View from the deck. On a clear day the ocean is visible in the distance.
The other weekend we enjoyed a relaxing couple of days in a rented cabin on Palomar Mountain just outside of San Diego. We really didn’t do anything but hang out there until it was time to leave. Eli is the ultimate homebody and rather averse to transitions in general so even the suggestion of taking a walk to explore the neighborhood met with great disapproval. For us the path of least resistance was to take no path at all. (We did work in a short two block walk to the end of the road just before leaving.) It really was nice to have time to do nothing but sit, relax, make food, and watch the kids.
The desire to stay put was quite understandable when seen from his point of view.
After all there were birds to feed,
a 1932 Ford driven by a goose parked out front,
hollowed out trees to play in,
sisters to play with,
books to read (about construction sites, of course),
much dirt in which to play out all sorts of construction site fantasies,
and best of all his very own cat!
The cat was a stray whose owners had moved away and he had decided to find his way back to his old neighborhood. Not sure how long a journey that was for him but the owners of our rental were quite impressed and I guess it took the cat quite a while to complete the journey. For whatever reason I guess the original family is not interested in reclaiming him. Many were the discussions over the weekend about our adopting him. We are cat people through and through, Eli is asking often for a pet (or “rather 5 cats, and 5 dogs, and 5 cows…!”), and this particular cat was so friendly and gentle around small children. But in the end this is just not a good time for us to add a fur baby and the accompanying messes and expenses to the family. We were happy to hear at the end of our stay that the cabin owners had decided to officially adopting him.
“Rikana”, as Eli named the cat, was about as snuggly a cat as one could ever find. The appearance of a lap was an open invitation,
and I don’t know how many times I fished him out of Zoe’s excersaucer. No photos of that as Zoe was always in it at the time and sweet cuddler status and all I still dove quickly to separate them with images of a cat-slashed baby face flashing before my eyes. Thankfully, Rikana wasn’t phased a bit by having handfuls of fur removed by a drooling, squealing baby and was still in full purr mode as I removed him from Zoe’s elated grasp. I can be such a killjoy. We did let him stay cuddled up with Eli on the couch at night until it was time for us to go to bed as well.
The one time the birds weren’t mobbing the feeder.
For her part Zoe also very much enjoyed the weekend, but she seems to enjoy herself pretty much everywhere as long as she can get down and crawl about. She did take issue with the cabin’s soft carpeting for some reason, so most of her time out of arms or excersaucer consisted of us trying to keep her on the blanket on the deck.
Folk Haven 