I feel like I've hardly stopped moving all weekend; I know I have, but the moments of rest have been few and far between. I know I took a long, hot bath last night, but the memory is far away . . .

The weather turned bad again Friday night, and on Saturday morning Bob's dad called to warn us to stay inside. He said the roads were terrible, that he had watched one of his neighbors run into another neighbor's car, and said that Bob's mother had gone out and come back to report that conditions were bad.

I had planned to spend the whole day shopping, and had hoped that I could finish most of the stuff I needed to do for Christmas; I couldn't afford to lose the day. Bob had decided not to open his office, so he suggested that we go out together to accomplish the absolutely vital stuff (I had to go pick up a box of grapefruit at the post office, and didn't really want to leave it there until next week), and see how the roads were.

Once we got out of our immediate neighborhood, things seemed fine. It was cold and windy, but the streets were clear. We went to the post office and picked up the grapefruit, then, since we were driving by Borders, Bob asked if I needed to get anything there, and I did, so he had a cup of coffee in the café while I shopped, then we went next door to Bed, Bath & Beyond for more of the same (shopping, not coffee), then decided to look for a Christmas tree.

I couldn't really think of anyplace to tell him to go, so we drove around for awhile and finally found a Christmas tree lot that still had trees on it. They were in the neighborhood of $60-70, though, and we didn't really want to pay that. We also didn't really want to spend the entire day driving around looking for one, so we decided to get another artificial one.

The memory of last year is still vivid--Dinah climbing the new artificial tree that we bought that year, and bending the branches and ruining it, and us having to throw it out.

I really hope that doesn't happen again this year, but I'm not exactly sure how to avoid it. Bob's mother said there are sprays to keep cats away from things, and I know there are, I've used them before although I can't remember how why--oh, I think it was to keep Doña from peeing in the corners. I guess I need to stop by a pet store tomorrow and see if I can get something like that.

Once we got the tree, Bob took me home and dropped me off, then he took off again to go have lunch and watch some game or other at the bar, and I got in my own car and took off to do more shopping. I spent the rest of the day driving all over down spending money, and got most of it done. I just had a few things left to do today, and I finished them up in a few hours this afternoon.

I still have a bunch of stuff coming mail order that hasn't arrived yet, and I realized tonight that there's one friend I need to get something for (I thought I'd bought something for her, but I guess I didn't), and something I bought for Bob's mother isn't quite right--if I can't find the right one, the one I have will do, but I'd like to find the right one--other than that, I'm finished.

While I was out shopping yesterday, Bob called me to tell me he had had "an adventure." He had called me a little while earlier to tell me that he had lost his American Express card. We talked about it, trying to remember when he had used it last, and he said he'd used it a couple of times last week at the local brew-pub, so I suggested he call them and see if they had it.

They did, fortunately. In order to call them, though, he had gone into the half-bath downstairs to get the phone book (we keep the phone books under the sink there--it's just a good place for them), and after he had placed the call, he couldn't find the cats.

They were nowhere to be seen, and after looking around for awhile, he finally thought to look in the bathroom, and found Dinah in there, behind the tank. She wouldn't come out, and he had to drag her out, and then he proceeded to look for Pye, and couldn't find her.

He noticed, though, that Dinah, after he had dragged her out of the bathroom, was still sitting in front of the bathroom door and wouldn't budge. He looked in there again, thinking maybe he'd missed Pye somehow, but she wasn't in there. It's a really small room, hard to see how he could miss her, but he did look.

Then, on a whim, he said, he opened the cabinet under the sink, and Pye was sitting inside.

When she's stuck someplace, no matter how much you call her, she never answers. I don't understand that, really. She just sits wherever she is, patiently waiting for someone to figure out where she is and come rescue her.

But in this case, she had Dinah helping. I'm sure if she could, Dinah would have said, "Bob, Bob, look in there, Pye's under the sink!!!!!"