After a busy, stressful week at work (made more stressful than ever since my boss left the company this week), it is an absolute necessity to find something to recharge your internal soul-battery. When I am at home, my recharge area is my bedroom. I am making a dent in our mattress from sitting on my bed reading! From my own perch, I can see our cat’s perch on the window that looks down into the backyard. Most of the time, she just rests. But when there’s a bird at the feeders, she watches closely. Kikyo is a senior cat now, so she isn’t as active as she used to be.

She sure knows how to recharge!

Two weekends ago, my husband and I did one of our favorite “recharge” activities-we went to the Washington State Fair in Puyallup. We chose that weekend, because we knew the 4-H Cats would be there, and we just love to see the clever cages the kids design for their kitties. Here is one of the most clever ones!

What cat isn’t an automatic trip hazard?! This young lady named her black cat Trip Hazard, and its cage is decorated to emphasize that. She won a slew of ribbons for her great idea. I also got a good laugh at the cute t-shirts the kids wore.

How about that cat on the skateboard! Now, it’s not that farfetched of an idea, since just this week on Twitter I saw a great video of a cat on a snowboard!

We also got quite lucky this year, and we got to watch some very accomplished young women showing what they could do on their horses. I have been horse-crazy since childhood, and I always love to watch the kids put their mounts through their paces. We were especially taken with this particular rider and her prancing steed.

This is the whole group at the end of the event, waiting to hear which of them had won ribbons. At command, they lined up their horses in front of an attendant, and I saw that they were being judged on how well they responded to that command.

Later on, after dark, we went to visit the amusement area. I just love the brightly-colored lights on all the rides.

We are very fortunate to live near a beautiful lake, and walking around it is a great way to recharge. Last weekend, I met my best friend for lunch at a lakeside restaurant, and we took a stroll first. Here’s what we saw that made us smile.

Nearly every one of the old concrete posts had a duck on it! They made quite the noise, too.

And just yesterday on my way to work at around 7:00AM, I saw this beautiful scene. I took a chance, and parked in a bus zone to take some quick photos of the mist sitting on the water.

When we have some free time on a weekend, we always love to take a day trip to Leavenworth. The weather was fine, and I got this photo through the car windshield as we drove east over Stevens Pass.

When we got there, we took a walk through town, and saw this pair of goats keeping the grass near the golf course under control.

They certainly seemed to be pretty contented-no need for them to recharge!

Here’s the Link to this week’s Original Post. And Tina’s too!