California

As you may remember, my dear friend Jessie moved to California about four months ago. It was sad for me and you can read about it here. But the happy part of the story is that I love to travel and so last weekend I went out to California to see Jessie, Randy, and Jake.

I'm happy to report that they are doing well and they have an adorable house and Randy loves his job and Jake is just as spry as ever, even at his ripe old age of 13. We had an action packed weekend filled with In-N-Out, kayaking, playing cards, watching movies, playing Words with Friends on our phones with each other while sitting in the same room, a little drinking, a lot of Starbucks,  not to mention great conversations where Jessie and I conquered many of the world's problems such as orphans, poverty, religion, and politics. My weekend there had all of the components that I love about going to Canada, just condensed into 3 days.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so I'll let my pictures from the weekend do some talking.

Animal style extra toast

Kayaking at Half Moon Bay

Some other bay we found

We almost died trying to climb down this hillside. When we got to the bottom, we found stairs just to the left of where we emerged.

Here Jessie is remembering walking through a hard time and only seeing one set of footprints in the sand but that was when Jesus carried her through that hard time.

Seriously. It was amazing.

Randy picking lemons from their lemon tree.

Aren't they beautiful?

My buddy Jake.

My high school friend Ellen also lives in the Bay area with her husband and their two kids, so on Sunday evening I went to a Rosh Hashana service with them. This was actually the first time in my life I ever went to a Jewish service and I really loved it. Rosh Hashana is Jewish New Year and a time of celebrating what God has done in the previous year and preparing for the year ahead. Part of how you celebrate is by eating apples and honey. The next ten days after Rosh Hashana are a time of making amends and seeking forgiveness from anyone you've wronged in the year before. After this, Yom Kippur happens, which is the Day of Atonement.

Turner and I celebrating Rosh Hashana. He was mostly celebrating how good my thumb tasted.

Meira and I enjoying our Rosh Hashana apples.

So it was a great weekend and I will be back, probably many times. California is a little closer and cheaper to get to than Canada, so it will fill in the gaps nicely between Canada trips. It's also convenient that they can both be abbreviated to CA.

Finally, many of you have asked about Charlie over the past week. You all seem to be very concerned about his well being while forgetting that he was the one who attacked ME, not the other way around. For the record, he is fine and me and my face have recovered with minimal damage. As you can see, he is feeling cuddly and nice once again. Now would be the perfect time to adopt him into your home!

On second thought

I'd like to recant every nice thing I said about Charlie in my earlier blog this week due to his once again proving that he is, in fact, spawn from the pit of hell. Or, at the least, a thorn in my side sent to torment me.

This morning as I was getting ready for work, I saw Charlie in his usual spot on the couch. He looked so sweet and cuddly, and my heart was still brimming with warmhearted feelings after our tender moment the other day.

He lured me in and I sat down next to him. Bad move, Rob. You should know better by now. He started purring. I started to pat his head.

It all happened so fast and it's still hard to talk about, but here goes.

He met my gentle head petting with a vicious swipe of his paw on my face, locking his claw into my lip and yanking down hard. As I screamed and flailed my arms to get him to let go, he released his grip on my lip and pounced on my arm, biting my hand and kicking me with his back legs.

Evil cat. Evil cat who I'm stuck with for the rest of his life because other people are smart enough to know better.

Somehow I got away from him and stumbled to the bathroom to survey the blood streaming down my face. He followed me, like a character  in some cheesy overrated horror movie. He purred and rubbed himself against my legs. I wiped the blood off my face and put on some makeup. He took off running into the laundry room and made a loud commotion, which turned out to be this:



Oh, Charlie. What am I ever going to do with you?

Maybe Charlie isn't so bad after all

Many of you know my valiant efforts to find a new forever home for my vivaciously naughty orange tabby cat, Charlie. Charlie is known around my house as the one who bullies sweet little Midge and eats her food, destroyer of the toilet paper roll in the bathroom every chance he gets, and has been known to pull this little stunt on many a Monday morning right as I'm trying to leave for work:

There's a verse in the Bible that talks about how some just spend their time inventing ways to do evil. That is Charlie in a nutshell.

But yesterday Charlie earned some good PR and he deserves the chance to have his bad name cleared, at least for a few hours. Or minutes. Or seconds, as the case may be.

There was another closed door yesterday. I'll spare you the gory details but rest assured, they were gory and sad. Very, very sad. It's true that I might have overreacted a little bit by locking myself in the bathroom (after verifying that my roommate was in fact gone) and lying down on the bathroom floor and sobbing hysterically for about 45 minutes. But it is what it is and I was really, really sad and that seemed like the most logical thing to do in that moment.

About 35 minutes into my crying fest, party of one, the bathroom doorknob started jiggling. I paused long enough to assess whether it was my roommate suddenly come home or perhaps a poltergeist. The long mournful meow that I heard next confirmed it was actually Charlie come to check on me. This was confirmed by the little orange paw that started making sweeping motions under the door crack.

For as obnoxious as he is 23 hours and 57 minutes of the day, Charlie does have a tender heart. It really bothers him when I cry. He feels compelled to jump into action and do his part to comfort me, and last night was no exception.

So I opened the bathroom door and let him come in. Then I fell over wailing again on the floor. Charlie took it in stride. First, he came and snuggled in close to my head and put his little paw on my arm. For some reason, this actually made me cry harder. He sensed that and then got up and paced around my crumpled body, stopping once to lick my leg for a few moments. For good measure, he also bit my foot twice. I have no doubt that if I had died on that bathroom floor, he would have wasted no time snacking on me until help came, 20 minutes later in the form of my roommate returning home.

There's a verse in the Bible that says, "Praise be to...the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles." I thought of that verse last night as I was lying on the bathroom floor.  I was alone in that moment, but I wasn't. God sent Charlie, good old obnoxious Charlie, into the bathroom with me so that I wouldn't be alone in my time of sorrow. Praise be to the God who can use a naughty tabby cat to comfort His child when she's sad.

So it turns out, Charlie isn't so bad. He would be a great comforting addition to any home, maybe even yours.