King Midas had nothing on this.

Birds chirping, dew drops glistening, and dust motes fluttering, I feel as though I am in a sacred place. I keep quiet and watch as the awe takes hold, and I feel her caress my face with her gentle mothers' hands and hold me close. She used to call me every morning while I lived in North Carolina and say, "The weather is clear here, is it there?" And if I'd reply that it was, she would volley happily, "Then we are looking at the same sun today." And so we are today too, with the warmth and sparkle of our blessings.

Well, it's saturated in incandescent lighting and I really need to get that zoom flash attachment for my camera, but you can sort of see the "work I had done" in the following picture. I plopped myself down in Jean's chair and I prefaced the whole affair with a somewhat-warning, "I trust you." I told her I wanted some sort of red in my hair, but I didn't want to be taken for Ronald McDonald's cousin...or that weird art student who always reads magazines upside down and swallows skittles whole with a swig of orange juice.



I took Sophie to the kitty doctor this afternoon. Nick came home in the middle of the day to help me catch her, and then us girls were off! I had collected some of her stool this morning when cleaning out her litter box, and placed it in a snack Zip-Loc bag at the end of the counter. Nick came down from his shower crooning, "Aww, you set out my lunch!"

I was done with work at noon, and headed to De Forest to get my car washed, because I like the car wash at the BP gas station in De Forest better than I like the car wash at the BP where I live now, in Waunakee. It's the dryer, totally the dryer. In De Forest, it's perfectly permissible to sit in your car like a schmuck while the dryer does all the work. In Waunakee, you're supposed to drive your car out of the wash garage slowly so that the dryer located above the exit can whisk the wet away. I'm sorry, but that's just wrong in my book. If you're going to go through a car wash in the first place, instead of the soapy driveway puddles I remember as a kid, I think it's only fair that you get to be a schmuck from start to finish. If I'm paying for a wash and dry, I want the dry done for me!

And, then, I came home to Sophie...and to this:



So anyway, I patted the potting soil back coaxingly, willing them not to die, before carrying them to safety, atop the china cabinet that I don't think she's figured out how to scale yet. I cleaned up the dirt from the carpet and threw out the wilted flowers Nick had given me weeks ago. I picked up a bouquet of vibrant blossoms from Pick 'N Save in De Forest, which I prefer to Piggly Wiggly in Waunakee because the parking lot wasn't designed by a moron or with a bumper car course in mind. Clearly, I'm living in the wrong village, but what can you do?



I scurried around in a stooped subservient way, picking up all of the plant guts that littered the kitchen floor, wondering how those plants survived all those months with just Nick and I in residence. Those stupid plants, falling off their stands and pulling off their leaves like that...naughty! It couldn't be our Sophie, our dear, sweet, gentle kitten who is afraid of her own reflection in the floor-length bedroom mirror. I straightened, the blood spazing all gung ho around my head, and the door opened from the garage: Nick was home.



Perhaps I should explain the title better. See, Nick and I attended rival high schools. Myself, the prestigious and altogether better De Forest, and he in the neighboring and altogether lesser Waunakee. Nonetheless, his brothers have both lived in De Forest, and Nick found a nice, wholesome De Forest girl to date and call "Dear". So, guess they know all about that car wash and the Pick 'N Save parking lot, huh? Plus, that's where Jean, the person I'd take with me if I were stranded on a desert island and could only take one person with me (AKA: my hairstylist) works.



So once Nick is home, we tromp upstairs, to the room we know Sophie is hiding in, and close the door. I crawled beneath the computer desk and talk to her. We do the slow-blink exchange and I let her smell my hand. With another flutter of her eyelashes (and she has such pretty eyelashes!) I pet her soft head and tell her that we're going on a fun trip to the vet today! She looks bored, and like she thinks I'm lovable (but very stupid). I am actually able to reach behind the desk and untangle her from the mess of cables to lift her to my chest. She is warm and very fuzzy, very small, and Nick helps me get her into her carrier. "The next right after Piggly Wiggly [with the stupid parking lot], right?" I confirm my directions to the vet in Waunakee. He nods and me and Soph head out.

After a very long and very expensive "Wellness Check", I left with all kinds of medication: apparently our kitty has a yeast infection in both ears. So now the poor animal has to be captured twice a day for ear drops and a pill. This cat is going to LOVE me! She was a good girl though, scared to pieces if her quaking was any indication, and curled trustingly into me when it became too much.



So we came home, and that's why I am posting all of the flower pictures now. Because, who knows how long she'll leave them be. But, hey! Nothin' wrong with a girl who likes flowers!