Thank you all for your kind words about our loss of Chloe. Our house feels so empty. Both Bryan and I keep thinking we either need to get home and feed her, if we’re running late, or I’ll expect her to be hiding under the bed before we go to bed. It’s truly amazing how much these little furry creatures touch your life and make you a better person. (This is a photo I took of her about four days before she died. She had food on her nose and kept giving me the look of “What? I’m saving it for later.” She was such a sweetheart and loved having her photo taken.)

Bryan, friends and school have kept me busy this past week. Wednesday I baked bread and learned all about what it means to have a very warm and humid kitchen. The end result bread was fabulous and was so airy. I have more bread in the works this morning.

Sunday we went blueberry picking for the third time this summer. We came home with just over seven pounds. We’ve slowly been freezing some of them to have for later. Last year we had blueberries until December. My breakfast bowl has been so filled with berries over the last few weeks between the blueberries we’ve picked and the berries from our friends’ backyard. Now our little garden in back is becoming fruitful with bell and jalapeño peppers, along with our amazingly huge plant of basil.

With my two classes this summer I’ve been reading a lot. Every summer, I sign up for the adult summer reading program at the local public library. I also keep a list on the fridge of the books I’ve read and “reward” myself with cute stickers I’ve had for years. (To decorate all of those letters that I was supposedly going to write all of these years.) This weekend I passed a goal that I didn’t think was possible for summer. Granted I started my summer reading as soon as school ended, but still I’ve read more than 25 books since May 3. This doesn’t even count the picture books that I’ve read for my Children’s Non-Fiction class. In summers past, I’ve been proud of 16 books over the summer but this will be hard to surpass next summer. So what are these books I’ve read, well here they are:
(one star = read for Adult Popular Literature, two stars = read for Children’s Non-Fiction)
* Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Gossip Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar
What Happened to Cass McBride by Gail Giles
* Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
** Laika by Nick Abadzis
* Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
* Thursday Next: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
* Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
** Little People and a Lost World by Linda Goldenberg
* Anyone But You by Jennifer Crusie
** Code Talkers by Joseph Bruchac
** Indian School by Michael Cooper
** 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving by Catherine O’Neill Grace and Margaret Bruchac
* Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld
* Be Still My Vampire Heart by Kerrelyn Sparks
** Bearing Witness: Stories of the Holocaust selected by Hazel Rochman and Darlene Z. McCampbell
** Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman
** Maus II: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman
* Forbidden Pleasures by Bertrice Small (I was surprised how explicit this romance novel was)
** Ain’t Nothing But A Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry by Scott Reynolds Nelson
** Steel Drivin’ Man: John Henry, The Untold Story of an American Legend by Scott Reynolds Nelson
* Mojave Crossing by Louis L’Amour
** What’s Going on Down There? by Karen Gravelle
** The Period Book by Karen Gravelle
** Kampung Boy by Lat
** Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos

For my sanity, a couple of them I’ve listened to as audio books so that I can get off the couch and do a little sewing. Only two more weeks of class and 11 more books to go. Then I can start reading for pleasure again, which seems sort of strange to say since so much of the reading I’ve done this summer has been pleasurable reading. On my list for after-school reading - Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer, Bonk by Mary Roach, The Host by Stephenie Meyer and I’m literally drawing a blank on what else is on my list. I only have three weeks off before school starts in last August but I plan on getting more done than just reading. There’s a quilt the desperately needs to be finished and I have some fabric for tops that I’d like to get made before it gets too chilly to wear sleeveless tops.

It’s so hard to say good-bye. I didn’t think it would come this quickly, but we had to put Chloe to sleep yesterday. She hadn’t been the same since George died and the last week she just wasn’t doing well. It was obvious she missed George terribly and just didn’t know what it meant to exist without him.

We’ll definitely miss her silly ways. How she used to paw the edge of the couch before jumping up. Drooling as she kneaded anything. You could always tell where Chloe had been laying because there were little drool spots. Her obsession with chewing on plastic bags. And what I’ll miss the most is her mewing at night with her orange mouse and then putting it by our bedroom door so we’d find it first thing in the morning.

