Beware the pirate elves! The kawaii factor lowers your defenses, then they'll steal your heart ...

We spent the weekend -- well, a second weekend, in Southlake. Petsitting is no joke, unless the pets are your own ... which wouldn't make it petsitting, would it, unless the dogs (or cats) literally DO sit on you. Mine have been known to do so, and Joy's birds use her as a perch whenever they can (usually while the cats are placed inside their room). Back to the subject at hand: the girls & Veronica (who is in her late 50s but prefers to party with younger females) decided to go on a road trip to the East Coast ... after toodling around the Big Apple and its environs, they came south to that center of Elvis worship, Graceland. Currently they're driving south and west towards their house ... where Joy waits in durance vile.

This was a weekend for old movies: Kind Hearts & Coronets, starring Alec Guinness in 7 roles; Laura, with Gene Tierney and Vincent Price, a documentary on the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, and Return to the House on Haunted Hill, with no name actors ... oh, and we caught the last half of Disney's Princess & the Frog. No one could ever say our tastes weren't eclectic ... We interspersed the movie watching with reading -- Joy had found the final volume in one of her fantasy series, and I read a reprint of a Mary Balough romance, The Christmas Promise, as well as parts from The Chronicles of Narnia. I guess all the reading was to distract the mind from the fact that duty had trapped us in a place where we really didn't wish to be, caring for animals not our own ... Worse, two of Joy's cockatiels died this week, and she was unable to bid them a final farewell and mourn properly since she wasn't here. I know that sorrow bothers her -- I remember finding Lady Orchid, who had been quite ill for a long time ... She had died inside the hospital cage in the bedroom, since I feared that she might climb into the mattress or closet in her last moments. Such a lovely, loving queenly cat ... Her brother Skittles is still with us. He meowed and chatted me up since I had spent 2 nights in Southlake.

We now have bison on a chain ... well, chain earrings. This week is homecoming at Sunset HS, so I made some earring sets for teachers who want to show spirit on Friday ... and it's tough to find bison. Luckily, Mar found some pewter pieces at Intergem, so I have a bagful for earrings and pendants ... plus, a few buffalo nickels in a coin setting. They're too heavy for earrings, but perfect as pendants ... and I saw a few steers in the field next to Cheri's abode. They ignored us mere humans (after all, we didn't have any food for them), despite our "mooooooooo"-ing.

Dance Quote: If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance. George Bernard Shaw