The Saturday 7

Have I got a story for you this week!

1. Stella is theoretically an indoor cat, but she loves to go outside, and she usually doesn't stray beyond the backyard. She knows the sound of the slider opening and will book it outside anytime the door is open. I'm sure you see where this story is going . . . I was working in the church office on Tuesday when Justin texted me, "Have you seen Stella today? I didn't see her this morning, which is really weird. And I just searched the whole house and can't find her." Uh-oh. After some brainstorming, one of the kids remembered that she had gone outside Monday night, but none of us ever let her back in. By the time we realized she was gone, it had been like 18 hours. The kids immediately started to search the neighborhood calling her name to no avail. Lena went to bed in tears that night when we still hadn't seen hide nor hair of her. I posted on facebook asking if anyone had seen her, and I even made a "lost cat" poster that Levi carried around our block asking everyone he saw if they'd seen her. By that point, I was starting to think she'd been eaten by something. She never wanders far from home. I couldn't believe she wasn't back. Wednesday morning around 11, I went downstairs to get something out of Levi's closet and I heard the slightest "mew." I thought she must be right outside one of the basement windows, so I checked them all, but didn't see her. I opened every closet door, and started moving furniture around in the basement. Finally, she meowed again a little louder and I realized the noise was coming from . . . chimney. We have an old, janky brick fireplace in the basement that we don't use. I opened the grate and the meowing got significantly louder, but I couldn't see her and she wasn't coming out. I started to really panic then that she had been stuck in the chimney for 36 hours and was going to be totally mangled and broken - not to mention wedged up there! I went upstairs to get my phone and ask Justin what the heck I was supposed to do, and came back downstairs just in time to see her hop out of the open fireplace and come trotting out, dirty but unscathed!

I don't think she was actually in the chimney that whole time. First of all, we would have heard her before Wednesday morning. Secondly, there is no access to the fireplace from inside the house - except for the grate that I had to pry open to find her. There's no way she got in the grate and closed it behind her. So we think that she was outside for a day and a half, finally climbed up on the roof, and realized she could get inside by going down. Or she was being a curious cat, sniffing around the chimney and fell in. Either way, her new nickname is Santa. This stinkin' cat has used up two of her nine lives already!

2. Later that day we met up with Libby and her kids to explore the Rogue. I intended to spend more time this summer doing stuff like this, but it just never happened. 

NGK came too

We spent a couple hours exploring the trails and playing at the park, and the kids loved every minute of it. 

3. We had small group last weekend, and our friend Tim introduced us to a birdsong identifying app on his phone. I laughed mercilessly at him for being an old man with a bird app. But then, when Levi was being cranky on the trail, I downloaded the app real quick and handed my phone to him. He was immediately enamored, and has been identifying birds ever since. Yesterday morning at 8 a.m., he ran into my room, grabbed my phone and went outside. I was still in bed fifteen minutes later when he jumped up next to me, exclaiming, "Look at all these birds I heard!" Lol. We're so cool. 

4. I'm seriously depressed about how fast summer is going. Usually, I make it until the middle of July and then I'm ready for school to start again. But this year, I feel like I've hardly spent any time with my kids. I've been working three nights a week, filling in at the church office, doing all kinds of soccer camp prep that took up a lot of my time, etc., etc. I got to spend some time at the pool with the kids this week. I even got in the pool a couple times! Winning!

5. School starts in three weeks, and while I'm sad summer is winding down, I got my library schedule this week and I'm looking forward to seeing the kids again. There's only one class that I've never had, so I'm a little nervous about getting to know them. But I don't have Levi's class - which is for the best. He's way worse for me than most other authority figures. 🤦 I've had fun the past couple of days thinking about what chapter books I'm going to read for my older classes. It'll be good to get back in the library.

6. There are a few things in the works right now that I can't talk about, and they've taken the majority of my focus this week, so I don't have a lot else to report. (How's that for building suspense, though?!) Here are a couple memes instead:

I might vote for him just because of this meme.