Dagny does magic.

She gets some fluffy wool




spends some time with one of these




and ends up with this



How lucky am I?

Thanks to Ren, there's a new baby in our house. Ok, technically he lives with Andrew, but since Andrew spends lots of time here I can pretend the baby's mine.

We stopped at Ren's house in Tennessee on our way to the conference and we were immediately led downstairs to meet the kittens. Anyone who's ever met a kitten knows they're pretty damn hard to resist. I mean seriously - look at this kitten!




We were convinced our dogs would not allow a kitten in the house. Andrew, on the other hand, has cats and a dog and just had to bring home a kitten. One question, though: Could I babysit him for a week while Dagny and Andrew went to NBTSC? And would I make it really clear to Rowan that the kitten is Andrew's?

Well, sure, I figured we could handle the dog/kitten situation for a week. And Rowan felt pretty sure she could handle the fact that the kitten was going to live with Andrew.

We forgot one little thing. No one made it clear to ME that he was Andrew's kitten, and I have fallen completely in love. Again, seriously - would you look at this kitten?!



This cat has ruined some pillows. He has scratched Rowan's eyeball, causing inflammation of her cornea, a need for Dr. visits and lots of eyedrops. (The Dr. wrote a prescription saying Rowan needed the kitty, but Andrew didn't go for it.) His favorite thing to scratch is my very favorite, very old, and very fragile crazy quilt. When I lay down to sleep he uses my hair as some sort of burrowing, batting, climbing toy. Andrew calls him Evelyn. I call him Pestykitty.

But...he likes to snuggle with me. When I pick him up he purrs in a low, constant grumbly sort of way. He plays catch - I slide a block across the floor and he bats it back to me and waits for me to hit it back to him. He goes through the front door of Rowan's doll house and kidnaps the mom and baby. He collects doll house flower pots under a chair in our living room. He rubs his face on my face and puts his nose on mine and stares straight into my eyes.

The dogs are interested in the kitty, but don't seem to want to eat him, and other than a few one-sided boxing matches, where the kitty hits the air in front of their noses while they stand there wagging their tails they've gotten along just fine. One night Godiva and Evelyn slept on a chair together.

So...I want the kitty. And I can't have him. And I'm much sadder about that than I ever would have expected.

We broke out the window paint for our trip and our car was a rolling advertisement for fun, happiness, and unschooling (and how much D hearts A). On the highways and at hotels we saw people reading, looking either horrified or intrigued, and talking to the people they were with about it. In Asheville, NC we were stopped by a bunch of people on the street, and every reaction we got was positive. It was so much fun I decided to make it a more permanent addition to our car.

I went to thriftysigns.com to order a nice big magnet. One window in particular had gotten a lot of attention, so I used what was written on it and threw in a bit of advertising. (Kelly Lovejoy will be so proud of me!) When I realized my design was looking kind of bland I called in a professional, and Rowan took my words and made them look cool.

It'll be interesting to see what kind of a reaction ten words on a 12"x24" magnet will get in our little town.

HA HA!
the moon is made of cheese!
p.s this post was by Rowan

I didn't go looking for these (I can only imagine how many I would find if I did) and I'm not including any of the incredibly numerous teacher-sexually-abused-student stories I saw in my 1/2 hour on the computer last night.

Goths

Pink shirts

Shirt-tucking

Green hair

Cell phones

911

Reporter banned

Yearbook

'Missing' kids

Phys Ed

Play canceled

Toy gun

Heroin


Back to school? No thanks.