I know, I know.

I'm really sorry. It's been FOREVER! I don't know if we've really been that "busy", per se, I guess I just haven't had much to blog about (since we haven't really been "busy" doing much). We did have our housewarming party last weekend, which was pretty laid back and enjoyable. We got to spend time with a variety of friends, I cooked all day, I got to see Sarah's new bling and talk wedding stuff... all in all, good times ;) We also had my friend Leanne here visiting last Thurs-Fri-Sat, which was tons of fun! Leanne and I had a lovely girls' night with lots of beer, kitty fun, movies, etc. on Thursday night while Ben visited his dad, and Janelle and Sarah came up and hung out on Friday evening with us and made dinner (sweet!). Unfortunately Leanne had to get back home on Saturday for a grad party so she missed our party, but we had a great time while it lasted!

Leanne snuggling with little Squidward

Lewis hanging out on Leanne's legs... LOL! They LOVED her - she let them sleep on the couch with her at night ;)

And this week was my LAST WEEK OF WORK!!! HOORAY!!! I've been waiting SO long to be finished, and now here I am - a free woman again! Today was my last day, a half-day followed by a group outing to Just Cakes in Bethesda for cupcakes, brownies, and other horrendously fattening treats :) Then I made the long-ass commute for THE LAST TIME, took a nice (WAY too long) nap, and soaked up my freedom.

Speaking of fattening treats, I've officially decided that it's time to start paying attention to what I'm eating again. I'm flirting dangerously with the upper limits of my weight gain tolerance. I really don't tolerate ANY weight gain well - no one does - but this is generally the maximum that I'll stand for before taking drastic measures. I think they call it "yo-yo dieting". It's not severe, I only fluctuate by 5-8 pounds when I go through these phases, but I've noticed that it's definitely a pattern for me. I lose some weight, start feeling good, get into a good work-out regimen, and then something happens to make me fall off the wagon. I injure myself, I get sick, I go on vacation... and then I start sliding down that slippery slope toward completely abandoning it all. And then one day it hits me that I've been COMPLETELY ignoring what I'm putting into my body, eating whatever I want whenever I want, and I look in the mirror and IT SHOWS. Ugh. So I'm in one of those ruts at the moment. Part of my problem is this athsma issue I've been having that's keeping me from running. I just can't run like I used to. I'm usually wheezing and feeling a lot of tightness in my chest by about 5 to 10 minutes into my run, and by 20 minutes I feel like I'm going to collapse and I have to stop. Running really is my work-out of choice - it's so rewarding and I feel like I've really kicked my ass and accomplished something when I'm finished - but lately it's just not working for me. I'm trying to get more diligent about doing the Jillian Michaels 30-day shred DVD that I bought, so we'll see how that goes. It's hard to get started because every time I start it again, it KILLS me and I have to skip at least the next day or even two because my muscles simply aren't functioning. Once I get into the swing of it I know I'll be able to do it daily, I just have to allow myself to ease into it WITHOUT allowing myself to fall off the wagon during that day or two between work-outs. Ugh. The endless battle.

I really should be getting to bed. We're leaving tomorrow morning for a long weekend in North Carolina to visit my aunt, uncle and two little cousins - the aunt who just had the baby boy a few weeks ago. I can't wait to meet him! I went to Target today and did a little baby shopping (ALWAYS fun!), did some laundry and packed for the trip. I'm hoping to take a day trip with my cousin Nikki (she's 12) while we're there to get her out of the house for a day since she's sorta cooped up with her mom and the baby all the time while her dad is at work. We're thinking some kind of amusement park or water park or something - apparently there are a few nearby. Should be fun! And of course there will be lots of baby-cuddling and photo-snapping ;) We're dropping the kittens at my dad's for the weekend (he's all anti-pet these days, but you should see him with the kitties - he loves them!) and then heading out west and down south (they live in western western NC). It'll be about a 7 1/2 hour ride, so like I said, I'm off the hit the sack. My psycho husband who apparently enjoys torturing himself is already dead to the world for the evening - he's working tomorrow morning 5-8am to make some OT money. It's much needed, but he always seems to pick the WORST days to do this stuff - it's always when we have a zillion other things to do and he wants to try to squeeze in a few hours in the extremely early morning, so he can be exhausted all day and pass out early. Ugh. But I really can't complain about having a husband who will go the extra mile to provide for his family ;) I just hope he doesn't think this means I'm driving...

