Tag Archives: cats

What the melting snow reveals …

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Not only did the dire predictions for a winter storm not amount to much in Bemidji beyond some wind and a little snow, we spent the noon hour Wednesday taking note of things that had been unearthed lately by the melting snow.

Such as the sandal above, which still had some ice adhered to it. Then we found a remnant of Halloween:

We have no guess as to story behind these pants:

And I have a feeling that this bunny is around for Easter and was merely forgotten outside. But doesn’t he look lonely???

Speaking of bunnies, I don’t suppose these tracks belong to *that* bunny:

We saw the rabbit tracks just after these really cute ones of a big and little kitty (yes, we know, they’re not supposed to be running loose, but maybe the big kitty had the little kitty on a leash ;) :

Can you guess whose tracks these are? :

While it was a very sunny day, it was also cold walking north, but once we turned around it felt pretty decent. In fact we were hot by the end of our walk.

We’re pretty excited for the rest of the snow to melt and the temps to keep rising. When we walked past the library and saw the grass exposed by the melting snow near the bushes, Bethany said her nearly 3-year-old daughter, Lola, had been thrilled to see grass for the first time. She even wanted to play in it!

Here’s the library bushes, and below is a view of the lovely mush that marks the beginning of spring:

Not a very long post today — heavy on the photos, though — as I had to go out of town and was busy until just now.

Happy spring! :)

We did see a little color today, but although Bethany’s tulips are already coming up, we were dubious of these flowers, which turned out to be of the faux variety:

Back to the basics

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After yesterday’s fiasco, we stuck closer to home.

Above, Bethany is petting our favorite cat, the black-and-white kitty we see sometimes along our route near downtown, joined this time by another friendly kitty from across the street who seemed quite at home:

Bethany took such a pretty picture yesterday of the sun shining through the trees, so when I saw this sight I just had to try for a little sunshine, too.

Yesterday’s hour-and-a-half walk burned far more calories than today’s did. When we’re walking along the sidewalks, we don’t get as energetic as when we’re in more rustic areas. We get distracted by people, animals, holiday decorations, whatever, and we don’t keep up the pace as much as we should. But in our ever-present quest to lose weight, we keep discussing the possibilities of mixing the walks (which we really enjoy) with other more fast-faced activities, including some cardio stuff we could just do in my living room, where I have Tae Bo tapes and other exercise videos that without a partner end up collecting dust. We have been weighing in on Fridays in my kitchen and we’re hoping for positive results. Keep your fingers crossed for us and feel free to pass along suggestions!

"That would be a great climbing tree," Bethany said as I took this photo.

Heck, you wouldn’t even have to figure out how to get up. A couple of steps and you’re up there and ready to pick which direction you want to go. It’s an awesome tree.

We’ve been walking by this house for months, watching the renovations take shape. It looks like it’s just about done. I love the windows, especially with the black trim.

Here’s today’s mystery photo. Is this too easy? We shall see.

We’ve been using Bethany’s camera for the past couple of days because my card reader broke, but I ran over to Target tonight and bought a $16 reader, so here’s a photo of the sun on Lake Irving from Monday that we couldn’t get off the card until just now (I’m updating this late Wednesday night):

Take care!

– Laurie

Orange pumpkins, black cats and red sweat pants

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After yesterday’s adventure with the lost keys, it was nice today to just take a walk, even if it was raining the whole time.

We enjoyed seeing all the Halloween displays. You miss a lot of that if you see the city only from a car. When we’re walking, we see not only the whole display, but we have time to appreciate all the elements of it and the work that went into creating it. There sure are some creative folks in Bemidji!

We decided that on Saturday, we’ll post a bunch of Halloween photos. Bethany is working Saturday, and I have my granddaughter for the weekend, so we may even cross paths at some point.

When we saw this house with a trio of jack-o’-lanterns, Bethany said, "I like it when they let kids make their own jack-o’-lanterns." Imperfect pumpkins are perfect in our books!

Today we made a couple of furry friends.

