1-20-09

Chasity‘s daughter Isabella needs a liver transplant, and they need help to make that happen.

Go check out Isabella’s page and donate if you can!!!

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Don’t feel bad, over-explainers – a lot of people over-explain stuff. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. I only over-explain when I feel like I need an excuse (like last week when the dentist’s office called to remind me of my appointment on Thursday, and I told them I needed to cancel and reschedule, and then went on to tell them that my daughter was in town and sick and had to reschedule for the next day and blah blah blah, the complete disinterest from the woman calling from the dentist’s office was practically visible through the phone line).

Most of the time I’m an under-explainer. Like, when I show you my driver’s license and you look at my license and then at me and then you say “You’ve lost a lot of weight!” (since my license picture is from, like, five years ago), I will likely smile and say “Yes, I have.” And then you might look expectantly at me, and I will smile and wait for you to hand my license back. It’s not ’til maybe three days later that it occurs to me that you were hoping I’d mention how I lost that weight.

I tend to assume if someone wants to know something specific, they’ll ask. Which is ironic, because I might be DYING to know the details of something, but I try not to get all up in other people’s shit and demand details, because I don’t want to be perceived as being rude.

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I forgot to mention it in yesterday’s entry, but regarding Miz Poo and the visit to the vet: a few weeks ago I noticed that she was doing an AWFUL lot of grooming, and upon further inspection, I discovered that the hair on her stomach from the waist down (not that cats have waists, but YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN) was pretty much completely gone, and she had a bit of a rash as well. Since she’s our money cat, off to the vet we (eventually) went.

The vet inspected her all over, discussed her history with me, and finally opted to give her a steroid shot. We’re augmenting that at home with a dose of essential oils to help her skin dryness, and a Chlorphenaramine tablet each evening to help with the itchiness. So far, it seems to be working well, but we need to be diligent about keeping up with the oil and pill every day instead of slacking, as we tend to do.

(This is how I’m diligent: “Can you give Miz Poo her pill and oil, please?” to Fred. Because he’s so much better at that sort of thing than I am!)

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So yesterday afternoon, the adjuster from our insurance company came out to check out our roof. It hadn’t occurred to us that our homeowner’s insurance might cover part of the cost of replacing the roof (did I mention that we had a lot of leaking inside the house during the last couple of sets of storms?) until one of Fred’s coworkers mentioned it. The guy showed up, Fred took him around the inside of the house so he could see the damage in the laundry room ceiling, the damage in the computer room, and the damage upstairs.

Then – and it was cold and windy and spitting snow at the time, thus a prime time to be stomping around on the roof of a house – the guy went up on the roof. And the dogs, who’d been snoozing out in front of the chicken coop (the colder it gets, the happier those two dorks are), were all of a sudden “Hey, Gracie! There’s a GUY! On the ROOF! Of the HOUSE! And I think he might be trying to get OUR CHICKENS!” and “GEORGE! GUY! ROOF! PROTECT THE CHICKENS!” and they barked. And they barked. Then they barked some more. Bark. Bark. Bark.

The entire time the guy was up there, they stood at the fence at the front of the back forty and they barked. Even after the guy left, Gracie barked for a little while as if to say “I saw you! And I’ll remember your face! And I will RIP YOU FROM LIMB TO LIMB!”

I said to Fred “Those two are so freakin’ cute, I don’t know how anyone could ever be scared of them.”

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So I mentioned last week that I was going to try making cookies with frozen (then thawed) eggs with a completely different cookie recipe. I made the cookies with the thawed eggs and… they were like cookies. Not cake-like at all!

Apparently it’s only the Sundry cookies, made with frozen (and then thawed) eggs that come out that way.

Just to double-check, I made a batch of the Sundry cookies for Fred over the weekend, leaving out the chocolate chips and adding a cup of peanut butter, and they came out cake-like. Saturday evening, he asked me to hide them from him, ’cause he was eating too many of them. I did – and the good thing is that I won’t be tempted to eat a peanut butter cookie here or there, ’cause I’m no fan of peanut butter cookies.

Anyway, there you go.

As for me, I’ll probably always prefer the Cooking Light chocolate chip cookies. They’re like crack to me!

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I spent a good part of the morning on Saturday making fruit-habanero jams. I started to set up an Etsy store, but after listing a few jars of jam, I stopped and rethought it. Since people have to pay directly to the seller for their purchases, I could put up a self-hosted page with the jams and hot sauces I have available, along with the estimated shipping costs, and I won’t charge myself 20 cents per listing the way Etsy does.

(I considered an eBay store, but at $16 a month just for the store front and the percentage eBay takes from each purchase, I don’t think so.)

So I’m going to set up a page and give that a try. I’ll link to it when it’s live for anyone who’s interested.

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The news on Lem and Delmar: Delmar got adopted on Saturday! Lem still hasn’t been adopted, though. Wah!

Tonight, Marion and Claudette go to the pet store, hopefully to be adopted quickly (not that I expect it, but a foster momma can hope!).

From the terrified, practically-feral kittens they were to the kittens who actually seek out human interaction they are now, they’ve changed a lot. They’re still skittish, and if you walk toward them they’ll run off and hide (especially Marion), but once things are settled, they’ll come and ask for petting.

Last night as I watched TV, with Miz Poo on my lap, Claudette settled down next to me and stayed there for a long time. I honestly never thought we’d get to that point back when we first got them.

Keep your fingers crossed that someone walks by the cat cages at the pet store and can see past their scaredy-cat exteriors to the lovable little sweeties they really are.

More pics over at Love & Hisses.

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Previously
2008: No entry.
2007: No entry.
2006: I think I took my first steps toward being an adult yesterday.
2005: Who the fuck knew?
2004: A Kitchenaid mixer!
2003: “My ass. Please let him go for my ass, and not my throat or my eyes, I’ve got plenty of ass to spare.”
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: Double ear infection, thankyouverymuch.