So, be looking for an update next week with lots of cute baby pictures! We're both off all week so I'll have no excuse not to blog. We do need to organize the office before school starts, and the kitties are getting "the snip" on Thursday, but other than that we're pretty wide open! Vacation on the couch... there's nothing quite like it ;)

Another crazy weekend

Whew. So... Friday. Friday I came home from work and tirelessly cleaned the apartment for our guests, Mike and Sarah. Ahh, Mike and Sarah. How we LOVE Mike and Sarah :) Mike was Ben's best man at the wedding, and Sarah is his sweet-as-pie Kindergarten-teacher girlfriend. I state her occupation because it describes her personality so perfectly - SUPER friendly, SUPER sweet, creative, fun, and all smiles. As you can see below, they're simply picture-perfect! Anyway, they're just a blast to hang out with, so we had them down for drinks and sparkling conversation (since we're all poor and can't really go out... more on why Mike is poor shortly...) and had a lovely, relaxed evening just talking and laughing and playing with the kittens.

...and the snake. ew. This is the first time I've ever held him, and it may be the last, I won't lie. He's just gross. I'm sorry. This lasted about a total of a minute, and it only happened because I'd had a few glasses of wine.

Lewis really likes shoes. Here, he's sitting in Mike's shoes :)
And this is just a really cute one of Eddie sleeping on my leg later that evening...

Then came Saturday. We got up around 9:30 and got ready to go down to Amberly and Chris's. Ben spent the morning/afternoon helping Chris replace the brakes on Amberly's Jeep Liberty before they go on vacation next weekend. In the meantime, I watched the boys...

Leo spent most of our visit watching train videos on YouTube... the kid LOVES trains. And you just can't resist Evan's cheezy grin ;) He's totally mastered it - EVERY time you point a camera at him, this is what you get! He's a great subject ;)

Waiting patiently for daddy to come back inside and play...

Being good for me :) I even got him to go down for a nap! I was very impressed with myself! LOL :)

Me & Smeebo had a great time watching train videos, eating hot dogs and watching "Over the Hedge". He was an angel all day!

Leo refusing to smile nice for the camera, probably because he never sees Ben smile nice either (he usually only ever sees Ben making faces similar to the one he's making!)

Evan obviously looks up to his big brother Leo ;)

That brings me to why I was watching the boys... Amberly was at the hospital with Lace :'( Unfortunately Lacy came down with a respiratory infection last week that was causing her a lot of chest pain and shortness of breath, and she was running a fever of about 103, and after failing to respond well to oral antibiotics she was admitted to the Hopkins Children's Center on Friday afternoon. Her chest X-ray showed large mucus build-ups in the bottom of each of her lungs, which the doctor said were cutting her lung capacity nearly in half. For anyone who isn't familiar with CF, CF patients accumulate mucus build-ups because their tissues don't regulate salt/water balances correctly which leads to really thick mucus (as opposed to the nice liquidy wet mucus in a normal lung), which is a lovely environment for bacteria and viruses to live and grow in, making CF patients far more susceptible to serious respiratory infections. Anyway, after a long weekend of strong IV antibiotics, she had a PICC line inserted today (Peripheral Intravenous Central Catheter). It's basically a really long IV line that runs from a vein in her arm into the right atrium of her heart to more directly and aggressively administer antibiotics. Three times a day she'll have to hook up a portable IV pump to her PICC line and sit around for an antibiotic drip, over the course of a few weeks. She's had a PICC line once before so it isn't new to her. The last one was inserted in the OR under general anesthesia, but this time around she was brave enough to have it inserted by a nurse at the bedside with a local and a mild sedative! Amberly said she cried a little but did amazingly well, and when I was in to see her this afternoon she was completely back to normal, bouncing around the room. So please keep her continued progress and recovery in your prayers. Especially since they're leaving for family vacation in the Outer Banks on Saturday!

