Ben & Jen Shepard

Nothing too exciting has happened these last few days since we’ve been snowed in.  So I figured it’s a good time to introduce our other kitty, Orange.  There’s so much to tell about Orange, but I’ll try to filter it down.  First, his name.  Orange used to belong to my roommate.  She tried out many different names on him but none of them seemed to fit.  She finally gave up and started calling him “the orange one”. For better or worse, it stuck even after I adopted him.  The up side of such an unassuming name is that it leaves room for numerous nick names.  He’s had about a dozen so far, including the most frequently used “Juicer”.  It sounds nonsensical, but is fun to say in that tone some people take when talking to young children.  It went like this:  Orange -> Orange Juice -> Juice -> Juicer.  Most pet owners will understand perfectly.

Ok, moving on. Orange holds entire conversations with me while I get ready for work, he always sleeps next to me at night, he comes when I call him, won’t leave my side when I am home sick, and sometimes I turn around and he’s watching me with a soft contented look in his eyes.  No, I am not mistaking him for Ben.  (Ben doesn’t always come when I call him.)  Put Orange outside and he’s a total boyscout, interested in everything and not usually afraid unfavorable weather.  As for his vices, Orange has only a few.  Getting into the garbage and instigating fights with Romeo, then acting like it was all Romeo’s fault (but what younger sibling doesn’t do that?).  I think Orange is in many ways the quintessential kitty.  Oh, and he has his own theme song.

Orange has actually taught me a lot about human-animal relationships.  Through a series of turbulent moves and difficult months, Orange and I learned that we needed each other.  I was the only constant thing in his life when we moved from house to house.  He was sometimes my only comfort in a lonely moment, and he even helped calm my nervous jitters on my wedding day.  He’s truly my kitty.  And I know I’m his human.

No Sign of Stopping

Last night we got news of a winter weather advisory for all of Western New York due to a massive snow storm heading straight in our direction.  Like a school kid, I raced to the window this morning expecting mounds of snow covering everything and a snow day declared on the TV.  But it looked exactly the same as the day before.  No snow had fallen.  I was bummed and started getting ready for work.  I drove all the way to the office (only 7 miles, but it takes half an hour in traffic), got two steps in the door and was told to go home.  They were closing the building and declaring my wished-for snow day afterall!  An hour earlier would have been nice, but I will take what I can get!  I did a little Christmas shopping and by the time I got home, about 6 inches had amassed and the driving was terrible.  I took some pictures to show you how bad it got in just a few hours.  I don’t think it’s going to let up until much later tonight, or even tomorrow.  They say there’s another big storm that will hit on Sunday.  Maybe Monday will be a snow day too!

Flurries

Poor Mailman!

We all know baking is an essential part of the holidays.   There’s chocolate cookies, sugar cookies, red and green sprinkles, truffles and the infamous fruitcake, all of which is usually followed by a nation-wide increase in gym memberships.  Inkeeping with this tradtion, last night I tried to make my grandmother’s famous meringue coconut Christmas cookies.  I can remember these being my absolute favorite cookies ever since I was old enough for solid food.  Sadly, my Nana passed about 13 years ago, and no one could bake these quite like she could.  That is a long time between cookies.  I know she was probably smiling down at me from Heaven last night as I gazed into the oven watching these little puffy white clouds bake to perfection.  I was thinking of her the whole time, especially when I finally pulled one off the hot baking sheet and that familiar aroma made me five years old again.  Nana and I often struggled because she was a tough nana and I could be an equally tough kid.  I have a lot of memories of her that sometimes hurt to think about.  But I know that she loved me.  I could tell beause no matter what, she’d always let me have just one more coconut meringue cookie.

I’ve really been enjoying the Holiday season more than usual this year. I think it’s partly because we have a beautiful Christmas tree to gaze at and other very meaningful decorations up.  I have two beautiful nativity sets, one from my boss and another from some family friends.  Both were wedding gifts and so they mean a lot to me.  Romeo has yet to destroy anything, so the season is still bright in that regard. Sometimes Ben makes a fire, which warms up the house even more.  It also helped that I started my Christmas shopping way in advance this year.  So I don’t feel the rush and panic of last minute shopping.

Instead, I’ve been able to really feel in my heart the things that I know make Christmas a special time. Often we know in our minds that it’s really about joy and family and peace, but we don’t actually feel all that much of it.  Without all the distractions and noise of Commercial Christmas, I’m finding that the real Christmas is actually full of peace and joy, and is offering them to me in abundance.

After my Dad’s heart attack in November, I am more grateful than ever that we are all still together. That there are still opportunities to say how much we care, to offer comfort, to say I’m sorry, to laugh at jokes, this is the best gift.

There is a serenity that Christmas offers that is unlike any other time of the year.  It’s like a whisper that has been drowned out by our constant flurry of activity. But when we finally get still enough to listen again, it’s still there.  I hope that this season you find it too.

