a reincarnated cat?

So, I mentioned yesterday that we have a new cat!  Her name is no longer Eggplant; her new name is — Pepper!  It’s not the most original or brilliant name in the book, but it seems to suit her.  We had planned for months to name the new cat Poppinga (Isn’t it fun to say?  “Poppinga!” Five points for anyone who can figure out where that name comes from!), but when it came time to officially name the cat, Lyd put her foot down against the name.  So, we instead chose Pepper.  It’s still got lots of “p” sounds which we all like, but it’s more of a “normal” cat name.

We chose this cat based on its description on the Peninsula Humane Society webpage:

Do you like eggplant? You know that purple vegetable that makes a great type of lasagna? Well if you do, you need to adopt me because that’s my name, Eggplant! I also have a nickname “Auika” but generally people just call me Eggplant. I am a 3 year old Domestic Short Hair female. I was adopted by a family about a month ago until they returned me recently. Their cat didn’t like me too much and I didn’t really like her so that pretty much landed me back at the shelter. I am good as an indoor/outdoor cat…I know how to use a litterbox and also go outside. Also, I lived with children under 10 and did wonderfully. I would prefer to be an “only child” so no other animals in the home would be best. Thanks for taking the time to read about me! Come visit please! A432861.

This sounded perfect for our family!  Indoor/outdoor, knows how to go outside, did wonderful with children under 10, no other animals in the home — it all sounded good to us.  What we didn’t realize, however, is that this cat is almost an exact replicate of our former cat, Stripes!  We chose the cat based on her description, without getting a good look at her first.  We did observe the cat inside its small cubicle-sized room at the shelter, but she and her 5 other cat-mates were all sleeping, so we weren’t sure which one was Eggplant.  When she was brought to us in a small “get acquainted” room, the first thing out of both JJ’s and my mouth was, “It looks just like Stripes!”  In fact, she looks so much like Stripes that JJ and I are having a VERY difficult time calling the cat “she” (Stripes was a “he”), and have even called her “Stripes” once or twice.

Lyd, however, has no such problems.  She loves Pepper, and we are doing our best to restrain her from smothering the cat with affection.  This cat is her birthday present, albeit a late present; Lyd was given a fair amount of money for her birthday, and when I asked her if she wanted to spend her money on a cat, she readily agreed.  She is completely happy with her choice.  Curious J is really enjoying the cat, too.  Last night she was giggling like crazy every time the cat walked past her; it was pretty cute.

Pepper seems like she will be a good match for our family.  Despite the huge amount of affection being showered on her, we haven’t heard her protest once.  She hasn’t clawed or bit anyone, even though Curious J gave her tail a good yank last night.  For now, her home is in our enclosed back porch, which is a room built alongside our house.  It has electricity and is roofed and fully enclosed with sliding glass door walls, but it doesn’t have heat.  However, the temp got up to 70 today, so that’s not a big problem.  She has used the litter box once, and I think she’s taken a few bites of food.  However, she much prefers to be in the house rather than on the back porch, away from all the people.  Last night and this morning, she spent considerable time in our family room around the girls.  Later this morning she found her way upstairs and took up residence under the twin bed in Curious J’s room.  She was hiding under there in such a way that it was really hard to see her, and for about an hour we wondered if she had somehow gotten out of the house.  I was very glad to find her hiding under there, especially since I had looked in every other nook and cranny in the house, and if she wasn’t in there, I was going to start really worrying.

So, after reading some of the advice given to us in her adoption papers, we’ve made the decision to keep her mainly in the back porch, where her food and litter box are.  I think coming into our new, big house and being practically mauled by our two affectionate daughters was a bit overwhelming for the cat.  Pepper needs to settle down into some quiet digs so that she’ll actually start eating.  I’m also trying to limit how much time Lyd spends out in the back porch with the cat.  Lyd is extremely disappointed by this, but I think it’s for the best.  I’m planning to bring the cat into the family room with me after the kids go to bed.  I’ll watch a movie and cuddle with the cat, and hopefully that will help Pepper feel more comfortable.

Eventually, once she learns that this is home, we’d like to start letting her outside during the day.  Maybe she can make herself useful by catching a few mice for us!  Our old cat, Stripes, hardly ever came into the house.  He was strictly an outdoor cat.  The world was his litterbox, which made taking care of him a simple matter of putting food out twice a day.  However, I suspect that if Lyd has anything to do with it, this cat will be indoors more of the time, so we’ll have to take better care of Pepper physically than we did with Stripes.  Although, Stripes lived to be 19 years old, so apparently not taking him to the vet paid off!    But, we get an inital vet visit for free since we got the cat from a shelter, so I’ll try to set that up next week.  Also, all cats that come out of a California Humane Society have to be neutered and brought up to date on their shots, so I at least don’t have to worry about that end of things.  No surprise kittens at our house!