So, back to Saturday... When the guys finished with the brake job, we headed over to Frank's to take him out to the store (well, two stores). Which of course wasn't a quick trip, but it was realtively uneventful and painless :) Then we shot down to Eldersburg to stop in and visit with my dad for an hour or so, which was just lovely! I really do miss being at home with him and seeing him every day, so it felt great to spend a little time at home and catch up. I'm hoping to get back down there again this weekend for a more extended visit. We had to get going to get home for our next evening of visitors - Janelle and her roommate Sarah (not Mike's Sarah - we'll call this one Sarah M.) came up for dinner :) Just like our lovely Friday evening, we had a lovely Saturday evening of casual drinks, more sparkling conversation, and DELICIOUS dessert! And the kitties got even MORE attention - they had a GREAT weekend ;) I hadn't seen Janelle since the wedding, and hadn't seen Sarah M. since the last time we hung out at their place which was God-knows-how-long ago, so we were thrilled to finally get to spend some time just hanging out and catching up with them. It was a good time.

Oh, so I was saying, about us all being too poor to go out Friday night... yeah, something else fun happened on Saturday night - Mike proposed to Sarah!!! YAY! It was so fun to kinda watch it all unfold, since we knew it was coming ;) Not that we actually got to SEE it, but we got theplanning updates and news ahead of time, and then got the phone call when it happened and all that. Talking to her on Friday night when the boys went out for a beer run, I was just biting my tongue listening to her trying to guess when it was coming and talking about wedding plans! Hee hee :) I'm SO SO SO happy for them! Mike has been through a lot and he's such an amazingly wonderful guy, and he deserves this SO much. And Sarah is just so awesome and it's so obvious that she recognizes and appreciates what she has in Mike - it's just wonderful to see! I'm sure they'll have a FABULOUS wedding too, because Sarah is just so creative. They're just so perfect for each other... I can't wait!

Then came Sunday. Whew, it was the never-ending weekend. We got up and went over to Hopkins to visit Lacy, who was of course in great spirits because that's just the kind of girl she is, plus she was definitely feeling a lot better. It was a relief to finally get to see her and see that she was getting back to her normal self and not feeling too miserable. Plus we got to visit with Amberly and Ben's mom, which was an added bonus! It had definitely been a little while since we'd gotten to just sit down and chat with them for more than a few minutes! Then we made the drive from east Baltimore out to Carroll Valley, PA for a cookout with Tom & Amy and Mark & Susan, and the dogs of course ;) That was filled with the usual fabulous Amy Smith food, lots of laughs and fun with the pups. And lots of drinks of course - had to drive Ben home from that one! But we somehow managed to get into bed at a reasonable hour anyway, to start up another hectic work week.

Speaking of getting to bed at a reasonable hour, I gotta go get a shower. And you're probably MORE than DONE reading yet another novel of a blog post from yours truly, so I should let you go anyway ;) LATER!

Ahhh progress...

I think we're making progress with Mr. Ray Lewis. Eddie has always been a snuggler - a "people cat" if you will. When we went to pick them out Eddie was the rambunctious one, playing with all the other kittens and being very sociable, while Lewis hid under large pieces of furniture for the majority of our visit. But Lewis was just too cute to pass up - we really loved his coloring and he had been the first one to catch our eye when we came into the vet's office and were checking out the kitten cage. I was a little concerned about his skittishness - he didn't want to come out until we got most of the other kittens out of the room (after narrowing it down to the two we have, we asked the lady to take the others out so we could get to know them without all the craziness - at the time we thought we'd be choosing between the two but THAT obviously didn't happen!). And even when we did get rid of the others, he was very hesitant to come out, backed away when you tried to pet him, and didn't particularly want to be held. Sounds like a kitten everyone's just DYING to take home, doesn't it! LOL :) But I tend to be a sucker for shyness, and when we finally were able to pick him up and hold him for a few minutes, he was very sweet. So we had hope that he'd come around. When we were deciding whether to take one or two, we were actually just going to take him and leave Eddie!

