Kittens Nursing

Originally uploaded by Miss Amandy.

I’d been secretly feeding the orange and white cat that was always hanging around for about a week, even though Dad said not to encourage the cat to hang out around the house. He doesn’t really like strays, and I don’t blame him. There’s always danger in keeping strange, scraggly, possibly-rabid animals nearby. Still, this one was really cute, and really sweet, and really hungry. I noticed that she was nursing, but I didn’t know where the kittens were until the other night. There were five of them huddled up under the firewood in the garage; I have no idea how long they’ve been there. Hopefully Dad will feel sorry for their adorable little hungry faces and feed them while I’m gone this week.

Oh, and just so that you all know, if my commenting system doesn’t recognize your IP address, it will automatically put your comment in moderation until I can sort it out, so if you comment this week, it may not show up until I get back on Saturday. Don’t let that discourage you from commenting or anything, but don’t try to repost the same comment three hundred times, either.

I’ve been rather unmotivated to blog these days, and I really attribute this to a handful of different factors. Firstly, my camera has been broken for a while now. To be honest, it’s only the battery cover that’s broken, which means that I have to keep duct tape wrapped around it to keep the cover over the batteries. While the camera still functions this way, the tape tends to slide a lot, and the camera powers off at inopportune moments. It’s very frustrating, and I’m trying to persuade myself to just get over the annoyance and use the camera anyway. Secondly, my domain name and server hosting come up for renewal this time every year. I know that the bills will come, and that my account will be charged. I know this. But I tend to… forget. Especially when I’m in a pinch for cash, as I am now. Thirdly, I felt that the site needed a slight change of image, and I felt guilty every time I posted, knowing that I should be working on a new theme.

Oh, also, it’s summer vacation! That’s right, time off for Mandy, albeit very little time off. Hopewood finished up about a week and a half ago. I leave this Saturday for Salkehatchie. A few days after I get back from that, I’ll leave for my yearly service group conference, and after that, if all goes well, I’ll be teaching summer school at Hopewood. If all doesn’t go quite so well, I’ll be desperately looking for any work I can possibly get for the summer, in order to afford a laptop in the fall. Amy and I are still pretty much the only people in the CIS department without laptops, and it’s making things slightly difficult.

So this is the last of my actual time off this summer, because beginning Saturday, my life will be as busy as always. It’s been a good couple of weeks, I’ve been sleeping late and spending some quality time in the hammock under the trees. Brian and I went to the Whole Foods Market Saturday, and I bought a bunch of organic veggies that I intend to cook tonight. I never get a chance to cook, because of both the limitations of my time and the limitations of my family’s tolerance of food. Dad refuses to eat any meal that does not have meat in it. He’ll be eating out tonight. It’s a shame though, he’s gonna miss out on my all-organic pasta and tomato and feta cheese creation.

But besides all that, what do you think of the new look? The photo is from my most recent trip to visit Jessi in Georgia (which really isn’t that recent at all). On the way home, Sarah and Amy and I stopped to pick some of these flowers. We couldn’t not.