In praise of good eatin’ (among other things)

It happens a lot lately that I’ll open up the door to our building and a smell will tickle my nose. A different sort of smell from that old, slightly musty building – a building with history and dust and smells aplenty. A cooking smell. A food smell. As I walk up the stairs to our (our!) apartment, I’ll say a little prayer that the smell is coming from our kitchen. Please, please, please, I’ll think, lingering exhaustion and annoyance from my work day making me feel a little prickly. Let that smell be coming from Apt 2.

I have yet to be disappointed.

Joe is an amazing cook – and (lucky me!) he loves to share. Prior to Joe, I had a fridge full of farm produce slowly going rotten. Now I have a fridge full of fresh ingredients just waiting to become yummy food. Last night he made us turkey burgers, with a side of string beans and potatoes (he had cous cous, but I’m more of a potato girl) and a big salad. Where I’m content to just make patties and slap them on a bun, Joe’s turkey burgers were full of onions and pepper and spices and he even made bread crumbs and bound it all up with egg. Oh, and sprinkled with fresh basil and cheddar cheese.

I don’t think I have to tell you how delicious it was. Even better: there’s leftovers. A girl could get used to this!

Things are going well in every way. All of the remaining tack strips from the carpet saga are gone (thanks, Joe) and things have been organized (thanks, Joe) and furniture assembled or moved to a better spot (thanks, Joe). Also the floors have been kept pretty clean (thanks, Joe). I must be the worst live-in girlfriend ever. All I do is enjoy the fruits of his labors.

Last night, Joe and Seb and I took a stroll around Highland Park – the neighborhood and the park itself. I call it a stroll because we walked in Cate-speed (ie, slow), but it was a sort of urban hike. We walked for almost two hours, up and down huge hills, getting home sweaty but happy. I like this neighborhood more and more as time goes on. I think the boys had a good time, too. We couldn’t find the dog park, but that’s just an excuse to do some more exploring!

The Amazing Introduction of Josie and Seb

I was so excited about Joe and Seb just being here that I forgot entirely to talk about the actual first time face-to-face meeting of our animals. In a word: uneventful.

Miss Josie saw the Big Yellow Dog coming and went into full-out defense mode: arched back, huge puffed tail, growly sneer. Seb looked in her direction and then totally ignored her. “Oh, there’s a cat here,” he seemed to say. “Whatever. Now about that snuggling…?”

Once Josie realized he wasn’t going to eat her, she settled down and went back to being her normal chatty, cuddly self. They’ve only been living together a few days, and she’s already taken to rubbing up against his face and sniffing him when he’s sitting still. Seb, a gentleman through and through, has once or twice snuffed in her direction but that’s it.

Actually, once or twice Josie has tried to make a speedy exit from a room only to find Seb and his long legs blocking her path. It’s sort of funny to watch her crash into him and Seb look baffled by this fluffy thing careening out of nowhere. Oh, animals. You do amuse!

Josie desperately wants to play with him. A few times now I’ve seen her deliberately rub on him and then go thundering away, only to stop and stare at him, wondering why he doesn’t chase her. She’s learning that living with a small-breed puppy and a large-breed adult are quite different, but I think she’ll end up preferring a dog that doesn’t grab her by the throat and drag her across the floor.

Last night as Joe and I sat on our couch, Josie curled up on my lap and Seb sat in front of us to get some lovin’. They touched noses in the most adorable display of inter-species affection (well, awareness anyway) I’ve ever seen. Of course I didn’t get a picture, but here’s proof that they do share space! It’s dark and hard to tell, but Josie and Seb are both in that picture, quite close and happy about it.

How sweet it is!

Joe and Seb made it to Pittsburgh on Saturday…more than 24 hours earlier than expected because Joe went mad and pushed through to get here as fast as possible. He showed up haggard and exhausted but I think it was worth it. (I can say that because I wasn’t driving or even in the car.)

One of my favorite shots from the trip

Needless to say, wonderful to have them around. Even though the apartment (our apartment!) is full of Joe’s stuff and Seb is hanging about with his big dog smile I haven’t really wrapped my head around the “living together” thing yet. It feels like another visit. Soon it will all sink in, I’m sure.

*smiles*

Saturday we had dinner at the Hofbrauhaus – good beer, good food, very raucous company. Sunday was a bit more low-key. We did real relationshippy things, like going to IKEA and Target and hefting Joe’s thousand-pound boxes up the stairs. And then I napped while Joe dismantled the office door. And then Joe made us dinner while I put together “the world’s smallest desk” for his computer.

