Hibernating with a snow storm on the way!

Can you find the Timber Lake Tiger in this photo?

How about now?

We are celebrating our first holiday season at The Cottage and my second overall. We had freezing rain this morning and there is snow everywhere.

Mommy Bonnie is trying to find a way to Iowa to visit her son and granddaughters that will keep her on good roads. It is 11 a.m. and she hasn't left yet. Mommy hopes the weather is better tomorrow when she tries to get to Logansport to visit Grandma for the day.

There just isn't much going on here. We sleep a lot. Mommy has lots of books and a movie to watch over the weekend. She worked yesterday and will get a couple extra days next week too. So far both of my mommies have been able to get to work. They say the hardest part is getting to a main road. Mommy Bonnie has to get to 9 and Mommy has to get to 24. There are lots of curves and hills between here and there.

I recovered from my fall just fine. My leg never did swell and I only limped a couple of days. I haven't been on the railing since though Tacumwah has.

No other news here. I hope all of my readers have a safe and joyous holiday season!

~There is no such thing as a FREE kitten!~

The bigger they come....

...the harder they fall.

First casualty of the railing...your blogger.

Tacumwah and Little Bear are best buds.

Tacumwah is using LB as a pillow while they share a wool blanket.

Toasted cat...Tacumwah on the toaster.

Lucy helping Mommy paint on the last sleepover.

Yes, it is sadly true that this morning I became the first casualty of the loft railing. I was walking the railing and Tacumwah was pawing at me from Mommy Bonnie's hopeless chest wanting to play. Mommy was on her way up the stairway to try to prevent a mishap when I lost my balance and tumbled into the dining area below. I managed to hit every countertop and hand railing between the loft railing and floor where I landed. Mommies couldn't do anything but gasp as I flew through the air. I landed on my feet (sort of), and walked away. But now my right front leg is giving me fits and I keep licking it and looking up at Mommy and telling her it hurts. I am putting weight on it so she doesn't think it is broken. Mommy Bonnie hopes it will keep me off the railing for the rest of my life!

Mommy has had two sleepovers since I was last able to post to my blog. Let's see if she can remember the food and movies.

The November sleepover featured some beef tenderloin fillet that Mommy thought was a whole piece but ended up being trimmings. Grandma had baked potato and a salad with it if Mommy remembers correctly. The menu for the December sleepover (just this past Wednesday) was sauerbraten, red cabbage and noodles that Grandma does in a crockpot, and Mommy said it was yummy.

Mommy tried to paint this one wall in Grandma's bedroom that has issues (long story), but there wasn't enough paint to do a good job. Grandma is going to buy more paint and Mommy will try again in a month or two.

Movies: November - Burn After Reading with John Malkovich, Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand and George Clooney. Mommy and Grandma both give this movie a thumbs up and 4 stars. Destined to be a cult film in the future, this was a witty, wonderfully-acted movie with a most uncharacteristic performance by Brad Pitt. Well-written and directed by the Coen brothers, this movie is hard to categorize; i.e., is it a drama or comedy? It involves blackmail, infidelities, double-standards. Absolutely hilarious with unexpected twists and turns. You could watch this movie over and over and see things you didn't see in previous viewings. Rent this movie.

December - The Visitor with Richard Jenkins, Hiam Abbass, Haaz Sleiman, and Danai Jekesai Gurira. Jenkins plays a widowed professor who is teaching only one class so that he can concentrate on finishing his 4th book. When told that he must go to New York to present a paper at a conference, he arrives in NY at an apartment he owns to find a young couple occupying it. This young couple are both illegals. Jenkins' character befriends them, lets them stay on, and the relationships that develop enrich the lives of all three of them, particularly Jenkins, who feels depressed and whose life has become mundane. Jenkins takes a leave of absence from his job while he tries to assist Sleiman's character, Tarek, after he has been arrested and detained as an illegal. Not a great movie, Mommy still gives this movie 3 stars.

The Namesake with Kal Penn, Tabu, and Irrfan Kahn. Mommy watched this movie last night and enjoyed it (3 stars). Arranged marriages, trying to keep ones culture alive in a foreign country (Indian-born couple lives and works in New York), and attempting to instill those cultural values in children born in America who appreciate all that America stands for and have little understanding of what life would have been like for them if they had grown up in India (until they take a 3-month trip there with their parents) are what this movie is about. And surfacing throughout the movie is the fact that the father names his son after a Russian writer, Nikolai Gogol. This name causes the son some problems in school and in his life in general though Mommy isn't certain exactly why. Here is a brief excerpt from one of Gogol's books which Mommy thinks is excellent:

"The moon is made by some lame cooper, and you can see the idiot has no idea about moons at all. He put in a creosoted rope and some wood oil; and this has led to such a terrible stink all over the earth that you have to hold your nose. Another reason the moon is such a tender globe it that people just cannot live on it any more, and all that's left alive there are noses. This is also why we cannot see our own noses - they're all on the moon." (from Diary of a Madman, 1835)

Mommy has no book reviews. She is currently reading Dan Brown's latest book, The Lost Symbol, but has not read a book cover-to-cover for a while.

