Kittens. Yes, Again.

Soot (elder brother), Marmalade, Maggie, and Raggie. My favourite kittens, all lined up waiting for a picture. Badger (who used to be Maggie II, but earned herself an individual name by being extraordinarily ornery and grouchy) and Bleach weren't brave enough to make the long walk from the barn to the back porch.

Tomorrow is the first of November, and I think I remember that some people do a sort of forced-march blogging in November. I need that. Need some sort of boot in the arse to get the juices flowing.

Here's the Solemn Swear: I'm gonna blog me a blog every loving day in November. Maybe pictures, maybe not. Maybe even a picture without words. Maybe short, maybe long. But there'll be something, by Jingo, or .... or I'll be very disappointed in myself.

So there.

Yes, that's a threat.

Kittens.... Again.

Miss Puss thwarted me. She must have heard me say that I was going to have her spayed after she was done nursing #1 Son, and slyly continued to nurse him right through another pregnancy. So we have five more! Yikes! This time, it's the 10 week mark and no qualifiers.

They are:

Marmalade (M)
Bleach (b/c he looks like a bleached version of Marmalade) (M)
Maggie 1 (short for Magpie, b/c she's b&w) (F)
Maggie 2 (see above) (F)
Rags (short for Ragtime Gal) (F) a little callie/tortoiseshell.

And Soot, of course, the only survivor of the first batch. He's pretty jealous, and is just begging to get his nuts nipped with his aggressive behaviour. Trying to chew through a kitten's neck isn't the best way into my good books. He's on notice.

Seven cats.

This wasn't the sort of livestock I'd envisioned when we started this venture...

Effable, Very

Holy guacamole!

I'm no saint, that's for sure. I'm a screw-up and probably neurotic in a dozen different ways that I'm not even aware of at this point, but there's a line, you know?

And I've had a line severely crossed in the last few days. Actually, it was happening last winter, but I only found out about it now. The things you don't know...

Himself and I have been seeing another acupuncturist in the past year, on and off, because the other one was so busy, and this lady had a specialty we were interested in. And jeepers, she seemed SO nice, and wanted to HELP, and she certainly was good with the needles. I referred people to her all the time, friends and clients of mine, and she smiled in my face and talked about collaborating as practitioners....

And this weekend I found out that through last winter she had posted, on a semi-public forum, a very detailed description of the Spouse's medical condition, her take on our family dynamics, her opinion of all the ways in which we were dysfunctional, and then had a Madcap & Co. flaming party with the other practitioners on the site. Our names weren't used, but hers was.

When I found out, I went and had a look, and printed copies of the pages concerning us. Should be useful. She'd already had the moderator wipe a bunch of it out, but there were enough traces left that it's pretty unmistakable what was going on.

This was someone who has professional obligations through her association, obligations of confidentiality, respect, and compassion towards clients. I'm pretty sure this doesn't qualify.

The prevailing winds of incivility are disturbing.

Redefined

While I was making the bread this morning, the word "ineffable" came to mind, and ....

Ineffable. Does that mean something that can't possibly be effed up?