Month: July 2008

The other day, Glenda in CO suggested that I put the entry I wrote a year ago today in my “Best Of” list.

Her wish is my command! I’ll admit, I cracked up when I re-read the entry, is that wrong?

Yay! Simon’s cat is back!

The others can be seen here, if you missed them first time around.

Before 9:00 yesterday morning, I:

1. Had to run out and herd the chickens back into the chicken yard. Half the damn flock got through a gap in the fence (on the church side of their yard) and the adults were smart enough to circle around the garage and try to get back in through the big gate (though why they didn’t just go back through the gap they went through in the first place I haven’t any idea).

The adult chickens were easily coaxed back into the chicken yard when I started tossing pieces of cinnamon/ raisin bagel on the ground (I bought cinnamon/ raisin bagels last week and then remembered I don’t like raisins in stuff, so set them aside for just such an occasion). The younger chickens were fairly easy to coax back in through the gap they’d gone out through, but Charlie. Goddamn, motherfucking Charlie, with her twisted up crippled toes IS AN IDIOT.

She flapped and squawked and ran away from me, and I had to chase her through the undergrowth between the chicken yard and the church property, and I later told Fred that if I get poison ivy from the experience, I’m going to go out there and wring her stupid fucking neck myself.

Goddamn chickens.

One of the featherheads (what we call our three fancy chickens with the poofs of feather on top of their heads) managed to get her head stuck in the fence while I was chasing Charlie, so I had to rescue her from the evil fence, and she repaid me by squirting a long stream of poo at me as she went squawking and flapping away from me.

I repeat: GODDAMN CHICKENS.

2. Coaxed Joe Bob out from under the duct in the back yard that runs between the air conditioning unit and the house. Tuesday, I was in front of the computer when I heard an odd sound coming from the front room. It was annoying enough that I got up and went into the front room to see who was doing what, and I found Stinkerbelle sitting on her cat tree staring at the floor.

“What the fuck?” I said, and then I heard the sound of a distinctly unhappy cat. It was coming from UNDER THE FLOOR, and I said “What the FUCK?”, and opened the front door and stepped out. I heard it again, this time from under the porch, and I got my shoes on and went around the side of the house and then I worried that perhaps one of the kittens had pried off the cover to the air vent in one of the downstairs rooms and was running around in the air ducts in the house, so I ran upstairs and counted kittens. They were all sleeping (and thus easy to count) and accounted for, so I went back outside and looked through the grate covering the vent on the side of the house (side note: there are vents on all four sides of the house, all covered with grates so, one assumes, nothing living can get under there and set up shop. This includes the porch – nothing can get under the porch from the outside, because it’s bricked off.). I could see and hear nothing. I opened the little side door leading under the house so I could look under there, but I was very wary about actually going under the house because (a) I wasn’t completely sure it was a cat I’d heard and (b) If it was a cat and not one of ours, I didn’t want it to claw my face off. Ultimately, I decided to just wait and see if I heard it again.

Meantime, I realized that Joe Bob was nowhere to be found. I called and called and he never came running – he’s been jumping the fence a lot lately despite the fact that he wears a collar because he’s an ASSHOLE – and finally I just went inside and waited to see what would happen. What happened was that I heard the sound of sheet metal moving around from right outside the computer room window, and when I went out to investigate, I saw Joe Bob’s nose sticking out from under the duct between the air conditioning unit and the house. I called him and he meowed pitifully, and then I backed off and he eventually crawled out from underneath and ran inside to eat.

Turns out there’s apparently a way under the house if you get under that duct, and he’d figured it out. I put an empty litter bucket in front of the dug-out spot next to the duct to block his entrance, and made a mental note to block it more permanently at some point. Of course, I didn’t, so yesterday morning when I couldn’t find Joe Bob and a minute later heard the moving sheet metal sound, I knew he’d pushed the bucket out of the way. I went out with some baby food to coax him out, then grabbed a cinder block from between the garage and workshop (What? Where do you keep YOUR cinder blocks?) and put it in front of the dug-out place so he couldn’t get back in there.

A few hours later, I heard the distinct sheet-metal sound from outside the computer room window and I was all “WTF?”, went out, moved the cinder block, and a minute later saw Maxi’s nose as she meowed pitifully at me. She finally squirmed out and ran inside to eat.

This time I did a cat count before I blocked the dug out area by the duct.

Goddamn cats.

3. Vacuumed the house. I love my Dyson and I love seeing all the shit that comes up off my floors when it’s been two days since I last vacuumed. It gives me such a feeling of accomplishment.

