’s blog!)

We got her home and put her in the bathroom to explore. She found the “behind the dryer” spot pretty quickly. :) Daisy found that spot a few times too!

Lost already!

She was pretty happy back there. Purring away. We pulled the washing machine out and she peeked out a few times, but kept tucking herself back again.

After awhile she came out and met Arlo. He was intrigued, but not aggressive.

New friends

Eve brought her upstairs and the kitty quickly found another good hiding place. :) I spent the afternoon reassuring the kids that she is friendly (she is!) and that she’s just shy right now, but it won’t last forever. We are watching a movie right now and Jasmine is exploring upstairs. I hear her walking around and knocking things over! She came down the stairs once too, looked around, then headed back up. She’ll be snuggling in laps in no time!

Under the bed is cozy.

And then there’s these goofballs! :)

Arlo and Lex

Calm and Chaos: Life with kids

Tag Archives: Jasmine