The Cat Came Back... from Fresno

From 2004 to 2009 we were a two cat household. After Finn was born our younger cat, Murray, wasn't happy, and generally demonstrated it by peeing on lots of things outside the litter box (including, on two memorable occasions, Jonathan and me). I wrote about it here, here, here, and here, among other places. For the last few years we've been supporting his upkeep at Cat House on the Kings, south of Fresno.
Last month I went to visit Cat House with some friends who wanted to see it. (It's famous.) They do amazing work there, and I think that if you're a feral cat, or a cat who likes to be surrounded by cats, or a dog who likes to run in a small pack, it must be heaven. But they have hundreds of cats and a limited staff who have a LOT of work to do, so if you're a cat who likes a lot of human attention, it's a little sad. I found Murray among the hundreds of cats, and held and petted him for about half an hour. Then I found myself hatching a plan to bring him home, now that our living circumstances have changed. Jonathan, after some thought, came around.  Last weekend I went and got him (btw, SUPER AWESOME road trips both times, ladies).

Here's the setup, for anyone wondering about how we can keep a cat we can't trust not to pee on stuff:

1) Kennel in the garage. We built him a fenced in area inside our garage, so he'd have some space that was his alone. It's supposed to be 4x4 feet, but since we were using the garage as one wall, we rearranged the panels to make it 4X6. Unless we're out there with him, the fenced off part is the only part he has access to.
2) Door to access the kennel in the garage. This fancy schmancy cat door only unlocks for an animal wearing a special tag with an RFID chip. What's more, we can program it so that during the day he can go in or out at will, but at night he can come in, but not get back out. It took him 3 or 4 days to learn how to use it. If you get one, make sure to find the section in the manual on "training mode."

3) Cat tree for in the kennel. This way he can have a little more space, see out the window, and be more cozy. This one is regularly on sale for under $100. Jonathan's modified it so it fits in the kennel, which is not as tall as the description would lead you to believe.

4) Heated cat bed/pad. Most heated cat beds are indoor only, but K&H makes some that are indoor/outdoor. It was really hard to find a cat tree that would accommodate one of these giant things, but the lower "condo" in our cat tree does... once Jonathan sawed some gaps along the floor of it, because that part comes pre-assembled.
5) Secure cat food storage. I saw this at a friend's house recently, and knew I wanted one. Not only is it cat and dog and raccoon proof, it claims to be ant-proof.
6) Litter box. Our preferred litter box is still the one recommended by the cat behavior consultant we dealt with way back when we were early in the process of trying to resolve Murray's issues: a 66 qt giant Sterilite bin.

And there you have it. It's expensive, I don't particularly recommend it if you have other options, but it's working for us. Murray had better access to a fully heated house at Cat House, but here he's got personal space, posh cat food... and his family. There are no current plans to integrate him into the indoor household. Aside from the whole peeing thing, Mona is now ten years old, kinda flipped her lid when she saw him outside, and hisses and runs away when he comes to the back door. Although the novelty may wear off, so far the boys ADORE him. He's much more interested in their attention than Mona has ever been, and they are puzzled and delighted by that.

Plus, I mean, look at him. The guy's adorable.

Back to the Pumpkin Farm

Yesterday afternoon (after grocery shopping, laundry, swimming lessons...) we headed up the coast to Half Moon Bay on our annual pumpkin farm visit. On the way there we passed this stretch of beach where there always seem to be at least a dozen people kitesurfing. Since this is less than 20 miles from my house, it is entirely possible that there are people I pass in the grocery store every week who own their own kitesurfing equipment and do this every weekend. Every time we drive by I have a surreal "wow, we really live in California" moment.

Up at the pumpkin farm, the first order of business is always the 2 acre hay maze. We've been doing this most years since 2005, even if I was 8 1/2 months pregnant, because we love a good maze. The first few years we carried/dragged the kids through the maze; this might be the first year they had even more fun than we did. There's a time after you first have kids where you stop doing a lot of the things you used to do, and start doing things you never would have done before (children's museums, anyone?). This is all fine and normal and all, but it's nowhere near as cool as doing things you used to do, going places you used to go, bringing your kids, and watching them have a blast.

