The Kitty and the Wardrobe?

Yesterday I hear a funny noise coming from the dresser while studying.  Go to investigate, and I find........!

Lily was in the dresser. 

xoxo

Happy Holi-dazzze

What a daze it has been.  I've been so busy lately, and I'm very sorry for ignoring my blog family.  I have had exam after exam, and practical after practical.  Good thing is, I've done well on all of the above.  Now I can take a short break before I start the last of my finals.  And what am I doing during that break?, well, writing to you all of course!

I've made a photo mash up of all of the things I've done in these busy weeks.  And after looking it through, I definitely don't look like I've been too busy...hah.  I guess it is possible to have a life while trying to become a doctor.

In order of appearance:
Lily helping me study.  Thanksgiving #1, Pilgrims and Indians.  Medieval Times.  Thanksgiving #2.

Thanksgiving was definitely a week of thanks.  Two dinners = lots of good food!  Plus at Thanksgiving #2, we sang karaoke and danced for almost four whole hours!  Who says turkey makes you tired?  The kitties even got turkey for Thanksgiving.  We are insane. 

Hope everyone had a good holiday, and I can't wait for Christmas!  I'm going to NYC Saturday.  I just know that will get me in the holiday spirit! :)

xoxo

Trick or Treat!

Happy Halloween blog family!  Sorry I have been MIA lately.  Been very busy with school.  Passing practicals and taking exams.  I've finally gotten a bit of a break, so I figured I could update you all with our Halloween!  Remember when I said I would never buy any stupid cat thing again...I lied.

Hubs went as Patrick Bateman from "American Psycho", I was Max from "Where The Wild Things Are", Tip was a tiger, and Lil' was a pumpkin.

Enjoy Halloween!  Don't forget to x-ray your candy!  

P.S. Phillip, father-in-law, coolest dude on Earth, and best winter driver, can you pick us up from the airport? Pweety pweese?

xoxo

kitty meow meows.

So today I made a few purchases from the sale rack at Urban Outfitters.  I got a new lomography camera (can't wait to use it by the way), a couple belts, shoes, and some extras from their apartment section. {Read: It might sound like I spent a fortune, but I'm always one for a deal, and they had a killer sale on their already sale items.  Yippee!}  Let me just say right now, that I cannot wait to use the camera.  However, I'm still trying to find a store that has 120 film and can process 120 film.  (If you have suggestions, please let me know!) You will be the first to see the pictures when I can actually figure out the logistics of getting them developed!

And now onto those "extras".  Oh wait, side note: Remember when I took pictures of everything Hubs (Chef) cooked?  Well, he has continued cooking, but I haven't continued taking pictures.  Why?  Mostly because he cooks a lot, and I'm usually so starved from being at school for 12 hours, that I just stuff my face the instant I walk through the door.  So, don't fret, he's still a master chef, and his food is still amazing.  I'm just slack-a-lackin'....;) 

Okay, for real now, about those "extras".  I got a super deal on three books.  Two were cookbooks for Hubs, one about food trucks (love them), and the other about fearless baking (I supposed I can try and conquer this one).  The third was....wellll...I'll just show you the picture.

 Yes, I bought a cat coffee table book.  And here's another purchase.  Mind you, each of these was $2.50.  I told you this sale was goooood.  


The second purchase has infinitely improved my key situation.  Take a look.

 

On top of the "I thought it was a cat sweater", and these new purchases, I think I'm really starting to embrace this cat parent persona.  That just sounds weird.  After today, I made a decision that these will be the last of my cat inspired purchases.  Unless an amazing sale comes along again. 

cat stroller.

Yes folks, you read that right!  They now have cat strollers.  Like baby strollers....but for cats.  And yes, they are just as ridiculous amazing as they sound!

I'm assuming their commercial goes something like this "Do you love taking your cat for walks on a leash (even though they aren't dogs), but your cat only walks ten steps and then stops moving, never to move again (and then you drag them all the way home)? Never fear!  Cat Stroller is here!"