4. Made Snickerdoodles for the pigs. Well. They were supposed to be Snickerdoodles (because I don’t like Snickerdoodles and so I won’t eat them when they’re meant for the pigs; chocolate chip cookies wouldn’t make it out to the pigs because they’d be residing IN MAH BELLEH) except I have the very bad habit of not reading recipes all the way through before I start them, so when I found that you’re supposed to chill the cookie dough and then roll each cookie in cinnamon and sugar, I was all “Fuck THAT, I’m not jumping through hoops for the goddamn pigs” and instead I tossed a big handful of raisins in the cookie dough (I think I mentioned I don’t like raisins in stuff, right? Well. I do like raisins in raisin bran, so maybe I should say I don’t like raisins in baked goods.) and scooped the cookie dough onto cookie sheets and baked them, and as far as I know, they came out just fine. I don’t know for sure, though, because I have no desire to eat any of them. The pigs seemed to enjoy them last night at snack time.

Why did I feel the need to make cookies for the pigs? Because we go out every evening after we shut away the chickens in their coops and give the pigs a snack and they’ve come to expect it, and we’re running out of chocolate and I didn’t want to haul my ass to the Russell Stover store. THAT’S WHY. Besides, a happy pig is a tasty pig, haven’t you heard?

5. Put many ears of corn in the refrigerator. Monday, I was sitting at my computer when I heard the sound of a horn in the driveway. I assumed it was the mail lady, so imagine my surprise when I walked out to see a couple of strange men getting out of a truck. I gave them the universal “May I help you?” look, and the driver of the truck came around the end.

“I know you have chickens,” he said, opening the tailgate of his truck. “I saw you sell eggs…”

“Oh, we don’t really have any eggs,” I said, assuming he wanted to buy some.

“No, no, I’m not here for that,” he said, and he pulled a big bag out of the back of his truck. It was filled to the brim with corn on the cob. “We have this extra corn and it’s too tough for us to eat, so I thought your chickens might like it.”

Instantly, I was interested. Our chickens LOVE corn. “Oh, they’d love it!” I said. “How much?” I was racking my brain trying to figure out how much I was willing to spend on a big bag of corn. I settled on a babillion dollars and not one cent more.

He looked off to the side and considered. “Well,” he said. “Um, free?”

My jaw dropped. “REALLY?” I squealed. He handed over the bag. I thanked him several times, he shrugged it off, and they left. I immediately called Fred to tell him about it, and he told me I should have asked where he lived, and told him we’d drop off some eggs later in the week. I hadn’t even thought of that, and I described the man and told Fred I was going to keep my eyes open when I drove to Closeville later and would let him know if I saw the guy’s truck anywhere.

And a couple of hours later, he showed up again with an equally big bag of corn. He seemed so embarrassed by my profuse thanks that I didn’t have the courage to ask where he lived. He handed me the bag, said “Well, it would have just been gone to waste, I’m glad you could use it!” and motored on out of there.

Living in the country is freakin’ AWESOME.

Kara tries to stop the nursing attempt by (gently) rabbit-kicking Kaylee in the head. Kaylee will not be deterred.

Kara’s all “I give up. Nurse if you want to, brat. GOOD LUCK getting anything, though!”

Kara says “Keep nursing, I’ll just make sure you’re clean” and then suddenly Inara’s like “Hey!”

Inara’s all “What’s going on over HERE?”

Inara’s like “I’ll take some of that action!”

Kara says “Oh HELL no.” Kaylee still tries to nurse, like Kara’s a cow and Kaylee’s her calf. And over by the pillows, Zoe’s all “What’s going on over THERE?”

Kara’s all “I’m OUT of here!”

“Get away from me, you soul-sucking monsters.”

“Wha happen?”

Miz Poo, running for some love.

Previously
2007: My day in motherfucking pictures.
2006: No motherfucking entry.
2005: No motherfucking entry.
2004: No motherfucking entry.
2003: The motherfucking shit fit continued unabated.
2002: I guess I’d better keep these motherfucking babies to myself.
2001: Ever found yourself being a total unreasonable motherfucking bitch for no good reason, and even though you know there’s no reason for the bitchiness, you can’t halt it, can’t stop it, just have to sit back and let it happen?
2000: ‘Cause that’s just the kinda lazy motherfucker I am.

The best thing I’ve purchased recently:

My Kuhn Rikon Gripper Jar Opener. I saw it in a Kuhn Rikon catalog, decided it couldn’t hurt to give it a try (though if I’d realized it came in red, I would have gotten that instead of white!), and it is SO handy. Because I’ve apparently gotten old and frail since I turned 40, I’ve been having one hell of a time opening the damn baby food jars. With the Gripper, I turn the wheel to make the gripper thingies grip the jar lid, and with a simple turn, that damn thing is open. No muss, no fuss! And best of all, it adjusts to lid sizes from 1″ – 3.5″, so if I could have figured out in which direction to open the lid on the spaghetti sauce jar last night, I would have been able to open that, too.

