Hibernating is Good

Sorry for the lack of posting, as Jen so kindly reminded me today. Thank you lady friend!
So, Xtian and I are all moved in at the new place. All we have left to do is put up a few more pictures. It's bizarre to have room for stuff. The cats are enjoying the wood and tile floors. They chase eachother all over the house, skidding out of control, crashing into walls and generally looking as undignified as you can imagine. I can sit and giggle at them all day. And I often do. Which is probably why my new neighbor is avoiding me.
Little Fiddy is now huge. He's barely 4 months old, and almost the same size as the big cats. His feet are enormous. I'm now fairly certain we brought home a lion cub. This cat kills me. He's so feisty it annoys the other cats, but he's also the cuddliest cat in the world. If you sit down in my house, we will be climbing into your lap within minutes. If you lay down, he will be snuggled into your hair within the hour. My favorite thing is the three kitty pile-ons that have been occurring. All three cats decide that my pillow is the only place they want to be, and so are curled and flopped all over eachother all night. Sure, this leaves no room for my head, but it's so cute, I can't get angry.


Ok, enough of the crazy cat lady posting.
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So, with my new home comes a much longer walk to work. Due to the awkwardness of location, busing and barting save me no time/energy, and driving is just stupid, so now I have a 30 minute walk to work. Which so far had been fine. I have to walk through some sketch-ass neighborhoods, so walking in the dark will not be an option, but this is all good, and I've been enjoying my walks as a way to explore my new neighborhood. Overall, delightful.

Then this morning, I awoke to rain. "No biggie, I've walked in worse rain that this. Hell I've lived in Milwaukee, for gawe's sake. Bring it on!" I thought. Yeah. The thing about rain as opposed to snow, is that rain gets you wet immediately, whereas you've got a few minutes to brush snow off before it melts. So, I got to work, and spent 20 minutes in the bathroom wringing out my pants, socks and jacket. Nothing like crouching in a KP bathroom in my underwear trying to paper-towel the water out of my wool pants.
So now, I'm mostly dry, finally, yet have the distinct odor of moistened barnyard. Which is just delightful. I can't wait to walk back home.

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Xtian has been fully welcomed into the familial clan. Over Thanksgiving he got to spend a few days with most of my extended family, and everyone just adores him. How could they not? The boy cousins are smitten. Since our entire family is really female dominated, any male is a precious commodity. Whenever we see the cousins, Xtian is quickly stolen by the boys and I don't see him again until it's time to eat.
My little 9-year old cousin (my namesake, actually..) is in love with Xtian. She makes every excuse to sit next to him, and has always favored me a bit anyway, so there is ample opportunity. She thought she was hot shit when she got to ride with only us to go to a movie. Since my truck only seats two comfortably, and three with some major body contortions, she got to be snuggled in the middle and was in heaven. Silly muffin.

In other family news, Xtian's brother is spending some time with us while on his Winter break. And since their mom can't make it up, we'll all be heading to Chico to spend Xmas with my family. Those poor kids have no idea what they are in for. Xtian and his brother are really quiet, shy and polite. My family is loud, has no boundaries for personal space, and our favorite game is mockery. This could get ugly.

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Right after Thanksgiving, I was struck down with a terrible cold/flu thing. I ended up working from home on Monday. (a quick note before we get into it. Most of my work requires use of the company intranet, which I only recently gained the various accoutrement that allows me to access the network from home. My new lady-boss is a contractor, and therefore has to jump through a lot of hoops to get this same equipment, and so had asked me to order this stuff for myself, so she could use it. It arrived the day before my time-off began, and since I was on-call to should anything go wrong on the weekend, I took it home with me. If I was going to have to work, I'll be damned if I actually had to GO to work. So I had the "token," lady boss did not.) I should have just taken the day off sick, but I felt badly since I knew my clients would be ravenous, and so compromised by staying home. Midway through the day, lady boss calls, remarks that I sound awful (and I did. My voice was the deep raspy, throaty, frogginess that most transexual phonesex operators would die for), and then makes a snarky comment about my having the network "token." I explain that it had arrived and my thought process behind not immediately giving it to her. She make another snarky comment, then asks me to make sure she gets it back when I return.

Nice. So, when Xtian got home from work, I had him drive me to work so I could drop it all off at her office. The next day I'm still feeling rough, so I stay home, and send an email alerting her to the "token" I left in her office.

I took a hot steamy shower to try to clear my sinuses and soothe my throat. When I got out, there was a shame-filled message on my answering machine from lady boss, thanking me for bringing her the network "token" and repeatedly making "you shouldn't have" comments. Serves the bitch right. Get in my face about using equipment that is rightfully mine? Enjoy your shame, let it feed you. Gah!

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Right, I'm about out of things to bitch about. More soon to come, I'm sure.