Overall, we’re very happy with this cat.  She seems to have a great personality, and once she feels comfortable here, she should fit in well with our family.  The fact that she looks so much like Stripes is serendipitous, I think.  I’m sure she will get called “Stripes” by people in church.  Even though Stripes has been gone almost a year, I’m sure there are still people who haven’t realized that Stripes actually died.  Over and over, JJ and I have marveled over how much this new cat looks like Stripes!  It’s really uncanny.

Just for comparison’s sake, here’s two pictures of Stripes (with a very young Lyd):

And here’s two pictures of Pepper.

Don’t they look the same?  Perhaps Pepper is Stripes reincarnated! 

Eggplant

Today we bought a cat from the Humane Society.  We had promised Lyd a cat for her birthday, and we had been stalling for over a month.  Today was The Day.

Lyd is in love with her new cat. 

I will share more about her tomorrow.

PS. We changed the cat’s name.

recipe for a relaxing Thanksgiving

Our family had a VERY relaxing Thanksgiving celebration today.  Here’s how we did it:

1. Go to church the night before, and have everyone stay up later than normal, eating sweet things at the Pie & Ice Cream Social after church.  Hopefully this will cause…
2. The children to sleep in.  Curious J slept until 8am!!!  She hasn’t done that in months.  Lyd slept until at least 9am, although she didn’t emerge from her room until 9:30, which is when JJ got up.  I, of course, arose with the baby at 8am.  But still!  8am!  What a treat!
3. Take a shower while your baby naps.  Allow your older daughter to join you in the shower, which she will love.  Dress yourself in comfy, yoga-style clothes.  Don’t bother to put your contacts in.  You’re relaxing today, remember?
4. Take it easy all morning.  Put away clean dishes.  Fold some laundry.  Watch the classic movie “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” while you do that.  Introduce your daughter to the fantastic dancing scene in the middle of that movie, which she will like.  Sing “Bless Your Beautiful Hide” all morning.
5. Make your cranberry sauce early, so it’s ready for later.  Make a small, super-simple late lunch (since half the family ate breakfast really late) of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.
6. Deal with a small personal crisis at church/school.  (Everything’s okay, but the result is that you’ll be sub-teaching in the grade 2-4 classroom on Monday and Tuesday next week.)  This takes some time, and distracts you from the project you meant to tackle this afternoon, but so it goes.
7. Play with your kids a bit.  Enjoy your children.  They’re cute. 
8. Make sweet potato souffle, broccoli-corn casserole, mashed potatoes and gravy in the afternoon.  (Make your ginormous turkey two days previously.  So, all you have to do to get your turkey ready is to take your previously prepared pan of sliced turkey meat covered in turkey skin and turkey drippings out of the fridge and pop it into the oven an hour before you plan to eat.  Voila!  The turkey is done.)
9. Invite only two guests over for the Thanksgiving meal, and have only one come.  Eat in the kitchen (especially if your dining room has been your husband’s makeshift office for almost the past year).
10. Eat early, at 5pm.  Eat plenty.  It’s all delicious. 
11. Put your children to bed.  They’re whiny and a little out of sorts after all the relaxation of the day, so just get them to bed and get their day over with.
12. Wash your dishes.  (This is not particularly relaxing, but it will be relaxing to have it done and over with.  The dread of having to do all those dishes is worse than just … doing the dishes.)  Ahh.
13. Sit down at your computer, and write a blog on how to have a relaxing Thanksgiving.

Despite not having family around to get together with on this Thanksgiving, it was one of the nicest and most relaxing Thanksgivings we’ve had in a long time.  Making the turkey on Tuesday was a huge help with that.  I think I will always be making the turkey ahead of time from now on.  It made such a difference.

And no matter if our extended family is around or not, my husband and my girls and I were together.  They are the people I want to be with the most, and any holiday I get to spend with them is a good holiday.

It was a good Thanksgiving. 

cherry pie love

Can she make a cherry pie, Billy Boy, Billy Boy,
Can she make a cherry pie, charming Billy?
She can make a cherry pie quick as a cat can wink it’s eye,
She’s a young thing and cannot leave her mother.

I love cherry pie.  Hands down, it is my favorite kind of pie.  No competition.