She came to live with George and me almost 11 years ago. They instantly loved each other and became the best of friends. I could always count on Chloe to make me smile, even when George was driving me crazy. She mothered George and he loved every minute of it, even when it turned in to a major kitty cat fight. When I watched Days of Our Lives, I could always count on Chloe to be sitting by my side within the first five minutes of the show. I gave her the nickname of “my soap-cat.” We created so many songs to go with her nickname “Kwo-cat” over the five years Bryan and I have lived together and it’s hard not having her to sing them to. Our house is so empty now and my heart has a great big hole in it. Both of my baby kitties are gone. We know they are together forever now.

My classes this summer have been keeping me very busy. I’m having a lot of fun in both classes, which is how summer classes should be. I’ve also managed to get a little sewing in during my breaks from reading.

My Adult Popular Literature is an online class and I’ve been reading science fiction, fantasy, romance and non-fiction books for that class. I’m in the middle of a romance novel now called Be Still My Vampire Heart. It’s really been a fun read and one that I didn’t expect to like. I still have to read three mysteries and a western.

This weekend I was working on a book talk that I have to do for Adult Pop Lit. I’m doing it on one of my favorite books, Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. It’s been two years and after reading over 90 books since then I needed a bit of a refresher. I’m not one to reread books but I reread Prep to refresh my memory and I enjoyed it as much as I did the first time I read it. As one of my friends said yesterday, “The cover really doesn’t do it justice.” If you like coming-of-age stories and haven’t heard of Prep, I highly recommend it.

My other class is Information Books for Children. It’s basically Children’s Non-Fiction but since there are fairy tales, poetry, plays and literature cataloged in the Dewey numbers with the “non-fiction” in a library, information books fits the books better. We’ve read some great and not-so-great books for the class. The point isn’t to read all wonderful books because we need to learn about the not-so-great books out there too. My instructor is wonderful, she’s the same instructor I had for my Children’s Lit class last fall that I loved.

The last several weeks have been a whirlwind. June has also not been a friendly month for the Lee kitties. My parents lost their second cat, Lucy, last week. She hadn’t been doing well since her friend Milly died on the first of June. My parents were out of town and Lucy was boarding at the vet. She’d been having trouble breathing on Tuesday and just slipped away later in the day. At least she went peacefully and knew she was loved, she was definitely a spoiled cat. My mom made sure of that.

This past weekend, Bryan and I decided to make it a three day weekend to celebrate his birthday and both took Friday off. Friday, we just relaxed and got a lot of reading done. We’d planned to go to Springfield, Illinois but the threat of bad thunderstorms made us rethink our plans. Saturday, we did one of our favorite things - blueberry picking! There is nothing quite as scrumptious as fresh, handpicked blueberries. We thought we’d pick just enough to get us through a week since we’ll probably go back this Friday. We had not idea we’d picked almost five pounds. So we gave some to our friend L and her husband to enjoy since we know they won’t be able to get out there for a while. Then Sunday, L brought us some black raspberries from her garden to add to the berry delightfulness in our house. Even Chloe seems to like the fresh berries, though she can’t eat them. She gets so excited when we open the container of berries. You’d think we had kitty cat food stashed way in those bags by the way she acts.

Bryan also spent part of the weekend getting his Etsy shop and new blog set up.

Once I get some photos of my sewing I’ll post them. I hope everyone is having a good summer.

Bang, bang, bang. That’s pretty much what we heard in our apartment from Thursday last week until Monday this week. Thank goodness the rain made them finish up on Monday evening. They were redoing the roof of our apartment building and didn’t take a day off. I was so ready for them to finish so that I didn’t have to hear the banging any longer or their obnoxious choice of music. The other day when we asked them to turn the music down they told us that it was a bummer for them. It was definitely a bummer for us to have to listen to it in our own house. I was tempted to find some good crazy polka music and play it loudly for them. Now there is just stuff left around the apartment building, I hope they come clean up their messes soon.

By popular request here is a photo of the treasures that I brought home from my grandfather’s house - buttons, a darning egg (which I know will come in handy) and the library cards. There are so many more things in boxes that my mom has stored away. When she scans the photo of my grandparents, I may post it. It’s absolutely priceless. For now you’ll just have to settle for a photo of me that I had never seen before.

I think it’s my new favorite photo of myself.

Our family has lost another kitty family member. Milly, my first cat, who has lived with my parents the sixteen years I’ve been away from home was put to sleep on Sunday. She had been dealing with kidney failure for a while. Her seventeen and a half years were lived to their fullest. I know my parents will miss her dearly and will miss her sneakiness at the dinner table. Chloe sends her love to my mom and Lucy, the remaining kitty in my parents’ house.

