Barney and Moe were our first babies. We picked them out at the shelter on the same day, three days after moving into the house we had bought.

Barney was the last one left from his litter, and we always wondered exactly how cute the other ones were, because he won us over effortlessly. He was a scruffy, ratty little thing, so little he hadn’t figured out about grooming yet, but already insanely curiously and gloriously weird. Moe has always outweighed him significantly, but this, and the fact that he was missing his testicles, has never stopped him from trying to hump/boss her. He has always been delusional, convinced he was a dog or a person, and above all, MUCH bigger than his little 8-and-a-half pound self.

He has also always been in touch with his inner drag queen, irresistibly attracted to marabou feathers. My friend N. once came over with a box of birthday stuff for a mutual friend whom we were planning to fete at my house. Barney leapt into the box, drug out a tiara with marabou edging, and carried it around the entire house, growling whenever anyone got too close. My mom got him a toy that had marabou feathers on top to bat at and that was intended as a stationary plaything. Barney knew it had to be his and his alone, and he dragged that thing upstairs by the feathers, clunk-growl, clunk-growl so he could be alone with it in some secret space.

He has also always been the clumsiest cat I’ve ever known. I used to think maybe he had his own poltergeists, because he can manage to fall over spectacularly, as though pushed by an unseen hand, on the levelest and widest of surfaces. Jumping up onto the counters is always a hair-raising proposition, and the door on the cupboard under the sink bears the marks of his crazed scrabbling as he hoists himself up the rest of the way after another unsuccessful leap.

Barney isn’t jumping tonight. He hasn’t all weekend.

He’s sick. Possibly very sick. He threw up 5 times this weekend, mostly bile, and he barely ate. The veterinarian tells us that everything looks normal except his liver function, but she can’t tell what came first, the not-eating or the wonky liver. The good news is at least there’s no intestinal blockage or kidney failure, because that would’ve sealed his fate right there. But the fact that they can’t find anything brings its own worry — apparently cats can develop a kind of hepatitis spontaneously. If that’s what he has (and they’re running more tests to see) we’ll have to see whether it can be treated.

In addition, the clumsiness that’s always present is really exaggerated today and the vet pointed out that he seemed to have arthritis or even an injury in his low back.

The good news is they gave him IV fluids so he’s not so dangerously dehydrated anymore, and I’ve set out an array of children baby food mashed-up meat, which he seems to be sampling, if sparingly.

He’s *just* a cat, but I have been teary over him all day. I can’t help but feel that I’ve failed him.

The back thing — I grab him by whatever body part I can when he dashes to get under the bed in Eliza’s room as I’m putting her in her crib — I can’t have him in there at night and so he gets tossed into our bedroom. Eliza’s rough toddler treatment can’t help either, particularly since he’s a doormat and scarcely flinches when she whacks him with her feet as the three of us cuddle for storytime.

And, heck, being so quick to take the vet nurse’s advice. I called them Saturday and they said bring him in Monday if he’s still off. There was a time I’d have hauled him into the emergency vet’s without a second thought on Sunday morning just to quiet the gut feeling that this was the better course of action, $300 fee be damned. I let it slide because I had other things on my mind and didn’t want to spend that kind of money.

And that’s the part that kills me most of all. He just wants to love and be loved by his humans, and he is so far out of first place right now in our world that some nights I barely even pet him. And yeah, my kid comes first, always and every day, and it should be like that, but every day I say to myself, tonight is the night I blow everything off after Eliza goes down and just sit with the cats, and every week I let something get in the way.

All I could think about all day was this poor cat sitting, terrified, at the vet by himself, and going under sedation, which is always risky for a cat, and dying without my ever having rubbed his little head all day.

And still, in spite of the horrible, frightening day he had, and how freaked out his is from the meds, he hauled himself up on the bed while Eliza and I were reading and curled up and started purring.

I’m sorry, little guy.

Three or four housing situations ago, I was friendly with a couple, R&R who lived in the carriage house on the property. The male half is a good 6 1/2 feet tall, and the distaff side is 5′2″ or so. She went as his pants once for Halloween. Anyway, they’re the kind of people I always wished I had gotten to know a little better because they were really fun and outgoing, but as it is, we continue to run into each other here and there.

I had one of those biennial run-ins on Tuesday when we were the next town over and I took Eliza to admire the lake located at the back of the women’s college campus there. They were properly worshipful of the Small Personage, updates were exchanged, and as we chatted they mentioned that they’d discovered a particularly picturesque reservoir in my town.

I knew about one of the reservoirs — in fact, we’ve been there several times — but I haven’t gone with Eliza during the day because it’s isolated and unsafe for a woman and child by themselves. They assured me this one was more populated and had police passing through regularly, and that it was lovely, so I decided to check it out.

They were right. It was stunning; placid water, tall pines, the occasional honk of Canada Geese. What made it so remarkable was that instead of being one solid body of water, it was a series of smaller lakes. There was a wide, elevated gravel path that ran the circumference of the entire complex of reservoirs, but there were low earthen berms about 5 feet wide and only half a foot or so above the waterline that ran between all the lakes, with paths of their own. Standing at the midpoint of one of these paths, with a tiny strip of grassy earth snaking away from us and water on all sides, I felt like I was standing in a field of silver.

I wish that a. I had a camera and b. the photographic talent to do the site justice.

