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Well, it only took me two years but I have finished recording Anne of Green Gables!  It’s a bit embarrassing that it took me so long but I’ve had a busy two years with meeting Stephen, finishing my master’s degree, battling Meniere’s Disease, getting engaged and married, and buying a house.  I feel somehow like I became an adult in the last two years if that makes sense.

Anyhow, I’ve podcasted chapters 36 and 37 and 38 will be up tomorrow.  I thought about spacing them out a bit more but figured I’ve made folks wait long enough!  Cataloging at LibriVox is in the works and a complete Zip file of all chapters will be available soon.

So as for what is next with the podcast, I’d like to get a good chunk more recording done before I start releasing more chapters.  Once I’m confident I can release on a regular basis, the podcast will start up again.  I’ll continue with the next Anne book by L. M. Montgomery - Anne of Avonlea.  I’ve also begun recording a duet with Kara of Emma by Jane Austen.  We will trade off chapters and I will likely podcast that at some point as well.

Life in general has settled in which is really nice.  My health is the best it has been in years.  I found out that I had a bad Vitamin D deficiency which was likely causing a lot of my fatigue and weak immune system and once I had supplements for that I started to bounce back.  Our new house is beautiful and I’m really enjoying the yard and learning how to do some gardening.  One of my favorite things about the house is this beauty who came with it:

Her name is Tasha and she is a Keeshond - a lovely arctic breed that I hadn’t heard of before.  We bought the house from a nice gentleman named Bill and it turned out he can’t have dogs in his new apartment.  We had been planning on getting a dog as soon as we had a house and fell in love with Tasha when we first saw the house.  We wrote in the contract that if Bill couldn’t keep Tasha that we’d love to take care of her.  We were half joking but when it turned out that he couldn’t keep her, everything fell into place.  She is the sweetest, most loving dog I’ve ever known and I think we are good for each other.  We get out and walk every morning and she is constant company and entertainment.

I haven’t been knitting a whole lot lately with the wedding, move, and summer heat but I think I’ll have more time now to devote to knitting and knit-blogging both.  So stay tuned and thanks for your patience to my podcast listeners!

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Before the wedding at my parents’ house; bride and groom:

Sister and maid of honor Julia, Mom, Me, Dad:

Julia with her then-boyfriend, now-fiance Jason:

Julia and me with our Grandma Melba, aka Mema:

At Orlando Gardens, before the ceremony; Julia’s bouquet:

Pretty chairs:

Pretty tables:

My hair:

Julia’s hair:

Jason was in charge of starting and stopping the iPod for the walk up the aisle:

Getting ready to sign the Ketubah:

Signed Ketubah:

Run through before guests arrived:

People (and their many cameras!) begin to arrive:

Stephen’s dad, David and Bev:

Is it time?

Stephen with his friends Bryan and Mike:

Last second, giving Julia my engagement ring to wear during the ceremony:

Dad reminding me to step with my right foot first so we’re in sync:

Now is it time?

It’s time!

After the ceremony:

Stephen’s mom, Dianne, and her husband Tim:

Stephen gets his beer!

Mom and Dad:

Stephen with his sister, Celia:

So happy:

The rings with my bouquet:

End of the night, worn out and hanging out with Mema:

Stephen took this one of Julia with her friend Maureen - our photographer!

And that’s it! Thanks for waiting patiently. We’ve been busy buying a house and getting a dog and doing other such domesticated things that married folk do. Life is good.

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Earlier this week, just before bed I remember noticing that the dishwasher was making a really odd noise but didn’t think much of it. Then last night I woke up in the middle of the night and could have sworn I heard something but immediately fell back asleep and forgot it. Until this afternoon when I most definitely heard something in the kitchen. I was trying to decide how to go about trapping a mouse when to my surprise, I found this:

A little brown bat.  He wasn’t in the tupperware when I found him, he was actually trying to climb up the kitchen wall. I quickly helped him into the tupperware and set the lid on loosely so I could look at him. He went in easily but he let his displeasure be known by opening his mouth wide, baring his pointy, tiny teeth, and hissing. At least I think he hissed. He definitely made a sound although I don’t remember exactly what it sounded like. I do remember quite clearly that I found it rather humorous that he was hissing (or something) at me considering his state. For one thing, he was tiny. For another, he looked oddly wet:

I was worried that maybe he’d been stuck down in the sink or dishwasher but I quickly realized that made no sense because he was obviously still alive (hence the hissing). He quickly settled down and appeared to be napping so I grabbed my camera and took these shots. I don’t think I’ve ever been this close to a bat before and I thought what I could see of his wings and the little talon-like things at the joints were pretty cool.