This ones called the "Kittywalk Royale". Oooo, Fancy!

Now if they only had one for runners....  Oh wait...They do.  I'm sold.

Special thanks to Amber for showing me the best invention since cat butt covers. 

Photos courtesy of

{Just Pet Strollers}

{Rear Gear}

Goodbye Kitty, bye bye

I'm writing with a very heavy heart tonight. Today, my childhood kitty cat, Mr. Tibbs passed into kitty heaven.

I remember when we first got him, and I was five years old. He was just a baby. He was the best surprise I have ever gotten. He would have been 20 years old in September. He had a wonderful life full of fun, adventure, and love. I could not have wished a better life for a cat.

I loved him so much, and still do. I spent all last night cuddling with him, and most of the day today doing the same and telling him how much I love him, and how I'll never forget him.

My Mom is going through all of this with me as well. She was very strong for Mr. Tibbs today, and I know she helped him through it all.

This is the last picture we have of Tibbs, taken last night.

If you have a moment, think of Mr. Tibbs. We will miss him very much.

9/15/1991 - 6/13/2011

Busy Bee

Hello again folks! It has been awhile. Sorry about that! I’ve been busy with finals, then moving, then my clerkship, then my wedding. Whew!

We’ll start where I left off! Finals. Dun dun DUNNNNNNNNN..... It wasn't that bad ;) They went well. Grades came back very good, so I’m pleased with that. I’m now officially a second year optometry student!

The day after finals (and a very fun night out in the city I might add ;) ) we moved back home for the summer. We stopped in Ohio for our half way rest stop with the boy’s family for a day, which is so totally needed. A seventeen hour drive is zero fun in one day. The gas prices were also ridiculous. It was $4.53 in one city!

Of course the kitties came with too! They were just peaches. They both slept almost the entire way in their cute little kennel situation.

So precious.

They have also been getting along at home as well. They both sleep on the bed with me at night, so they must love each other more now than ever. I think the drive helped them bond. Lily is still eating Tip’s food, so we’re trying to put her on a diet. If anyone knows anything about how to keep a cat from eating, puhleeasssee let me know! She’s turning into a large lump of fuzz. Yeesh.

Home has been nice and relaxing. It’s been somewhat warm weather, and not too humid yet. Let’s hope it stays that way for the wedding! No rain or may flies! ICK. The only real weather problem recently was a tornado. That old native American legend “where three rivers meet, no wind can defeat” decided to stop working a couple weeks ago. There was an EF-2 tornado here in the city no less, and it definitely defeated a few blocks. I’ve never seen tornadoes in the city, only in the country, so it was surreal. The worst part was that we have no basement here, so when the siren went off, we had to drive to the boy’s house for safety. I honestly had no idea what was going on, and my mom had to inform me that there was a tornado siren. (The same siren signals a fire truck leaving the station in PA, so I was confused for a moment.)

We get to his house, and he was gone. I immediately start getting scared. Mom was gone all morning, and I was left without a car, so he came to rescue me from my unsafe location when the siren went off (thinking Mom was still gone). Little did he know that she had come home, and we were already on our way over. I was freaking out a tad because the news had just spotted a tornado about a mile away from where I live coming towards my house. No phone calls were going through either. I stayed upstairs waiting for him to get home, but I knew he would go inside my Mom’s to find me which would take even longer. About five minutes later, I see him speeding down the street into his driveway. He noticed the cat carriers were gone, so he figured we went to his house. The kitties bonded during the storm too. J

We stayed upstairs, along with his dad watching the storm pass. It was crazy windy and really scary outside. Later we found out that a tornado ripped apart a couple blocks close to downtown. Thankfully no one was hurt.