However, all these little berms running willy nilly everywhere, coupled with my nonexistent sense of direction and “hey, this looks pretty, let’s go here” enthusiasm, conspired to get us fabulously lost. I had NO idea where we were and was starting to panic a little that Eliza and I would be bivouacking in the wilds of western Massachusetts overnight when I spotted two women who’d set out from the same parking lot as we had and seemed to know where they were going. I gave chase, only then I felt like a nimrod for having gotten us lost (bad, irresponsible mommy!), so instead of fessing up, I followed them at a distance, stopping every so often and ever so casually to admire the geese and fish with Eliza, then bolting to catch up before they disappeared behind the trees.

I am suave and Bond-like.

This is almost as good as the German translator site:

elizasmom.com

I’m not saying Alec Baldwin was right to berate his daughter like that, but I have a major issue with whomever leaked that tape, especially if it turns out to have been custody-related gamesmanship by the Kim Basinger camp. Now, in addition to getting yelled at by her dad, the entire world gets to be witness to that poor girl’s humiliation. (As for the concern that he is emotionally abusive and that this kind of behavior needs to be part of the public record in a custody hearing, I think justice would’ve been far better served by getting this to a judge, instead of the internet.)

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You know how at T@rget, they have items marked with Yellow Price Cut labels? Next time you’re in, do yourself a favor and look at the original price posted underneath the price cut sticker. Suspiciously similar, no?

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Speaking of price tomfoolery, I’ve really had it with gas stations that put the gas buttons out of order so that instead of going from Regular to Kinda Fancy to Super Fancy, they go Kinda Fancy, Regular, Super Fancy. Are the extra whatever cents per gallon you get from people who push the wrong button by mistake enough to make up for the fact that you’re being kind of sleazy? I sure hope so.

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Children’s clothing sizing at H&M is wacky, yo. Eliza is a 2T in American brands and I am buying 3T stuff for the summer because I don’t want her to outgrow it right away. Yesterday, we went to H&M and she spotted a shirt with a fuzzy iron-on bunny patch that she really, really liked. They only had a size 86, which translates to 12-18 months, left. I bought it anyway because it looked like it would fit and even if she outgrew it, at least she’d get to wear it a couple of times. Well, she put it on this morning and it’s HUGE. What the hell kind of babies are they growing up there in Sweden?

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For most of her life, Eliza has been a low-impact baby — most of her baby equipment was borrowed or purchased second-hand, and her clothing has been largely hand-me-down from friends and relatives with older girls. This week, I looked in her closet and realized that we suddenly seem to have hit the end of that wave of clothes. My theory is that kids her age grow more slowly and are active and into enough stuff that they actually wear out their clothes before they outgrow them.

Although I’ve loved not having to worry about a clothing budget these last two years, it was really fun going shopping with her last night. She has surprisingly good taste (meaning, my taste).

The shoes she picked were pink, yes, but I was expecting to end up with this or this, and we ended up with these.

Then we went to H&M and in addition to the bunny shirt, after dithering around a bit, she picked a dress with a bright strawberry print that I can’t find a picture of because the H&M site is unbelievably annoying. But trust me: Cute!

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My PPD flowers are blooming. When I was all nutso the summer of ‘05, I ordered something like 300 bulbs from an online garden service, whose merchandise I liked but I won’t recommend because they will TOTALLY sell you out to every garden-related internet business out there, and I have the spam to prove it.
Anyway, I thought I ordered normal flowers, but in my PPD fog I apparently ordered some little mutant irises and daffodils that have ittybitty stems but normal-size blossoms. In a corrollary to the Comedy = Tragedy + Time equation, I can say that PPD + the Internet = Flowers That Crack Me Up.

Eliza vs the potbellied pig. Jim took her to a local zoo, this one having an actual selection of animals, including a potbellied pig who roams the grounds. I had a hard time telling, from this picture, which end was which, but as usual, Eliza cozied right up.

Girl continues to have no fear/ick factor whatsoever with animals. On Sunday I did yardwork and introduced her to earthworms. First, I had one on my hand and she petted it, saying, “Worm wike a widduh snake!”

Then I put one on the palm of her hand. “Worm is wigguwing an’ wigguwing!”

(Have I mentioned that although she has mastered “R,” the “L” sound continues to stump her?)

Also, please note the extremely lopsided pigtails: Jim attempted to do her hair himself this morning, and I am just falling over from the cuteness at the very thought. In the words of my progeny: “Daddy is a ROCKstah!”

Then, Jim put her on a little trolley ride at the zoo, and he said that though he was a little nervous about what might happen if she freakled out, there was apparently no freaking:

She won’t stop talking about it; I think she is kind of impressed with herself.

Sadly, these may be the last pictures you’ll see for a while, as our (3-week-old) camera has experienced some sort of catastrophic organ failure. We’ve had trouble with the focus nearly from the start, as you’ll see when you look at the last month’s batch of photos. Then, today, I was bitching about same and futzing with the menu thingie, when I noticed that one of the batteries seemed to have exploded, corroding the camera’s innards, and gluing my media card into its slot.

I NEVER buy the store warranty. I caved this time because the saleswoman WOULD NOT SHUT UP about it, And I figured I’d come back when she wasn’t around and cancel it. I never got around to it, and boy am I glad. They need to figure out whether or not it can be fixed or whether they’ll give me a whole new one, and I am of course hoping for the latter, because I have a trip to photograph in 3 weeks and if my camera breaks down in the middle of the Belgian family reunion, I will become irate in the extreme, possibly with multilingual swearing.