It’s coming together, this cohabitation thing. It’s really coming together.

Complete with a cat in the window!

Shots from the road!

Like most other aspects of my life, I need to get used to sharing this blog with Joe’s adventures, rather than just filling it up with my own (small though they are lately). I try really hard to think about and refer to the apartment as “our apartment,” instead of just “my apartment.” Because it’s his as much as mine and soon his touch will be all over the place as much as mine is – maybe more, depending how in depth he gets with his projects. But the point is: it’s not all me, me, me all the time. Or it won’t be soon.

And can I tell you? I cannot fucking wait.

Joe is headed my way via some very scenic highways and he tortures me along the trip with occasional cell phone pictures. Here’s most of what I’ve received so far (all from Montana and Wyoming, I think):

And now the obligatory pictures of Josie, because after all she is the shining star in both our lives! (Seb too, but as a dog he’s more low-key about it.)

She is so cute!

...but this face scares me a little.

Sunday, people! Three days!!!

Back to my roots…

No offense to Josie or Seb, who are both awesome, but sometimes it just needs to be a Beagle.

Farm veggies galore!

Quick round-up of awesome!

Whoa boy, I’m behind in updating! Briefly:

I went up to Michigan for a week to lounge by the lake and visit with family, including the intrepid and portly Beagle-of-my-heart Rocky. It was a wonderful trip and I’m lucky enough to be going back up there over Labor Day weekend for more lounging…and also to introduce Joe to the Lake and a few members of my extended family.

My lake :)

Rocky waddles through the woods

I left Josie in the apartment in the care of a friend who lives around the corner (and who also has one of Josie’s kittens, so she understands a bit of the mindset…they are eerily similar). Josie was pretty ticked off at me for leaving her, but I expected that would be the case. I tried to reassure her as best I could. In turn, she reassured me that she missed me by walking all over my face while I slept. Thanks, kitten.

You're welcome, says Josie-cat

While I was up north I bought all kinds of sweet art for the apartment. Pretty excited to get the walls in a condition where we feel ready to start hanging up art. Soon, soon, soon!

Had a great morning up at the farm on Saturday. When I left the house I was feeling really grumpy and negative about going, but I cheered up fast when I got there. I spent almost the entire three hours I was working thinning out one of the carrot patches. There were just so many! When I was finally done it was time to pick and pack up, so I pulled beans and beets and left with my bags stuffed full of farm bounty. I’ll have pictures of everything I got soon, but trust me…it’s a lot.

School starts in two weeks (booo).

I have a week-long date with Thesis because I’ve been slacking (BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO).

OK, best for last: today, August 17, Joe and Seb are packing up the car (I imagine Joe will do most of the packing) and setting off in an eastern direction. Yes, that’s right, they’re on their way to us!! Joe is taking the long way, camping and exploring along the trip, and anticipates a Sunday arrival.

Yes, I am pretty much crapping myself with excitement. Less than a week, kids! LESS THAN A WEEK!!

Not enough kitty pictures in this post, I know!

The Case of the Grey-Striped Cat

Today began very oddly. First: my alarm didn’t go off, which ended up not being an issue because I was awake well in time anyway. Second, and more disturbingly: Josie didn’t crawl on my face at 5am. I woke up feely a little detached from reality, wondering if I wasn’t dreaming myself waking up. It seemed real enough. But where was Josie?

I called out, “Josie?” Nothing. She wasn’t sitting in front of the bedroom window or on the rug next to my bed or in my closet (her new favorite place). I started to get a little anxious.

I walked all through to apartment calling her. Nothing. No little meows, no grumbly purring, no thuds as she jumped to the floor from whatever perch. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

For a loud cat like Miss Jos, that’s cause for concern. I checked all her usual spots: the kitchen, the bath tub, her litter box. I even checked behind the couch in case she got stuck back there again. No kitty.

What’s a girl to do? Call off work to find my missing cat? Take to bed in a swoon?

I decided to retrace my steps and look in all the places I’d already looked. Just in case. Maybe she was under the bed or in the closet and didn’t want to answer me. Maybe she ate a bad bug and was feeling poorly. Maybe she’d been eating leftover carpet crap off the floor. Maybe she’d been poisoned. Who could drive us to the vet if we needed to go?

Finally I found her, laying in between boxes on the window shelf in the office, watching me go back and forth with an amused look on her face that clearly said, “human, you are so dumb.” If cats had eyebrows, hers would have been arched.

I’m glad she’s okay, but jeez…maybe tomorrow she could just walk on  my face like usual and spare me the anguish!

whatever.