Awesome, and highly recommended.

(And recommended to ME: exercises to strengthen my grip. I’m too young to be old and frail!)

I bought mine online, but I’m fairly certain I saw it at Bed, Bath & Beyond the other day, too.

The thing I will never ever ever EVER buy (and you better not, either!):

So, you’re making dinner. And you’ve got a lot of dinner garbage. It’s a pain in the ass to keep running to the garbage can to toss the garbage in, right? But if you leave the garbage laying on the counter, it makes a mess, right?

Rachael Ray thinks you should spend FIFTEEN GODDAMN DOLLARS on a BOWL to leave by your sink, to toss your garbage in, so you can toss the garbage all at once.

Fifteen dollars. For a BOWL. The sole use of which is to toss garbage in. Really – are you fucking KIDDING ME? What a rip off. Hey, here’s a little-known secret Rachael Ray (or the cheeseballs in charge of her “empire”) doesn’t want you to know: open your cupboard. See that bowl right there? That bowl just sitting there doing nothing? That you won’t need in the preparation of dinner?

Guess what?

You can use that bowl to put your kitchen garbage in!

GASP!

And then you can wash it out and use it for something else!

GASP!

What a revolutionary idea!

Buy the goddamn bowl if you think it’s pretty and you want to put your popcorn in it or eat cereal out of it, I don’t care. It’s YOUR money, not mine. But I will tell you this: if you buy a goddamn FIFTEEN DOLLAR BOWL to PUT YOUR KITCHEN GARBAGE IN because RACHAEL RAY SAYS, I will disown you.

DISOWNED.

So watch your step, is all I’m saying. Don’t be suckered in by the bullshit.

Excellent side dish we had last night with dinner:

Take yellow squash, slice it however you like (I do it kind of on a diagonal, about half an inch thick), put it on a (already sprayed with Pam) cookie sheet. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and very lightly with parmesan. Cook it for 27 minutes at 350º. Remove from oven.

Using a 8×8 baking dish, put a layer of the squash on the bottom. Put a VERY thin layer of spaghetti sauce on top of the squash, sprinkle with parmesan if you like (or your husband is a parmesan-addicted freak), put a second layer of squash, thin layer of spaghetti sauce, parmesan, last layer of squash, last thin layer of spaghetti sauce, last sprinkle of parmesan. Sprinkle a little mozzarella on top, put it back in the oven until the cheese is melted and bubbly (5 – 10 minutes; keep an eye on it). SO GOOD.

I had my six-month dental cleaning yesterday. It turns out that a “shadow” on an x-ray they did back in January, located under an old filling, has gotten bigger, and so the old filling needs to be replaced. This is fine with me, because the old filling is silver and shows through my tooth (it’s on the upper right, near the front of my mouth), and they’re going to replace it with a tooth-colored filling.

I’ll be going for that in about a month.

Anyway, I really like my dentist’s office, because they are very thorough and careful and double-check the medications you’re on, and ask after your health and all that, and the dental hygienist takes copious notes. But anyway, she asked if there was anything new going on with my teeth or my tongue, and I told her that we’re fostering kittens, and every time I pick up one of the kittens I bite my tongue so I won’t squoosh it to death, and she gave me a look and then made a note.

And then we discussed why I had foster kittens, and she went on to basically tell me that cats are “too independent” and have no personality.

She’s a dog person. You know how THEY are.

(Oh, I kid. I know many of you are crazy-add weirdos dog people. Nothing wrong with that! Some of my best friends are! Etc. etc.)

She’s a good dental hygienist, polishes my teeth up nice, always does a good job. You ever feel like punching the dental hygienist when they get the floss out, though? It’s nothing personal against her, but feeling that kind of pain always makes me feel like inflicting pain, you know?

Anyway, my teeth are looking good. The dentist came and looked ’em over, told me I had nice teeth (“‘ank ‘oo”, I said.), and then told me that Monday was a banner day for him. He had eight or nine adults come in who’d never had a single filling. He usually gets one or two in the course of a day, but never that many all at once.

The economy might be going to shit, but we’ve got us some nice teeth. At least those of us who can still afford to go to the dentist!

Today is my first day back at the pet store since surgery. I’ve really missed it! So, a few kitten pics for you, then I’m outta here.

