Saved - 'It's a Boy!' balloon

J-cub was born at 8.34pm on a Tuesday evening. My parents live in Devon and were waiting from an announcement from us before they came to visit. After I'd spent an equally awful and lovely 2.5 hours being stitched up and having skin-to-skin with this new bundle of burning redness who'd appeared out of nowhere, I rang them to share the news (yes, apparently you can use mobile phones in hospitals now). I don't really remember what was said, as I was still pretty out of it and into my 37th hour of no sleep, but I do remember that they agreed to ring in the morning and arrange a visit.

A brief phonecall at 7.30am (really, Mum?) set them on the road and they were with us by visiting hours around lunchtime. They came with a massive vase of flowers, a lovely card, a soft blue teddy (who still sleeps with J-cub today) and the obligatory announcement balloon.

By the time we were finally allowed to leave hospital 4 days later, we had amassed a ridiculous amount of Stuff. I don't think I've mentioned this before, but Jamie doesn't drive, so it all had to be bundled into a cab along with our precious bundle of joy. Bless the cab driver, he read the instruction book and figured out how to safely strap the carseat in (one of the things from my 'To Do' list which I'd never got round to doing) and helped us to pack all our nonsense into the cab outside the hospital and into the house when we got home.

The balloon of course came with us (to the great joy of Tilly and Maeby), and when it withered and died, I packed it away into J-cub's baby box.

Tilly and Maeby have been experiencing joy of a different kind this afternoon, as they've unearthed another frog. Honestly, I have no idea where they come from. None of our neighbours have ponds and we have 6 feet high solid fences all the way round. Today's visitor was massive, much bigger than his tiny counterpart from last week who squeaked like a mouse. The more grown-up vocalisation of today sounded just like the air being squeezed out of a balloon. Tilly and Maeby are totally baffled by him, and have been following him slowly around the patio all afternoon. I feel like I should move him to a place of safety, but don't know what the right thing is to do. If I put him near the village pond, what if it's not his home? I worry he might get confused or eaten by a duck. Do ducks eat frogs? It seems like the sort of thing they would do...

Anyway, he's very good at scaring the cats off with his balloonesque noises, and hopping out of their reach when they get too close. I'm sure he can look after himself. Feel free to set me straight thought, frog-experts, if there's something I could do to rescue him.

Shooting from the hip

I was just fooling around with J-cub on the sofa this morning, playing phonecalls (J-cub picks up anything - a remote control, Jemaine, a book - and clutches it to his neck/ear area. I do the same, and we have a 'chat'.), and I started taking photos without looking through the viewfinder. I read about doing this when I was learning how to use my Fisheye camera, but have never tried it with my normal camera. I'm so happy with the photos I got, they're much more natural and really capture the feel of our day.

In this photo, I'm sitting next to J-cub, but holding the camera out in front of us. He's looking at me, chatting away. I love love love this photo.

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Today's Look Up photo comes with courtesy from Maeby, who was having a loving-us (rather than an indifferent-to-us) morning. Maeby is the special one, out of the two cats. She's very shy, and doesn't really understand that she's a cat, and likes to do things like stare at walls for hours on end and hide under blankets when she's scared (which is most of the time). She's named after a character from our most favouritest TV show of all time, Arrested Development, although her name is purposefully misspelt so as to not confuse vets (who would pronounce Maebe either Mayb or Mave).

When she decides that actually, we're not scary giants after all, and might be worth paying a bit of attention to, she suddenly morphs from crazy, haughty, I'm-not-looking-at-you into OhMyGODIloveyousomuchcanIhaveacuddlepleasenownowSTROKEME! She expresses this by miaowing quietly (the rest of the time she is entirely silent), trying to get as close to your hands as possible and reaching up to make stroking movements with her paw (with claws fully extended - it's quite scary). I managed to catch her in full pleading mode here. Isn't she pretty?

38. Clean radiator and below in lounge

This area has been completely inaccessible since I cleverly made a 'cage' for behind the TV table, in order to prevent the kittens from getting to the cables (our previously-mentioned Poppy once chewed through our speaker cables). I boxed it in with shelves from an old fridge, which I tied together and to the radiator with cable ties. All well and good - but there was no chance of getting a hoover in there.

All this had to be removed to make way for New TV Table (at last!). We were sad to see Old TV Table go, as it was one of the first pieces of furniture we ever bought, and to have lasted nearly 8 years is not bad for a cheap bit of Argos tat.

Once it was moved, the resulting dust, debris and cat hair (they spend a lot of their time climbing over the cage on their way to the windowsill, shedding along the way) was quite astonishing.

I hoovered (well, Dysoned), cleaned the radiator and skirting board, and tidied up the cables.

The resulting cleanliness was very satisfying.

