the domestic zoo

Owing to unseasonably warm weather, the kidlets have spent the better part of the last week outside, and my brother is already starting to darken. He has the irritating ability to bronze after just a few hours in the sun, a trait that seems to have passed me by completely. I take more after my Scottish ancestors. Last summer, after two weeks in Africa (and a spectacular sunburn in Annapolis preceding the trip) I came home with only a slightly reddish-tinge.

My sister tries to console me: “There’s a genetic disorder that makes some people immune to tanning, you know…I’m serious! I saw it on the Discovery Channel. They just burn and turn white, burn and turn white. They cannot ever tan.” (with special emphasis added to the last three words)

“Shut up, Hannah.”

It’s been over a month since the three youngest cats have had any sign of urinary problems. Which may not seem like very long, until you realize that from the end of December until the end of February, every two weeks there would be at least one cat at the vet.

But a month ago, after it seemed like we would never get to the root of these issues, the vet thought it was time for a radical diet change. I agreed. Only I had a very different change in mind.

Raw food isn’t a universal solution. But has worked for us, and marvelously. The cats are sleeker, have softer, shinier coats, and absolutely no signs of ill health.

Our vet is somewhat anti-raw food (and by ’somewhat’ I mean that he thinks it’s stupid and dangerous). So it gives me no small amount of pleasure to think about the next time the cats have their check-up (many, many months from now), when I will have the opportunity to educate the vet about what has been working for us.

My period of rest and relaxation is drawing to a close, and soon I will be back to calculating related rates, analyzing the composition of gases, and discussing the reproductive habits of ferns. My imagination withers just thinking about it.

I took time this week to finish Facing East by Frederica Matthewes-Green. It’s an easy read, compared with some of Orthodox literature out there, and I would not hesitate to recommend it to any of my non-Orthodox friends who are wondering what on earth I’ve gotten myself into.

I did have the occasional panic-stricken moment when I would recall the stack of projects I had intended to work on, and quickly finish a Chemistry assignment or add another paragraph to my Biology paper. Like most procrastinators, I do my best work under pressure.

Other than that, it was a week of relative freedom and irresponsibility. You know, hanging out with friends, going to extra church services, reading for pleasure, that sort of thing. Wild Living According to Emily can be characterized by staying up past 10 o’clock two nights in a row. Watch out, world!