Wintery weekend

So at the end of the last post, I nearly wrote something along the lines of "shame there won't be any left by tomorrow" ... but lucky I didn't, because that night it started snowing again. And didn't stop until the next night.

This was today:

We have two very rosy-cheeked boys tonight.

Great excitement

We've been watching the snow come lower and lower down the hills ever since we got back from Romania. On Wednesday, we were in a snow flurry at a friend's house in a village just a bit higher than ours. And last night, the first snow finally fell here.

Snow, snow! I want to play in the snow!

Going to school

Stomping around

Mr Credulous

If you asked the kids what they liked about our short stay in Munich, I'm pretty sure the hotel breakfast would be high on the list. Cheese platters - Lukan's dream. Baskets full of eggs - Téo's.

Lukan's enthusiasm for cheese is long-standing, but while Téo has always liked eggs, we were a bit taken aback by his obsession with them in Germany. He ate two for breakfast each day, and then one evening scoffed at least 3 more at his aunt's wedding supper - and then begged for more when we said he'd had enough.

- Sweetheart, 5 eggs in one day is too many. 

- It's not too many!

- Yes it is, you've had enough. You can eat something else instead.

- (honestly puzzled) But I can't throw cannon balls yet.

And then I remembered what he'd been reading on the train: Mr. Strong.

Thanks, Roger.

(And thanks also our supermarket, for now selling Hello Kitty hard-boiled eggs. Pink Hello Kitty eggs that put my pink-loving, Mr. Strong-wannabee son's pester mode into overdrive.)

Nothing if not persistent

So Splotch was actually the 4th cat we have attempted to have.

The first was back in June last year, when a friend forwarded me an email from a colleague about a lost cat looking for a new home. The cat had been living in the colleague's garden for a couple of months, there'd been no response to the "found cat" notices he put up, and he already had two cats and didn't want a third.

I asked C if we could have him. He sighed and said if there was really no one else willing to take him, we could.

All was arranged. We were to pick him up in two days time, a Saturday. And then on the Friday, the owner appeared.

The same friend, and this time her colleague too, then forwarded me an email about another cat looking for a new home. Her owners, a youngish couple living in an apartment, felt she needed more attention and the chance to go outside. Well, the boy felt this, the girl was not so sure. She was being Very Picky about who would get Millie.

I drove the kids 40 minutes to their place one Saturday morning so we could be assessed, where I dutifully admired all 756 of the cat's kitten photos, discussed my easing-cat-into-new-home plan, and promised to send regular photos and updates on how Millie was settling in. All without rolling my eyes. (At least not that they saw.)

We were declared The Chosen Family. A date was set for them to deliver her to us.

Only then I remembered we were going to Sydney five weeks later, for a month. A month outside in the snow seemed a little cruel, as did sending her to a cattery so soon after moving to a new home. So they said we could have her once we got back. And when we got back, they had decided they would keep her.

By this time, C's brother's family had adopted a cat. On hearing that she wasn't desexed, I said we'd have one of her kittens.

Hence Tabby. Poor Tabby.

And then we got Splotch. Poor Splotch.

(I am really not being flippant, I can't bear to think of them being eaten by a fox.)

The week that Splotch disappeared, we got an email from one of the people we'd contacted about a kitten after Tabby disappeared, letting us know her mother had kittens to give away if we were still looking for one.

We stalled a bit, but by the end of last week it was clear Splotch was gone for good.

So yesterday, I went to pick up our 5th attempt...

...Quincy.

Although, as I discovered a couple of hours after bringing her home, an equally descriptive name would have been Flea Bag.

Grey areas

Just recently, like a month ago, I was thinking how well my hair was doing in the not-going-grey department. There were a couple of grey hairs, true, but that was all. Maybe three. All easily removed.

(Aside: For years I wished the hairs in the centre of my monobrow were not so black. Well, actually, I wished there were no hairs there at all, but if they had to exist then why couldn't they be blonde and fine? Then they started turning grey, which didn't alarm me in the OMG-my-eyebrows-are-turning-grey-I-am-old sense – because these particular hairs had done a lot more growing than any others by virtue of being plucked all the time, so it just seemed logical that they would go grey first – but nevertheless wasn't exactly like my fantasy of non-black mid-eyebrow hairs either.

Fantasy: hairs that would be less noticeable, meaning a lower likelihood that people would see any unplucked hairs. Reality: hairs that are less noticeable, meaning a lower likelihood that I find them while short, meaning I only see them when they're so long they catch the light, and holy toledo everyone else must have been blinded by the light reflected from the forest of hairs above my nose.)

(Another aside: this difficulty of seeing unwanted non-black facial hairs worries me somewhat for the future... will I be able to see and pluck those three chin hairs in a timely manner once they turn grey, or will people be stealing sidelong glances to gauge their length?)

And then, just before we went to Romania, overnight there were grey hairs everywhere. Including in my fringe.

(Another aside: So the explanation for grey hairs is that they simply lack pigmentation because the cells that store pigment in the hair follicle, melanocytes, start to die off. OK, fine, I can understand the biology of this. But then why are the grey hairs also about 10 times thicker than my regular head hairs?? Which is another lovely example of the irony that graces our lives, given that in my younger years I also fervently wished to not have such fine hair.)

I hastily plucked out all the ones I could see, but I knew there must be many more hiding at the back, or under other hairs. And indeed, every now and again I see a glint from one of these sneakier ones. But still, even though the speed at which new grey hairs are appearing is a little alarming, it's not like I have to embrace the grey. Hello hairdresser!

But then yesterday, it got worse.

I found a grey pube.

A grey bush is something that had honestly not occurred to me. And if it had, well, it wouldn't have occurred to me that I would have one in my 40s.

Awesome. Just... awesome.

Dilemma

Last week, after performing Do-re-mi and The Lonely Goatherd for the umpteenth time, I was sorely tempted to let YouTube take over for a bit. Only, watching videos on the computer conflicts with my previously alluded to screen-time-limiting tendencies. Plus, one video inevitably leads to a request for Barbapapa where Cindy bwoke his ankle and then Stinky Pingu and then de jomping elephant and then de hippo and de dog and then the funny cats and then each of the videos that YouTube helpfully displays over on the right and then ends in tears when half an hour later I finally say no, that really was the last one.

So I hit on a compromise - the kids could listen to, but not watch, the Sound of Music songs. Perfect! I wouldn't have to sing anymore, and the kids wouldn't be zombified in front of a screen.

Instead they became mummified on the floor.

Causing me to wonder whether sitting passively and staring vacantly into space is really more desirable than sitting passively and watching a video?

Tough neighbourhood

So, ah, well, we seem to have lost Splotch.

My pro-wildlife stance is developing a decidedly anti-fox slant.

Goodbye little cat, you are very much missed.