Before:

After:

Day 45: Mission complete

44. Fix curtain rail in lounge

I went AWOL yesterday - a combination of exhaustion from wrangling a poorly baby; cabin fever; general malaise and realising that I hadn't done a list item at 11.30pm and wasn't about to start at that time of night.  Apologies, and today I have done two to catch up (I know, I know, I still haven't caught up from pre-Christmas illness, but I'll get there!).

Our house + curtains has always been a thorny subject.  We negotiated long and hard during the contract period in order to retain the fixtures and fittings, including the curtains.  Unfortunately, we hadn't really looked at them during our initial viewing and when we moved in we realised that heavy cream brocade, mixed with tassels, bucketfuls of voile, and curtains which had been designed so they didn't close (?!) didn't really marry with our tastes.  We put up with them for the time being, and a couple of years later, we decided to be responsible adults and get a kitten.

Poppy had probably been dropped on her head as a kitten, she was loveable, and loving, and funny, and did all kinds of tricks, but she was also certifiably insane.  Within a couple of months, she had ripped all the curtains down, necessitated the removal of the delightfully-draped voile (twisted around the curtain poles, from whence I had to rescue an upside-down crying Poppy, frantically clinging on for dear life), broken all of our nicest Things, and we had given up trying to maintain any semblance of Having Things On Shelves.

Poppy owned us for 3 years, at which point (on Boxing Day) we were devastated when she died from a blood clot.  Just before she died, we'd adopted my old cat Chokki from home, as my parents were moving house and the process was upsetting her.  I was 8 years old and present at the birth of Chokki, and it was lovely that she came to live with us for her last year.  Slow and arthritic, she stood no chance of getting onto the sofa, let alone going anywhere near curtains, so we gradually replaced all the plastic curtain tracks with nice shiny poles, and started being warm again.  Chokki got older and slower over the following year, was sporadically hobbled with crippling pains the vets could never find the cause of, and in the end it got too much for all of us to bear.  She was 4 months shy of 20 years old when she died.

Tilly and Maeby came to live with us just a couple of months before I found out I was pregnant, and much though I love them, I think I would rather have a baby with no cats.  Not only does he torment them by grabbing and yanking handfuls of their fur, but there's all the litter, and cat food, and they won't wipe their feet when they come in, and Maeby still forgets where the litter tray is sometimes.  But they're here to stay, and they followed happily in Poppy's pawprints by pulling down the lounge curtains not long after they'd moved in.  They actually managed to go one better than her, by pulling one of the curtain rail brackets out of the wall (and I'm sure this had nothing to do with me using the wrong pluggy things when I put it up).

I figure that now they're older and wiser (ha!), and are allowed to expend their energy by chasing each other around outside, that curtains might be safe once more.  Plus it is so damn cold that I'd do anything to help retain the heat a little more.

This evening I have tugged those dastardly wall plugs out, replaced them with Proper Ones, and screwed the bracket thing back in.  It made my arms ache and Maeby hid under a blanket.  Maeby is Special.

I thought you'd rather see some pictures of cats than pictures of a curtain rail, so here you are.

1. Tilly as a kitten, 2. Tilly attacks a sleeping Maeby's tail, 3. Hello Maeby,

4. Chokki in the sun, 5. Poppy reading, 6. Popstar

Clean out and reorganise cat-corner-cupboard

This cupboard is really too big just for the cat's stuff, but it had still managed to get out of hand and turn into a big old mess. In the summer, I tend to use it for gardening bits and bobs too, but all of that has been relegated to the garage for the past couple of years, since I've been too pregnant/postnatal to do any gardening.

Oh and my sewing machine used to live in it too, but I decided it was too dusty (the cat litter emits a cloud of dust every time you move it) and that probably wasn't doing the machinery any good, so it's getting its own new crafting cupboard soon.

So I cleaned, and wiped, and recycled all the empty food boxes, and stacked, and wondered why we have so many cat toys when these cats aren't cats who like to play ... and now it's lovely and clean.

Before...

After...

Day 33: Mission complete.

69. Clean window, curtain and ledge on landing

This area has been fairly dirty for a long time, as a previous cat used the window as her doorway in and out of the house, and simply would not remember to wipe her paws before she slid them down the wall in order to safely facilitate her jump onto the landing. I've tried everything, and the pawprints and streaks of mud will not come off. Decorating the hall is on the list, so that'll take care of that, but the window itself had got very grubby, the curtain (leftover from the previous residents) was torn and grubby (and just not very nice), and the iron doesn't really need to live on the windowsill. There was also a suspect amount of mould growing around the sealant, but as that's not strictly on the list, I'm leaving stripping and resealing that for another day, when I'm using the sealant for something else.

Before...

After...

Oh and yes, that's not a proper curtain. It's a spare thermal lining, and when we decorate the hallway, I'll choose some nice appropriate fabric and make a proper curtain to join it.