I’m rudderless. My life floats around family & travel. Travel & family. I have a rather large family so most of my travel is to family. If it’s not to family, it’s almost always with family. Now, in covid days, my life floats in my house.

I’m not due back up to Bavaria for another 3 weeks. It’s been my saving grace this summer and I need it. I am so lost just being home. I feel guilty. Shouldn’t home be my haven? It feels like a prison.

Yesterday the basement guy came to check on the drying out of the basement. Our big octopus down there has been doing an awesome job of sucking out all the excess water. I was super excited to talk to a new person & followed the poor man around, offering so much coffee that I’m pretty sure he’s still caffeinated today. Sadly he was done fairly fast, tented up the downstairs and fogged it with another mold treatment and left me to my devices. Now I can’t even go down there to do laundry for a day or two. Another thing I can’t do.

Today Asriel had a dental check-up at the vets. One of his teeth are cracked, and he needs an x-ray to see if he can keep it or not. Big excitement! We absolutely adore our vets office, it is one of my favorite places at the moment. It is not Asriels favorite place. He’s been a lot lately. His heart specialist flew in from Vienna (I’ve been dying to say that, LOL, she sees all the animals at the practice, not just Azi) two weeks ago & he had a big check-up. He’s actually doing really well, well enough that he can be sedated for his dental work today.

Mochi on the other hand is still not a fan of Azi. In fact, she’s so much not a fan not that she’s taken to hissing at her own reflection. Because. They look alike. So much alike Mochi can’t tell it’s her own reflection & not Azi looking back at her. Our vet clinic is helping us help them. It’s taking more time than we’d hoped, but they are very slowly learning to tolerate each other. I hope, in time, they will be friends.

In addition to a broken tooth and a weak left ventricle, Azi is also underweight. The vet had him on a special high-protein supplement and now we are on the lookout for the perfect high-protein food he likes. He’s picky. He & Mochi are both picky. Why won’t they be friends? This week we’ve found some amazing foods for him to try. So far he’s not a fan of horse or kangaroo. I’m hoping the wild boar or elk will be to his Majesty’s liking. Those cats eat better than me. Not that I want to eat horse!

But the highlight of this week (it’s only Wednesday, so nothing too major here) has been the annual back-to-school shopping for Dane. It has been the dreaded match-the-notebook-to-the-list game at our local school supply store. It is my very least favorite day of the year. There are at least 100 different notebooks. They vary in size, lines per page, margins per page, height per line, color, who knows what else! It. Is. Awful.

You can get a good idea of how overwhelming these notebook aisles are HERE. Or from my photo of Dane in the Aisle of Terror below. However. Dane is now a pro. At the first sight of my tears (of despair), he took the list from me & said:

“I got this.” And he did! He looked at the list, looked at the never ending row of notebooks, and magically grabbed out the right one. Just one after the other. We were done in 10 minutes, not an hour like all the other years. I am so impressed!