Mommy Bonnie is working on a paper for her class and Mommy isn't doing much of anything. She has two days off the middle of this month and additional holidays that will give her two 5-day breaks. She doesn't have much to do to keep herself busy, but she says she will come up with some projects.

Mommy Bonnie will be going to Iowa over Christmas to see her son, Scott, and her two granddaughters, Maya an Nala. Mommy will go spend part of Christmas day with Grandma. Grandma may also have all of her children and their spouses over on the 13th for a get-together, and Mommies are going to Wolcottville on the 20th to spend some time with one of Mommy Bonnie's cousins, Janice.

No other news here. The most exciting news was me taking a tumble from the loft railing. Little Bear also had an issue with the front porch steps and he refuses to go up or down them any more. He may be injured because he yelps every once in a while and won't chew hard treats...only wants soft ones. And Millie is stiffer now in the colder weather. So we are the walking wounded here.

Mommy says she will try to update the blog soon so that my readers can get the latest news about my fall.

~There is no such thing as a FREE kitten!~

Spending the day under the quilt!

Your blogger

(Click on photos to enlarge)

Marquette (L) and Tacumwah

Mommy's new cellphone seems to take pretty good photos. Her old one couldn't have gotten as good a photo of me looking through the loft railing.

Once again Mommy has gone a very long time between posts. She has been busy doing not much of anything. And once again she is on vacation trying to use up some hours before she loses them at the end of the year. She hasn't even read any books and has only seen one movie, Mama Mia.

Movie review: Mama Mia with Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan. Mommy really wanted to dislike this movie and wouldn't even have watched it except that Grandma owned a copy and forced her to bring it home. So, one day last weekend, she and Mommy Bonnie watched this movie. Well, people either like this movie or hate it. Mommy expected to hate it. When it was all said and done, Mommy had to admit that she liked the movie because (1) it made her smile and (2) she enjoyed the music. The acting was not that good, there were numbers that could have been cut, the dancing could have been much better, but more important than all of that was that the movie made Mommy smile. A patron at the library took the movie home the same weekend Mommy watched it.They decided to compare notes on Monday. The lady came in and said, "Well?" Mommy said, "You know, I liked it. The lady indicated that she did not like the movie. Mommy asked her, "Did it make you smile?" The lady replied with a reluctant, "Yes." Mommy said, "I rest my case."

My mommies were very busy the last two days cleaning the cottage like I have never seen them do before. Today I found out why. About 11 a.m. Grandma and Aunt Jane showed up. I raced for the quilt on the upstairs futon and hid. I was there for hours. Tacumwah was all over everyone sucking up. Marquette was missing. After tearing the house apart, Mommy discovered that when she put Little Bear in his kennel to keep him from being a pest, Marquette must have been in there, because she found him in the back of the kennel curled into a ball.

Mommy gave Grandma and Aunt Jane a tour of the cottage and it included the loft. She pulled the quilt down a little so they could see me. But I refused to come downstairs the whole time they were here. I waited until I didn't hear their voices any longer and Mommy called up to me that they were gone. Then I came flying down the stairs.

Mommy Bonnie got a job at DePuy in Warsaw. She starts this coming Wednesday. We will miss having her home with us...especially the dogs. It is a contract job for 6 months.

The barn is done, the deck is built and all but one storm door is on. At least Builder Mike won't be around much and I won't have to hide under the quilt. There are rumblings of other smaller projects but maybe they won't happen for a while.

~There is no such thing as a FREE kitten!~

Book and movie reviews

Trying to cat nap on the counter.

Tacumwah in her box on the heating pad.

Mommy has returned from Sleepover #10. No movie for the second month in a row as she and Grandma were busy.

Mommy determined that lightning had taken out Grandma's phone and the modem in her computer, so off the twosome went to purchase a laptop for Grandma. They had already decided not to put any money into fixing Grandma's antiquated computer. They bought a 17" Toshiba only to get it home and find out it did not have a phone jack. (Grandma is still on dialup.) The man at the store said it had a phone jack but the fine print said "available on some models." So back they went to exchange the laptop and they had to get a 15" which was more expensive because it had more bells and whistles than the 17". Grandma did get a 10% discount on it for their trouble. Mommy also had Grandma buy a wireless mouse with a bluetooth USB device and a surge protector.