Considering the vigorous hissing I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt so I took him outside and set the container down and took the lid off. He didn’t move. It was unseasonably warm and sunny today so I thought maybe he didn’t like all the light so I put him in a bit of shade under a bush but he still didn’t move. So I brought him back inside and got on the internet.

I found the website for the Wildlife Center of Missouri and gave them a call. The woman I talked to was extremely helpful. She said that if he wasn’t bleeding and didn’t have an obviously broken wing then he probably wasn’t injured. She said he was probably coming out of his hibernation* and would be somewhat disoriented and weak. She said he also wouldn’t want to fly until it was darker out and to put him in a slighly elevated place. She explained that bats need to take off from a bit of height because they swoop down before they start flapping. I asked her about the wetness and she said that they are very vigorous groomers and that was probably all it was. She said that if he still hadn’t left by the morning to call them back.

So, armed with my new bat knowledge, I returned to my little brown bat. By then I had him in a cardboard box with some loose plastic wrap over the top (with air holes of course). He was sleeping peacefully so I decided to let him nap a while until it got a bit darker outside. About an hour later I went to check on him and he’d moved around a bit. He was dried off and fluffing up nicely.

He was awake and seemed to know that dusk was approaching. I took him outside and took off the plastic wrap. He chilled out and let me take a few more pictures.

Yeah the guano is icky but if you can look past that, he’s really pretty darned cute in my opinion. The pointy ears, the little nose, the fluffy fur:

And the wings are just so fascinating.  I settled his box into the top of a bush and sat down with a book on the porch. He really was a tiny thing, no more than 3 inches long.

About ten minutes later, with really no warning, I saw him swoop up, circle around a bit, then fly away. Fly away, little brown bat! Sounds like a children’s book or something, doesn’t it? I came inside and looked up Missouri bats.  I’m pretty sure that my guy was Myotis lucifugus, which I was delighted to learn is commonly known as the “Little Brown Bat.”  So that was my adventure this Friday afternoon!

*No, I really don’t want to think about the fact that he has likely been hibernating in our kitchen all winter long.

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Many thanks to all of my podcast and audiobook listeners who send me such encouraging emails and comments - I can’t tell you how much it means to me. And thanks especially to the Anne listeners who’ve been nudging me to get on with it already! I am truly sorry to leave you all hanging for so long. Life has been busy and my motivation seemed to wane for a while. But I miss recording and LibriVox and plan on making it part of my routine again. So, without further ado, Chapter 29: An Epoch in Anne’s Life is now available. I have already recorded Chapters 30-33 for an earlier group version of AoGG so those are ready and waiting in the wings. I plan on releasing a chapter a week and by the time Ch. 33 is released, I should have the rest of the book recorded and ready to continue on that schedule.

One of the things keeping me busy these days is wedding planning! Stephen and I got engaged the night before Thanksgiving and will be married May 10th.

Yes that is a pudding pop in my hand. I didn’t know we were about to be photographed or I would have held off on dessert! Anyway, it will be a good sized wedding, probably between 75 and 100 people; but we’re keeping it as low key and stress free as possible. We want our families to be there and this will be as small and laid back as is possible while still including everyone (I have around 35 first cousins alone hence the large number for a family only wedding!). No loud band or DJ, just nice background music of our choosing (we’ll pre-program an iPod and they have a system to pipe it through their speakers). We’ll have a short civil ceremony followed immediately by dinner, all at Orlando Gardens. Orlando Gardens is a very nice banquet hall and weddings are their thing so they’ve been very accomodating with everything.  I ordered my dress online from Nordstrom’s and I think it is perfect:

I don’t think I’ll even need to have it altered. I’ll probably knit up a little pink shrug to wear over it. Here’s a close up look at the overlay, it’s a sort of netting with sequined diamonds in gold and silver:

My sister Julia will be my maid of honor and she has picked out a darling J. Crew dress in a gorgeous deep purple/blue. Invitations are ordered and here. I’m sort of just dealing with one thing at a time and that is working well for me. Next up is flowers, we’ll do pink and white flowers I think. And though I’m generally not big on gifts or jewelry, I am truly in love with my ring:

It’s a classic round solitaire in white gold and I think it’s perfect.

So far the planning has been lots of fun and only a little bit stressful.  I have an aunt who works in a bridal shop and is great help with planning.  And Julia is my perfect maid of honor, she knows what is in style and what needs to be done.  I can’t believe it’s only three months away but I’m glad we didn’t drag the whole process out for a year or longer.  So, that’s my fun news.  I don’t know why I didn’t post it sooner, I tend to have mixed feelings about posting more personal stuff on the blog but I guess the time felt right.  (Now I just hope Stephen doesn’t die when he sees his picture on the website - he was appalled when I posted a picture of his birthday socks on his feet without his permission!)

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