 After the maze we all picked out our pumpkins - and took the obligatory pictures-of-boy(s)-in-field-of-pumpkins.
2008:

2010:

2012:

After we finished up at the pumpkin farm, we headed a few miles further up the coast for dinner at Cameron's. It's a family favorite. There are double decker buses, video games, TV screens, plenty of space, a pretty extensive kids menu, and a full bar. It's exciting enough for the kids that they stay entertained while we have a conversation, but familiar enough they don't forget to go to the bathroom. And I can get a whole plate of fried brussel sprouts.

Pictured: ice cream, not brussel sprouts. After dessert, we threw the boys in their PJs and headed for home, where we moved their sleeping selves from the car to their beds.
Good day, Fortney family!

10 Things We Did on Memorial Day Weekend

1. Jonathan and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary, which was last Tuesday. After the boys went to bed, we went out for dinner at what is probably our favorite restaurant in town, then met some friends downtown for a treasure hunt. Yes, a treasure hunt. With clues, and a map, and counting paces, and pirates. And running. Too much running. We didn't win, but we beat a number of the whipper snapper college student teams, and then we watched Goonies, which was supposed to start at midnight but actually started later after prizes and things and OH MY GOD WE WERE SO TIRED. But good tired.

Here's Jonathan, at the theater, posing with for a quick photo with Jack Black. No action shots of the treasure hunt, because of all the running.

2. We slept in while the boys watched a movie - 3 days in a row. Usually this is a special treat reserved for Sundays, but did I mention about the movie-that-started-after-midnight? Yeah. No one got dressed before 9 all weekend, and 10 was not unusual. As a family that usually is out the door before 8, this is a big deal for us. Here they are today sometime after we clothed them:

3. We picked up half a pig worth of frozen pork from the meat locker on Saturday. We had ordered it from Windsor Family Farm a while back, and even went to visit the farm when my mom was here back in April. The boys had a blast that weekend. There were pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, rabbits... and a trampoline.
If you're in the Bay Area, I highly recommend you check it out. And if you're not, I still recommend finding a local farm to buy meat from (or vegetables, or cheese, or whatever): see what a quick search on Local Harvest shows in your neck of the woods.

Baby roosters, by the way? Hilarious. Not really big enough for either the feathers or the attitude they walk around with.

I'm not sure the boys get the connection between these pigs and the meat, but... we'll get there.

4. On Saturday, we grownups went to sleep the earliest we can remember - I think we were both in bed around 8, and frankly, I wasn't functioning all that well before that, even after napping with Graham in the afternoon. Putting recycling in the trash, trash in the recycling - it was madness. Did I mention the midnight movie?

5. We took the boys to see a movie on Sunday - Chimpanzee. It was... okay. A little more death and violence than I expected, but the boys were okay with it.

6. After nearly 2 years in our new house, we finally had a fire in the fireplace. And the living room kind of smells like wood smoke now. Yes, the flue works, but the fire didn't take on the first try and there was a lot of kindling involved.

7. We went to a baseball game. The San Jose Giants minor league team, known (at least at our house) for their giant orange gorilla mascot, Gigante. This is supposed to be the 3 guys watching the game, but Finn's cotton candy bag decided to grab a piece of the action.

And like last summer, there were plenty of inflatables.

We left early, but not before sampling some ice cream, churros, and lemonade - in addition to the cotton candy.

8. We made muffins. Finn would want me to tell you: he can crack an egg into a bowl without breaking the yolk.

9. We did yardwork. Jonathan dug up what's probably the biggest bamboo root I've ever seen. I weeded 'til I could hardly stand. The menfolk transplanted Finn's pumpkin plant from indoors to outdoors. And Finn and Graham picked our pea plants completely clean of snowpeas. And ate them all out in the yard. I think I snagged two.

10. And tonight - Mad Men!

Eclipsecation? Vaclipsetion?

Our family drove 5 hours away from our house this weekend, the better to see the solar eclipse on Sunday. That's normal, right?
We had to leave a little late on Saturday so that the grownup half of the family could go to a wedding reception first, which meant that we rolled into our destination - Redding, CA, right in the center of the next day's eclipse path, around 10:30 p.m. The boys' normal bedtime is around 7:30. Finn conked out slightly after the dinner stop, as planned, but Graham managed to stay awake until at least 9:30. ("I see a black spot, Daddy. Is that space?" "No Graham, that's a mountain. Go to sleep.")
Jonathan had selected Turtle Bay Exploration Park and the adjacent Sundial Bridge as our day's entertainment/eclipse viewing spot. He chose well. We saw a fish feeding, a wild animal show (a barn owl flew right over our heads! and a hawk! and a vulture!), and the "model river" area before heading out for lunch and a nap.