Setting up the laptop was a breeze as the bluetooth device was instantly recognized and set up by Vista, and as soon as the mouse was turned on it worked. Mommy set up Grandma's email and added all of her contacts and tried to make everything easy for Grandma to read. The computer boots up very quickly and shuts down quickly too. It will take some getting used to, but Grandma should be able to handle it. Mommy also changed Grandma's cellphone battery. She didn't get the painting done she wanted to do, but there is always next month.

Dinner was the last of the scallops. It took 8 months to eat all the scallops in the package. They also had fillet mignon, baked potato, a yummy salad, wine, coffee and homemade cookies. After dinner they did watch The Good Wife which Grandma had taped.

This morning Grandma had to leave early to meet Charlie to go to Indy for a concert, but Mommy and Grandma still had breakfast together and Mommy got back to us fairly early.

Book review: Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctorow. Mommy enjoyed this short novel. She said it was beautifully written. Though Doctorow took great license with his story, having the Collyer brothers live into the '70s when they died in 1947, she believes that the basic facts were probably accurate and taken from documents and news accounts written at the time the mansion in which the brothers lived was broken into by the police who were notified of a foul odor coming from the house. Homer and Langley were two brothers who inherited a mansion on 5th Avenue in NY from their parents. Reclusive hoarders, there was hardly a square foot in the house that was not piled high with stacks of newspapers and other things collected throughout his life by Langley. There were 4 or 5 grand pianos in the house, a Model T Ford, and anything else Langley thought they might have a use for. The house was booby-trapped by Langley and the doors and windows barricaded on the inside. Langley was crushed to death by one of his own booby traps while trying to reach Homer to help him. Homer starved to death. The police had to break into the house, and Wikipedia has photos of the things that were thrown into the street so that they could try to reach the brothers. It was days before Langley's body was found. A very good novel; however, Mommy wonders if an equally good non-fiction accounting of the brothers' lives could not have been written, sticking more to the facts. It seems to be the trend today to speculate and write fictional accounts of famous people; i.e., Frank Lloyd Wright, who had interesting enough lives that it seems silly to write things that aren't true.

Movie review: Flash of Genius, starring Greg Kinnear. Mommy always enjoys watching Logansport native, Greg Kinnear, in movies and she was not disappointed in this based-on-a-true-story movie about the man who invented interval wipers. Kinnear was very good as Dr. Bob Kearns who sued the Ford Motor Company for stealing his pattens...and won! Three stars.

Movie review: Sunshine Cleaning with Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin. The writing, directing and acting in this movie was excellent. A story about a family and, in particular, two sisters, who start a crime scene clean-up business. Their mishaps, their relationship with each other and with others, is the crux of this movie. Each sister is dealing with her own story-within-a-story, Adams, a single mother dealing with her high school sweetheart who married another woman but with whom she is having an affair, and Blunt tracking down the daughter of one of the crime scene victims whose ID and photos she took from the scene to use to find the daughter who she felt should know about her mother's death. This movie might not rate 4 stars, but it gets at least 3 1/2 from this reviewer.

I guess this blog was all about Mommy, huh?

Tacumwah is all better from her cold though she is still using the heating pad in the box. Marquette is not coughing any more, and I never got sick.

Each day when Builder Mike comes I hide under the quilts upstairs. Today Mommy came home from the sleepover and found me there and told me it was ok to come out. I came out within a few minutes and stayed out the rest of the day because I knew Mommy wouldn't let anybody hurt me.

~There is no such thing as a FREE kitten!~

Frost advisory

Your blogger

Wow! It hasn't been a week and Mommy is letting me blog! Not that much has happened around here.

We are all keeping an eye on Tacumwah who has had a cold. Mommies got out the heating pad and wrapped a towel around it and put it in a box Miss Becky gave Mommy. Tacumwah has been sleeping in it almost non-stop. She is eating, drinking, etc., and seems a little better today. Her eyes and nose aren't running as much. Mommy is worried that Marquette and I will get Tacumwah's cold since we have been taking care of her.

Mommy gets her car fixed next week so that will be behind her. And her other big news is that she filed for early Social Security which she will begin receiving next January. I asked her what that meant and she said it meant that my catfood would not have to be rationed. I asked her what that meant and she just said, "Oh, Possum, you ask too many questions."

Builder Mike and his crew were here today and I spent a lot of time under the quilt. Mommy came up to watch a kids' video on clouds and told me it was ok to get out from under the quilt.

No book or movie reviews today though Mommy is almost done with Homer and Langley and will be watching a movie today or tomorrow.

~There is no such thing as a FREE kitten!~

Sweeping it all under the rug....

I worked my way under the kitchen runner.

Here we are and another week has come and gone.

Mommy finally got everything taken care of with the Honda Pilot and a check is in the mail from the insurance company of the lady who ran into it. Soon it will go into the shop for repairs.

Karen met Mommy at Ziffles last Monday and, as usual, they found plenty to talk about. Mommy thinks Karen is just about the neatest person she has ever met.

