Happy Days

Georgie was distracted, but Chris and I were trying to grab a shot with her.  There must have been a toy on the ground.

Sophi also loved the spot behind the trashcan.  

Monster

Today began a good day.  It was the beginning of a 3 day weekend.  The sun was out for once.  It was cold, but not frigid.  I felt productive and cleaned some stuff.  I called the vet to get Georgie in for a nail trim.  Turns out they take walk-ins, who knew.  So I shoved her in her kennel, she escaped through an open side door, and I shoved her back in with a couple more treats and made nice sounds to her like maybe she would be a good girl, which we know never works.

Per usual, she huffed and tossled around in her kennel like it wasn't good enough for her on the walk to the vet, which is about 7 - 10 minutes worth of walking away.  Lucky for Georgie, who hates loud noises, sudden noises, anything that moves suddenly, and dogs, it was relatively quiet this morning off Connecticut avenue.  Could things have been any more in her favor?

It must have been the waiting room full of dogs.  If there is anything Georgie hates more than a world of snow and 40 below, its dogs.  The last time Georgie encountered a dog, she bit the crap out of my hand.  MY hand.

You see, kittie doesn't care who you are or whether you put food in front of her face or change the brita water in her kittie water bowl twice a day or scoop the **** from her litterbox every morning so that she has fresh litter to kick across the bathroom floor during the day.  When kittie is stressed, she takes it out on the nearest flesh-covered organism she can sink her teeth, or slash her claws, into.

Add another victim to her list.  The poor vet-tech who attempted to trim Georgie's nails this morning with bare hands and got a slashing.  There was blood.  Georgie isn't satisfied until there is blood.  By the end of the appointment, Georgie was no longer Georgie but Georgina, her evil alter-ego, and was covered in a towel while three of us held her down so she could endure the painful process of nail-trimming.

"They bite through towels," one of the vet tech's told me.  You don't say...

To top it all off, Georgie, (or is it Georgina?) has early onset gingivitis for which a 300+ dollar cleaning and special food are prescribed?  A quick email to Uncle Dave should clear some of this up.

Comfy and back in her kennel for the walk home, Georgie was getting used to her new claws and enjoying the usual compliments from passersby.

"Oh what a beautiful cat," a woman said.  She was standing with two other men and they had a conversation about Georgie, which Georgie was likey relishing.  I turned and said, "She looks nice, but she's not nice."

Charly Loves Her Uncle Nick

So much that she urped on about 87% of her bib.

Oh, and here is one with Charly and me.

In this one, it's Charly - and that is me holding her.

I like to play a song for Charly once and a while on the guitar.  She was asleep on the floor, you wouldn't know from the picture.  But she was.

Presents! For me? You shouldn't have...

Here is Georgie in a typical situation; lounging in a self-indulgent manner.  Are the presents too much?  Well, she didn't think so.  Notice Chris' environmentally conscious wrapping.  Georgie found all the global warming talk at Christmas to be repulsive.  She hates snow and she hates also to be cold, which is why she complained non-stop in KCI's airport terminal while they left the door to the bridge open.  A nice lady said "Awwww.  I would take a cat any day over a baby."  In the distance, a baby was shrieking.  Shows how little she knows this cat.

While for the next hour Georgie tossed and turned in her carrier to get comfortable, I treated the slash wounds she inflicted upon me in security in a desperate scramble to get back in her kennel.  She hates being exposed to any type of scanning device.

The Nelson Atkins Museum

A stroll through some of the masterworks at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, MO.  Georgie's favorite is in here.  It was a good opportunity to practice taking pictures with my camera (that I promise to use in DC to amp up this blog).  We'll call it my new year resolution.  Until then, no making fun of my amateur photo skills.

Elisabeth Louise Vigee-Lebrun's Portrait of the Duchesse de Caderousse.  Both barely escaped from the French Revolution, heads in-tact. 

A bust by Augustin Pajou, the infamous du Barry's favorite sculptor.  She was not so lucky as the Duchesse.

Cupid and Psyche by Boucher.

A portrait by Hyacinthe Riguad, the famous painter of Louis XIV.

A nice picture of Marian devotion.

David with Goliath's head.

The famous Caravaggio.  St. John the Baptist in the Wilderness.

A favorite:  St. Cecilia.  Needless to say the pictures (or is it my camera) just can't do them justice.

Monet's famous Boulevard de Capucines.  You can see the pink balloons from here.

Another Monet.

I've always liked these cows.

A Chinese horse.

A scene of revolutionary war.  This one became a book jacket.  I like it a lot.

What museum collection is complete without Georgia O'Keefe's flowers.

My favorite of the Thomas Hart Bentons.  A minstrel show.

A nice Madonna and Child.

Period room from the French Neoclassical Period.

Another view.

Another period room with wood paneling.

Period room from the Colonial Period in America.

Another view.

A favorite.  John Singleton Copley's wedding portrait of the Barretts.

Raphaelle Peale's Venus Rising from the Sea.

Winter Wonderland

(Georgie enjoys the wintry scene)

It's final.  Finals are finally over.  Georgie is so glad about that because she hated all the studying and the tests.  We don't have any more room in our brains for anything else.  A good idea to stare vacantly out a window at a white parking lot.

Actually, I don't have a lot of time to mess around.  As Mom would say, "No rest for the weary."  I hustled it back from Contracts, hoofed it across the treacherous sidewalks in search of a salad sandwich, and now I'm smashing it.  Afternoon Agenda Item #1:  Figure out how to get three weeks worth of clothes into one suitcase, plus Georgie's necessities, of which she has informed me there are (supposedly) a lot.  

And so the holiday begins...

Trynna find a way...

to get some shut eye.  Or sanity.  I told her she's gonna get an F if she doesn't get some coffee in her system and hit the books.  She had some choice words for me.  The image can probably convey what those words meant.