I will say that I'm SO glad we brought Eddie home, because having just Lewis would've been a little disappointing for a while - it's taken him a few weeks to warm up. I was very hesitant about taking two (financial reasons mostly - I was afraid to commit to two animals' worth of vet bills), but Eddie has already been worth his weight in gold - he's just SUCH a sweetheart. Despite the toilet fiasco (see post below). But anyway, back to Lewis, we're really starting to notice a change in him now. He's always first in line to greet me when I get home from work, and he's starting to jump up on the couch with us and let us just sit and pet him more. It used to be darn-near impossible to pick him up, but now he has no qualms about letting us pick him up and hold him for a bit. He even let me trim his nails!

But this morning was the most exciting progress so far :) It's not at all rare for me to wake up to Eddie in my face. Ben usually crawls out of bed a few minutes before I do and opens the bathroom door so they have access to the bedroom at that point (we've been keeping them locked out of our room at night so Eddie can't crawl all over us!). But today, when I felt the little paws land on the edge of the bed and looked down expecting to see my sweet little Squidward peering up at me (if you know Ben I'm sure you can track the progression of that nickname), I was shocked to see Lewey instead! I sat up and he came right up into my lap, purring his little face off and rubbing his head all over me :) He even laid down in my lap, which he NEVER does (he's usually far too active to sit still). I know this probably seems QUITE silly to the rest of the world, but it just thrilled me :) And Ben was very excited too - he's been very worried that Lewis is just going to be one of those cats that you never see. So I think we're making great progress with Lewis, and we're going to end up having two awesome kitties when they're all grown up!

Gotta go check my fish. I got in TWO experiments yesterday (LOTS of fishy babies!), but so far today has been a no-go. I was expecting this, given the unusual success of yesterday's breeding - Lord knows THAT can't happen twice in one week. Whatev. Today is my "farewell lunch" so I'm getting even more excited about my impending fellowship termination :) I know I still have 2 1/2 weeks left, but it's fun to start doing these "wrap-up" activities!

Every parent's worst nightmare

My dear, sweet Eddie is a closet DOG.

I only wish I had the pictures to prove it! He chases his tail quite enthusiastically, loves to cuddle and sit on laps, licks people, and is obsessed with the toilet. EVERY TIME you go in the bathroom and lift up the seat, he comes tearing in there like a bat out of hell, comes to a sliding halt right next to the bowl, and watches in amazement. He's just enamored. Early this morning, Edward's unhealthy potty fetish nearly killed him, in fact. Let me explain.

It's 5:10am. My alarm goes off at 5:20am, so I'm already unhappy about being awake, but I REALLY have to pee and I just know I'm going to lay there awake til the alarm goes off anyway if I don't get up and do it. So I get up and wander into the bathroom in the dark (it's getting light outside, but once I pull up the bathroom door it's just about pitch dark in there). I pick up the seat and start to turn around to sit down, and before I can begin to lower myself at all, Eddie comes tearing around the corner and I hear/feel a big SPLASH. That's right, my 12-week-old kitten is IN the toilet, at 10 after 5 in the morning. My first thought is "dear God he's going to drown!" - I'm picturing him completely submerged in toilet water gasping for air and clawing at the sides of the bowl - so I quickly flick on the light (which of course nearly blinds me, given my sleep-wake status), reach into the bowl and yank him out. Of course I've completely overestimated the severity of the situation - he's much bigger than I'm imagining him to be relative to the toilet, and he's basically just standing in there with wet paws. He didn't even seem to be in much of a hurry to get himself out. What a fool. I guess he was just thrilled to finally find out for himself what goes on in there. I grab the nearest hand towel and dry off his paws and belly through clenched teeth, toss him onto the floor, and wander back into my bedroom half-stunned. WAY too much action for 5am.

