Wall-O

As has been mentioned, I think, The Boy and I are using our reception in two weeks as a deadline to get all the little things we’ve wanted to do for two years done. Today, The Boy worked on the high sections of the basement stairwell.

Obi was there to help.

The Boy did not want Obi’s help.

I woke up to a brown kitten poking me in the nose and crying about the deep and abiding boredom from which he suffered. I followed him downstairs and found, when I went into the kitchen for coffee, a closed door. The Boy REALLY didn’t want Obi’s help.

I was holding the brown kitten and we were listening to the sound of a roller on the other side of that door when the grey kitten walked in. He was headed to the breakfast nook for a snack. As he walked past us, though, he stopped.

One foot in the air, mid step.

He turned his head.

He sat down in shock.

When did we get a wall? Who put that wall there? Oliver looked at me and cried. This was not okay.

I set Obi on the floor and assured them both that it was, in fact, okay. The brown kitten decided to treat his boredom with a Thunder and pounced on his brother. By the time they finished wrestling The Boy was done painting and, indeed, it was all okay.

Advertisement

Sunday Snapshots

The Boy fixed the downstairs toilet today while I was at the old house painting the storage room because evidently people won’t buy a house just because it has a pink storage room. So now it’s Celadon. Men, that means it isn’t pink. The Boy had plenty of help. Oliver sat on the seat and looked in – helpfully proving once again that his head is not transparent and that it is hard to work through, over or around. Obi stood on the floor and showed how tall he is getting. He was on the floor mostly because he has helped me work on this toilet before and knows I don’t play the kitten on the toilet game.

***

Obi is big into showing how tall he’s getting lately. Which isn’t tall at all. But it is now tall enough that he has touched my sandwich on the counter when it was too close to the edge.

***

Oliver had a cootie in his ear and shook his head to get rid of it. I happened to be holding him and got a good thwacking from that ear. Slap! Slap! Slap! Across my face. You could hear it from the other side of the room.

***

As the sun was setting, Obi was watching the shadows of branches dance on the wall in the dining room. I stuck my finger into the beam and he attacked the shadow for a couple minutes. Then I laughed and he noticed I was in the room. Then, for the first time ever, he looked at where I was pointing! Except I wasn’t pointing at anything…

***

After dinner, Obi and I were sitting on the couch. Real casual, I lifted up my hand and DEPLOYED THE CLAW! Except Obi was about two inches further away than my reach. He looked at the claw. Watched it desperately trying to reach his face. Looked at me like I was a little stupid. Then I leaned over and moved within clawing range. THE CLAW!

“Drat. How did you find the camera?”

 ***

On my way in to blog, I noticed that Mr. Bear is in the hallway again. And Oliver had the need…the need to knead.

"Kneading you into a puddle is how I show I care."

Caught, Red Pawed

This blog is going to be quick because I am off to the old house to paint. More painting. Ugh. I am so sick of painting. Painting, painting, painting. If I was worried about seeing this house go, I’ve gotten over it with all the painting. And, over the ten years that I’ve owned that house, I did enough painting that you’d think there’d be no more painting left to do.

When Oliver was a juvenile I refinanced my house. To do this, I needed a new appraisal. And that meant finishing the stairwell. Fast. It was 2 a.m. and I was painting away. I’d painted every other step of the stairs so I could still go up and down. I used this great, rich scarlet paint. While the floor dried, I was painting the trim around the door the same color.

I heard a tiny mew.

I look down from my ladder and there is Oliver, holding up one tiny red paw. It didn’t take long to figure out what had happened. From the paint tray there were paw tracks leading down the steps and into the basement. They went about twenty feet before fading out. Oli had tried to clean his own feet. Then he came to me to confess…and beg for help.

There’s a lot that goes through your mind at a time like that. Is concrete paint poisonous? How much did he lick off? Do you get extra points on your appraisal for adorable cat prints?

It was about 4 a.m. when I finished washing Oliver’s feet. They’d faded to a delightful, very girly pink. They stayed that way for weeks. I went back to painting and worked for about five minutes before I decided that it would be two full days before someone came looking for me if I fell down the stairs and broke something. I stopped.

And never started again.

So last month I finished painting the walls in the stairwell. And now I’m off to do the doors and finish that floor. Bye bye, cute little kitty prints.