On Wednesday, I made a cherry pie from scratch.  Not just from scratch, but Completely From Scratch, even down to the fact that I picked the cherries off a tree and pitted and froze them myself.

It turned out perfectly.  It was DELICIOUS.

Yes, I’m shamelessly bragging.  I realize this.  But I haven’t made a pie for at least two, if not three years, much less made a pie totally from scratch like this.  And I had never made a cherry pie by myself before.  So, yes, this was a note-worthy accomplishment for me.

How did I do it?

The cherries were from last summer.  Remember the cherries?  Those were the ones I used.

My pie crust was from Martha Stewart, her pate brisee recipe.  It’s a bit tricky to work with if the dough gets too warm, but it is YUMMY.  I made the dough in my food processor, which makes it so easy.  I used to make pie crust by hand with that hand-held kitchen contraption that I can’t remember the name of.  That was a pain.  The food processor is much easier … and faster.  Hey, even Martha says to use a food processor for this pie crust recipe!

My cherry pie recipe was from a small paperback book I purchased in college somewhere on a choir tour titled “Old-Fashioned Berry Recipes.”  I haven’t found a bad recipe in this book yet. 

Fresh Cherry Pie

1 9-inch double piecrust, unbaked
4 C. fresh sour cherries, pitted
2 Tbs. tapioca
1 Tbs. cornstarch
1 1/3 C. sugar
2 Tbs. butter
1/4 C. water (I used cherry juice from the thawed bag of cherries, and I used an extra 2 Tbs. or so)
1/4 tsp. almond extract

In large saucepan, combine tapioca, cornstarch, sugar, butter and water.  Cook over medium heat until mixture thickens.  Then stir in almond flavoring and cherries.  Remove pan from heat and set aside while preparing crust.  Pour filling into pie crust.  Add the top crust and seal around edges by crimping so that juice will not ooze out into oven. Prick top crust with fork numerous times as heat vents.  Bake in pre-heated oven 450 degrees for 10 minutes.  Reduce heat to 350 degrees, and bake 40 minutes more or until crust is lovely golden brown (and filling is bubbly.  Put a sheet of aluminum foil loosely over the top of your pie if the crust is browning too fast and the filling isn’t bubbly yet.)

Pre-baking, my pie looked like this:

Isn’t it just the most beautiful thing?  I even did a fancy lattice top on the pie with an ancient lattie-pie cutter that made the lattice look like it had perforated edges.  It was fun!  And I don’t know where the inspiration to put four hearts on the pie came from, but Lyd had fun helping me cut those out.

After baking, it looked like this:

It was, truly, a perfect pie.  This will likely never happen in my life again, so I’m glad I recorded this moment for posterity.

And, oh, my goodness, it was GOOD!

Little Miss Flinger

(In the spirit of full disclosure, I want to say that I got the idea for the name “Flinger” from the “Mrs. Flinger” blog.  I like her writing style and her perspective on life.  I really enjoyed her post to her husband on their anniversary.  Read it here.)

JJ and I are reminded every day how our second daughter, Curious J, 14 months old tomorrow, is very different from her older sister.

Case in point: her attitude towards food.

We are having new difficulties with food.  A month ago my worry was that J wasn’t eating enough.  It seems I was right, and increasing her solid food intake has made a good difference.  However, we have new difficulties.  Now she only wants to feed herself, and she really dislikes when I feed her something (ie. oatmeal, yogurt, our supper that’s too chewing-intensive for her so I’ve put throught the baby food grinder, sometimes jarred baby food if I’m desperate).  She wants to feed herself, thank you very much.

I try to give as much finger foods as possible.  She loves feeding herself, but even when she likes the food, she has this habit of flinging food off of her tray.  It’s not that she doesn’t like the food that she’s eating; sometimes she will drop a piece of something on the floor, watch it hit the ground, then grab another piece of it and put it in her mouth.  When she does NOT like a certain food, she passionately flings it to the floor.  But why does she also fling food to the floor when she likes it?  JJ and I are puzzled.

She is a flinger.  Lyd was never a flinger.  Her food always (and I do mean that literally) stayed on her high chair tray.  She stayed neat and clean while she ate, and happily opened up for the spoon headed towards her mouth.  She was not a fussy eater; as long as someone else was feeding her, she ate whatever was put in her mouth.  In fact, we had to really WORK to get her to feed herself.  She was SO SLOW to feed herself (she still is, grrr), that it was much faster to just feed her ourselves so that we could be done with our meal.

