Less than Twelve Parsecs

[go to the bottom of this post to get the full book! ] We call them The Silkies. The Tener Silkies, that is, because they are definitely part of the family. They are an ancient breed of chickens  of Asian descent, first introduced in Europe  by the Dutch as: the wondrous cross-breed between a rabbit and a chicken! It turns out that this is quite a believable description because they are absolutely fuzzy and soft, quite like a bunny. Note: The original version of this post had the phrasing "bunny rabbit" but Mara pointed out that "rabbit" is redundant because all bunnies are rabbits. Elena pointed out that "bunny rabbit" is more artistic. I will just have to write this again, in case you didn't realize how extremely huggable they are. Fuzzy and soft, they feel all over like a silky-soft fur - the poofy head, the poofy tail, chest and back and wings are all soft fuzziness. I'd say they're even softer than you would imagine from my paltry descrip

Well, Fae just took five steps this evening. Full-on steps, no question about it, each little one with a slight hesitation but then pushing confidently forward. They weren't big; she advanced just about a foot forward overall, but that was a huge leap forward in her life and that's what matters. The motivation? She did it because she needed - definitely, absolutely needed - to grab Gaius's enticing Outfoxed board game . Because it had four "choking hazard" pieces on it and thus it was essential for her to get at them and bat her little hands all over the board. Anyway, this is big. She turned nine months of age only a week ago. If you know your baby milestones, this is quite the earliest end of the spectrum - walking is more like a twelve months thing. Mara and Gaius were both right on the curve: walking when they turned one year old. Fae is doing her own thing though. Greg keeps joking that he's gonna Call the Baby Police on her and ask them to pull her over

It's hard for me to write about things that hurt. I wrote multiple posts about rough life moments, but they never seem good enough to honor the memory of the one who is missing. So I bottle them up, a hidden journal close to my heart, too fragile to be seen by others' eyes. This post won't be good enough, by far. But it's time to share it, and move on. You might have noticed that we've stopped being responsive to texts/emails/missed calls for multiple weeks this summer. Happy blog posts were put on hold. That's because we have been grieving by day, and searching night, after night, after night. Willow is missing. She's been a happy nighttime-indoor / daytime-outdoor cat for the past 8 years of our lives, she's spent the past 12+ years as part of our family. Willow was pretty much our first "child" and the reason we started using this blog more. We had adopted her as a 3-months-old white fluff ball, with angel looks but devilish behavior. I'