Jamie Thingelstad

Shortly after Tyler was born my Mom got him a pedal tractor. At my Grandparents farm there was always a metal pedal tractor that my cousins and I use to ride all the time. In comparison to new toys, it was ridiculously heavy and hard to get moving. But we had a great time with it. It was a John Deere, just like Grandpa drove.

I’ve kept the tractor in the box since Tyler was just too small, but I decided to put it together today so he can start playing with it. He is still far too small to make it go, but he thought it was pretty cool to sit on!

I had to do one of these hip retro photos too.

Mazie had to give it a try to!

Today was the 2011 So Long Summer show! Our neighbors the Miller’s host this every year for five years running now. It’s the last Sunday before school and a ton of kids in the neighborhood do performances. It’s awesome on so many levels.

This year Mazie sang a song from her now favorite movie, Annie. She sang “It’s a Hard Knock” life and knocked it out of the park!

I was so proud of her — great job! The crappy focusing is my poor performance on my camera.

Add video.

Tammy had noted that Mazie and Tyler really like to play in playhouses when we visit people. Our yard is a standard city lot, so we don’t have much space but she figured out a good spot in the yard and a playhouse that would work there.

The playhouse didn’t have a floor so we made a trip to Home Depot and got the stuff to build a simple deck that would sit on the ground with cedar deck boards. Mazie helped me build the platform and Tammy prepared the ground and got the playhouse ready to assemble. It was a fun afternoon of building and assembling and the kids like the end result.

Our neighbors down the street, the Conley’s, hosted an unplanned S’mores evening last night. Mazie loved staying up to 11:30 pm! 🔥🍫

Tonight we put Gypsie to sleep. Tammy took her to the vet a couple of months ago because we noticed that she didn’t seem to be urinating right. There were puddles of water in her litter box. She had also lost over half of her body weight, leaving just four pounds of mostly fur and bones. The vet did some tests and concluded quickly that her kidneys had failed. A terminal situation regardless of treatments, just a matter of time.

Gypsie sitting on a chair in my old apartment in 2001.

Gypsie got her name because she was a bit of a Gypsy originally. I got her when I moved into an apartment in college and the previous people where moving out and couldn’t take a cat with them. They had gotten her the same way, and had named her Gypsie. She ended up being my cat from then on. I never really knew exactly how old she was. We figure that she was 22 years old now, but that could be off a year. Needless to say she lived a long cat life.

Gypsie was my cat for years of college living with roommates and then a decade of living on my own. She was always a good cat and fine even when I was traveling for work a ton. She had incredibly soft calico fur. Her favorite thing was to sit on my lap or on my desk while I was relaxing or working on the computer. One of the odd things about her was she couldn’t really meow. I have no idea why, but she could just make a “kak” kind of sound. No meowing. She was also had an understated purr.

Gypsie sitting on my desk at the apartment in 2001.

Gypsie ended up being one of those challenging things from your life before being married and kids. She never liked Tammy’s cat Logan. She never really like Tammy. She was downright mad when we got a dog, and then another dog. She was mostly stoic about all of that though, and it wasn’t until our last move that her health really started to deteriorate.

Mazie and Gypsie just shortly before the vet visited.

The end for her was incredibly peaceful. She had a shot to put her to sleep, and then another shot that euthanized her. I held her while she fell asleep and it was all harder than I expected. While she had gotten progressively out of sync with the rest of the family happenings, she was after all my cat for nearly 20 years. I can’t help but feel that I could have been a better cat owner for the last year with the new house, a new son and an uncountable number of other things. But I also know that all the kids liked playing with her and she liked playing with them. She wasn’t the friendliest cat in her youth, but in the last year she was very nice to everyone.

Her kidneys had failed and she was very frail. When she fell asleep after the first shot tonight she seemed about as small as a little kitten. She faded away very calmly. Mazie was there and involved in the process. Tammy answered her questions about what was going on. It was hard, but I know it was the right thing to do.

See ya Gyps…