I'm Home!

Howdy, folks!

I'm home now, and everything is working splendidly with my blog. I think I've got it all set up the way I want it to be, and now I can focus on posting. Yay!

I was wondering if any of you could give me ideas for horse names. I'm writing a book (the one I've set a goal for 40,000 words) right now and its about a girl named Skylar King and she lives on a Thoroughbred breeding farm. Since horses are included almost every second - well, not that often - I need names.

Anybody have any ideas? If you could, please don't add names that have already been given to a famous horse :)

I'm sorry that my posts aren't horribly exciting right now; I'm looking for things to post about. I do have a little story about a problem that arose on Thursday . . .

So, here's the set up: we're getting ready for the trip to Sunriver and the problem arises that the cats will run out of food while we're gone. So, Mom remembers the cat-feeder we have that holds a ton of food but only lets them eat a bowl at a time - if that makes sense. She says it's outside and announces it looks like its full of oil.

I scrunch my eyebrows up. "How is that possible? How did we get oil in a cat feeder?"

Dad chuckles. "I don't know."

Myla, my ten-year-old sister, grimaces. "That'll hurt the cats."

I nod. She's right. What if the cats have been drinking the oil? Common sense floods me, though, and I realize that it must smell bad and so the smart kitties we have wouldn't ever do something like that.

"Can you go check, honey?" Mom asks my dad. "And see if you could clean it out so we could use it?"

Dad nods. "Sure, I'll go see what I can do."

It's nearly the time we were hoping to leave by, so my parents are rushing through the last things they need to do to be ready: feed the cats and Mom's in the kitchen, doing something that I can't remember, Lol.

I am eating my breakfast of cold cereal. Myla and Nikki are playing Legos or play mobiles or something farther down the table, and chatting about Sunriver. We'd been there years and years ago, and I remember that it was a magical vacation. I was so excited to go back.

I had just finished my breakfast when Dad slips back into the house, shuddering. "Uhhhhh." His voice is fulled of disgusted laughter.

"What is it?" Mom pauses in cleaning the kitchen - ah, ha! I think that's what she was doing!

I look at my father expectantly. "Was the oil that bad?" Perhaps he saw a dead bird Kabuki brought in . . . it couldn't be the oil!

Dad shakes his head no. Chuckling, he shudders again, then grimaces, "That oil was not oil. It was -" He pauses and looks around - "It was rotten, slimy, disgusting cat food and who knows what else!"

His voice, and then the way his whole body shakes in a shudder with remembrance of the "oil" sends his daughters and wife bursting into laughter. My face brightens in mirth.

"I can still smell it. Ughh."

"Ewwww," Nikki shrieks her laughter.

Mom laughs. "That's gross."

"It was so bad!" Dad exclaims further.

I laugh, picturing him picking up the feeder, preparing to dump the "oil" out, and realizing this was not oil but something all together horribly worse - dropping the feeder and running back inside. It must have smelled awful! But it does make more sense than oil in a cat feeder. "Now what will we do about feeding the cats?" I ask.

We ended up just filling about four bowls full of cat food and sticking them in different spots. As we drove out of the driveway, I glance at the large bowl of the food.

Oh, dear, I thought, August will most likely gain another pound when we return and he's already huge! 


Anyway, that's our "oil-in-the-cat-feeder" escapade. I hoped you enjoyed getting a little glimpse into what our days usually hold in the midst of everyday goings. We enjoy being silly and I thought maybe somebody out there would enjoy this :)

~Izzy