Walking down the halls in middle school, I could look around and see pagers hanging off the hips of early adopters.  Once I got to high school it seemed most of my peers had cell phones.  For me, the interest just wasn’t there.  Nevertheless, moving away to college made owning a cell phone necessary and despite my staunch attempts to go without for as long as possible, I was eventually forced to concede.

So, I joined my family on a family plan and to the puzzlement of sales reps, friends and family alike, chose the most basic phone available.  By this time cameras came stock on most models and could usually play music.  I didn’t need any of that.  Give me the $50 phone that has a number-pad and an earpiece…

That wonderful phone lasted for 3 years before being retired for a slightly newer free upgrade.  I didn’t get to choose the new phone, so it came with a camera and about 1/4″ of extra thickness in my pocket. That phone lasted about a year and my streak of flawless phone care came to an end when, with a little help from my brother, it was crushed between my hip and a rock while we scaled a steep bank out in the woods.

Nowhere near my next free upgrade, I was fortunate enough to inherit another phone from a different brother.  This phone had a camera, played music AND had a flip up screen which hid a full keyboard (unfortunately I’d yet to join the younger generations and their text reliant ways of communication).  Oh yeah, and it was the size of Zack Morris’ cell phone…

Now its the end of 2008 and the trend continues to escalate!  Having gone from not wanting a cell at all to owning a combo phone, camera, typewriter, brick, I’ve moved on yet again. This time to a Blackberry Storm, compliments of my web design company, 360PSG.  How could I say no to that?

Despite my attitude toward cellphones, I’ve yet to put it down.  It’s proven to be an irresistible toy giving me access to the Internet, games, music and video wherever I want and yeah it can sync with my email and calendar and all that important stuff too.

When I found out I was going to own this phone I did a little research and read some mixed reviews.  I really have nothing to benchmark my experience, but so far my only real complaint is the battery.  I’m used to being able to go 5 days without a recharge.  This one is dead in a day.  That’s probably unavoidable, given the fact that this is much less a phone, than a pocket-sized laptop.

Anyway, if you’re reading this you might want to drop me a line on my old number while it’s still active, so I can give you my new number.  Unfortunately, I was unable to transfer it.

One of the best sources of entertainment and funny stories in our lives is our cats, Romeo and Orange.  To give you an illustration of what it’s like to live with cats, check out this link.

Persistent and inventive until they get what they want.

So this is Romeo.  Oh, I know he looks all cute and furry.  But don’t let that fool you.  All that fluff is merely a disguise for just about every feline disaster you could think possible, all in one monochromatic little package.  Or rather, not so little.  Romeo’s favorite thing to do is eat.  Most people with cats leave a bowl of food around for the cat to munch on throughout the day at various times.  We, however, are on a strict regiment of 1/4 cup cat food in the morning and 1/4 cup in the evening and not one nugget more in between.  Given the chance, Romeo will eat every possible scrap of food in sight and when he can’t eat anymore…well…let’s just say that what goes down must come up.  Not exactly a specimen of feline intelligence.

That’s not to say he isn’t clever.  I remember the time I came home from work to find the refrigerator door wide open and the remains of my freshly purchased chicken breast (that night’s dinner) shredded into pieces across the floor.  Obviously, I had not made it clear it was to be my dinner.  The next day, the refrigerator door was open again.  And the next day.  Drastic measures had to be taken, so I purchased a toddler-proof refrigerator door lock, thinking that thanks to man’s capacity for innovation and the invention of plastic, I, Human, had once and for all triumphed over Cat. The next day I walked confidently into the house only to find the freezer door flung wide open and all my frozen chicken thawing on the kitchen floor.  Cat: 1, Human: 0.

This is the story of our very first Christmas Tree.  We had such a good time getting this tree and decorating it that it seemed an awful waste not to share the experience with friends and family.

So here’s the tree story, with photos to prove it…

First, let me say that for me, a Christmas Tree has to be real!  We always had real trees while I was growing up and I can remember the wonderful smell and warm coziness it brought to the family room.  So this year Ben and I embarked on our first ever quest for the perfect Shepard Christmas Tree.  I will admit now that it was my idea to march out into a field in the freezing cold and cut one down ourselves.  As you will soon see, Lumberjack Ben took on the brunt of the work.

We drove out to a local tree plantation on the coldest Saturday we’ve had yet, the first December snow still sticking to the ground over a thick layer of ice.  When we got to the farm, I told the man I was specifically looking for a Frasier Fur.  He smiled, said something about a “hike”, handed us a saw and a small map and sent us on our way.  Half a mile, four freezing hands and one near-frost-bitten nose later, we found it!  Ben set to work chopping it down.  I tried, but sawing things just isn’t for me.

Sawing complete, we had to figure out how to trek half a mile back across the wilderness carrying a six-and-a-half foot tree.  Ben was all over it.

The first ever, Shepard family tree

Until that huge gust of wind…

We finally did make it across the field and back home.  This too was not without its mishaps, though.  Once we had the tree inside the house, we realized we had to cut off more of the trunk.  This naturally required a chain saw in my living room and lots of sawdust everywhere…

…but in the end, it was definitely worth it.