Category Archives: Family
Tales of a feline weight watcher
Ninja’s diet and exercise programme resulted in her losing the grand total of 70g in her first month of the new regime. This isn’t as much as she needs to lose, but any loss is better than a gain, right? I worked it out in human terms, based on percentage of body-weight, and if I were to lose the same percentage, it would be around 800g. I think that’s significant enough to count, don’t you?
More ‘tales from the scale’ after her next appointment (19 November). The food part’s going well but the exercise part has fallen away (yesterday she ‘didn’t hear me’ when I called her to accompany me on a walk!).
Ninja goes walkies again
It’s been a while since I did a Ninja-centric post, and as her fans may be wondering how she is getting on it is high time for an update.
I am sorry to tell you that she weighed in at 5.2kg recently, and the vet declared she needed to lose weight – at least a kilogram. Oh dear! Since that visit we have been gradually changing her food over to a higher protein/lower carbohydrate formula and undertaking an exercise campaign. Fortunately she still loves to accompany me when I walk around the grove, and the call of “Ninja, walkies!” brings her outside and ready for an expedition.
I wanted to visit the hazelnut orchard to see how these trees were leafing up in the warmer spring weather, and to take some photographs for the Fantail Grove website.
Someone got into the act though:
So of course I ended up taking a whole lot more photos of Ninja than of hazelnuts!
She spotted a bit of damage from the most recent of the equinoxal gales (a lovely phrase to describe the windy conditions we experience in spring):
We’ll have to go back with the pruning saw and paste to tidy this up, and be ready for more damage like this, as we are sure to have another gale or two during October and November.
Ninja loved the hay bales, as from the top she had a good vantage point and could survey her surroundings:
On the way back to the house I opened a gate but she didn’t want to come through it when I did. Perhaps she wanted to prove that she wasn’t too fat to slip underneath it, as I am sure there is a smug expression on her wee face here:
This next photo is probably my favourite of the day – and it also gives you a real sense of how rampant the grass is around here in springtime:
When we got back inside, the first thing Ninja did was rest:
Preparing for Graduation in his own special way
We recently attended Ed’s graduation ceremony – it was a great occasion for his proud family. As he usually wears casual clothing Ed’s neat trousers and white shirts were still at our place, so we brought them over the hill with us. We had arranged to meet him in the car parking building opposite the Michael Fowler Centre, a half-hour before he needed to present himself for the ceremony.
Except the car parking building was full – and we had to park a 10-minute walk further away. So we met Ed near the venue and as I handed Ed his dark trousers and white shirt I expected him to dash off to the venue to change in their bathrooms. But no. “I’ll just change in these bushes”, he said – and proceeded to do just that!
Ready at last, our graduand hurried off to join his fellows.
So very happy to see him graduate – and to have a funny story to tell.
Time is a Bullet Train
This blue-eyed cutie is Edward on his first birthday, way back in March 1992.
Roll on 20 years, and suddenly (so it seems) here he is on his 21st birthday:
Time sure speeds along, so much faster than I ever thought possible. I have forgotten so much about Ed’s early years and I can never go back and recapture the memories. I am thankful for photographs and the recall of others, but how I wish I had written down more of the stories of his toddlerhood and primary school years to go with the photographs I have – and for all the daily events for which there are no pictures at all.
I am so glad I have diaries from 2002, and that I have made scrapbook pages documenting our lives from then onwards. The stories are as important as the photographs – so if you are hesitant about writing things down, please don’t be! Do it – either in a physical diary or using an on-line service such as OhLifeI or DailyDiary. Make notes on your calendar, scribble in a notebook – but please help your memory out, because in 20 years you won’t remember the things you wish you did.