These half-grown kittens were *very* friendly, so friendly, in fact, that after we were done petting them, they tried to follow us. We even jogged for half a block to try to lose them, but they kept trotting along. It looks like they were slowing down and staying in their own yard, though.

Today’s quote of the day incorporates a stranger we encountered while walking.

"Lovely day for a walk," she said, noting the overcast skies and continual mist.

I mumbled something cheerful about at least it wasn’t cold, and we walked on.

Then I turned to Bethany, looked at our beat-up hoodies and sweat pants, and said, "I wonder how she could tell that we’re out walking instead of just happening to be walking past her." 

"With our red sweat pants," she said, referring to a conversation I told her about from last night with my friend Tom, who saw our blog yesterday and did a fashion critique of my sweat pants, telling me that sweat pants are bad enough, but red is the worst color. And here I thought I was dolling up a bit by not wearing gray sweats with elastic ankles!

My mother, when she sees me in my red sweat pants, threatens to send the "What Not to Wear" people after me. 

Within reason, I don’t really care what I look like when I’m sweating and/or freezing and/or soaking wet, but if the "What Not to Wear" people really want to hand me $5,000 for a new wardrobe, I would be more than willing to give up my red sweat pants for whatever they would deign appropriate for sweaty and/or freezing and/or soaking wet hikes.

 And I dispute that red is the worst color (to be fair, neither of our sweat pants are bright red; they’re more of a brick red). I used to have purple sweats. Now *those* were ugly.

We liked this tree, which looks like it’s some sort of dancing creature, complete with fingers! It’s like a Halloween decoration without even trying. :)

The Thursday How Well Do You Know Bemidji? photo may be more obscure than our last few … we’ll see!

Our last photo was of the firefighter statue outside the fire hall. Kudos to Rita and Sarah!

Stay dry!

– Laurie

Smiles and kitty cats

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Bethany was off today, so we took to the sidewalks with Lola, who was – - surprisingly — pretty happy with everything. That has not always been the result when Bethany has pulled Lola from the car seatand strapped her into the stoller.

She’s never been very interested in my cats, but today she petted Max (aka Big Kitty, above) briefly and remained in the general vicinity of Zelda (aka Little Kitty)

And I had her smiling before she even got out of the car. It’s a far cry from the day I peeked in at her, only to see her face screw up in that way that you know is going to be followed by baby screams.

Below, she’s eating some of her "num-nums" in my little patch of yard. Bethany got her to smile really big.

Note: The num-nums (I have no idea what they’re called; Bethany only calls them num-nums; she might call them something else if she were to offer them to me!) really are pretty good. They taste like bananas and they melt in your mouth. Lola has let me eat a few. :)

Today’s Quote, from Bethany: "I think you’re wrong."

Me: "About what?"

Bethany: "You said we weren’t going to sweat today."

Yes, I was wrong. It was a deceptively cool day with intermittent peeks of sunshine that heated things up intermittently.

I also think I should remember to bring my digital voice recorder more often, because I have a feeling we said much more interesting stuff when we were sitting in the grass with Lola and the cats.

 

Today, we decided to walk to the site of the Front Yard Garden of the Month. That will be published in the Sunday B section of the Bemidji Pioneer, so we’re not going to scoop ourselves by telling you where it is or showing you the photo. But I will give you a close-up photo I took today. The garden was pretty amazing.

And I guess that’s all I should really say!

Here’s another flower photo from a different garden. I guess it’s a snapdragon (correct me if I’m wrong), but we found it interesting how the flowers curled up:

 For today’s How Well Do You Know Bemidji? game, we have a pretty well-known item in the city. I bet our friend Julie will know this one…

Yesterday’s mystery photo is from the mural in the area of Third Street and America Avenue Northwest.

We came up with the idea today that we would show a full version of the mystery photo. I don’t have the mural in total, but here’s a fuller version:

 I think that’s enough photos for one day! It’s more like an album. We should shift some to areavoices.com. :)

– Laurie