Disaster strikes!

In a small way. Hannah cooked us a delicious spaghetti dinner on Monday. She put the noodles on the table. She put the sauce on the table. She went to close the leftover container of tomato sauce and managed to knock it off the counter, sending the plastic lid onto the hot burner and sauce down me, her, and the length of our galley kitchen. Luckily, John was making salad behind her, so he avoided getting splattered. Hannah and I had to strip off and soak our clothes before sitting down to eat.

The next day, I put the wet clothes in the washing machine on the spin cycle before washing them (otherwise it gets unbalanced), and in the 10 minutes they were spinning, I splattered my sweater with ketchup. (My pants, too, a little, but I didn't notice until later.) So that got rinsed and thrown in with the other bespattered clothing.

Speaking of laundry, I may have to murder our cats. They are inveterate pukers (one is long-haired, and hairballs are now the bane of my existence), but when I found cat puke in one of my shoes recently, that was the last straw. I don't mind them puking on the rag rugs (which is part of the reason I bought them), because those can go into the machine, or on tile, which is easy to clean, but when they start puking on other things, then I get hacked off. I've started threatening to turn Eliza into a muff after she dies.

I finally had a chance to pick up all the leaves that had fallen off my citrus plant. It had dropped over 50 leaves in about a week. I didn't even think it had 50 leaves on it. It is looking rather threadbare at the moment, but the poinsettia is looking good.

This year, I planted a slightly different variety of flowering plants in my window boxes on the downstairs balcony. There was still some statice and lobelia alive at Thanksgiving, so Hannah made a tiny bouquet out of them for the table. When I planted the carnations, I didn't realize they only bloom in the second year. The poor things are partially covered in snow at the moment. I have no idea if I should move them, cover them, or what, but if they survive this winter and my half-assed care, they will be the hardiest flowers I've ever had.

And it is snowing again. I need to return the key to the people I was catsitting for, but I really don't want to travel around in the snow if I can avoid it. Maybe I can take it by tomorrow when I am already going to be out and about (if I manage it).

-Nee in Germany has petty complaints, in the larger scheme of things