Meanwhile, dear hubby remains sound asleep, rolled up in the covers like a burrito, completely oblivious.

Weekend Update

We had a fun-filled, action-packed weekend! On Friday Ben played a round of golf so he got home VERY late, whilst I commuted 2 HOURS home from work, ran for 20 minutes AND did my 30-day shred DVD (HOLLA! Very proud of myself!), showered, and made a kick-ass dinner of sesame-ginger salmon with veggies over parmesan risotto - deeee-lish :) Then we watched Ace Ventura 2, because a quote came up earlier in the day that reminded us of it ("kinda hot in these RHINOoooos"). Saturday morning we slept in (well, HE slept in, while I started some laundry... though I did sleep til at least 10 which definitely qualifies as "sleeping in"), had a quick breakfast and then drove 45 minutes up to Ray's house to pick up my car.

My poor car. Ray's friend Jimmy is a master mechanic and has done some work on Ben's car very inexpensively, so when it finally came time to drop some serious coin on MY car, we knew where to go. It took almost 2 weeks, but my car is essentially brand new except for the body! I'll try to remember most of what he replaced off the top of my head because I don't have the list on me... fuel filter, air filter, front brake pads, front rotors, a flex tube in the front (yeah I don't know either), front struts, the filler neck for my gas tank (rusted and leaking gas - FABULOUS), catalytic converter, muffler, exhaust piping basically from the catalytic converter on back... YEAH and that's definitely not everything but holy crap. The ol' Cavvy was a mess. He only charged us for parts plus $250 in labor to put everything on. SWEET! We still spent some serious money, but at least my car will pass emissions now (no more check engine light!) and hopefully it'll last me longer than I need it to. I'm excited to clean it up and take some pride in it for a change :)

When we got back from picking up my car it was time to get ready for Jeanne's 40th birthday party (wahoo!). Parties at Ron & Jeanne's are always a great time :) We had a blast of course - ate lots of good food, got to play with a few babies (yay!), stayed up WAY too late and drank WAY too much wine... the usual. We really shouldn't have stayed up til 2am, because we had to get up at 8:30 the next day. Boo.

But we did have fun on Sunday, despite the early start. Ray invited us to hang out and check out his O.G. (that is, original gangster, for those of you who aren't frequently exposed to my husband's vocab) dirt biking skillz at an observed trials event in Taylorsville. Observed trials are all about control and balance on the bike, so they set up a loop of 8 sections which you repeat 4 times, and each section is full of rocks and branches and tight turns and steep inclines/declines, etc. You're scored by someone on the ground observing you at each section, and you get a point every time you put your foot down. You get maximum points if you come to a complete stop for more than a full second, stall your bike, or go out of bounds also (and the boundaries are of course VERY tight). I'll post some pics when I get home, but suffice it to say that it's PRETTY intense! There's a lot of man-handling the bike (which isn't light by any means!) plus your own weight, LOTS of control and balance and weight-shifting, and you're constantly trying to get through the current obstacle while setting yourself up for the next one, and keeping track of your back tire behind you... it's crazy. I was very impressed. I hung out with Ray's wife Shannon for most of the day because of course Ben was following Ray's every move all day (hiking through woods and streams and all over creation). We followed him through one complete loop (of 4 total), most of another one, and watched him every time he came through the sections that we could see from where we were sitting :)

