Tis the season

I'm glad that my stomach ailment lasted only the usual 24 hours. I'm still feeling slightly wobbly, but at least everything seems to be working normally and I haven't run a fever since Sunday.Stephan and I are wrapping up our respective semesters and getting ready to travel to North Carolina to visit my family for Christmas. It looks increasingly like we will be boarding Athena while we're gone, which I hate to have to do, but taking her along is going to probably be too stressful and she needs a little more care than someone looking in twice a day, even if they are a registered Vet tech.One or both of the kittens, Freya and Narvi, have somehow made off with the left shift key of my computer keyboard. At least I'm blaming them because I can't imagine how else it went missing. They're not that easy to remove -- my guess is that one of them jumped up and got a claw caught in it. But where the darn thing is now, I haven't a clue. I've checked around under my desk. I can still use the key by pressing the tiny button in the center, which is annoying. Going to the Apple technical support website hasn't turned up anything remotely helpful, like how to order a replacement key.Today, the kittens helped me put clean linens on the bed. While I was stuffing our unwieldy king-sized comforter into its cover, I told them that the object was to get it to fit in its "envelope" and get buttoned in while making sure both cats were on the outside. They were quite helpful, pouncing and burrowing and making sure I had all the corners of the sheet tucked in. We succeeded in getting the bed made, somehow.We're doing a relatively low-key Christmas this year with inexpensive gifts and some small donations to charity in honor of family members. I resolved not to buy any new wrapping paper or ribbons. Today I started wrapping, using leftovers from previous years. We've accumulated lots of little gift bags, which reuse well. I still had a few partial rolls of paper and some ribbons. I had to hunt for a while to find a ribbon to match a blue and silver paper, and I'll probably have to use old Christmas cards to make tags for all the bags that I had to cut off the old tags from. But it looks like I can get everything wrapped and more or less matching without any new purchases. It's not that I'm so hard up for cash I couldn't buy a few bows if I wanted to; it just seems silly and wasteful when I have things I can use if I'm willing to get creative and not worry about having everything look perfect.Of course, when I started getting out gift wrap and ribbons, Freya and Narvi decided I needed their help. I was certain I'd have to throw them out of the room and close the door in order to get anything done. But all they did was run across a roll of wrapping paper, then go off into the next room to sleep. I wondered for a moment if they were normal. Kittens not involved when there are ribbons and paper? I suppose they were overtired from making the bed.Typically, when the kittens do something naughty, like jumping up on the counter or trying to eat Athena's food, and Stephan complains, I reply, "Well, we knew when we got them that they were kittens." You can't have the fun and cuteness without the chaos!Athena just scowls at them, certain that she was never that young or foolish. I don't have the heart to remind her of all the trouble she used to get into.