Category: Family

Bertha Redux

Bellana has a plant that she named Burt. It grew from a clipping taken from her step mother’s mother’s plant. During the pandemic lockdown Burt ended up at our house for a short time. Bellana cut off a clipping and Jen and I grew a new plant with it. We named it Bertha.

Bertha was a frequent source of blog posts for a while, but I haven’t been sharing any updates lately. She’s still alive and kicking, but she’s definitely having a rough go these days. A bunch of her leaves have died, while new ones are still sprouting. If I keep her watered she does okay, but she’s so big now that we don’t really have any place to put her and I fear she’s close to the live/die tipping point.

With the goal of keeping some form of the original plant alive forever, I took two new clippings this morning. They are in Harry’s room in a glass of water sitting next to the window. Unfortunately the weather is so gloomy and awful there isn’t a lot of sunlight to be found. It should get better over the weekend. Here’s hoping the two clippings grow some new roots and I can pot them both and have two more chances of keeping the original plant alive for all time.

Wish Bertha’s kids luck.

One Year

Today is Robin Sparkles the Cat’s first adoptiversary. One year ago today we met her for the first time at the MSPCA in Methuen, Massachusetts and we took her home with us. Her daughter, Lily Pad the Cat, was also adopted that day but she needed some medical work before we could take her home. We’re marking her adoptiversary as the day she came home for the first time. That is early next week. 

Robin’s name was Disco when she was at the shelter. Lily’s name was Boogie.

January 21, 2024
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January 21, 2023

Bah Humbug Day

It’s New Year’s Day. Is everyone having a nice holiday today? I hope so.

This is the day that we celebrate the new year by getting rid of all of the xmas decorations. It is the time for me to embrace my inner scrooge or my inner grinch and put an end to the season and put the house back to normal. Insert the sound of my sigh of relief here.

My initial plan was to wait for Harry to get out of bed at some point in the early afternoon and then Jen and Harry and I could just crank our way through all of the decorations together. It would take no time at all. Then when I finished my morning routine I decided to bring a couple of the boxes we store the decorations in upstairs with me and I’d pick off a few things on my own. Next thing I knew the tree was gone. Jen went from room to room and pulled most of the rest of the stuff out and stacked it on the dining room table. I took a break for some water and some meds and some real estate shopping TV show episodes and then brought a few more boxes upstairs and… next thing we knew, everything was gone. The house has been 100% de-xmased. 

It is glorious.

I still need to move some furniture around in the living room, move a bunch of empty amazon shipping boxes to the cellar, put a new cat tree together, and then help Jen cook a super fancy dinner. That is a long to-do list, but it is fine because the decorations are done.

Again… glorious, said the grinchy scrooge. 

New Years Eve

It’s New Years Eve again. Wasn’t it just New Years Eve a few weeks ago? 2023 is ending? How the hell did that happen?

We don’t have any solid plans for today apart from picking up some take-out Chinese food. Maybe some board games? Maybe another round of Yahtzee?

I watched Rebel Moon on Netflix. I was conflicted. I wanted to watch it but I also did not want to watch it. See the conflict? My spoiler free review is to recommend that you wait until part two comes out in April. This movie feels like two hours worth of a four hour heist movie, where generally the first half of a heist movie is assembling the team. That means the movie that is out now is really just the assembling of the team. That’s why it doesn’t have a coherent story. It’s more like a bunch of mini-movies introducing all of the characters. Hopefully part two will make sense on it’s own. So if you wait for part two to come out and then watch them both together, maybe it will be a decent movie as a whole. For now though… eh.

I have to play guitar today. I have two songs in progress for this month’s Record Every Month challenge. They both need lead guitar parts. I need to record them today and then mix the two songs and then I will have my first R.E.M. win since September. It’s a must.

Speaking of guitar, I went down a rabbit hole last week that I find myself visiting once every couple of years. If you read this page you might have noticed that I have been obsessed with the band Rush since 1981. Back then there were two bands that I was obsessed with. The other was Led Zeppelin. As I got older though, the whole unending adolescence vibe that Zeppelin had sort of got tiring for me and I moved away from them. Also, Jimmy Page is one of my guitar heroes, and he is definitely one of the reasons I NEEDED to learn to play guitar when I was a kid. When I look at my own playing objectively though (if that’s even possible) I don’t hear a lot of his style in my playing. I think as I moved away from the debauchery that Zeppelin represented, I sort of moved away from Page too.

Every once in a while though, I feel the need to really dig into the catalog and try to remind myself that there is a lot of value there. That comes up once every couple of years, and it came up for me on Thursday. I put together a playlist with all of their studio records and over the course of the work day I plowed through all of it. Did the old musical feelings I used to get when I listened to Led Zeppelin as a teenager come back? Yes. Not exactly the same, as I am no longer that kid that I used to be, but it was close enough that I felt good about the whole experience. Now I can move on to other things again until the next time I feel cosmically compelled to examine the Zeppelin again. Probably some time in 2025, I think.

Okay then, it’s almost 11:00am. I have not had anything to eat for about three hours. It’s time to have a snack to keep my stomach happy. Gastric Bypass for the win!

Happy New Years Eve, everyone. HoHoHo.