Then the boys went swimming. Bonus points for getting to wear the goggles IN THE WATER, instead of just around the house.

Then it was back to the park/bridge for parrot feeding and the eclipse. I was impressed with how well Finn did with the parrots - two decided to land on him at once, when I was maybe 8 feet from him, and he kept his cool. But I wouldn't go so far as to say he was a fan.
By the time the eclipse started, we were all pretty hot and tired - it was around 90 in Redding that day. And since it was about an hour from the beginning of the eclipse to the peak, the boys were bored with it long before we were. They liked to put on their cardboard glasses now and again, and told us what they saw, and they humored us with the pinhole viewer, but... yeah.

Not everyone is able to dress for an eclipse. My husband? Heck, yeah.

We didn't have a camera with us that was fancy enough to figure out what it was looking at, even through the eclipse glasses. But the lens flares showing the progress of the eclipse were pretty cool. (See the teeny bright circles/crescents?)

It was a large and fun crowd at the bridge. It was definitely an eclipse viewing destination - lots of people were from out of town, and one family we sat next to for a while was on a day trip... from Seattle. Today I found out that I guy I work with was there on the same bridge - we just didn't see each other. It was awesome time, and totally worth both the drive and the whining of our children. I'm sure some day they'll agree with us.

The next day we decided to check out Shasta Caverns before heading home. Silly us, we thought they would like it. Not so much, even though we did see the bats Finn had been so excited about. Basically, they would have been more than happy to leave just about right after we went in - apparently they found it scary (not the bats, just the empty cave). But we cajoled and bribed them through their doubts, and it was SO worth it. Neither photo nor video quite captures the size and awesomeness of the last chamber, but I tried.

The boys mostly liked the boat ride.

And the miners' helmets we got them as souvenirs. (I mean really, how do you NOT buy those helmets?!)
And then we went home. Five-ish hours, only two stops. 1.5 movies. A new and miraculous record for our boys.
So Tuesday morning we walked into our child care center, after missing a day of school, and no matter how much Finn whined *in* the caverns, he had brought the brochure to show off to all his friends. Jonathan hears him lecturing about stalactites, "See these? These are actually ALIVE." So at least the first half of the whole "living cave" thing stuck. Just not the whole "but not like a plant or animal" part.
And then one of Graham's teachers asked him "where were you yesterday?" And he replied "In a cage!!" Cave, Graham. A CAVE.

P.S. Hotel rooms with sliding doors between the kids and us? Awesome. But next time, can they have the DVD player, and can we have the fridge?

Skinned Knees

The weather has been quite pleasant here lately (well, I guess that isn't such a surprise, sorry) and the boys have been wearing a fair amount of shorts and t-shirts. Scrapes and scabs aplenty! This is actually less "costly" for Finn than wearing pants, since he tends to rip holes in the knees with regularity, which costs us money and time for patches or new pants. That or he can look like a little hobo who wears rags for clothes. It happens. Finn is now 4 1/2 years old, as of the 13th. We're now getting him a little involved in organized activities, which has its pluses and minuses. The minuses are that things cost money and we have to drive him there! But so far he's done a version of soccer with strong parent participation, and tonight was his first swimming lesson in a long time. (We'd done some water-babies type stuff in the past, but it had been a LONG time.) He did great! The only problem from his perspective was that it was only 30 minutes.
He's very proud of his new swimsuit that says "Totally Jawsome" with a shark's mouth. Graham and Finn are really getting along pretty well these days, and while they do play pretty rough, they make each other laugh a lot. Graham can apparently laugh even while getting manhandled as I tell Finn to leave his brother alone. At some point the laughter turns to tears, of course! In this orange (the official color of Fortney Boys, LLC) photo, I think they are both being mice. Graham is "Super Mouse" while Finn is "Flash Mouse."

Obviously here they are "Batman" and "Tiny Batman."  The warm weather has brought out the backyard hammock as well. While last year they were good about not playing on it, this year, not so much. If you turn the volume up to 11 you can hear them giggling. I took the movie from our bedroom window.

