of moss and leaves

On Monday, I voluntarily evacuated myself and our cats ahead of Hurricane Sandy.
Hobbes woke me up at 10:30am, looking incredibly worried.  As he is usually Mr Cool, this rattled me.  I looked outside and saw the water was making its way steadily up the yard.  I estimated it was within hours of covering the driveway and cutting off my only escape route. 

As I left around noon, I noticed that the water on my street was almost up to the edges of the road.
I later learned that high tide was at 3:30pm.

We stayed at W's for three days (bless her!) and got to hang out in relative safety.  Maggie and Hobbes weren't too pleased at having to share quarters with W's elderly cat, but no fights broke out.

Maggie ended up claiming one chair as "hers".



Hobbes, tired of my late-night internet surfing, fell asleep next to my keyboard every night.

We finally got to go home last night and it’s a bizarre feeling – the landscape is subtly different.  All the colours are muted, dusty.  The whole yard smells faintly of saltwater.  There’s debris everywhere – downed trees, branches…things have floated in from everywhere.  Bits of cornstalks all over the yard.  I can tell the direction the water flowed through the grass near the steps when the tide receded.  It looks like the yard got about a foot of water.  A few larger things floated away, but odd little things stayed...

And our semi-feral outdoor cat is okay. 
She showed up at 2am yesterday, hungry, but otherwise well.  :)

Hobbes is growing up to be quite the handsome boy.
Here he is at 1 month old and last weekend at 16 months old.

Happy New Year, all.

I've been busy the past week or so.  stormsongk and I have been trying to clean up the house and be more organised.  I've been attempting to clean for a minimum of 15 minutes a day.  So far, we've cleared off nearly half of the kitchen table, our Hoosier cabinet, and much of the kitchen counter.
On Monday, I finished rearranging the dinnerware.  I'm pretty proud of myself.  What's the point of owning all that gorgeous pottery if it's not in a place where it can be used every day?



Also, I've been sharing the seedlings from our lettuce plants that bolted over the summer.  They're everywhere in our back garden, so I waited until they got large enough to transplant and then shared them with family.  Salads for all!



While I was home on Monday, I noticed that Maggie and Hobbes have begun snoozing only a few feet apart in the afternoon sunbeams.  Pretty much the only time these two spend time together is at sunrise (they love to sit in the window) or during games of chase-and-pounce.
I ran for the camera at this sweet sight.

This weekend was the Yule feast with our chosen family.
A bunch of us and a load of food crammed into my sister's tiny 1-bedroom apartment.
Crowded and sometimes loud, but fun.

During the weekend, I started a new cross stitch pattern (yay Etsy!) - a wreath of holly, ivy, and mistletoe.  On Sunday morning, I had some trouble sleeping, so I got up and started stitching.
Hobbes curled up next to me and purred for three hours.

It's come to my attention that since stormsongk and I have adopted our cats, life has begun to imitate art.  About 20 years ago, I bought an art tile that looks a great deal like three-month-old Hobbes.



And the reason I bought it is that it looked like my best concept of what I wanted "home" to be.