Adventures with livestock

I am a bad blogger. It has been an entire month since I last posted here. Shame on me. Shame!

Plus, I've been busy doing awesome things, so you'd think I'd want to post about all the awesomeness.

My life is getting ridiculous again. I'm loving it.

Par example: Last weekend we went to the Taos Sheep and Wool Festival. I got a big bag of yarn and stuff, and a tiny sunburn on just one shoulder. I'm not sure how I managed that. I think I must have been somehow facing the same way all day.

The festival was so much fun though. I met other another knitter from Santa Fe, and her daughter and granddaughter from Phoenix.

And we saw a whole passel of knitting-friendly livestock. First there were the traditional sheep:


That one in the middle refused to come out of the middle. He was trying so hard to hide the indignity of being the only one that was shorn. It certainly wasn't because he was cold. It was at least seventy-five that day. Maybe eighty. Unseasonably warm for Taos.

Next we saw the alpacas.

They were very shy and stayed huddled in the middle so you couldn't really pet them much. The Boy Creature managed it, and said they were very soft. I'll have to console myself with petting the hand-dyed alpaca yarn I bought instead.

I did love the sound they made, though. It's sort of somewhere between a cat's meow and a sheep's bleat. And they did it over and over. I loved it!

This next little guy is a baby yak.


And when I say little, I mean about the size of a labrador. He was adorable, though. It was too hot for him, so he mostly just laid around and panted, poor little thing.


Last but certainly not least, were the angora bunnies. I'm crazy about these things, to the point that I considered getting one before we got Bagheera.


These are some of the most ridiculous-looking animals I've ever seen. They look like a normal bunny got put in the dryer and they puffed up into these giant dandelion type things. And they're huge. I'd seen pictures of them on the internet, and I thought they were the size of normal bunnies. But they're two to three times that size! And now I'm glad I didn't get one, because you pretty much have to be endlessly combing that fur. And there's a lot of fur.

It was a super fun day. I almost wish they had one every month. But not really, because I'd go so very broke buying yarn, and I'd never knit it all up. I already have too much as it is. But that's the way I like it.

And the other thing that's making my life more ridiculous: I signed up for trapeze classes again. I'm so excited! I will soon have super cool bruises again! That'll make wearing skirts to work interesting, once we get to doing ankle hangs.

It's starting to feel more home-y...

Happy cat:


Happy Kat:


It's been an eventful week.

On Wednesday we got the kitten. She's about five months old, and we can't figure out what to name her. Her foster mother was calling her Maya, but we don't like that. The names that have come up so far are Eleanor Roosevelt, Queen Elizabeth the First, and Bagheera. I suggested that last one, although I've since learned that I'm remembering my Kipling wrong. I thought Bagheera was female for some reason. So I guess that one will get pulled off the table. Our kitten is very sleek and velvety and panther-like, though. Just on a much smaller, more timid scale. She's very, very timid. I'm hoping she grows out of that, although not out of the part where she's too timid to use her claws.

The kitten is currently curled up in the Boy Creature's lap, and the Boy Creature is asleep. It's rather adorable.

Today I got the bookshelf. It was free. One of my office mates was standing in the empty office across the hall with the facilities manager talking about what furniture to keep and what to get rid of for the person who's moving into said office. So I called out, "Are you giving furniture away?" Ten minutes later, they delivered the bookshelf to my office door. Apparently it used to be in the registrar's office, because people kept coming by to drop off files or ask a question, and they'd go, "Hey, that looks awfully familiar. What's it doing here?"

Sadly, said bookshelf did not fit into my wee little Honda Civic at the end of the day. It got about halfway in and wouldn't go any further. If we'd had some rope, we could have tied it down and it would have been fine, but we had no rope. Luckily, we had a friend with an SUV who was kind enough to come help us out. So even though I still have four boxes of books yet to unpack, I'm happy.

Even though it won't help the fact that I was already reading two books at once, and I just put a third on hold at the library.

Soon there will be belly scratches and loves

The Boy Creature and I just dropped off a form to adopt a little black kitten named Maya.

When we get her, we will change her name to Eleanor Roosevelt. There's a long story behind that name.

But I can't wait to get her.

Like a steel trap. For trapping useless things

I don't understand the way my brain works.

We're watching "When Harry Met Sally." For no particular reason. It's on, and it was better than "Rush Hour 3."

We just got past the part where they're shopping and singing "Surrey with the Fringe on Top" on the karaoke machine in the store, and his ex-wife shows up.

And I was doing the dance in my head. The dance from when I played Dream Laurey in Oklahoma in tenth grade. Eight years ago.

Why are those steps still in my brain? And why can't I remember the passwords I set minutes before I need them again?

More cowbell!

So it's the end of week one in Santa Fe. Not that this weekend won't be just as busy. I need to look at apartments, and the Boy Creature seems to think he's taking my car to Albuquerque to go to a barbershop. He's weird like that. Also, I desperately want to go for a hike. It's been too long.

But so far, I like my new job. It's sort of weird timing for me to be starting, because the school is going through all sorts of changes (including changing its name), so there's sort of a weird limbo feeling around the office. But I like it.

My favorite part so far is that when we get a confirmed student, I get to ring a cowbell and change the number on the board.

Today I rang the bell, and one of the enrollment advisors said "More cowbell!" and carried on with a pretty decent Walken impression.

Definitely my favorite part of the job so far.

Eventful

Tonight I am sitting at my kitchen counter with a couple of lamps on, reading blogs and listening to the bugs outside hurling themselves against the glass of our back door. They seem extra desperate to get in. Maybe it's because there's not much of a moon, so they want the light that much more. Or maybe I'm just not used to being up this later, or it being this quiet.

Things are happening in my little world. Big, exciting, slightly scary (mostly because of how quickly they're happening) things.

Things that soon I might even be able to get my head around enough to write about. But there is much to look forward to.

Strange and new experiences

Wanna hear something funny? Something so quintessentially ridiculous it could only go on in my brain?

You know how I've been going on about how crazy and busy the last two months have been? It's nearing three months now. Every single weekend I've had some sort of plans where I've been out and about, and I don't just mean a quick jaunt to Target. And the one weekend where I didn't have plans, and was going to rest for the weekend, I got sick, and felt crappier on Monday morning than I did the Friday night before. And there's been plenty to do on the weeknights as well.

So I've been whining about how crazy things were, and I how I wish things would slow down, and it finally hit me. It's been so long since I was living the kind of life where I was busy on a regular basis. It's ok that I don't have hours to sit and read or watch DVDs for entire weekends. This isn't abnormal. It's not a bad thing.

This is what actually having a life feels like.