But Curious J?  Not only is she a much pickier eater, she is a messy eater and a flinger while she eats.  I can’t give her a plate or a cup or spoon or anything as it will inevitably get flung away.  I tried to get one of those plates that suction-cups to the tray.  Yeah, whatever.  She had that thing off and on the floor in ten seconds flat.  And even if the plate had stayed on the tray, her food is always fair game to be flung – I can’t suction that on!

We’re not sure what to do about this.  We could just take the food away, but she does need to eat, and she’s still a little young to congitively understand cause and effect.  She hates to be spoon-fed, and if forced to eat that way will often cry and fuss and scream until distracted in some way from what’s happening (usually involving singing and/or games like peek-a-boo).  That’s not a pleasant way to have a meal, for her or for the rest of us.  (If I put on the TV in the kitchen while I’m trying to feed her, that usually distracts her so that I can feed her without her really paying much attention.  But I really don’t like to have the TV on when we eat.)

If you have any ideas, I’d be happy to hear them.  In the meantime, we’re just taking it one meal at a time.  We’re hoping that, like most things, this too shall pass.  Sooner or later.

But in the meantime, it is making mealtimes really rough.

Sigh.

(It’s a good thing we’re still a breastfeeding duo, at 14 months.  At least I know she’s getting good nutrition that way.)

a homeopathic learning experience

Curious J has gotten sick again over the last few days.  In fact, her bronchiolitis has come back.  Sigh.

While at first it seemed to me that perhaps the homeopathy hadn’t worked after all, I realize now that no, it DID work, but I stopped giving J the remedies too quickly.  My homeopath had recommended I do that, but now we both know that that wasn’t the right thing to do.  Curious J was doing great, but when she stopped getting the remedies, her health really went downhill over the next 24 hours.   Since she had been fighting a cold for almost two weeks before getting her ear infection, this time the bug settled in her lungs, giving her bronchiolitis (baby bronchitis) again.

However, her homeopath and I both learned from this experience.  I re-started giving J her homeopathic remedies, but today I also started her on her breathing medication via a nebulizer.  Her coughing had gotten pretty bad over the past few days (and nights), and this morning I heard her audibly wheezing.  Thankfully, after 4 different sessions with the nebulizer today (during which I read her her favorite books over and over to help her sit still!), she is breathing much better and her coughing is dramatically decreased.  This is a huge improvement, and I’m hopeful that I might actually get more than a 3 hour stretch of sleep at a time tonight!

As far as homeopathy goes, I’ve learned that J has a constitution like mine.  Like me, she doesn’t get over colds easily, and she has to keep taking her medication for a while even after the cold seems to be gone.  So, while I definitely think that I’ll be using homeopathy again with her, I know now (and so does my homeopath) that she needs to keep taking the remedy for a few days even after she feels better.

With that thought in mind, we’re also going to give her another dose of her constitutional remedy once she’s over this illness.  J first took a homeopathic constitutional remedy back in early September, and immediately following that, she started sleeping longer stretches at night.  Plus, the cold that she got in the following month was the only one that she’s had in her short life so far that did NOT end up in bronchiolitis.  So once J can take that constitutional remedy again, hopefully that will keep any future colds that she may get from turning into bronchiolitis.

So, to sum up, I’m disappointed her cold came back, but it has turned out to be a good homeopathic learning experience.  Next time we (my homeopath and I) will know better how best to help my baby J to help keep her as healthy as possible.  And she IS going to be okay.  We know what to do, and I’m not afraid to use my good, old-fashioned, Western medicine nebulizer with Xopanex/albuterol to help my baby breathe if I need to.  Hopefully I’m finding a good balance between Western medicine and alternative medicine.  There are times and places for both, and knowing when each are appropriate is what it’s all about.

nighttime in the big city

Over the past week or so, I’ve had a few evenings when I went out to the store after 9pm.  While I’m usually tired, I don’t mind these nighttime trips.  It’s nice to be out of the house and completely on my own for a little while.  And, of course, it’s nice to shop by myself.

Usually I take a small local freeway that goes down a steep hill, because once I’m down that hill, it connects with the big five-lane 101 freeway.  I like driving down that hill and seeing all the planes lined up in the sky preparing to land at San Francisco International.  I like clear nights when I can see the skyline of San Francisco off in the distance.  On those nights I can also see across to the East Bay, and I love how the actual San Francisco Bay separating the Peninsula from the East Bay is like a black hole surrounded by all these lights.  I like seeing the bridges off in the distance, such as the San Mateo Bridge, and further off, the Bay Bridge which links San Francisco and Oakland.  I like getting onto 101, and looking back up the hill at where I live, seeing all the street lights around the homes dotting the hill like … lights on a Christmas tree.  I love seeing the lights of the city around me, and I love driving around at night.

