Telling the story

Not quite from the Attic: "Farm Camp"

I suppose the laptop, suitably loaded with my digital scrapping templates and other files could be considered the portable attic. I am 1200 miles away from my attic, vacationing in Maine at the top of the hill on the family farm. Hence the "Farm Camp" title. The boys and Syd are occupied with lots of outdoor activities. Before we arrived the kids collected five Monarch caterpillars and put them in a huge jar with some milkweed. They ate for a couple of days and then went onto the crysalis stage. When William and I arrived there were five beautiful green crysalises hanging in the jar. The first one emerged on August 10 and the next three on August 11 (today!). It was so cool and we had to document the event thoroughly, of course.

You can see the whole process below. Thanks to Ali Edwards for the easy-peasy grid page template.

2 weeks and a little more

They are starting to sit up like proper little kitties. These picture were taken on Sunday and you can see them almost sitting up. This morning I went up and they were sitting just as pretty as can be--except for Zippy as he was still asleep. And again, my photographs are not quite current because I didn't have the camera with me when I ran upstairs. To be fair, though, I was really going to use the bathroom as the one in the house was occupied and I didn't want to wait.

Cotton and Zippy. Look at the little paws! So tiny and their claws are still extended so they can grab onto stuff.

Little Orlando. He would not get in the group shot. He was too interested in exporing on his own. They are very curious about everything. Orlando played with me a little this morning, batting at my fingers. That's a first.

Penny and the kids in their new "house". The shallower B&T boxes make a good kitten nest. The kittens can't get out to go on walkabout quite yet. We may have a week or so before they figure that out. Penny wasn't too sure about moving them into the box but she seems to have accepted it well enough. As long as the kittens are hidden under the table, she feels OK with it. 

Two weeks old

At this point the kittens are two weeks old, plus a little. Turns out, just a little time makes a big difference in the life of a tiny kitten and these photos are already outdated. So this is what the babies looked like on May 15 when these photos were taken. Their eyes are completely open and they are looking around more and more. When I go in the room and talk, their little heads pop up and sometimes one or two of them will crawl toward me to check me out. They were just starting to walk but their little legs were not quite strong enough to hold up the rest of their bodies. They were also just starting to do things like play with one another and try out a bit of grooming on themselves and each other.

Here are the kids. As of last night, we gave them all names. These are almost all what I call convenience names because we will not be keeping the entire family. They are, from left to right: Zippy McGee, Orlando Orange and Cotton Princess. Cotton is actually claimed by a little girl in the neighborhood and was so named for her white fuzzy fur and the fact that she is a Cottontown neighborhood kitten.

The whole family together under the table. So far the kittens have been contained by the towel. They put a paw onto the carpet, realize it is a different surface and stop. That's not going to last much longer. I need to set up a kitten box to keep them corralled just a bit longer.

 

Oops. Orlando just lost his balance and rolled over. He's making the most of it by playing with Penny's foot and whatever else he can get his tiny paws on, usually a sibling. In fact, the kittens are not ready to start playing with toys or people--too new and strange yet--but they will play happily with one another. It is so fun to sit quietly and watch them tumble and wrestle. Mind you, they can't walk very well and the balance is iffy at best but that doesn't seem to faze them at all.

One Week Old

The kittens are one week old now and they still don't do much more than eat, sleep and poop. Typical babies. They are crawling around a bit more and sometimes they purr. They just started that a couple of days ago.

They don't like being away from Penny or one another. They sleep in a little kitten ball when Penny takes a break.

Penny is a good mom. She's very attentive and the kittens are squeaky clean and have cute little round bellies so they are definitely well fed.

This little guy, I call him orange, is the biggest kitten. His eyes are just starting to open. Here he has had a good feed and is ready for his nap.   

"It's about time!"

This past Sunday, Joe & Lucy were married after 20 years of life together. It was a very small, intimate gathering at the Mitchell House in Lexington, SC. Michael officiated the ceremony and I took some photographs.

Lucy, the beautiful bride. You can see more photos in the photo album for Joe & Lucy.

We have kittens!

Pennykits
Originally uploaded by Melissa in SC

Penny has been hanging out at our house for the past two weeks. She's been around for longer, but just recently let us get close enough to pet her at which point I realized that she was pregnant. I asked around and found a bunch of neighbors who had been feeding her but none to claim her. On Thursday evening she did not come around for supper and no-one saw her for a couple of days. I was hoping that she was OK.

Sure enough, today I took a dish of food and walked down the street calling her and rattling the food. She appeared from the bushes beside one of the houses and tucked right in to the food I put down. I checked the bushes and heard the mewing of three little kittens tucked in under the shrubs. It wasn't that easy to get in there and pull them out. Penny was none too happy about it, either.

William and I put them in a box and relocated them to the attic apartment that is also my scrap room and William's play room. Theres a bit of junk up there, too. So, Penny and the babies are inside out of the weather and away from the rats, foxes and possums that also live in the neighborhood. Penny is not sure she likes it that much, being and independent, outdoor sort of cat, but she's happy to be with the kittens and really pleases about the big dish of food I put down for her. I think she'll settle in nicely soon.

I tried to let it die

But I had to come back to see and it was still breathing, if not completely conscious. My real purpoase for returning was to play with the Flickr badge. So now you can see more old stuff that I have uploaded to Flickr. Whoop-de-doo. I've been too busy to give much thought to blogging or taking photographs for that matter. The lack of blogging is not so bad. The lack of photographs is putting a serious crimp in the scrapbooking. Yikes.

Anyway, behold the Flickr badge. Maybe I'll play a bit more with blog gadgets...

A nice clean desk

It is not necessarily a good thing.

This is how it works. Most every day I get a little pile of piddly stuff to do--new labels, call number corrections, bad tags, journals to read. That sort of thing. It isn't critical stuff so it accumulates. It's the other things I tend to invest more of my time and energy into--getting database trial running right, collection development plans, RFID project. Most of that goes along pretty steadily until--some crisis or change that means dropping the other stuff and figuring out what to do next.

That is when the desk suddenly gets cleared off. All of that little piddly stuff gets knocked out in one fell swoop so that I can have some calm uncluttered space to think and work. So if you walk by and see that my desk is nice and clean and neat, no little piles, folders filed away etc. don't assume that it's OK to stop and chat because I don't have much work to do. Quite the opposite. It means I'm very, very busy and probably pretty stressed out. Just say hello and keep going. It probably won't be long before it looks like a tornado has struck again.

You looking at me?

Thought I would do a photo of the day. Love this little guy. The kids were fascinated by the meercats. They were very playful that day. You can see the reflection of his audience in the glass window behind him. Pretty cool.

Storycorps

It's been a while. I'll try to be better about making a post here and there. And to add to the insanity, I'm on MySpace as well. Trying to stay up to date with what's out there. Take a peek, if you like. Me on MySpace

Listening to Storycorps excerpts right now. The library is playing some stories over the  intercom system here just before we open to get the staff familiar with the Storycorps concept. The travelling Storycorps booth will be parked here at the library for two weeks. People can sign up to do an interview.I love these interviews, even the sad ones. What we are creating is such a  treasure of everyday history. I think hearing another person's voice with all of the emotion is so powerful. The printed word just doesn't have the same impact.

Maybe I can find a podcast to post. That is yet another Tech challenge assignment I'd be able to check off the list. :)