No books or movies to review but Mommy is very much still enjoying Homer and Langley. She wishes she had time to just finish it, but there is much to do and little time to read.

Mommy does want to mention a new TV series she watched last week, The Good Wife, starring Julianna Margulies. She says the writing is excellent as well as the acting, and it is her new favorite show. Tuesday nights at 10 on CBS. Mommy can't stay awake long enough to watch it so has to watch it on the computer the next day.

Mommies took off yesterday to go to an apple orchard southwest of Huntington, to tour the Forks of the Wabash museum and the Richardville house, to pick up a cache for Mommy at Evergreen Park, and to go to the Pioneer Festival at Hires Park.

Tacumwah is sick. She has a runny nose and eyes. Mommies are keeping a close eye on her. She has never been sick before.

Builder Mike will be back this week to begin work on the barn. They will pour the concrete slab. I don't know what I will do. I must learn to overcome my fear of strangers so I don't have to spend entire days under the quilt on the futon in the loft.

Grandma's computer is up and running again. Changing the monitor did the trick and Mommy has an idea of how to restore the settings and maybe get the flat screen monitor to work again.

There were sirens last night and some emergency vehicles went racing down the road headed south. Mommy saw Mr. Taylor in one of them. Mommy has seen him almost every weekend!

Mommy needed a new cellphone, so last weekend Mommies went to The Fort and ran lots of errands and picked up a few caches. Mommy wanted a phone like the one she had, but AT&T didn't carry it any more. She picked out one that was similar and the young man who waited on her said, "That is a very popular phone with seniors." So Mommy calls to Mommy Bonnie and says, "Come over here, Bonnie, and look at the senior phone I like."

~There is no such thing as a FREE kitten!~

Smokey or Possum? YOU decide!

Lucy at last Wednesday's sleepover.

Mommy had her sleepover with Grandma and she said it didn't go well. Oh, the company was just fine, but Mommy said the steak she bought was not very good, the melon she brought from the garden wasn't very good, and none of the people she wanted to win on America's Got Talent won.

Mommy talked Grandma into watching the final vote for America's Got Talent instead of watching a movie. Besides, Susan Boyle was making her American singing debut which Mommy PREDICTED many months ago would take place on the finale of America's Got Talent. Mommy likes Susan's voice but did not care for the song that much. THEN, a guy who CAN"T SING worth beans won the contest over people much more talented than him. Mommy got worked up watching the show and Grandma had to shut the windows on her porch because she was afraid her neighbors would call the police because she (Grandma) lives a very quiet life and Mommy was talking and swearing pretty loudly.

The turtle sundae was good...the first of the season for Mommy and Grandma. Good thing they got to Sycamore because they will be closing in the next couple of weeks.

Then Mommy couldn't fix Grandma's computer. She is getting a monitor resolution error and Mommy couldn't even boot in Safe Mode (whatever that means) and Grandma is still without her computer. One of Mommy's brothers is going to take a monitor over and hook it up and see if Grandma's monitor is just bad. Mommy and Grandma may be shopping for a new monitor or a new computer on the next sleepover.

And then there was the touch-up paint job where Mommy touched up Grandma's walls with the wrong color paint and then wondered why it didn't look right. It really is kinda funny. Finally, with the right paint, Mommy touched up the walls again, and the spots with two coats look fine, but Mommy may have to repaint one whole wall for Grandma on the next sleepover. There may not be a movie that night either!

So Mommy Bonnie got her car back from the shop today (I did mention she got back-ended on her first day of class, right?) and it looks great. But a lady ran into the Honda on Tuesday as Mommy was turning into the grocery store near her work and now the Pilot will have to go through repairs! It is such a pain to get estimates and loaner cars, etc.

We are getting a pole building put up that will be a garage for the cars and house bicycles, lawn equipment, etc. Every time I hear Builder Mike and his crew I run up to the loft and hide under the quilt on the futon. I was under there a very long time on Thursday until Mommy came up and told me that everything was okay. The building will also have a shop for Mommy Bonnie to make wine in.

So Mommies were in Roanoke last Saturday for the Fall Festival and ran into Mr. Taylor again. This time he was with his wife and his son and daughter. I really liked his son a lot. His son told Mommy that they looked and looked for me when it was time for them to leave the campground and his parents told him that they knew Mommy would find me and would give Smokey a good home. Smokey...that is the name they gave me. So now I have even another name to add to the name my mother gave me and the name Mommy gave me. Even though it has been a year, Mr. Taylor and his family haven't forgotten me and I think that is really special.

No movies and no books to review. Mommy is reading E.L. Doctorow's Homer and Langley and says it is beautifully written.

A busy weekend for Mommy. Lots to do inside and out.

~There is no such thing as a FREE kitten!~