When I was a little girl growing up in Milwaukee, I remember that when our family was out at night, I would ask my parents to drive us through the downtown.  I loved driving by the First Wisconsin building, the tallest building in the Milwaukee skyline, and I would crane my neck up to see to the very top as we drove by.  I loved driving through the “spaghetti roads,” my childish name for how the various downtown freeways intersected together.  I loved how the lights of the city were so bright and sparkling, even late at night.  To me, there’s such vitality and romance in a big city at night, and I can’t remember a time when I haven’t appreciated the beauty and excitement of nighttime in the big city.

I remember, too, when JJ and I were newlyweds living in Los Angeles for a few weeks, there were numerous times when we were out and about after dark, and it was just so COOL!  To be in L.A.!  After dark!  I remember one time when we went driving at sunset up into the posh hills surrounding L.A., where the stars live, just to go for a drive.  We had been given some general directions from a friend, but those roads are not easy to find your way around on, probably on purpose.  We got rather lost for a while, but I remember some fantastic views of the greater L.A. area from up in these hills once the sun went down.  It was amazing.

So, when I drive the freeway system here in the San Francisco Bay Area after dark, it always reminds me of how much I enjoy being out and about in a big city at night.  I still enjoy such a drive now just as much as I did back when I was a child, and it’s one of the things I enjoy about living in near a big city.

being happy where I’m planted

My husband and I live in California, 2000+ miles from the state where we grew up, where our parents, extended families, and many of our friends still live.  While we can be happy living anywhere, there are days when we wish we could be closer to our families.

Lately I’ve been getting a bit of a yen to move.  I don’t really want to go through the actual process of sorting and packing all of our worldly possessions, but I do feel like a fresh outlook would be nice.  And while I love many, many things about California, there are also things I don’t like.  Some days, I just miss my family.  I feel bad for my children, who don’t really know their grandparents and other relatives as well as I wish they did.

This week I have had moments of passionately wanting to stay where we are, and I have had equally passionate moments of wanting to go to someplace else, preferably closer to family.

JJ has asked not to be placed on a Call List until July 2009.  So, regardless, we’re not going anywhere anytime soon.  Even if he did get a Call next summer, it doesn’t mean that we would take it.

Sometimes I feel a little stuck here, but other times I feel so overwhelmingly grateful to live here.  I know that God puts his children right where he wants them, so I trust that this is where God wants us to be.  It’s not like I don’t like it here, because I do.  I like it very much.  But I’m starting to wonder what it would be like to live in some unknown other place.  I’m sure we’ll eventually move … someday.

Until then, I’ll do my best to be content where I am and be mindful of the blessings that surround me right here in California.  Like Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, our church, our big house, the alternative medicine so readily available, my great job, the weather, and of course the friends I’ve made here.

Really, I can’t complain too much.  I mean, the ocean is just a short drive away from my house — how cool is that?   Wherever we move to, that likely won’t happen ever again, so I’d better enjoy it while I have the chance!

Deepak Chopra is an anti-christ

Tonight I happened to watch part of a PBS show entitled: “Jesus and the Awakening to God Consciousness with Deepak Chopra.”  Apparently, Chopra has authored a new book, titled “The Third Jesus.”  Chopra was being interviewed by a pastorette, named Rev. Wendy Craig Purcell.  And what those two were saying about Jesus, about my Lord and Savior, was very, very disturbing.

It was disturbing to hear Jesus talked of merely as a spiritual teacher who had some form of advanced enlightenment and had the gift of healing.

It was disturbing to hear fundamentalist Christians dismissed as wackos who believed the Bible was the actual Words of God because obviously, as the “enlightened ones” explained, everyone knows that the Bible is just a collection of stories passed down through time and altered as needed, just like every other world religion.

It was disturbing to see people in the audience nodding along in agreement, as they were being led blithely down a path to hell like sheep to the slaughter.

It was all such utter and complete false doctrine, and yet these two people sat there talking as if they were sharing this great wisdom with everyone else.  Enlightenment … spirituality… mysticism … consciousness … world peace … blah blah blah.  Nothing about a cross, nothing about salvation, nothing about a resurrection from the dead, nothing about heaven and nothing about hell — and certainly nothing about our sinful natures.

