He has earned himself the name “Pavarotti” because dude has got some serious lung power. We still close him in the bathroom at night and when we’re not at home, and he thinks this is very unjust, even though we have tried to convince him that the bathroom is the Kitten Room of Fabulousness and Delight by leaving toys and food and! toilet paper! on the roll! He is not fooled.

He is actually maybe a bit smarter than we are used to in our cats. We love Magoo very much, but she’s not really that bright. We have a cat toy that consists of a hollow donut-shape with a ball inside it. There are holes cut into the hollow donut so that you can reach in and touch and feel the ball inside there, but it won’t come out. The exciting part is supposed to be that every time you reach your little paw inside there to get the ball, the ball goes rolling away around the tube. Fun for everyone! Except that Pavi and I had been playing with it for about 2 minutes when he very carefully reached through the opening with his toes spread wide like those basketball players that can palm a basketball. He placed his paw on the ball gently so it wouldn’t roll away, curled his wrist towards himself, pulling the ball snug against the too-small hole. Holding it there, he looked at me and said, “Look stupid lady. The hole is too small!” And then he walked away and never played with it again.

His very favorite toy of all is the crumpled up receipt on a string, right after our toes under the blankets.

Magoo still hates him, but she is starting to come around. Very slowly. She still hisses every time she sees him, but yesterday they both napped in the same room, and at one point Preston even had them both playing in the same room, with one toy in each of his hands.

We got a new kitten! We decided that Magoo was starting to get sort of complacent, and she needs someone to jump on her head from time to time. She doesn’t seem to appreciate it when Preston swoops her upside down and gives her noogies (he doesn’t believe me, but he SO needs a dog!), so a kitten it will be. We picked him out at the shelter on Saturday, he got fixed on Monday, and Preston brought him home last night. He is staying locked in the bathroom for the first 24 hours or so, in the hopes that Magoo will start to get acquainted through the door. So far, she has managed to pretend that she has no idea there’s any other cat around, let alone inside the house. Even last night when the kitten started meowing plaintively in the silence of 2am, loudly enough to wake us up to go check on him, Magoo stayed curled up on her chair and looked at us curiously, like, ” Meowing? No, I wasn’t meowing. You all can just go back to bed.” And then she closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. You see why we think she needs someone to jump on her head every now and then.

The kitten (who does not yet have a name, but I’m pretty sure he’s french or italian) is all black with a dozen little white hairs on his chest. He has yellow eyes, and he is the most friendliest, purr-ingest little thing you have ever met. We were worried that he might wear his purrer right out last night. He is 4 months old, and spent most of that time at the shelter, so we are impressed that he is adjusting so quickly. Tonight, we will close the door on his kitty carrier (which he really likes and has adopted as his very own cave) and put him in the living room for Magoo to be forced to deal with. Hopefully, that will go smoothly and he will be able to wander freely in the rest of the house tonight.

I was thinking about home decorating today (something I think about more often than you might think), and about how people do this thing called “picking colors” for the different rooms in their house. I’m not totally clear on this, but I’m pretty sure that it’s supposed to help you know if some new item will go with the rest of the room without having to actually put the item in the room. Also, maybe it’s supposed to help other people know what to get you if they want to get you a gift for your house. Like if I know that someone else’s bathroom is decorated with sunflowers, then I might be able to get them a picture of sunflowers that would fit in.

So I was looking around the house today and wondering, if someone wanted to get us something for our house, how would I describe what would fit in? Colors are so hard to describe. One wall in our living room and kitchen is sort of a coral/sand/pink/orange color that looks different in every different light and time of day. How would you know if you had found something the same color? And then there are issues of style. Even if you did manage to find a painting that incorporated just the right shade of pink, but it was an impressionist painting of a lighthouse…not working with the current scheme.

So I started wondering if it would be possible to take pictures that would somehow start to capture both the colors and the style of what we’re going for. Here are some more or less successful attempts:

Living Room

In the living room, the colors are mostly really warm-lots of shades off red/orange and rich wood tones. We’re trying to offset all that heaviness with light blue and silver. The sheer curtains are a light grey-blue as is one wall in the room. We need more silver to balance out mostly dark furniture. The lines we are looking for are clean and sleek, but with a bit of graceful curve to them. Nothing overstuffed, but nothing severe either.

Kitchen

Our kitchen is so small that we are trying for sleek clean lines here. The counters are white, the cupboard doors are white, and the floor is white tile. One small wall is that same coral color as the living room wall, which is similiar in color to the flowers on this recipe holder. There are a few accents, mostly in red and blue, and some woodtone stuff that ties in with the living room (the kitchen is open to the living room). On the list is a set of nice silver hardware for the cupboards.

Bathroom

I’m actually a little lost with the decorating in the bathroom. The walls are blue. The ceiling is white. The floor is white tile. That’s all just fine, but the only thing in the bathroom that actually makes me smile is this arrangement of pale yellow towels against the blue wall on the gold towel bar. A little bit of the warm reddish wood tone from the picture frame makes this the perfect vignette. I haven’t figured out how to create that feeling in the rest of the bathroom.

My Room

My room has that same coral wall color (which usually looks richer than it does in this picture) and a lot of warm earth tones and textures. It’s definitely on the brown/red side of the scale, and I’m not too worried about lightening that up, since it’s supposed to be a cozy retreat sort of space.

Preston’s Room

If you can picture a combination of Hawaiian surfer culture and Australian aboriginal art, you can picture Preston’s style. I still don’t have it all figured out myself. His floor is this geometric diamond pattern. Decorations include Hawaiian-print sarongs and a hanging surfboard as well as these lovely curtains (if I do say so myself). I think the key is to use Hawaiian themes very judiciously, and use lots and lots of white space and geometric designs to balance out all those flowers and shit. Of course, he can’t resist a little red, orange, and yellow too. Such a conflicted personality he has

So now you know all I know about how to create cohesive designs. Small insights here and there, but mostly I’m totally winging it. Do you feel like these pictures give you some sense of what we’re trying to do with our space?

So y’all have maybe noticed that I’m not posting frequently these days. Mostly that’s because for the previous few weeks I was looking seriously for a job, but there wasn’t really much else happening and I didn’t think anyone wanted to read:

Day 14 of Unsuccessful Job Hunting:
Still no job.

Day 15 of Unsuccessful Job Hunting:
Still no job.

Day 16 of Unsuccessful Job Hunting:
Still no job.

etc…

And then, last week, I got a job! It was totally unexpected. Another one of those positions I have a knack for getting where I’m not entirely qualified. And I didn’t think the interview went that well really. But call me he did, and I started last Monday. I’m working at a local skateboard/snowboard shop as the Web Store Manager, which is a cool job and will definitely challenge me. It’s also full-time, and there’s quite an adjustment to go from not working or only working part-time for the last two years to a regular full-time gig. Once I adjust, I’ll no doubt have time to update from work, but until then posting will likely be sparse.