Kaylee the fearsome beast demonstrates that she can unhinge her jaw and swallow your head whole, if she so desires.

(More kitten pics over at Flickr.)

Sugarbutt has found a soft place to snooze. It kinda makes me want a bed of padded envelopes for myself.

I tried to tell Fred that we could TOTALLY easily fit another five cats into the house if we give them all cat carriers to sleep in. We could stack ’em five high! They do it in Japan! He wouldn’t go for it, though. Hmph.

Previously
2007: WHO AM I AND WHAT HAVE I DONE WITH THE REAL ROBYN?
2006: Playing with tigers.
2005: No entry.
2004: No entry.
2003: How to kick a sock’s ass. If it had an ass.
2002: “What’s your name?” he asked.
2001: No entry.
2000: Leave it to me to have sex dreams about the gay guy, huh?

The Great Bra Search – as I am certain you will be SO very pleased to hear – is OVER. I’ve located the perfect bra for me. Well, almost perfect. It ain’t the Olga Perfect Fit, but it’s as close to perfect as I think I’m going to get.

I scoured the internet, I thought I found a source for the Olgas (thank you again, reader Linda!) and I ordered 7 of them and sat back and waited…. and received one. ONE. Because they were out of stock. And hadn’t bothered to tell me before they shipped ONE instead of the SEVEN I ordered. Thanks a LOT, Lady Grace. I found – and ordered – the Olga Perfect Bra in 36DD instead of DDD. Couldn’t hurt to try, right? No dice. I really do need that third D, it appears.

So, the search was on. I don’t know how many bras I ordered, received, and tried on, it was probably in the neighborhood of 15. Bras would come via UPS, FedEx or USPS, I’d have high hopes, only to have them dashed time and again.

On a side note, how much does it piss me off that the bra they recommend to replace the Olga Perfect Fit doesn’t come in size 36DDD, only goes up to a double-D? Grrrrr.

So, finally, last weekend, I got my latest order from FreshPair – two different Wacoal bras and a Goddess. I tried on the Goddess and didn’t care for it. I tried on one of the Wacoals and… eh. Maybe. Then I tried on the second Wacoal – the 85567, FYI – and it fit perfectly. I’m giving up the search, calling it good enough, and sticking with my one lone Olga Perfect Fit bra and will order a couple more of the Wacoals to get me through to January, when I will hopefully have my upper body plastic surgery and the bra-searching will begin anew. JOY.

I hate that the MOST expensive bra I ordered was the one that worked, but I suppose sometimes you’ve gotta pay more to get something that works. Ugh.

So, thank you all for your suggestions and recommendations and keep in mind that just ’cause I didn’t end up with the bra you suggested doesn’t mean I don’t LOVE YOU. It just means our boobs have different needs, is all.

I think I’ve probably bitched about it in the past, but now that I’ve found a solution, let me bitch about it again. In the laundry room, we have two litter boxes. One is a top-entry litter box (this one, though I don’t leave the lid on) and the other is (was) a covered litter box (not this exact one, but similar). Some cats would use one litter box, some would use the other, and some would use both. I figured that the cats who used the covered litter box preferred not to have to jump so high to get in and use the litter box (Spanky and Miz Poo are getting toward the elderly side, after all. Also, Miz Poo has the portly thing going on as well.). BUT one or more of the cats who were using the covered litter box were peeing up the back of it, and because the covered litter box was only so high, the pee would go between the lid and the bottom of the litter box, and sometimes drip out the back.

Ugh.

I got around this problem by draping paper towels along the top of the bottom part of the litter box before I put the top part on (I apologize for the convolution of this paragraph), which stopped the urine from dripping out the back and sides of the litter box, but led to the funnest part of litter box scooping, which was removing the urine-soaked paper towels from between the upper and lower layers of the litter box before I could scoop, then replace the paper towels with clean paper towels.

Fun.

So I got it into my head that we could get a covered plastic container – like they sell for storage – that was approximately the height of the covered litter box and Fred could cut a hole in the front of the container so they could use it as a litter box, and they could pee up the side of the damn thing all they wanted, and it would just go back into the litter and not drip out the back. Only problem was, we couldn’t find a container as high as the covered litter box, and I didn’t want to go lower (I assumed the cats wouldn’t go for that), so when we were at Lowe’s one day Fred pointed out a container and suggested we give it a try, and I hemmed and hawed because it didn’t have a cover, and then I shrugged and figured “Fuck it”, because the worst that could happen is the little motherfuckers could pee on something else to register their displeasure and THEY ALREADY DO THAT, so we could give it a try.

