Cuddles versus Green Thing

Leslie is just smitten with our little kitten. Shannon would do anything to spend time with her.
You can't blame them. Go on and admit it.
You think she is too cute for words.

Well....the latest in our cat news is this. (From Leslie)

Today when I was giving the cats some food in their cage, I was not careful enough. I had the garage door open and our big feral friend made a beeline for freedom. Ugh! So she is back in the world to make more kittens.

Cuddles, however, did not make it out. Because a kitten without a mommy is a hungry and sad one, we brought her right away to the humane league. (Yes, it is a she.) They told me that the three we brought the other day had a sad demise. She told me that if we wanted to see this one alive to go to a happy home, we needed to raise her up to two pounds before they would take her. Since she is about 3 weeks old, that will be another 4 - 6 weeks. Did we want to be foster parents?

Yes! We went to Petsmart and got kittie food, formula, bottle, litter. Doug just laughed when I told him why dinner would be late. After dinner we gave her a hot bath and picked off her fleas. She enjoyed a yummy chicken/formula slurry and is now asleep on my arm as I write this. I am smitten. Somebody is going to get a great kitten.

The Cat Diaries

So, the kids excitedly announced we had kittens one day. Apparently, their mama was nesting them under our shed. Initially, we saw two kittens.

Leslie went out to get a trap for Mama, while I donned orange rubber gloves and performed a kitten extraction of the THREE kittens hiding under the shed.
They were so cute, the kids wanted to keep them. But we have allergies to cats. And I have an allergy to cat attitudes. So, off they went to the humane league (hopefully to be adopted.)

That night, Mama made her way into our trap with kitten number FOUR. We gave them food and water and put towels under the cage.

We are trying to convince our friends to replace their old vicious cat with our cute little one (that Shannon named Cuddles.) If not, they both go to the Humane League tomorrow when they open.

Leslie and her fried made an awesome centerpiece for the Fall Splash at church Sunday.It is an edible stream going down the fill. The trees are broccoli, the pier is carrots, the stones are mushrooms and the water is balsamic vinaigrette.
Can you see the boater paddling UPSTREAM?

It won first prize for creativity.

The Tea Party March

I showed up not expecting a great crowd. I honestly thought it would be somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000. We showed up two hours before the march was going to start, but we saw Pennsylvania avenue clogged with marchers heading towards the Capitol while we were marching towards the meeting place. I thought something was wrong and we might miss it, but we had to stop at a store to use the restroom. Every store had a 10 minute wait to use the bathroom. E street was busy with marchers making their way to the meeting place.

 

When we finally arrived at the meeting place, we thought we would try to find the speakers that were to be there, but no one was speaking. Instead, we gawked and chatted with all the interesting folk and they with us. Many people asked if I was "really a doctor." Then they thanked me for coming. Most people were smiling and having a good time.

 

Two young ladies saw me taking a picture of a statue covered with protesters and asked me if they could interview me. They said they were working for a French news agency that would sell its story to outlets around the world. They were looking for a good soundbite and thought they had one when I said, "Obama is using doctor's compassion to sell Universal Health Care." So they taped me saying it. What I meant was he says people like Medicare, so government healthcare is a success. But he doesn't admit what all us physicians know is true: primary care docs lose money seeing Medicare patients. We do it out of a sense of community service. If everyone went "public option," all of us would have to close.

 

After 15 minutes, we figured out they weren't planning on doing any rallying at the meeting place as originally intended. As new people arrived, there was no room in the square for them. That is why the marchers were leaving the square two hours early. So we joined them. It was a very orderly and upbeat march. Several people stopped and thanked Dad for his service (he was in his Army uniform) and asked to take pictures of us with our signs.

 

When we arrived at the Capitol they ushered us onto the South lawn as the main area was already full by a longshot. It was about 10:30 or 11:00 and they already had speakers talking on the main stage. It was suposed to start at 1 pm, but the size of the crowd changed things, I believe. Over the next 4-5 hours several people asked if I was a doctor, thanked Dad for his service and took pictures of our signs.

 

The speakers were all limited to a couple of minutes. If they went long, the speakers started playing music to gently remind them time was up. Most had good things to say, some were great. The message was almost universally about taking our constitutional freedoms back from the federal government. It wasn't specifically about Obamacare for the most part. There were no superstars there to draw the crowd. Steven Baldwin may be the closest to that, but I didn't know he was coming. This was such a spontaneous grass-roots movement. Every sign was handmade except the 50-100 yellow "Don't Tread on Me" flags I saw.

 

At the end, we all peaceably disassembled. Dad and I were looking for trash to pick up, but there was none. People were very polite waiting in line at the port-a-potties. We got out of the city in about 30 minutes. Not bad.

 

All in all, I think we were all surprised at how many of us there were. I hope this leads to further action. Particularly I would like to see conservatives in the swing states get involved in the Republican political organization and generate rules to make sure there are no crossover liberals voting in our primaries jsut to ruin our choices. No more McCains!

 

Hope you will join us next year to tour DC a little and do the rally again. It will be a Congressional election year, and I hope the turnout will be even bigger.

A successful day of lobbying for freedom at the Capitol

Morrissey Men Prepare to March on Washington.

First Day of School Little Bro saying goodbye.

(This is Leslie)

 

Aaron was sharing with me about the importance of the sun yesterday.  He said, "There are so many good things about the sun - it warms up the earth, it causes the plants to grow, it brings light - the only really bad thing is its ultra-violent rays!"