Pokey Peas Challenge for September 2024

Thank you beachy - I'm looking forward to petting those cats in a couple of weeks myself - they belong to my older kids and live out of state but DD24 and the kitties are coming for a visit. I haven't seen them since Thanksgiving. Unfortunately DS32 is still deployed so it'll be a while still before we get to see him.

Sounds like a busy day grammadee - great job getting together all those donations.

I have PT this afternoon, some housework to tackle this morning, and hopefully I can get a bit more scrapping in as well. There are more kitty pictures on my desk along with another sketch...

Hey I just wanted to pop in, Friday is DGS birthday and I won't be cropping. kitbop would you be able to start one?

joyfulnana - Happy Birthday to Rudy!

kitbop - I'll probably be around on Saturday - what time are you thinking?

Good luck with "Katie" the cat and the cat adoption situation

And ENJOY the theatre!

I think I may have figured out the trigger to my most recent bout of really bad insomnia - and I think it's the RX flouride toothpaste. Sleeping got worse when I started using it (at bedtime) and it dawned on me that I forgot it a couple of times and slept really well those nights. So I deliberately skipped it the last two nights and have had zero problem falling asleep. That seems so weird. Guess I should call the dentist.

Feeling a little overwhelmed by all that needs to happen in the next two weeks. Both cars need to go in the shop, one locally but the other goes to a dealership 2 hrs away; dh will be driving to VA and back at the end of the month to collect DD24 and her cats; DD17 will be turning 18 on the 3rd and we still need to get her to DMV to test for her license (but the car needs to be fixed first); and then DH and I leave for the UK on the 5th...plus I still have PT and another dr appt in there as well. And of course the house needs deepcleaning and the yard is overdue for a mow and weedwhack and...until I looked at the calendar I thought there was at least 3 weeks left, lol

Happy birthday, Rudy! How old will he be, joyfulnana?

Linda, that sounds like a huge flurry of activity before you leave for your trip. Glad you have found the solution to your sleep issues, as you will need to go at this fully recharged each day.

kitbop, does your dd actually want a cat named with her name? LOL Or was she planning to rename him/her? I hope you find a kitty for all of you to love. Our old garage cat succumbed to his many medical issues a few weeks ago. Since then, Charley, who seemed to barely tolerate him is now really needy and lonely. But I don't have the bandwidth right now to acclimatize a new roomie for her.

How are you doing, nylene, as the clock ticks down to your surgery? I got a call from the hospital this morning confirming my colonoscopy next Tuesday. Need to start dietary prep today. Not a huge change as I already eat a bland, fairly low fiber diet, but I will have to give up nuts and fresh veggies until after the procedure. I can eat cooked potatoes and carrots, though, so planning to have those for supper today. I have a plan to be down to full fluids by Sunday and clear fluids on Monday--kind of a reverse recovery protocol.

Hope all the Pokeys have a wonderful Thursday. This is a kind of ketchup day for me here at home, after a day away Tuesday, and a blurry day yesterday dealing with fatigue plus a trip to town for after school care for dgs. Guess I missed picking up one med for dh, but I called the pharmacy this morning and have arranged for our nephew to pick it up today.

Happy Thursday! Waving hi to you all. Today was hair wash day and last week I started my curly style and did again today. I haven't had this style in a while and it feels good to get back to it for now. I am continuing with some art business stuff. I was on the computer almost all afternoon trying to figure out how to install this code on my blog!!! Hope the help person can help me figure it out tomorrow.

Funny Story: The other day I was cooking and thought to add some garlic powder to the meat. I never use it but thought my dh would like that in his ground turkey meat for dinner. I grabbed the bottle and shook it. Nothing happened. So I took the top off and use my fork to poke it. It was so hard. LOL! I looked at the expiration date and it said 2001! That is longer than we have been married! LOL! SO I guess when we bought it, it was way expired. So lesson, check the dates. LOL!

Linda- Wow, you do have a lot going on but at least it is good stuff. I am so glad your trip is on and dh is going. I hope you get it all done which I am sure you will. Hang in there!!! Also, your cat layouts are adorable!

nylene- Your page of your dggd is so sweet. I will check it out in the gallery.

kitbop- Have fun at the play! Sounds so exciting! Also, I hope that cat appointment goes well.

joyfulnana- How is your new furry roommate doing? So happy for you!

Happy Friday!

I love seeing all the creating you are all doing! Linda I am of course just loving those cat pages lol. I think I would be frozen with overwhelm with all you have to do in the next two weeks. But as mentioned it's all good stuff. Can't wait to hear about your trip to the UK.

kitbop there are soooo many cats needing homes here too. I'm not sure yet what my plans are this weekend - Rudy hasn't given me my orders yet lol. If you open a crop I should be able to join in for at least a little while I would like to get some scrapping in somewhere now that my mojo is back lol. Have fun tonight!