Speaking of storms, right now in my hometown in IA and NE, there is some serious flooding of the Missouri river which is impinging on my Aunt and Uncle’s house, and might possibly affect my Grandma’s house. I’m very scared for them all. My Aunt and Uncle live right on the river, so they have already sand bagged the river side of their house. I guess it could last all summer which is tragic. I talked to my Grandma today, and she said it could affect her house as well which is far away from the river. I really hope it doesn’t get to either, especially my Grandma’s. I love her house. I’m hoping the boy and I can still make a trip to see her this summer. I’d swim there if I had to.

I’ve also been doing my summer clerkship for school. It’s three weeks long, and 105 hours of work. I have one week left. Woo! Then I can finally have a summer….sort of. I also have 18 optics lectures to finish before July 25^th for our summer optics course. Well, I’ve already done four. Of course I’m trying to get them done a.s.a.p. Blah. What happened to my “summer”?

What else is going on….oh yeah…the wedding! I can finally let my life be consumed by my creative ideas and wedding planning! I love it. We’ve gotten almost everything done. I can’t wait! We are both incredibly excited for everything! It’s coming quite fast, which can be good, and bad. Good because we can’t wait! And bad because that means I almost have to start my summer semester on the East again…

I’ve been doing a lot of wedding prep too. Floral appointments, dress fittings, finding shoes, make up practice, hair practice (soon), skin care, exercise, etc.

I run a lot so fitness isn’t really an issue, but I’ve started doing Pilates. Phew! It is so hard. I actually use videos from YouTube because it’s free, and I can get a full 40 minute workout from them. After the first day I could barely move. I had no idea I was so out of shape! There is this one move that works your shoulders. You barely move, but man, does it work! Hopefully I don’t have man shoulders by the wedding.

Also, as I’m sitting here I have white strips on and a green mud face mask. I look quite attractive I must say. I would take a picture but....no I wouldn't take a picture. It’s funny how ugly you have to look in order to look good later on. Ick. This mask smells weird too. And how about these little white strips. Does anyone else have the problem where it seems like once they are on your teeth you start salivating like mad?! I mean come on! They are only on my teeth, and I definitely don’t want to eat them, so I have no idea why that’s my body’s reaction to them. A couple more weeks of these, no longer. The boy is also doing his boy beauty routine, which so far consists of nothing different than normal. ;)

Oh! I almost forgot! The boy, one of my bridesmaid’s and I went to a festival this past weekend. Her boyfriend was playing in a band at this fest, so I finally got to meet him which was awesome. We also ate tons of fair food (yum!), and watched the locals. It was about an hour and a half away in the middle of nowhere USA. The main attraction of the night was a “burn out” where you have 15 seconds to burn out your car’s tires. Whoever makes the most smoke, wins. Just burning tires…for the fun of it…ruining tires…for the fun of it?....I don’t think I’d ever willingly sign up for that contest. Of course I can make a fool out of myself anywhere, and I thought the smoke was from a chicken-Q (chicken barbeque), and I really wanted to eat some chicken. A nice couple at our table set me straight, while laughing a little. The boy said they probably thought I was some silly “city girl”. Cue pouty girl "humpf" right now.

I’ll leave you with this. The other day at work flowers were delivered…for me! I’m only there three weeks, but in that time, I got flowers! Of course they were from the boy, reminding me that it was our last “dating” anniversary. Seven years of dating. I guess we didn’t get the traditional seven year itch. Instead we got the itch to get hitched! He’s so sweet.

Catch up

That's right! Two more weeks of school, well mostly finals, until I'm done with my first year of optometry school. I have two finals this week, and three next. It went incredibly fast, and I can't wait to be back home.

Since I've gotten my new phone, I realized I've taken way too many pictures. Some are great, others are....well, not so great, but I figured since I've taken so many, I could at least post some so you guys can see what I've been up to lately. {Hint: mostly studying, but procrastination can produce some wonderful photo sessions}



Our friends from Wisconsin came during their spring break in March. We took them all over the city. Here's just a picture of the Liberty Bell because it's stereotypical Philadelphia. I also found out Pennsylvania is spelled wrong on the bell. "Pensylvania." The story is that they hadn't decided on the official spelling of the state when they were making the bell, so the maker's (Pass and Stow) decided to pick one. They chose wrong. It's like the blu-ray HD-DVD debate of the 1700's.