Thank you all for your kind words about George. We’re all getting along okay and Chloe is figuring out what it means to be the only cat in the house. This is the first time she’s ever been without George. I swear George gave her some snarking tips before he passed away.

I’m finished with school for the semester! It felt like the semester that would never end a few weeks ago, but I turned in my final paper (exam) on Wednesday, a day early. I’ve been home sick for the last seven days with a nasty virus (cold-like symptoms) so I’ve have a lot of time to read, watch Ugly Betty on DVD and knit. Another Baby Surprise Jacket is three rows from being finished. (Photos soon)

This summer I’m taking an Adult Popular Literature class and figured I’d start doing some reading for the class before everything kicks into full gear in June. In four days, I plowed through Devil in the White City, an amazing book. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. I seriously could have stayed up all night to read it but knew that I needed my sleep.

Of course, after I finished Devil in the White City I got a bit distracted. For one of my final papers this semester, I had to evaluate a medium that was geared to children or teens. I chose to evaluate the show Gossip Girl with no idea how addictive the show could be. It’s sort of an updated Beverly Hills, 90210 mixed in with Sex & the City. In all of my research, which included watching several episodes of the show and reading quite a few articles on the show, I totally got sucked in. Yesterday, I checked out a fair amount of books for my Adult Popular Lit class and a Gossip Girl book just happened to end up in my stack of books. How odd! I’ve since finished the book and am thinking I’ve found yet another guilty pleasure. They aren’t books I would recommend to younger teens and they’re books I would be hesitant to recommend to fifteen-year-olds but if they are fans of the show, then I probably would recommend them. I can definitely see why many parents are not happy about these books and the show - the amount of underage drinking is more than I think most adults want any kids engaging in, although I’m sure a lot of teens are drinking anyway.

(I learned this semester that when school gets a bit insane that washcloths are the perfect project - from February until this past Monday I knit a total of seven washcloths. Above are just three of them that I knit for my sister.)

It’s been a really rough week. We had to put George to sleep on Thursday. He’d been having problems walking and was very weak. I miss him tons. After 11 years together, there is a huge emptiness in our lives.

We’re giving Chloe extra attention and watching her for signs of kitty depression. She seems really lost without him but she was able to go visit him after he died and give him some good-bye kisses.

The last two mornings I’ve been sewing in ends on the Hobo sweater. One piece was blocked yesterday and the second piece is blocking today. I have no idea when I’m going to be able to sew it together. I’m sure I’ll find time but at this point I’m ready to be finished with the sweater. Maybe a bit of time off before I sew it is best, but we’ll see how I feel about it tomorrow when I have the morning off.

Since it is Socktoberfest and I’ve been knitting this fabulous sock with the Fleece Artist sock yarn, I had to share a photo. Trying to find a place to take the sock’s photo without kitties jumping all over the sock needles was difficult, as soon as I picked it up off the coffee table, both cats were following me around. Chloe’s feet appear in the photo and as soon as I took it she attacked the sock. The cooler weather has made them really crazy today. Now back to the sock, this is amazing yarn. It’s definitely doing it’s job of putting me in a more fall mood, the weather is forcing me to accept that it’s fall. A high of 45°F tomorrow is quite forceful.

This weekend, I’m officially starting my library application again. We’re traveling up to the Chicago area to for me to interview a librarian. She’s known Bryan for quite a while and we’re going to take her out to lunch after the interview. This year’s application is going to be even better than last year’s and since I’ve been working in the library, I feel like I have a much different approach to it this year. It’s a long process, I won’t know about my acceptance until mid-March, but I want to get started just so that I don’t feel rushed.

Well, the new yarn store opens here on October 29. I’m going to be teaching a sock class in November. I’m so excited, it will definitely be a lot of fun. The fun part about a new store opening in town and knowing the owner is I get to give my two cents about nice sock yarn. I’ve recommended the Fleece Artist yarn that I’m using right now and I think she’ll also be carrying Lorna’s Laces. Oh, the temptation! I’m in such a sock mood lately, maybe it’s the month and the cooler weather.
Last week, we saw a film called The Science of Sleep by Michel Gondry. If you liked Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I highly recommend you check it out. There’s also some cool knitting related things in the movie, some neat sweaters and something I want a knitting typewriter/machine, sadly it only exists in the movie. While I was watching it I thought, wow think of the sweaters if you could just type your way through. Fair-Isle sweaters would be an absolute breeze.