cadence

Yesterday I managed to coax Grayson into the kitty bed with high sides that's next to my laptop on the desk. Because it's getting colder, and it's lined with faux fur, he did nap in there for a decent part of the afternoon.

This morning he hung out in the bedroom until his noontime automatic feeding. Then he wandered out into the living room, had a short wash, and then jumped up on the desk and crawled right into the cuddle bed. No prompting needed on my part. *GLEE*

This is where all my previous kitties would hang out while I worked. I've been rather desperate to get him to stop trying to sit on my keyboard, or get into mischief trying to get my attention. Having him head right to the kitty bed and nap is MAJOR. I'm hoping this behavior continues!

ETA - He had a three hour nap before he got up to stretch his legs. <3

ETA #2 - When I was reading in the Comfy Chair in the evening he was playing around my feet and then he disappeared. When I went to look for him I found him sleeping in the kitty bed on my desk again. It seems like cold weather is helping me train him to sleep in the cuddler bed.

I’m not sure how it came up in conversation, but a couple of weeks ago ravena_kade and I realized we hadn’t been down to the Cape in a while. So we picked at date and penciled in a trip down to Provincetown just to poke around in the stores. Our original date was September 26, but we moved it back a week due to the Nor'easter that showed up that weekend.

Rescheduling was the right call, we had perfect weather. I was a little late on my target time to leave the house, but I needed to spend a little time with Grayson if I was going to be gone all day. I got to Jennifer’s house a little after ten. I had texted her when I left the house. When I rang the bell, I could hear her vacuuming upstairs. I texted her again. And then tried FB Messenger. Which got her to the door. That’s when I found out that I’d been texting the house number that was no longer connected. (It was the last number I’d texted, so when I went into my messaging app, it was what came up.) So the first thing I did was delete that number out of my contacts. =P

We had a good ride down, there was some traffic, but nothing like during the summer months. It was a gorgeous fall day, sunny with some puffy clouds. And even though I hadn’t been to P-town since before the Pandemic, I still found my way to the parking lot I like to use. We arrived around maybe 12:45, so the first order of business was finding somewhere to eat lunch. Usually my go to is the Post Office Cafe, but my friend Paul had been on vacation in P-town last week and he said that they waited so long for a server that they ended up leaving, so that was off the list. We ended up eating at Vorellis Restaurant, mostly because it was right where we came out on Commercial Street and the hostess was hanging out in the doorway and invited us in.

I thought the food was pretty mediocre. Jennifer had the half lobster roll and clam chowder special, which she said was good. But my crab cake sandwich had zero flavor, I think there was more bread than crab in it. And my fries were cold. But it was food, and I didn’t really feel like hunting too long for somewhere to eat.

After that we wandered down one side of the street, poking around in shops here and there. A lot of places had already closed for the season, but I’ve been to P-town in late October before, and I don’t remember the town being this closed up. I expect it’s Trump’s economy and gas prices. We walked one direction on Commercial Street, up one side until there were fewer and fewer shops. Then we turned around and came back down the other side of the street. By the time we got back to where we started, it was after 5:00, so instead of walking the rest of Commercial Street, we were ready to think about dinner. Plus, shops were starting to close since it was so late in the season.

I knew before we went down that a lot of the shops I usually frequent were probably gone, victims of the Pandemic, but I hadn’t really thought that almost all of them would be gone. We didn’t walk all of Commercial Street, but I only recognized a very few shops where I remember spending money before.

Places that were still around included a couple of restaurants that I doubt will ever close, the Governor Bradford and the Lobster Pot. The candy store and shell shop next to the Town Hall are still there, as is the Post Office Cafe. I was happy to see that the Portuguese Bakery has survived. And the cooking store (Utilities Home Store) where I always find something useful to take home with me. The Mad Hatter is still there too. But the other handmade hat shop (whose name I can’t remember) is gone. I saw that Marine Specialists was still there, but we didn’t get a chance to go inside.

Places that were missing included all of the sex toy shops (unless they were already closed for the season) including the Little Shop of Horrors. Unless there was one that we missed because we only walked about half of Commercial Street. I already knew that Recovering Hearts Bookstore had closed, I’d read about it somewhere. But I was surprised to see that Hersheldon's Leather had been replaced by a generic clothing store full of t-shirts and sweats. I had bought some lovely menswear style shoes there last time I was in P-town. The Life is Good store was gone (but when their Portsmouth shop closed it made me wonder if the one in P-town would also close). I don't know if we just didn't walk far enough, but we didn't see any antique shops, and I know there used to be a few. There were still plenty of art galleries, but most of them seemed high end (fewer paintings on the wall = more expensive).

My friend Paul had been on vacation in Provincetown last week, and he always posts restaurant reviews when he’s on vacation (usually he’s in NYC in the theater district). I scrolled back through Facebook looking for his reviews, and we ended up eating dinner at Chez Chole Bistro in Wellfleet, MA, which was a bit pricy, but OMG worth every damn penny! I didn’t know until I just read this article that the Chef had worked at Michelin starred restaurants in France, but I’m not surprised. The food was excellent. We both had the mixed mushrooms with puff pastry and foie gras for our appetizer. The chef sent out an “amuse bouche” of squash soup (delicious), and a taste of what I think was a chicken salad (also good), and then some sort of sauced peppers (Jennifer tried one, but I’m not brave enough to eat random peppers). And there was a bread basket, and some Saucisson, and probably something else I’m forgetting? Little tasting bits that we hadn’t ordered just kept showing up between our appetizers and our entrees. Jennifer had the duck breast au Poive, and I had the Steak Frites (fillet mignon). For dessert Jennifer tried the tarte du jour that our waiter had been parading around the dining room since before we’d even ordered, and I had the chocolate mousse. Everything was wonderful, and the two waiters and the manager kept swinging by our table, refilling our water, dropping off new nibbles and asking how everything was? I drove us home with a very happy tummy. <3

I picked up a few things while we were shopping: a pair of socks, a couple of bookmarks and a post card, a new cat toy for Grayson, and a really pretty small painting of two swans that has a William Morris feel to it. LOL it didn’t take Grayson long to dig into my paper shopping bag, it’s like he knew I’d bought him a new toy!

I might be doomed.

I have a recyling bin from IKEA that I use to hold my extra bags of kibble.

SORTERA

Since Grayson is always foraging for food in the kitchen, I make sure that the treats are in a cabinet and the kibble is in the bin where he can’t get to it.

Wednesday morning I heard a rather loud THUMP in the kitchen. When I got it there, it was pretty clear that Grayson had been trying to lever open the lid on the recycling bin, and what I’d heard was it falling shut. Crap, I guess he could smell the open bag in there and was trying to climb into the bin? I know if he got in there it would only take a few seconds for him to work the clip off the bag and help himself to a feast.

This cat is too damned smart.

I dreamt about CTRF last night.

I dreamt I was at their new site again. Clearly I’ve dreamt about faire recently, because in my head I’d been there before and I was familiar with the layout and where I should be able to find my friends who work the faire. I don’t tend to remember too much of my dreams, but I do remember being really pissed because 1) CTRF had adopted forcing you to buy food tickets like King Dick's and 2) they were these HUGE metal coins, the size of the bottom of a can of soda. So even though I only bought $20 worth of tokens (because I didn’t want to spend money at CTRF unless I had to) just putting them in my pouch weighed me down on one side, they were so damned heavy.

Around the time I had woken up I was so pissed off about it I was looking for Lying Harbour to throw the damned heavy things at him.