Let's try this again

I tried to post earlier, but blogger was having technical difficulties.  Here's hoping they're fixed, and my post actually keeps... :-/

It's been a month since I last posted, so there's a bit to catch up on, both good and back.

In the good news...

Eldest talked me into doing NaNoWriMo, which has a goal of writing 50,000 words in the month of November.  The first day was a very good start, which promptly fell apart after the second day.  That stalled me a bit, but I slowly started to catch up.  In the end, I completed the goal a couple of days early!  Doing her part to encourage me, Eldest agreed that if I completed NaNoWriMo, she would sing at an open mic night.  A nearby coffee shop had weekly open mic nights, but they closed for renovations and, since reopening, I haven't seen anything to show they're still doing it.  We'll have to figure it out.

In the more neutral news, Eldest has left her job.  She liked the work well enough, but there were a couple of issues.  One was the surprisingly bad public transportation to the location she worked at.  We knew it wasn't good - that's partly why she applied to a different location in the first place - but good grief, it sucked.  It's one thing to be driving her in for 3 or 5 am shifts.  It's another to be driving her home again because the buses in the area don't run on Sundays.  Or evenings.  Or that it take 3 times longer to take the bus compared to driving.  There were other issues, though, and she did tell one of her managers about it.  It turns out there's plenty of reason for this location to have such a high turnover rate.  She's going to take a bit of a break, then start handing out the resumes again.  The job market has really perked up, and not just for Christmas, so it should be interesting to see how that works out.

Then there's the bad news.  A few days ago, our younger cat suddenly started having difficulties walking and lost all bladder control.  We thought she might have had a spine injury or something.  It turned out to be massive kidney failure, and she had to be put down.  She was not a particularly nice cat, and was really rather dumb.  She could be pretty nasty, would sometimes go after the older cat for no reason, and generally didn't like people. Yet when she was in a friendly mood, she could be the sweetest thing.  Most of the time, though, she would just lay around like a fluffy black puddle on the floor.  I swear, that cat had cartilage for bones!  It was sad to have to put her down.  Especially so suddenly.  She was only 3 years old.  She was Youngest's cat, too. This is the second pet we got for her that ended up being put down.

Now, we're not sure what we're going to do.  You see, we still have a stray and her kitten around.  They had been on our balcony, but when the temperatures dropped, we brought them inside.  We're not allowed to have more than 2 pets, so we've been trying to adopt them out.  We had a couple of potential takers fall through.  I don't think there are too many people willing to take on both  mother and kitten. I was just about to contact my friend at the pound to find how to turn them in when we suddenly found ourselves down a cat.  Youngest has been wanting a dog for ages, but this kitten has been loving on her like her own cat never did.  The mama is pretty high strung, but friendly and playful.  We got tacit permission to hang on to them a bit longer.  If nothing else, we'll wait long enough for the kitten to be old enough to be separated from his mother.  In the end, it will be Youngest's choice.

Aside from that, we're slowly getting into the Christmas mood.  We've put the tree up, without decorations, to train the cats to stay out of it.  So far, it hasn't been an issue.  I really expected to have troubles with the kitten getting into it, but he seems content to leave it alone.  Of course, once it's decorated, it might be a different story.  So far, so good.  Decorating will start this weekend.

We haven't ordered our meats for our annual tourtierre this year.  Partly it's because we suddenly don't have the money.  Getting the cat to the vet, then put down, ended up costing us over $450.  That was money that was supposed to go for Christmas preparations.  Not that we could make our usual number of tourtierre, anyhow.  It's not cold enough!  After a brief deep freeze, the temperatures went right back up again and are now bouncing above and below the freezing level.  Our only freezer is the top of our fridge, so we relied on being able to keep the tourtierre frozen outside.  It's not cold enough!  So I'm thinking we'll place a meat order for perhaps a dozen pies.  There isn't room for that many in the freezer, but wee can fit a few in and still have a couple to give away or something.

I haven't done my annual Christmas decorations this year yet, either.  I had an idea in mind, but it required access to the kitchen sink, stove top and counter space.  Every time they all got cleared, they immediately got covered!  So I'm trying to come up with something else that will be quick and fairly easy.  I've got some papier mache ornament shapes as bases, as well as some paints and glue.  I have other supplies in the craft cupboard to use as well.  I'm thinking, for some of them at least, I'll be doing things with spices.  I've usually been doing items that reflected light in some way.  I think this time, I'll be more rustic.  We shall see how that works out.