Mozart in the Making

A Place to Call Home

Well it's cluttered and I even spy a box, the wall decorations are a little random and we're waiting for another couch to come in, but it's home! This is our main living room. And Papa and Caitlin posed in front before we left for our walk the other day (see below)! It's a 1977 ranch-style home with forest all behind, plenty of dandelions out front (that's today's project), and a tree with stunning fuschia blooms at the moment. We love it!

This Makes Me Smile!*

*or more accurately: I choose to smile because of this! :)
(because nothing can make me do or feel anything-! oooh deep)Our new piano! (well, new to us)

I Hate Cats.

Well not maybe for all time, but right now I've never felt an emotion so strongly for cats.

I was just on a walk with Caitlin when I looked over on someone's driveway at a cat sitting under a truck. Caitlin loves to see animals so I hoped she saw it too.

As we came closer I noticed another moving thing...but it was so small...was it a mouse? But it was...hopping!

It was the tiniest, cutest, most adorable little bunny! Caitlin was too distracted to see it, but I couldn't help but stop and just watch this little, perfect creature hop about like it had just learned to hop this morning. I couldn't believe it was only the size of a mouse, but still a rabbit!

And then the cat started to approach it. I tried to make noises to scare the cat away and at that point the rabbit came floppily hopping in my direction. I was unsure if I should pick it up and take it far away, or just not worry about it. The cat was uninhibited by my attempts to scare it off but the started nudging the bunny around as it changed course and started hopping away from me. Maybe the cat only wanted to play with it?

Then the owner of the house came out and I asked if he'd seen the baby rabbit before, hoping he would take charge of the cat and solve the problem...

But in that moment the cat swooped down and grabbed the little bunny, no more than 10 ft from me. The homeowner was totally unaffected, having started to say that he hadn't seen the bunny before and then after noticing its fate, saying, "Well that's the end of that." I was heartbroken! And the bunny's last screeches as it was carried away didn't help either.

It took less than a minute to "fall in love," so to say, with that teeny animal. And just like that that stupid cat put an end to it. That perfect, hopping baby animal didn't even see it coming.

I'm very surprised by my emotional reaction to it. I find myself blaming all cats for what happened to that bunny. I'm trying to figure out a resolving conclusion about how death fits into life. Maybe it's that I can relate so thoroughly to small creatures and their need for protection since Caitlin is still so small. Whatever the reasoning, I can't deny this great sense of loss that has welled up inside. Perhaps it also stems from having heard news that an old neighbor from Dresden passed away a couple days ago too.

I just don't get why animals would be so intricately made when this sort of thing happens in the wild all the time. I don't know how old the bunny was, but why even be born if he's just going to get eaten within a month? It makes me wish I hadn't gotten distracted and had reached down and "saved" the bunny as it hopped towards me. But I can't blame myself. I'm just so sad! Why did I have to walk by at just that moment...why did I even have to see that cute bunny...what's the purpose?!?

Stupid cat. I hate them.

Starting Over...Again

Well we've made it! We are now the proud owners of a new home on Sierra Lane in Rochester, Minnesota. We closed on the house and started moving in on May 1st, and let's just say the last week and a half have been, well, very full!

You never hear about how hard organizing is, so I'm here to proclaim it to the world: organizing is exhausting! Not only do we have to unpack boxes and suitcases, but we first have to obviously figure out where things should go. I consider myself a fan of organization and on a smaller scale I actually quite enjoy it. That's why I'm surprised to be so tired at the end of each day when the majority has been spent *only* organizing. Sheesh! Oh for the day when I can have something in my hand and put it in it's pre-existing place-!

Another thought I have to throw out there is opening new packages. I don't think I have or will ever open so many new things in such a short time again. I mostly mean food items, like ketchup, syrup, tea, peanut butter, etc etc. I think I'm a pro at finding the "dotted line" on any and every package, although some packages are definitely more user friendly to open than others. And then there's all the new household stuff like glasses, plates, cutlery (which may or may not have taken me at least half an hour to open each of the three boxes), hangers, furniture, and the like. Not to mention that every time I near the vicinity of Target or Walmart I can't escape the gravitational pull and end up finding numerous things I wasn't sure I needed upon entering but then couldn't live without by the end. It's an unusual type of settling in we are faced with: we aren't starting completely from scratch, having brought back boxes from Germany and combining my and Grady's childhood belongings, but yet we are empty handed in so many other ways. And it's like the experience we had in setting up our home in Germany somehow doesn't count because we only have the contents of that life with us now, not the structure. [sigh!] I would die happy if we never moved from this place, because then it would mean I'd never be faced with all this "unsettled-ness" again!

Ok enough ranting. On a happy note I love our new house! It backs up to a foresty area and we have seen so much wildlife already it's ridiculous. Squirrels, chipmunks, ducks, rabbits, not to mention birds (and we've heard even the occasional deer, although I haven't seen one yet) all frequent our backyard. Our patio doors are like a giant screen tv for Caitlin during every mealtime! (It beats Baby Einstein any day!)

Papa and Caitlin watch the wildlife while eating breakfast together the first morning in our new house

We have lots of space for those who might want to stop by and stay for a bit, as well as plenty of nice neighbors on our quiet street. Caitlin has her own huge, empty playroom at the moment, which makes life easy on all of us as she starts to pull herself around and we don't have to watch her every move.

One last side note: don't take your sofa for granted. Or any seat for that matter. The night we moved in we had only two wooden chairs I had picked up from a garage sale and a camping chair (G and I knelt at the table to eat dinner with his parents that night). We did finally acquire a couple more chairs, and I have never been so glad to finally own a couch as I was last Wednesday (6 days after going without) when we moved our first one in. Our second one wouldn't fit down the stairs and ended up putting a huge hole in the wall (a story for later!), but what bliss to at least own one soft surface to relax on. Oh the things one doesn't miss until they are without!