Thursday, January 24, 2013

Herding cats

A lot of people refer to the difficulty of organizing a group of people as herding cats... perhaps it's difficult because it's people doing the herding, instead of the cats?  The cats around here are pretty good at herding the people:

Miss J: The kitten of the house is fairly quiet most of the time, except just before breakfast and dinner.  Especially breakfast.  She can't read a clock (Mommy hasn't figured out how to teach telling time to cats), and has a range of about an hour for what she defines as breakfast time.  Mommy and Daddy, on the other hand, have a range of about 15 minutes for waking up, as defined by the alarm clocks.  But once Miss J starts - whether it's an hour before the alarm clock or 5 minutes - she just keeps going.  It's a continuous high-pitched meow-fest, which translates to "Come on, get up, you have to feed me, I'm staaarving.  Now, now, now, you have to get up NOW, I'm really hungry and oh yeah, so are the other cats.  You've got to feed us NOW."  (Translation may be a bit off, as I don't actually speak Cat.)

Mr. M: The old man has his quirks, though not as much near meal time (Miss J has those covered!).  His attempts to herd the people here tend to revolve around shower time and bed time: shower time because he likes drinking the water off the shower floor, and bed time to get his special spot under the covers.  He mwrorws at Mommy to lift the covers, and then stares at them, deciding if he's going to sleep under the blanket.  But heaven forbid Mommy put the covers down before he steps under, making him mrowr again.  And then he has to turn around a couple times under the cover before deciding if he's staying or not.  Some nights, he walks away, and comes back later (minutes or hours... it varies) and mrowrs at Mommy to lift the covers again.

Miss D: This lady is the quiet cat in our house.  She'll meow a bit around meal time, but mostly she uses body language to push the people around.  When she curls up on the bed by Mommy, she's curls up right against her... you know, the "if you shift a millimeter, I'm going to fill that space, try not to fall off the bed" type.  Her time sense is a bit better than Miss J's, so she waits until the last few minutes before the alarm rings to jump up on the bed and rub up against Mommy, to make sure she's awake at feeding time.  This is particularly amusing because Daddy feeds them most mornings.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Back into the swing of things

It should come as no surprise that the holidays were a busy time around here.  School was out, work was intermittent as people took time off, and the karate school was even closed for a few days.

But the busy schedule has continued past the holidays.  After taking several months off for an injury, Mommy's back at karate and getting ready to test for a new belt, along with Sissy.  When you're trying to cram in the knowledge for the next test, it's important to go to the right classes... at too large a class or too easy a class, you're not likely to cover the advanced skills needed, in this case, to test for 5th Gup. 

There are 10 Gups which count down, so white belt is 10th.  Mommy and Sissy will eventually move past the Gups and into the Dans, but that's a long way off still.  (Our belt system doesn't include purple, which Mommy says is a shame, since some forms of karate do.)

Now Mommy has to go write an essay about martial arts.  It's only 75 words, but the words have been slow to come together.