Our Newest Additions and Subtractions

Life in these parts hasn't been the same since we lost Clueless Wonder in February. Four cats seems to be the perfect balance in a place our size. There's plenty of interaction, plenty of spaces for everyone to hang out when they don't want to get in each others way, and enough selection that if someone wants to play they can generally find another cat interested. Three cats just seemed to leave an empty space on the cat tree that would eventually need filling.

Since The Little Grey Shit (LGS) and The Little Brown Shit (LBS) are considered mine, and the Warrior Princess is considered Math Man's, it was agreed that he'd get to pick the next cat. He knew exactly what he was looking for. It definitely had to be another male, since Math Man was now surrounded by nothing but women of all species. He wanted an orange cat, since we already had brown, grey and black. And he wanted a young adult, one that had outgrown its kitten antics, but would still be around for a good long time. Meet his final selection:



Apparently they locked glances in the PetSmart where the shelter I volunteer for has some of its cats, and that was that. She's four years old, about Warrior Princess's size, and does a mean head butt when she wants attention. She's only been with us three days, so she hasn't yet earned a "screen name", but I suspect one won't be long in coming. She's a character, and will eventually do something worthy of a user name.

In other news, my younger sister finally came over to start purging my basement of her accumulated junk/treasures. She hit the massive collection of books down there first, and selected a small mountain that she wanted to keep. These are now in a large plastic tub, a small brown box, and a minor pile to one side of the room. What remains is a Mount Everest of paperbacks, hardbacks, trade novels and oddly shaped children's books that require donation to some worthy cause. I reactivated my account at Bookcrossing and released a handful of the little darlings (mostly romance paperbacks, many of which appear never to have been opened) at a local Starbucks. I suspect that I'll find different places to leave books in the future, though, since I've never hand any great luck with Starbucks releases.

I can't remember ... did I mention I'd joined Weight Watchers? If not, then I guess I'm announcing it here. I had a visit with Dr. Liver at the end of February, and I weighed in at a rather astounding fifty pounds overweight. I gained back everything I lost on South Beach, and put on a bit extra for good measure. It's not like I needed Dr. Liver to read me the riot act. I knew from my rapidly shrinking wardrobe (shrinking both in its ability to make it around my waist and in my choice of what I could actually zip up) that I was going to have to do something soon. The gentle reminder that there were more ways to die than just liver failure prompted me to finally get serious about the situation though.

I joined WW in the first week of March. Since then I've lost 32 pounds officially (a couple more if you go by my current bathroom scale reading rather than the latest weigh in). I think I've finally accepted that I can't go on a diet to lose weight and then return to my "normal" eating habits. I find the prospect of modifying my eating for the rest of my life rather daunting, which is why I think WW is a good idea for me. I hope to lose another twenty pounds, give or take, which will put me at the top of the "ideal weight" range on the charts. Whether or not I maintain at that point or lose a few more pounds depends entirely on how I look and feel when I get to that point.