How do you measure, measure a year. Going on that standard I spent 4.7 million minutes with Hobbes.... I can live with that, I had her company for that amount of time. I would like just one more minute though, one more minute to tell her that I loved her, just one one minute, is that too much to ask?

I have been thinking of this of late, because you know when you buy a ticket you tend to think what you would do with the winnings. This is where I get stumped. The jackpot right now is about $26 million, so cash value (after taxes) is about $13 million (gosh don't you think that the government just loves lotteries, the windfall in taxes in one day). I reckon I could dispose of a couple of million off the bat, I would give 500K to my mum, 500K to my mother in law, 500K to my sister. I would buy my bosses office building and pay off his house note so the two of us could retire here real soon. My husband wants a truck, a REALLY NICE BIG TRUCK.... which could cost us maybe 30K, I would have some home improvements done, maybe another 50K if we are lucky, pay off all our debts another $120K, I want a Mini Cooper so there is another 27K... So after I have spent the two million what to do with the rest? And this is where I am stumped. You see I don't need anything, and in fact I don't WANT anything, I might perhaps upgrade to a nice digital SLR camera and a bigger printer but other than that, hmmmm. I really have no desire to sell my house and move into a McMansion, its just me and my husband, why would I want a bigger house? Of course the first thing I would do is hire a full time maid, so me and housework never have to cross paths again, I would also hire a landscaper so my husband and cutting the grass never have to cross paths again but other than that.... we are sure as hell going to have 10 million sitting in the bank doing nothing but earning interest. I am not a shopping person, so there is no way I am going out on a shopping spree, I have all the clothes, the jewelry, the shoes whatever that I could ever need so that is not going to happen. We would probably give a boat load of money to my husband's band so his kids do not have to worry about having an instrument to play but other than that? I don't know, I would have a vet on retainer, set up a college fund for my husband's grandchild, buy a new couch to replace the one that the dogs have eaten. Other than that? there isn't a damn thing that $10 million can do for me to make my life better than it already is. Is that not a good place to be?

died today. I am not sure how. Going over the "crime scene" it would appear that she got her bottom jaw caught in her collar, and then came in the house in distress. Cueball tried to help. Not sure how, but I know with absolute certainty that Cueball would never intentionally hurt Hobbes as the two of them were best pals, they absolutely adored each other. I am not sure if she had been injured before she got her mouth caught in her collar or afterwards, there is no way of telling. All I know is I found her in the guest bedroom soaking wet through after Cueball had tried and TRIED to revive her by licking her. She was the most precious and most well behaved cat on the planet. Only this morning she was doing her usual routine of sitting on the bathroom sink and rubbing her head up against me as I brushed my teeth. Yesterday she blackmailed me into cuddling her, threatening with her rubbing to knock my camera off its tripod. I would scritch her and then stop, whereupon she would commence scenting the tripod, whereupon I would scritch her to get her to stop. I have never been blackmailed by a cat before, and I suppose now she is gone, I never will be again. I am utterly devastated, I am crying as I type this. My ultimate "Languid cat" has gone and I miss her incredibly already. I really do not know what I am going to do tomorrow morning when I go to brush my teeth and she is not there to stick her butt in my face. My heart aches. Hobbes has gone and there is a hole the size of the grand canyon in my heart. Here she is, watching the birds out of the open kitchen window while I was trying to take photographs, this was her most classic blackmail pose.... god I am so going to miss that.

So I took a couple of hours off this afternoon to take a trip to Pender Pines Nursery to buy dill plants for my caterpillars. You have to understand that this is not a "quick trip" down the road, no it involves an hour drive to the nursery, and I did this in a raging thunderstorm, and when I got to Pender Pines I was wandering around the herb section in the pouring rain. And HOW INSANE IS THIS? I bought the plants that had Black Swallowtail eggs already laid on them..... is that not completely and utterly INSANE? I even brought home a parsley plant that had a caterpillar on it. I am really getting worried about myself at this point, I mean really



I went to Lowes today to buy two toilet seat bolts, I should have spent about $2.00, I spent $44.00...... there is no help for me you know. There has to be some sort of support group for people like me, there has to be

That answered that question, I came home this evening and checked out the fennel and the particular stalk that had five eggs attached to it was gone. I wasn't there when it happened of course so it could be that they snip off that part of the leaf to fall to the ground rather than eat their cousins but we shall see. If I get new caterpillars after this then I will know that the eggs were not eaten they were just snipped off. It has been a good day, we had the completion of a criminal superior Jury trial and got two not guilty verdicts. It's always a good day when your client DOES'NT go to jail. My plan for Friday afternoon is to run down to Pender Pines and buy up all the Dill and Fennel they have.... these caterpillars are eating me out of house and home. Wandering around in my garden is becoming akin to an extreme sport. The garden spiders are getting big and fat and are building webs in the most inconvenient of places. One has built a web outside the front door, and in an endorsement of the intelligence of garden spiders it has built it at EXACTLY two inches above the height of my husband's head. I do not know (because I am not up at 5 a.m.) if the spider built the web below that height for several days only to have it broken by my husband's head every morning until it decided, in its wisdom, to move it a couple of inches up. In any event, the web is now perfectly positioned above head height at my front door where it does not annoy anyone. If a six foot tall delivery person comes to my house in the next couple of days however we are going to be in real trouble. The garden spiders are getting very fat, very quickly, almost exclusively on a diet of dragonflies and crickets. While it upsets me slightly that the spiders are eating my dragonflies I have more than enough to go around and there is never a shortage of crickets. I am more than a little concerned however that one morning I am going to wake up wrapped in a cocoon of silk and hanging in a garden spider's pantry for eating at a later date.