It's... ALIVE....

Yep, I'm alive. Sorry about the absence, folks. I've been a bit busy, to say the least - and my computer was sitting (quite happily, I might add) unplugged and out of the way for a few months. But, thanks to a spate of unwanted spam comments*, I know without looking it up that my last post was in July, about "Gicler!" (Please, spammers, leave me alone!)

A lot has changed since then... Let's see if I can remember the major plot points:

• Kenyon & I finished painting my condo. We put it on the market the week before Labor Day. We got an offer within 48 hours, and closed 3 weeks after that. (Yay!)
• I moved in to K's apartment in sunny, exciting Palatine. His cats, Toadie and Big G were supportive....
• ...and continued to be, even when my own kitties joined us a few weeks later. (Thank you, Dhavid and Haruka, for putting up the kitties for us!) Rumble came extraordinarily close to death one evening when he "discovered" Toadie, and knocked Toadie's tank off the counter. (He came close to death another night when Toadie escaped on his own -- thankfully Toadie used his Ninja Toad skills to sneak by all 4 cats, who would have loved to catch him, and who would have died if they'd actually eaten his poisonous little self...)
• We've expanded the bufo americanus collection a bit, thanks to Mom & Dad's toad factory. We now have 3 bufos - Big G (named after the "gicler" incident), Buffy, and Pigpen. We've recently discovered that Pigpen is, in fact, a girl. But she's still messy, and eats like a pig, so the name's staying.
• We've also expanded the firebelly toad population significantly. Toadie has new friends! We think there's one female, but we're not quite sure... Their names - all dubbed by K - are Brownie, Tarzan and Spot. (Yes, we have a toad named Spot.)
• If you've been paying attention, you'll notice that we're now up to 2 humans, 4 cats, 7 toads (of 2 species) and a turtle -- in a 1-bedroom apartment. It's... cozy. And never have I been more acutely aware of the fact that I am female, and as such, I take up more space than I should. (Sorry, K.. I wish it weren't so!)

That brings us up to, oh, mid October. Lots of animals, tight space. What do people do when they outgrow their living space? Move!! Yeah - we're moving - we bought a house! A real, honest-to-goodness house. With a yard and a little pond and lots of bedrooms and everything! (The things that make us get all giggly and stupid are the ideas that we'll have a doorbell and a mailbox.) Here are pics of the front and back:



It's way, way out in the middle of nowhere, but it's gorgeous and we're so thrilled to be owning it! Time for us to be grown-ups and be all "responsible" I guess.... ;)

Anyway, that's really it for the news. We close just before Thanksgiving and move in just afterwards - thanks again to Dhavid for offering to round up the troops to help us!

I'll try to post more than once every quarter...

Love,
J.

* [Oh yeah, I had to turn on the requirement that you're a member in order to add comments. Sorry about that, I was getting too much spam to deal with it any other way.]