What’s your idea of a perfect weekend?
Going away somewhere, away from the daily routine or the familiar surroundings and taking in new sights, new surroundings, new experiences? It certainly has its attractions: the chance to get away, if only for a couple of days.
Or staying home and making plans: having friends over for pizza, or throwing a dinner party or filling the days with activities and errands that you never otherwise have time to do during the regular hamster-wheel of your week?
Or, even better, staying home and just enjoying yourself with no definitive plans? Sleeping in, doing some cleaning perhaps, having a family night with Mike Rowe, Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage and an indecently large bowl of popcorn. Spending Saturday watching the blue sky and the kids bouncing on the trampoline. Vacuuming the whole house and dusting with lemon Pledge. Folding freshly-washed, sweet-smelling laundry. Buying great big globe artichokes and new potatoes to make for Sunday dinner.
***
We went to see Wall·E last night; it was showing in English, though since the real dialogue didn’t begin until 45 minutes into the movie, it almost wouldn’t have made any difference if we’d seen it in Swedish. Most of the movie’s dialogue consisted of the 2 robots saying each other’s name with heart-felt conviction. Pixar is a force of nature. I really think their films are brilliant and consistently of the highest quality in storytelling. We raced through a delicious sushi dinner beforehand because we ran out of time and I really wish that we’d had more time to savor it.
Our favorite sushi place in Malmö completely overhauled their menu about a month ago, nearly crushing us with disappointment. We used to be able to eat there for under 600 kronor and with the new menu the bill was quite a bit more. 🙁 We haven’t found any other sushi place in Malmö or Lund that equals the lower prices, so it looks as if we’re doomed to eating sushi much less frequently as a family, at least until the kids get jobs and help pay for their ravenous sushi habits! 😛
***
Several times in the past however-many-years I have attempted to locate Siberian cat breeders in the southern part of Sweden, with no luck. Siberian cats are supposedly the best bet for people who have cat allergies because they are missing the enzyme in their blood that causes most people to react. It’s been hard to be a pet-less (except for fish) home, especially with 2 kids who love animals and have a much harder time accepting the fact that with Anders’ asthma triggered by both cats and dogs we just can’t take a risk. We know that there is no guarantee that even the Siberian breed won’t cause a reaction, but I figured it was worth a shot, IF we could find a breeder near us and IF the breeder was willing to let us borrow a cat for a couple of weeks to test.
Up until now, all of the breeders in Sweden have been located WAY far up north, but I did some searching again a few weeks ago and lo and behold, there are 2 breeders in the area now! One in Lund and one in Teckomatorp! I emailed them both to get more information and ask about the possibilities of cat-sitting.
One of them emailed me back saying that, unfortunately, she also raises Maine Coons so it wouldn’t be possible for us to visit or do any allergy-testing with her cats since both Anders and I would be sure to react to them since the 2 breeds share living space. The other called and left a message with her phone number and I called her back today, and YES they have a lovely social male cat that has no problem with strangers or strange places, who has been a guinea pig for other people with cat allergies and YES we’d be more than welcome to borrow him for a couple of weeks!!
Anders is understandably wary of the experiment, and rightly so, since even if he doesn’t react during the couple of weeks we have a borrowed cat, it’s no guarantee that he won’t start reacting a year or so down the line, but I think it’s worth the risk. If he does start reacting, of course, we’d have no choice but to make him sleep in the garage return the cat to the breeder or find it a new home, and that would suck and be really hard, for all of us, but I still think it’s worth trying to see if there’s any possibility we can have a cat again. I’ve really missed having cats, even with the litterbox-changing and scratching and hairballs. Since my mom is coming this week and Anders will be away on a business trip the last 2 weeks of September, I told the lady we’d call in early October to make arrangements and she was fine with that, so I’ll be asking you all then to KEEP YOUR FINGERS AND TOES CROSSED OR YOUR THUMBS HELD!
Really Great Writing Out There Right Now: For the Record
Big Basketfuls of Birthday Wishes to nancyvsont and a Bonus Bouquet of Belated ones to e11en!