Why is this here? We have a lot of snails and slugs in our yard. This one is only about 2 inches. The much rarer banana slugs (never seen in our yard, yet) are more like 6-8 inches.

Let's go fly a kite

It's really a testament to the awesomeness of our backyard that I don't think I've been to this park in months. I mean, it's on our BLOCK. There are DUCKS.

Jonathan's at some all day meeting today. About planets or something. So the boys and I came over to fly kites, which we cannot do in our backyard. And yes, I'm writing this blog post from the park. But I'll have to wait until later to embed the video. (I don't know who's screaming in the background. I didn't notice it at the time.)

This was Graham's first kite-flying expedition. (He's quite small and distant in this photo, but I promise he and the kite are both there.)

I think it was Finn's second time out with a kite. He's a pro, as you can see.

And then we went home and made cookies.

Quick post about our quick vacation

Presidents' Day Weekend! You have to celebrate that, right? And if you find yourself halfway through Saturday and realize you have no reason to be home before Monday night, shouldn't you celebrate that with an impromptu vacation? Isn't that what our founding fathers would have wanted? Staycations? I thought so.
First up, we met up with some friends and their new baby in Oakland to visit the Chabot Space & Science Center, and a good time was had by all. You would not believe how long a toddler can flip switches in an old space capsule and be thoroughly entertained. Also, grownups have fun. (Hey Fortney, nice job with the extra hand. No, I'm not going to Photoshop it out.)

On the way I downloaded a new app to play with photos on my phone. Aviary is not sponsoring this post, but you can send them hate mail if you're annoyed. Anyway, after the space fun we headed up to a hotel in Fairfield, and everyone had a pizza night out. At a table right next to all the video games.

The next morning brought swimming in the hotel pool (later deemed by Finn to be the best part of the trip), followed by TV while the parents showered. The boys are now familiar with commercial interruptions, and are justly angry at how unfair they are.

Once we were all dressed, we hit the Jelly Belly visitor center for the factory tour, and everyone ate as much candy as they wanted -- frankly, not much. We haven't even finished the free samples we got from the tour. But we are all stocked up on their new cocktail flavors if you want to come try them. Mojito jelly beans! Pomegranate cosmo jelly beans! What could be better? Well, lots of things. But we did have fun. See?

And now here's a video of Graham talking, because it's been sitting in the queue waiting for your enjoyment.

Our house

For Christmas we turned our office into a playroom, because we never actually used it as an office, and we figured our house was too small to have a whole room we never used. Then I was going to post some before and after pictures, and I realized I didn't HAVE any before pictures. Oops. So then I was just going to refer back to the old video walkthrough of the house, but after searching back through the blog, I realized that only existed in my mind. Huh. So then I made a NEW (first, only) video of the house, and even edited a little. But when I uploaded it to Vimeo, it got all squishified because Vimeo didn't understand the aspect ratio even though the dang thing looked fine on our computers. So then I gave up.

But then! Then Jonathan was out of town again this week and I reformatted/exported/something the video, and now you can view it non-squished. Pretty boring if you've been to our house; less so if you haven't and have been wondering what it's like here.


So now it exists, in case we ever do a big remodeling project, or find a way to lead a clutter-free existence (ha).
Also, have some photos.
1: The Ultimate Winter Couscous from Plenty, which I highly recommend. Even if you don't want to cook from it, just look at the pictures.

2: Remember when Finn melted down at his birthday party? Some classmates had a party at the same place recently, and he had a much better time. Here he is on the zipline.

3: Sometimes when you turn your back they DON'T destroy everything in sight. Sometimes you go to answer the phone, and when you come back the Lego wall is twice as tall as when you left the room. And it has eyes.

4: Finn and Graham's first time bowling. They loved it. And I got my first (and likely last) turkey.

5: Graham's 3rd haircut, and his first one not sitting in my lap.

6: I went to a conference in Dallas in January and got to meet Jeanette Winterson, who's only, oh, I don't know, probably my FAVORITE AUTHOR EVER. I was so sure I was going to miss her that when I saw she was still there I cried. It was pretty embarrassing, but I got a signed advance copy of her new memoir. Best. Conference. Ever.