Once Ray finished up, we had to head out to go visit Ben's dad and do some grocery shopping for him. Whew. First of all, we were both EXHAUSTED. Ben had taken a benadryl earlier in the day that messed him all up, and I was just plain tired. We couldn't decide who was safer behind the wheel at that point, and it was only about 4:00. Ben called his Dad on the way over, and they agreed that Ben would go to the store FOR him in order to speed up the process, since we were so tired and ready to go home (at Ray's event we were about 25 mins from his Dad's, plus another 45 minutes home to White Marsh). Of course by the time we got there, Frank had apparently changed his mind and was ready to walk out the door with Ben (and actually did proceed to walk out the door, at which point Ben had to get into a nasty fight with him in the middle of the hallway that brought the neighbors peeking out their doors... ugh). So after picking up his Dad's grocery list and money off the floor (you can guess how it got there), Ben finally made it back out to the car without his father, and we made the quickest grocery shopping trip in recorded history. We brought the groceries back, made sure he had everything done that he needed done, returned the key to Amberly's (and hung out to chat and visit with the kiddies for a few), and then headed home. Well, we ended up deciding to stop at Applebee's (given my exhaustion level and complete disinterest in cooking). That 2 for $20 menu is just too tempting. Except then we always end up getting a beer or two and ruining the cheap-ness factor that got us in the door in the first place. Their scheme is working brilliantly.

So anyway, it was an eventful and fun weekend :) And I'm down to 3 weeks of work remaining (it REALLY seems like it should be 2 at this point, but whatever)! Not a whole lot of excitement planned for this week though. I'm going to pick out a display for my bouquet today (which we had preserved because it was so pretty!), and I think Janelle is coming up to hang out at some point this weekend, but other than that we have a relatively placid week ahead of us... aaaahhhhh. And I'm making Old Bay Shrimp Scampi tonight. TOTALLY psyched! I love cooking when I have the time :)

Next week is shaping up to be even MORE fabulously boring! Of course, we're still a week out from next week - a lot can change in that amount of time! Those changes may involve my kittens getting "the snip"... I gotta get on that. They're still doing very well and behaving themselves for the most part :) And of course I have even more kitten-calendar-worthy pics of them to post! I gotta get on the photo-posting this evening.

I think I'll go call a few vets and get some snippity-snip price quotes (LOL, is it strange to "shop around" for a bargain on neutering?). The vet where we got the boys participates in a low-cost spay and neuter program so I know they're pretty inexpensive, but they're far away and if I can find one closer that would definitely be ideal! We shall see.

Update: A few photos from Ray's event

I must be the lamest person ever

I freaking blog ALL THE TIME. I really need to get a life. I'm waiting for the results of my second attempt at fish cupid-ry this morning. The first set gave me about 90 embryos, and not all of those will end up being fertilized, so that's basically useless to me. I need at least 150 to go forward with any kind of useful experiment. I could do a half-assed experiment but I'd just have to repeat it, and I don't have time for all those shenanigans at this point - I only have 3 and a half weeks left (*BIG SMILE*). I just don't understand how a gang mating of 15-20 fish can produce so little.

In case you've ever wondered about exactly what I do to these innocent fish, well I'll tell you. Because I have nothing better to do. I have a solution that I inject into them - literally, using a very fine needle that I have to first break the tip off of (under the microscope) and calibrate to make sure I know how much I'm putting in - and this solution contains a small piece of synthetic DNA that will alter which genes the embryo is capable of using for the first few days of it's development. We target specific genes by this technique to see what happens during development when those specific genes aren't available (and therefore the proteins that those genes ultimately produce are not available). I work on the folic acid/vitamin B12 pathway. The loads of folic acid in prenatal vitamins are important for development because folic acid supplementation has been shown to reduce the risk of congenital heart and neural tube defects (like spina bifida for example) in human babies. When we screw with the availability of the proteins in that pathway, we hinder the fish's ability to metabolize folic acid, so we're basically mimicking a situation in which folic acid isn't available to the embryo (like, say, when a woman doesn't know she's pregnant and hasn't been supplemented with it yet). So we use these methods to help us figure out exactly what's going on at the molecular level that causes these particular defects when folic acid isn't available during development, with fish as a model for humans (because they share a lot of the same developmental processes, proteins and pathways). Obviously we don't really care about folic acid metabolism in fish - we just use them to try and understand more about humans. I say that because sometimes people think that I "study fish" which seems pretty useless (and I would agree with that statement) but I really don't give a hoot about the fish themselves, they're just a useful tool since we can't (nor would we want to!) do these experiments in humans fetuses. And for those ladies among you, don't worry about your folic acid levels prior to pregnancy - we fortify all our milled grain products (bread, etc) in the US with folic acid specifically BECAUSE it's so important in the early stages of development and we don't want any pregnant ladies being completely depleted of FA before they know they're pregnant. Based on the work we've done in fish, it actually looks like folic acid is MOST important in the first few weeks of pregnancy before most women even know they're pregnant anyway. We're working on solidifying that data - if you frequently read scientific journals maybe you'll see it sometime in the next year or so :) I hope. I need a publication.

