June 12, 2012

Things around here are still nice and slow and relaxing.  Quite lovely:).

I took 14 year old Dancer cat to the vet a couple of days ago and had the micro-chip put in.  They also caught him up on his shots (I don't normally keep indoor-only cats caught up) and I bought some flea medicine for him. So now Dancer is an indoor-outdoor cat and he is a very happy fellow.  The first couple of days it seemed that he stayed very close to our house.  Today we saw him coming back to our house outside of our fence so he had wandered a bit further away.

The boys really surprised me.  The first day that I let Dancer go out, they both cried.  I was really shocked because this is the first time that they seemed to care.  They were not that upset when he disappeared for a week but I guess that has been a while and they are older now.  They are starting to get used to the idea now.  Nick has accepted it and is now ok with it but Ben still worries about Dancer a lot when he is outside and he wants to go to him if he sees him outside.

Hopefully Dancer will get to enjoy his outside time for a long time.  I say a little prayer for him when he is out.  I don't want anything to happen to him but he was really miserable and he was making me miserable.  The entire time he was awake, he would roam the house, from door to door, crying and scratching at doors wanting to go outside.  He has also been waking me up at night doing this and, wow, I had not realized how long this had been going on and how much it was impacting me.  I started letting him sleep in the garage (which he loves) and I am sleeping incredibly now and I feel so great!  It is amazing!  I suddenly have so much more energy!  I really had no idea how much this was impacting my day to day productivity.  I'm sure it was also impacting my immune response and who knows what else.  Anyway, I sure do feel better and, boy!, I am also in a much better mood.

Tinker seems to be doing better with Dancer, now that he is going outside too.  I'm not sure why but they have both been lying out on the back porch since he came in and she is leaving him alone.  Well, she did try to engage him for a bit but he just ignored her and she gave up.  But she didn't run over and jump on his back, which she so frequently does, so that was really good.  Maybe we are going to finally get to a place where they are tolerating each other.  I hope so.  I am really tired of playing musical cats around here (he went into the garage so I can let her in off of the back porch; she is in the house so he must be shut up in my bedroom, etc.).

In other news, we have joined a new co-op and I am really excited about all that they offer.  I think we are all really going to enjoy it.  The boys will be taking a P.E. class that is run by the local YMCA.  They will also be taking a spanish class and an art class.  They have a music class that is offered in the afternoons where the kids are going to put on a musical at the end of the semester, which sounds like a blast.  I may ask the boys if they would like to do that also.  I think Nick especially would love it.  We'll see.  It can all get a bit expensive if we sign up for too much.

Also, I am looking in to having the boys join the cub scouts, which I think they will love.  Ben is really afraid of bugs, any kind of bug, even those that are dead.  So he was not excited about the idea of camping outside.  But then we were talking to this guy across the street who is a Boy Scout leader and, when Ben was saying he didn't want to do Scouts because of his fear of bugs, the guy said, "Well, do you like BB guns and other kinds of guns and would like to learn to shoot?" and Ben's head jerk around and his eyes grew big and, suddenly, he was all on board and excited.  Of course, I don't know if they learn that in Cub Scouts.  They may not teach it until they are in Boy Scouts.  But the guy on the phone this morning was telling me all of the stuff they teach and I was really impressed.  I think they will really enjoy it.  And there is a den that meets in the local school, which is only about a mile from our house, if that.  I think it would also give them a chance to really make some close friends in our area, since they try to put you into a den with kids from around where you live.

I also decided to put off starting school one more week so the boys can go to vacation Bible school at our church.  So we will be starting on July 16th instead of the 9th.  When I was a child, we always went to VBS at our church and then we often went at my grandmother's church as well.  I think the boys will enjoy it and it will be good for them.  I think it is only for half a day.  They will have a fun time and it will give me a bit of quiet time to do some things that I need to get done before we start school.

So lots of new stuff going on around here and, with all the great sleep I am getting now, I feel like a million bucks!  I am still amazed at what a difference this has made for me.  Yay!