Best new blog I’ve discovered lately (I’m sure I followed the link from another blog, but I don’t remember which): Waiter Rant.
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So, Sunday I got a bug up my butt (not literally)(at least, I don’t think so) and decided to clean the master bathroom and dust the upstairs and vacuum as well. I hadn’t cleaned the bathroom since the day before I had surgery, which means it had gone for three weeks without being cleaned – sadly, that’s about the average ’round these parts – and the ring around the bathtub was starting to get on my nerves.
Anyway, I cleaned the bathroom, dusted the upstairs, and vacuumed the upstairs, then I looked at the stairs and decided they were horribly disgusting and needed to be vacuumed. Since I’m not supposed to lift anything heavy until six weeks after surgery, I decided I’d vacuum halfway down the stairs with the stair attachment, then ask Fred to carry it to the bottom of the stairs so I could do the other half of the stairs (the Dyson doesn’t quite reach to the top of the stairs, or I would have had him carry it down first). So I left the Dyson at the top of the stairs and started vacuuming. I’d done three or four stairs when I glanced up and saw that the Dyson was starting to tip over a little. I decided to do one more stair, then turn it off and yell for Fred.
I was in the middle of that stairs, when I heard a horrific crash as the Dyson tipped over and started cartwheeling down the stairs. The main part of the vacuum hit me and stopped, and the canister part detached and continued merrily on its way past me, smacking my hand really hard. By this time, Fred had flown out of the kitchen and was yelling “Are you okay?!” at me. I kind of looked around blankly, trying to figure out why the Dyson looked so funny, and then set it upright and turned it off.
“Are you okay?!” Fred asked again.
“Yeah,” I said, then pressed my now-bleeding hand against my side to blot the blood.
“Did it hit you?” he asked.
“Not really,” I said. It had hit my leg, but my leg felt fine.
Fred picked up the canister – which had come open when it hit the bottom of the stairs, scattering dust and crap everywhere, and closed it. Then he came up the stairs, took the Dyson, and set it at the bottom of the stairs. There was a bit of plastic chipped off the side of the top of the canister, but it fit back into place with no problem, and when we plugged the Dyson in to make sure it was working okay, it worked like a champ. So I vacuumed the entire downstairs while I was at it.
I love my Dyson.
But I’m afraid that now it’s tasted human blood, it’s going to require a periodic human sacrifice.
I wonder if cat blood would suffice?
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So, I know I’ve mentioned that Sugarbutt likes to climb in bed with me in the middle of the night and lick my neck while kneading VERY VERY HARD on whatever exposed skin he can find. The thing is, that it really fucking HURTS when he kneads on exposed skin, even if I keep his claws clipped, because they might be blunt claws, but they’re still CLAWS. Finally, I bitched about it enough (and then Tommy tried to climb a tree in the back yard last week) that Fred suggested we give
SoftPaws a try.
I ordered – at Fred’s suggestion – a set of red nail caps and a set of purple. They came pretty quickly – in a matter of days, I think – and Friday night we clipped Sugarbutt’s claws and Tommy’s, too. Then we carefully put caps on all of Tommy’s nails. It was kind of a production, because Tommy doesn’t much like having his paws messed with, and at one point he even growled at us, so we fell into a rhythm of putting one nail cap on, then letting him down and distracting him with a toy. We got four nails on each paw covered, and decided not to worry about his “thumb” nails. He licked at his paws for a little while, but didn’t seem too disturbed by the nail covers, and was pretty quickly back to running around, chasing Sugarbutt.
So on Saturday, we did Sugarbutt. And then we discussed it, and decided to go ahead and cover their “thumb” nails with caps, too, because it became pretty clear that they use those nails more than we realized. And Saturday night when Sugarbutt came to visit me, and he kneaded just as hard as he could, it didn’t hurt at ALL.
Thank GOD for SoftPaws!
I think the red goes nicely with his fur. (He now has a purple “thumb” nail, but that was after we took this picture)
Pretty in purple.
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“Bob! Dude! I don’t want to get nasty, here, but I NEED SOME FREAKIN’ ‘NIP! I’m going through withdrawal, man!”
I guess this is Sugarbutt’s version of working out.
All of today’s uploaded pictures are
here.
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Previously
2005: No entry.
2004: The Bean appeared before me, eyes wide and dark, a sad little
I’m a poor kitty who has lost his way look on his face.
2003: They freaked out.
2002: Um. In yesterday’s entry, I MEANT to link to Fred with the words “nice butt”, not MYSELF.
2001: We got proof today that we, in fact, do not have two gay hamsters.
2000: No entry.]]>