We also did the famous "Geno's vs. Pat's" cheese steak contest. It wasn't really a contest because the winner didn't win anything...but I think the winner was Jim's (who ironically wasn't even part of the contest). We ate at Jim's the day before. I still prefer Jim's over Pat's or Geno's.

In early March two friends from school and I went to the Vision Expo in NYC. Here's just a picture of part of the amazing Marchon exhibit. The trip was topped off by my friends winning an iPad and iPod. I didn't win anything. I got a hot dog in consolation.





The boy and I have slowly been trying to get the cats closer to each other. Here's just one of our ideas to make them best friends forever.


*Also, we know Lily has an eating problem...she got through her entire bowl by the time Tip had barely started hers.*










Here's our most recent attempt. You can tell they really love each other.













Tipsy also has a new thing that she does. She sleeps, and then randomly out of nowhere she meows super loud and wakes herself up. She's probably dreaming, but the boy and I think she has a slight form of Asperger Syndrome. If you spent any time around her, you'd think so too.





Remember when I went snowboarding in the Pokono's mountains? Well when the boy and I drove to Ohio for Easter with his family, we drove through the Pokono's Mountain range. Breathtaking, wouldn't you say...?

Just for the record, I'm now calling the bluffs at home, mountains. Yes folks, I live next to mountains. I've already referred to Grandads bluff as Grandads mountain. It went over well.


I've also gotten better at cooking, and I know it might not seem like much, but I'm pretty darn proud of those grill marks on my grilled turkey and cheese. I didn't even use a George Foreman....Yeah. Skill.

Storm that scared me during our trip home from Ohio. Yeah..I'm 24 and still afraid of tornadoes.















This is the trail I run now. It's pretty gorgeous, and it reminds me of home. It's normally a great running trail, however, this morning there were two people that were...eh hem...having relations in the middle of the trail. Seriously. It was probably the fastest I've ever done a 180 in my life.

Boston

Well hello again! It's been a very long time since I've been able to blog. Life got pretty busy. Three exams in two weeks meant that studying was the only thing I was doing. The boy guesses that I probably studied 60 hours per week. Icky.

I had a neuro exam, cardio exam, and clinical skills exam. Did great on them all! Now I've got the same sort of schedule again, except it's three exams in three weeks. Hopefully that makes all the difference! Neuro, respiratory/renal, and optics. After that we have four weeks without an exam. Good news except we also need to study for finals because we have five exams in three days or something crazy like that.

Anyways! What's happened in the time since we met last? A lot I must say. Here we go.

My spring break is currently in session. It started March 4th. On Friday, the boy and I decided to take a trip to Boston to see our friend, we'll call him Harvard. (It was technically Cambridge, Mass because Harvard goes to..you guessed it! Harvard Law). See, NYC is a great quick weekend trip. Two hours and you're there. Boston....not so much. It's definitely within driving distance (especially since before it would be a plane ticket plus rental car away), but trusty google maps told us the total trip time would be six hours. I thought, "Google maps is always a little slow, it'll probably be 5.5 hours at the most."

Driving there was fun. The boy has never seen NYC, and we drove right past it. He got a great look at it, and I think he was a little taken aback at how he was actually seeing NYC. We actually got to cross over from Jersey into NYC using the George Washington Bridge as well! Something I've always wanted to see.
GW Bridge.

The rest of the drive consisted of me craning my neck to see the ocean for pretty much the entirety of the trip. I've never actually touched an ocean yet in my life (saw a few flying to China), so it was going to be an amazing experience when I did. I got excited a couple of times, but all of my "Oh my gosh! THERE'S THE OCEAN!"'s turned out to be bays or lakes. I could always eventually see to the other side. Once I saw on the GPS that we were getting further away from the ocean, I gave up.