Anyway, my timer is going off in less than 30 seconds now so I gotta go check on the fishies. Hope you enjoyed the brief tutorial :)

Quick update - fishy blind date #2 is more-or-less a flop, so far. Boo. I gotta get a Barry White tape in there or something. Dribble some "sex panther" in the tank maybe... hey, "60% of the time it works, every time". I'd take 60%!

A New Arrival!

My aunt Suzie - my dad's sister who lives in North Carolina - just had a baby yesterday evening! His name is Carson Dennis Brice and he weighed a healthy 8 lbs 5 oz. Please pray for their family as they adjust to the new addition - my aunt is 43 and wasn't expecting to have any more children (she has one 12-year-old daughter and gave up trying for a second several years ago).

In other news... yeah there isn't much else. I'm still working... blah. We did go down to Ocean City for the 4th of July with our friends Tom and Amy and their three dogs, which was a good time...
http://picasaweb.google.com/jenna.bonner529/July4th09?
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We hung out on their boat(s) tubing, skiing, fishing, relaxing, sunning, drinking, and otherwise enjoying ourselves. We went out onto the water to watch fireworks on the 4th, which was cool because we could see three different professional displays from where we were anchored. We ALSO got our first crabs of the summer, which in and of itself made the entire trip well worth it! They were deeee-lish, as always.

Our kitties are doing very well and seem to have settled into their new home with relative ease. Apparently one of them peed in a laundry basket full of clean clothes (which I discovered this morning while getting ready for work... I just couldn't seem to escape the smell of cat urine no matter where I went, and I finally realized it was IN MY SHORTS. Great. Real live "whizzy britches" (I think Em and/or Amberly might remember that...). Other than that we haven't had any pee or poop or puke anywhere in the apartment (except in the approved receptacle, of course). We tried letting them have the run of the apartment last night for the first time (they're out during the day but we had been crating them at night), but that didn't really work. I kept waking up to Eddie's claws prickling around on me, and I really can't have him up in the bed because he's so small and one of us will roll over and smother him. So I suppose we'll either have to keep them out of our room or keep them crated in our room at night. I've decided that I really don't want to declaw them, which Ben isn't thrilled about, but I'm sorry I just think it's cruel. I don't think it's fair to remove the tips of my kittens' paws from the knuckle down because they might put a few picks in my slip covers. It's just not worth their pain, to me. I'll learn to clip their nails myself. That still leaves the neutering thing though, which needs to be done soon. I think we'll go ahead and do them both at the same time, because the recovery really isn't too bad, and that way they'll both be groggy together instead of one being rambunctious while the other is laid up. I feel bad even for doing that to them, but I know it's the responsible thing to do - we don't need any more homeless cats in shelters because people don't spay and neuter their pets who then accidentally escape from the house. I get that. At any rate, I really need to schedule that very soon. If for no other reason than the fact that, being boys, they'll start spraying all over the apartment soon.

I've also been fighting with our stupid management company about a bunch of maintenance issues (not the least of which being my non-functional dishwasher!!! which has been broken for a month!!!). We loved the management company that was there when we signed our lease (Bozzuto), but a month later we were taken over by a new one (Riverstone Residential) which has been essentially worthless. We have several leaks in our ceilings, the dishwasher is busted, the light switch in our bedroom doesn't work... and I've had to call about these things multiple times. I'm getting pissed. In fact, I'm going to go call them right now and complain some more. Ta-ta for now!