Rudy is 10! TEN! That happened way to fast for me. I miss him being a little guy. He asked for a gift card to the Asian Gift shop in the mall. He is big into anime and they sell lots of things like that. Currently he is big into One Piece. And they got me sucked into the One Piece live action series on Netflix and I was thinking I might start the animated version next lol. Bess is still settling in. She had a lot of big changes in a very short amount of time, she's still anxious and skittish, but she'll get there. She plopped herself in my lap for a few minutes the first time last night, so progress!

kellyr21 Are the Rams Rons team? I haven't really been following too much yet, for some reason I don't become completely obsessed until further into the season lol. I've only watched the Chiefs. I really kind of forget about the Monday night and Thursday night games now that are behind a paywall. I'm not paying to watch a football game at home lol.

grammadee I'm sorry to hear that about your garage kitty. I hope you get the "all clear" on the colonoscopy.

Waving HI to everyone! I hope we all have a great day!

kellyr21 - too funny! I have had garlic powder go rock hard and even if you break it up it's still useless as it doesn't go back to powder, it just turns into pebbles. But 2001 is going back. Remember the big 2000 scares where we all bought candles and thought planes might drop out of the sky???

Linda - I feel your stress and urgency in getting all the chores done in the next 2 weeks! An immutable deadline makes the pressure feel stronger, and of course there are so many loose ends to tie up before you leave the country. Good luck!

We did bring "Katie" cat home. We will be renaming her but the topic is divisive presently. The real Katie thought "Miso" would be a cute name. But her brother mis-heard her idea, and started calling the cat "Misu" (as in me-sue instead of meee-so) and he thinks that's adorable and the rest of us don't like it...and he may have ruined the name Miso for us. She's quite affectionate and jumps on us if we sit down or lie down in the room. She's not afraid to say when she's had enough tho and bit DD's boyfriend yesterday. We have her in our front living room which has glass doors to give all the animals a slow introduction. She can't wait to get out and explore, but I don't want to rush things. Honestly, DH and I are leaning towards the name "pepper" as it suits her personality AND appearance. But it's such a common name...

grammadee , I'm sorry about your cat. I'm sure the cat distribution system will auto-deliver a replacement soon.

joyfulnana - I'll have to ask my kids about that series - they're totally into anime and often give me recommendations about ones that I'd like too, but I hadn't heard of One Piece.

nylene - I find appointments that are out of our normal circles are exhausting. A trip to the doctor for me is a whole-day event, and I don't plan anything else for those days. I feel the same way about our theatre trip tonight in a city 1 hour away: that means I cannot be expected to do anything else productive today

Today I am hoping to get a layout finished, some preparatory homework done for the card event next week (4 days of 12 hours of card making. Yikes), my hair coloured   and the house vacuumed before the show. DH OTOH has a play date with a friend...they play frisbee golf. I think I'll ask him to vacuum before he goes. Seems fair, especially as he has no hair to colour. TBH, he'd happily exchange his hair-loss for grey hair 

Hope kitbop is having a wonderful time at the play and joyfulnana is having fun celebrating 10 years of nana-hood!

This one was a little tough as I don't yet have any journalling for it - I'll add some when he returns and can tell me where he was.



And this one completes August 2024 in the big kids album

Thanks joyfulnana - I'm looking forward to hearing about once he's safely home. I'm also looking forward to him being home - there's not been an announced return date yet.

Sounds like a nice evening with the Birthday Boy - too funny about the photos!

I think kitbop said she has to work so I was assuming 7/730 tomorrow but I could be wrong.

I think I just have one more to be caught up on Sketchtember - I need to go back and double check though

kitbop - yawn - I don't do that well either but your musical evening sounds amazing and well worth it!



It has depended - in part on whether the current cats have experience with introductions and if so, how did they do?

With the most recent batch (Chai, Thumper, and a day later, Dorian) - we isolated Chai and Thumper in one room (since they had been together at the shelter and would be moving together to the big kids) and then Dorian in another - probably just 48hrs or so BUT Mini has always been chill with new arrivals and I didn't anticipate issues with Dusty and PadBear. And they really did do fine - PadBear and Chai had the biggest issue - two girls, one house, lol - but even that was just some hissing and Pad did a bit of hiding.

With Dusty and PadBear - we were a bit more cautious - especially with Dusty as he was so tiny and young - and there was no unsupervised time for quite a while. But there weren't any issues, we were just super cautious as the older cats were quite elderly -between 11-20.

With Silver? We only had her briefly but she wasn't separated at all and everything was chill - she made friends with most of the cats and made it politely clear to the others that she wasn't an aggressor but she would put them in their place if needed.

I've never had dogs though...

I think I would play it by ear - give them at least 24-48hrs to sniff at door edges and get used to the new smells of each other. And then supervised time - one person per animal if possible so you can quickly separate if things don't go well. And take it from there. Good luck!



Planning to be there