Friendly reminder: lack of sleep constitutes torture

 Ruby is ridiculous! She woke me up three times between 2:30 am and 4 am. Then! she slept until after 7 am. Then! she yelled at me because I left her door open and the dogs were bothering her! And she needed to sleep! She is five YEARS old! Almost 5 and a half! A six month old isn't supposed to wake you up more than once a night!

The next night my security alarm went off. Ruby had been going outside a lot and I guess although the door looked closed, it wasn't all the way secure, so when Big Girl Honey tried to get back inside in the middle of the night, it set off the alarm. But, of course, hearing your security alarm go off at 1 am tends to cause one to go into fight or flight mode. It took me FOREVER to calm down and go back to sleep.

Then last night Maggie woke me up to ask me if she could sleep in my bed because the storm was scaring her. 

So, bad news, they're all fired. 

That's sweet Millie. She steals stuff constantly and that's where she takes it, just to the right of the big tree. I have to go out there several times a week and pick everything up. Thief!

This is Ruby sleeping in! After waking me up! Rude.

Honeybear and other stuff

 Honey is our new foster. I wanted to get a friend for Millie and she just came to us. She's about the same age as Millie, about one and a half or so. I picked her up right before the ridiculous weather. She is very cute. When I first got her, one of the other volunteers from my foster texted me that she had fostered Honey's mother. Then another texted me she had her sister. It turns out she comes from a backyard breeder. They still have Honey's grandmother and father. Honey was supposed to be the next cash cow but she's unable to get pregnant. They tried for over a year and it never happened so they let her go to us. Ironically, she still needs to be fixed. 

Look at those meaty paws.

She struggles with jumping so the dog door is hard for her. I made her a little step and that's really helped. 

I don't think she had ever seen a cat before because she was shocked by mine. She was standing in my room staring at Buddy and he turned and looked at her and she ran away. Now she just mostly barks at them and occasionally chases them. They figured out pretty quickly she is not a threat.

Oh yeah, they sent me two different colors. Ha! Hopefully I'll get the correct color soon.

That's Ruby. Ruby plays this game where she's the mommy. She wears my watch but then she only uses this mint julep southern accent. It's so funny. If I call her honey or sweetie, she says, I'm yo' Mama, girl! It's so funny. 

Gah! Look at those wrinkles.

Ruby was playing her game yesterday and started telling me this insane story. I told her, I love your stories, and she told me, I'm going to tell you stories every day, girl!

Then she said something was expensive and I asked her, what does expensive mean? Her answer? It's when people turn into owls. 

Perspective

 Picture dump!

My darling Buddy boy. He stays away sometimes which always worries me on account of he's so handsome and not super smart. I'm afraid someone will steal him for his good looks. He's the sweetest little guy and I'm always so happy when he comes home.

God bless America!

He's finally using the cat tree.

Something Maggie drew.

Sweet Millie.

A cat from the internet. In a sweater.

Dang cat!

I'm guessing this is Maggie taking pictures. That's my handsome boy, Buddy.

Val.

Sally. Or, as Ruby calls her, my sweet little baby.

Milhouse 

Annie.

This must be Ruby taking pictures. 

I mean, why not?

Ruby taking arty pictures. Rock by headphones.

Rock on step. Up close.

Further back.

Further still.

And back.

And back.

I've named it Perspective by Ruby Lou.

Winter storm

 So, last week was apocalyptic. It could have been fine, a fun snow day or days. But no! Because we value our "freedom," power went out or threatened to go out. Water had to be boiled or you didn't have any at all. For those that count this as freedom, there are lots of countries where this is just life. Go live there.

Sunday evening I started seeing the electric companies telling us to conserve power. Then power started going out. We were incredibly lucky ours never went out. Laurie's was out for days. She had to drive (in awful conditions) to a hotel. Once she got there, their power went out as well. Jeff stayed home. 

But, of course, we didn't know our power wouldn't go out. We made plans or I did. I told the girls what would happen. Ruby didn't understand the seriousness of our situation but Maggie did. Everyone else I know had power out and were in insane conditions. We live in America!

Water got bad pretty quickly. We either had low water pressure or partially frozen pipes. We had no water in the kitchen but the main bathroom worked. The bathroom in my room wouldn't flush. I saved water in the bathtub in case we needed it to flush toilets. We got a boil water notice at some point. I have a ton of distilled water I keep in my garage so we used that. We conserved as much as possible. I told my kids not to shower. We turned everything off and unplugged everything. It was literally the only thing we could do to help.

Ruby and I played Trash and listened to Hamilton.

Basically everything shut down. Because so many people didn't have power, we couldn't work or go to school or anything. 

The girls after playing in the snow.

Arlington ISD isn't opening at all until Wednesday and then only virtual on Wednesday. They say they are trying to reopen schools this Thursday, depending on damage. Unfortunately, Maggie's school is on the damaged list so who knows?

Me and Ruby staying warm. The girls rarely got dressed even though it was 5 degrees at one point. Ridiculous!

Ruby's hair was insane. I guess because the heater was going so much. It was huge and tangled.