Rubber Duckies

I like rubber duckies. In particular, I like devil ducks. We get ours from Archie McPhee's in Seattle. For a long time, devil ducks were our signature item and we left them in every cache that had room. Rubber duckies have been around since the nineteenth century, but Jim Henson and his Muppets popularized them in the 1970s with Ernie's Rubber Duckie song. Now they have all sorts of variations, such as the devil ducks which have horns, ducks dressed for different professions or the dead duck, which is a black duck with Xs for eyes which floats upside down.

Whether it's a river race of rubber ducks for Renton River Days in Renton, WA, Ernie singing Rubber Ducky You're the One or the unconfirmed tabloid story of the Queen of England having a rubber duck with an inflatable crown in her bathroom, (quoted from the Wikipedia article on Rubber Ducks) rubber duckies are ever more popular. I see them everywhere these days, but my favorite remains the devil ducks. They are such a funny mixture of innocence and evil.

Gypsy, my 12 year old Kitten

I received a package today. What it was isn't important. The important thing, at least to my Gypsy is what it was packed in. Bunches of crinkled up paper. Right at the moment she is inside the box with nothing but her ears showing and the most delicious paper rattling sounds are emanating from within. The other cats are coming around, but they're not interfering. You see, Gypsy rules the roost in this house. That wouldn't be amusing except Gypsy is only eight pounds. She's less than two-thirds the size of the male and half the size of the Maine Coon cat. Robin isn't pure blooded Maine Coon, so she only weighs about seventeen pounds, not the thirty a pure blood can grow to. Still, she's a big cat and although she'll haul off and slug Gypsy occasionally, all and all, she lets Gypsy be the boss.

I put out a tuna can a few weeks ago and they all came running. Toby and Robin stood quietly and waited for Gypsy to get done before crowding in to share what was left. I don't know how she does it. She just seems to be a take charge kind of kitty cat.

Although most of our animals are shelter adoptions or we found them dumped on the side of the road, Gypsy is a purebred Bengal. I fell in love with the breed reading about it on line and wanted one so badly that we broke down and contacted a breeder. I've never regretted it. Gypsy is my baby. I  still call her my kitten, even though she's twelve. She's been amazingly healthy and she has the sweetest personality. The only problem she has is she uses her claws if she gets startled. I get scratched a lot. I tell people it's because she's still part wildcat. I don't know, maybe it's true.

The Bengal is a cross between the Asian Leopard Cat, a small wildcat native (obviously) to Asia, and the American Domestic Shorthair. Hunters would poach the leopard cat females for their fur and sell the cubs as kittens in pet stores. Not surprisingly, this didn't work out well for the cubs or the people who adopted them. In the seventies, a woman decided to try to cross them with the American Domestic. She succeeded in breeding a cat with the coloring of the Asian Leopard Cat and the disposition of the domestic. The breed was recognized in the 1980s.  They have several different types, Gypsy is simply spotted.

We'd had her about a year and our son was about eight when we took him to a wild cat exhibition at the Pacific Science  Center. Along with lots of pictures and information about  different cats they had some that had died naturally and been taxidermied. One of them was an Asian Leopard Cat and it looked for all the world like a slightly larger Gypsy. Our son was a little distressed by this.  His eyes were huge.

When Gypsy isn't playing with paper, she is trying to get herself locked in closets. She locked herself in the linen closet this morning. Okay, she ran in and I didn't see her and closed her in. I got home this afternoon and heard her meowing and had to track her down. I knew she was either in the linen closet or my bedroom closet. I was hoping for my bedroom closet, she doesn't do any damage in there. Unfortunately, she was in the linen closet, which means I have to refold every towel, sheet and tablecloth that was in there because she climbed the shelves and dumped them all on the floor. Fortunately, I only have to rewash the ones on the bottom.

Now as I finish this up, she's tired of playing in the box. She's come over and curled up on my arm and hand, making it extremely difficult to type. I guess it could be worse, it could be Robin.

The countdown begins...

My son graduated from the Community College yesterday with his Associates in Science degree. That was the last step before he becomes a full-fledged university student in the fall. He will go up in July for an orientation and to register for classes. Then classes will begin at the end of August.

My son will move to the university at the end of August and chances are pretty good he won't ever live at home again. Oh, he'll come home next summer between his Junior and Senior year, assuming he isn't interning somewhere in Bellingham. But, for the most part, come August, my little boy will be a grown up.

How do I feel about that? Incredibly proud and a little bit sad. I wonder what it will be like to go for days without hearing from him. Maybe weeks. Then I think about all the things he will get to do and I am so excited for him.

Is he ready? Yes. Am I ready? Possibly. I will turn to my mother-in-law to learn how she handles not hearing from her sons for days or weeks at a time.

My husband is a very good man and my son is very much like him. They are so alike that they can get on each other's nerves. Knowing my son has his father's beliefs and values makes it that much easier to let him go.

Weekend Wrap Up

We decided late Friday evening (around 11pm) that we would leave early Saturday morning and drive to Eastern Washington, picking off some of the tiny towns on the Cities and Towns challenge and adding mileage to our little race car. The plan was to spend the night in Yakima, then head home a different way, picking up a few more towns and miles.

The first town we went to was Roslyn, WA. For the Northern Exposure fans out there, it's the town where most of the filming was done. We found our geocache, then ate lunch at The Brick. It has been redecorated since Northern Exposure days, so it didn't look much like The Brick from the show. I did have the best burger there I've had in ages. The Brick is the oldest tavern in Washington state.

From there, we headed on to Leavenworth where my dog fell in the Wenatchee river. Don't worry, just the side part of it. He did get soaking wet though and the car smelled like wet dog for the next few miles. We picked up a few more caches at a few more towns and finally made it to Yakima around 5:30pm.

Have I mentioned that Eastern Washington is a desert? It's hot over there, so we were a little limited on what we could do as far as leaving the dog in the car. We ended up getting takeout Chinese for dinner and eating it in the hotel room.

Sunday we headed out in the other direction, picked up several more caches, including one in a cemetery. We saw a guy with a life size metal elk in the back of his pickup truck. It made me comment that everyone should have a metal elk for their pickup truck. We saw some real elk, a mountain goat and a tiny little lizard on the trip. Oh, and some little teeny fish that Mickey scared when he fell in the water.

After posting the miles we logged for our little racer, we are now in the lead by about a 100 miles. Go Terrible Ts!