If people actually believe THIS about Jesus, that he’s just some great spiritual teacher, then they will be spending their eternity in hell.  They don’t know Jesus, and Jesus doesn’t know them.  My husband had a knock-it-out-of-the-park sermon about this last Sunday, and if you call yourself a Christian of any stripe or denomination, you need to read it.

Someone on the amazon.com review of The Third Jesus (Exactly who are the first and second Jesus, by the way?) reminded readers of the classic and totally applicable C.S. Lewis quote from his book “Mere Christianity”:

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg–or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.”

Deepak Chopra is promoting a complete and utter load of religious crap.  He leading people directly away from God, and he is an anti-christ.  I pray that people don’t believe what he has to say, and I pray that Christian pastors preach against this kind of “Jesus as spiritual teacher” thinking.

I know my husband will.

a good night

Tonight I had an evening that was just so nice, I wanted to record it for posterity.

First of all, just like the homeopath said would happen, Curious J’s fever was gone today.  I took her temp this morning, and it was exactly 37 degrees Celsius, which is exactly 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.  Totally normal.  J was back to her usual cheery self today.  I am definitely going to be learning more about homeopathy.

Secondly, after Lyd lost it emotionally during afternoon recess today (I was outside on the playground with Curious J, who likes to see all the schoolkids, and I noticed that Lyd was not playing with the other kids and was melting down about something not going her way), I took her home a little early and declared today a nap day.  She couldn’t seem to stop crying, however.  Everything in her life was wrong!  So, since Pulsatilla is a remedy for illnesses characterized by weepiness (and because I also know that a homeopathic remedy won’t cause any side effects if it’s not the right remedy), I gave her a small dose of Pulsatilla.  She still couldn’t seem to pull it together enough to stop whining and crying, so I also gave her a Bach Rescue Remedy pastille for the first time.  I told her it was candy with some medicine in it that would help her calm down and stop crying.  And after that, she took a 2.5 hour nap!

But, what I really wanted to say was that after waking up from this much-needed nap, she was SO cheerful!  She was making silly jokes and laughing and pleasant to be around and just a delight.  She’s almost always a happy, cheerful girl, but tonight she was especially so.  It was just lovely.

At supper tonight, Curious J did not hardly fuss at all during the meal.  I tend to get the food on too late, when J’s already getting quite tired.  But, I do the best I can.  Also, the food I’ve been making lately is not stuff that she can eat, so she’s been getting more jarred baby food, which she seems to be liking less and less.  But tonight, I had supper on the table slightly after 6pm, and I made baked salmon, plain steamed carrots, and noodles out of a box.  I didn’t give her those noodles, but I made some small shell noodles for her and shredded some cheddar cheese on top, and she ate that.  She loved the salmon and gobbled up the carrots like nobody’s business!  I think she enjoyed feeding herself; I’ll have to find more meals where she can do that.  Anyway, she’s been so fussy at mealtimes for at least the past week, so to have her smiling and pleasant and giggly tonight was a treat.

But BEST OF ALL was the fact that my husband’s laptop turned on tonight!!!  He’s known for a long time that his laptop doesn’t turn back on easily once it’s turned off.  So, he didn’t turn it off often.  Last week, he decided to try and get it fixed.  It turned out that the cure is almost as much as buying a new laptop.  But, neither he nor the computer repair guys could get his computer to turn back on.  It was off for over a week, and JJ had to use our family computer in the toy room to do his work on, which was NOT FUN for any of us.

But tonight!  Tonight he tried One More Time, and it turned on!!!  Joy and bliss!!!  He can now access his Libronix computer program, the one that compares Greek or Hebrew texts with any Bible translation he chooses, and it has a whole host of other features useful in writing sermons.  He had to do his sermon text exegesis by hand last week, and he was not amused to have to go back to the “old-fashioned” way of doing things.  But now his computer is back on!  He can access his files!  He doesn’t have to use our family’s computer anymore!  I can’t tell you what a change that made in his mood, and his good mood spilled over onto our whole family.

So, we had a lovely family supper hour together tonight, filled with laughter and silliness, delicious, healthy food (Alaskan salmon – $15 a pound, but so worth it!) and happiness all around.  Lyd told me more than once, and I quote, “Thank you, Momma, for making salmon – it’s my favorite!”  How many 5 year olds say that?

(Well, yes, I trained my child to thank me for making supper for her.  But it was nice to hear her say it of her own volition and with such enthusiasm tonight!)

Hee hee.  And now I have my own computer back!  It’s wonderful!