The next exciting (not really) moment was when we passed into the "Boston area". See, we went through four metropolitan areas. Philly, NYC, Hartford/New Haven, CT, and Boston. I never really thought about it, but now when I do, we could have never avoided rush hour leaving at or before noon in Philly, so I should have expected it, but I didn't. We were enjoying the lovely Bostonian forests when we notice a bit more traffic. That bit turns into a TON, and this is what we're stuck looking at for eight miles {Read: ONE AND A HALF HOURS} Yes, it took us one and a half hours to go 8 miles, well 7.8 but who's counting now? This is what we got to look at for that amount of time.
We finally made it to Harvard's house after driving for 7.5 or 8 hours. We decided to relax there for the night (after eating some amazing thai food) because we knew we were going to have a big day walking around Boston the next day.

We started the day walking around Harvard Law and Harvard Yard. Pretty normal campus, except they have tours going around at all hours.


After Harvard showed us around his stomping grounds we rode the train into Boston. We followed the freedom trail around for most of the day. Here are some pictures of historical stuff.

Sam Adams Grave. Second Photo: This was the church all the Declaration signers attended.


Good shot of the boys in the church. Second Photo: Boy is obviously the best photographer seeing as he completely misses the statue, but gets most of the cement in this one.


This is the outside of the church we were in.

George Washington on his pony.

We got home on Sunday. It was a great trip. Can't wait to go back when it's not so cold/windy.

Other things that are going on. Rita's opened up again. Rita's is this amazing slushie/frozen yogurt shop that mixes it all together into goodness. It's weird in Philly though because they don't call it slushie, they call it "water ice". In a Philly accent it sounds more like, wooaauuter ice. It's annoying.

I also finished a painting over spring break for my friend. It let me tap back into my creative side for a moment which was nice and relaxing.

School starts again next week. Our friends from my undergrad are coming to Philly tomorrow! I cannot wait to see them. They are staying for a week (while being in D.C. for some of that week as well). That should be fun.

The girls are getting along just fine. They actually sleep on the same bed now, and the hissing has stopped. I knew they would love each other eventually!

I'll leave you with a shot of our new bed. If you look closely you will catch Lily trying to steal Tipsy's food.

Busy

Hello all!

I've been so hideously busy lately, which is why there haven't been any new posts.

I had my Neurology exam last Monday (went well), a practical on Thursday (also went very well), and tomorrow (Monday) I have another midterm (clinical skills). I also have my Cardiology midterm on Friday.

Needless to say, I'm quite busy. I'm hoping to post Friday because that's when my spring break starts! The boy and I are heading to Boston :) Can't wait!

Updates soon!

P.S. The kitties are getting along....nicely!

Meet...

Tipsy.
Yes, I know we said we weren't going to get another cat, and yes, I know I'm going to get two phone calls whenever two certain people see this post {you know who you are}, but that doesn't change the fact that we still desperately wanted a playmate for Lily cat.

I had accepted the fact that Lily was to be an only child, until.....the boy said "I want a cat."

"Ohhhhh realllllyyy!?!!! OKAY!"

That's pretty much all it took. The fact that it was no longer my idea made it so much more of a good idea! So that is how it started. I am hard to convince, I know.

We went to a PetSmart adoption weekend, and fell in love with this little fur ball known as Tipsy, and here we are.

So far she likes to sit on the window sill, play with her collar (instead of actually leaving it on), and roam around the room. We are taking the steps to introduce the two girls the proper way, so they haven't formally met yet, except for a couple hisses. Right now they are stationed in separate rooms.

And for the record, her name is Tipsy because she has a white tip on her tail. Not because she is well...tipsy :)

The woman that helped us through the process was so thankful that Tipsy found a good home. It really makes it all worth it when you hear how sincerely grateful the volunteers and coordinators are that you are saving one of their cats lives. I know they say cats have nine lives, but cats here in Philadelphia have only three days.

Remember always, ADOPT!