Fred cut a hole in the container – a bucket, I guess you’d actually call it – and I dumped litter in it, and we waited to see what would happen. What happened is that the cats LOVE the damn thing. They’ve almost all gone to using it exclusively (though the other one gets occasional use). When Fred cut the hole in the front, he did it a little low, though, which meant that the cats were scattering litter all over the place, so this past weekend I stopped by Lowe’s and picked up another one, marked where the hole should go, and eureka! Perfect litter box!

The best part is that the buckets cost less than $6. Beat THAT price for a litter box!

I got an email from the shelter manager yesterday. Apparently they’ve never had a kitten season like this before – cats and kittens are coming in at a very fast rate, the shelter and all the foster homes are filled up, and adoptions are down. There are currently 55 (!) kittens in foster homes, at the pet store, and at the shelter. The shelter manager has come up with a new plan that will helpfully spur adoptions along (basically giving people the option to spend time with the kittens at their foster home – something she’s left up to each foster parent, they’re not required to let strangers into their homes). I’m more than willing to let prospective parents come spend time with the kittens here, and while I hope it helps move adoptions along, I also kinda hope it doesn’t, you know?

Ah well. I don’t know how anyone could resist these little faces once they see them, anyway.

Truly, he is SUCH a Momma’s boy.

Zoe was sitting in her fish. Just as I snapped the second picture, Kaylee’s paws came from out of nowhere for the smackdown.

More kitten pics over at Flickr.

Although he’s still wearing the collar, Sugarbutt is starting to act more like himself. Yesterday, he had a long stare-down with Joe Bob in the back yard, and then he chased him around the yard before sauntering over to the patio and settling down while looking fairly smug.

Previously
2007: It was quite a way to start the day, lemmetellya.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: I am smooth like a Barbie doll, and as far as I’m concerned, everyone else in the world is lacking nipples and sexual organs.
2003: Although, my father used to say to me ‘Nando, don’t be a shnook. It’s not how you feel, it’s how you look! And roo look mahvelous!
2002: Because, my friends, I am a squeezer.
2001: Any excuse to hold up the Laziest Gal in the South title.
2000: No entry.

Those of you looking for the laundry soap recipe, it’s here.

I think I mentioned I was going to use it to do laundry over the weekend. I did, and it works very well, and there’s just the slightest scent of Fels Naptha soap when the laundry is done. If that bothers you, you can add a cup of white vinegar to the fabric softener bin in your washer, and your clothes will smell like nothing at all when they’re dry. (No, they don’t smell like vinegar at all, I promise.)

Unless you hang them out to dry, in which case they’ll smell like sunshine.

Edited to add: You can usually find Fels Naptha and Borax in the laundry aisle, but washing soda is really hard to find, at least around here. I ordered the soap (actually, several bars since it didn’t change the price of shipping) and the washing soda from here, and they also carry Borax.

That site does have a “make your own laundry soap kit” with pre-grated Fels Naptha, but I tossed my bar of soap in the food processor and it worked like a charm.

Boneheaded things I have recently done:

1. When playing Scrabulous on Facebook the other night, I lined up my letters and hit “play word” and was incensed when I got the “invalid word” message. “That’s a word!” I protested loudly. I turned to Fred “Isn’t (the word) a real word?!” “Yes,” Fred agreed. “Well, goddamn Scrabulous won’t let me play it!” I was appalled. “H-A-R-E-L-I-P?” Fred spelled. Which is when I had to admit that I’d spelled it H-A-I-R-L-I-P. “That’s not a real word, it’s just another word for ‘mustache’!” Fred teased me. Luckily, I had the letters to play it spelled correctly, so all was good.

2. I mailed off ten bill payments yesterday and just now realized that I sent them off with 41-cent Christmas stamps affixed rather than the correct 42-cent stamps. So now I’m waiting to see if they get returned to me.

3. I went out to feed the pigs yesterday afternoon (usually Fred’s job, but he had to take Sugarbutt and Newt to the vet, so I offered to do it for him), and when I got out there, the pigs (who were sound asleep in their nasty fucking wallow, which they PEE IN if it’s not wet enough for them) came running and then they stood by the fence and started shaking the mud off while they waited for their food. Needless to say, I showered and changed clothes when I got back inside. Blech.

With Nance and Trey’s absence, my house is far too quiet. Even the cats are laying around, depressed that they don’t have Trey to bully into petting them and rubbing their ears.

Miz Poo got all emo and set up a MySpace for herself, so that she can lament the loss of her boyfriend.

Actually what “Miz Poo” spent an hour doing on Saturday was:

1. Started up a new Gmail address for herself.

2. Tried to sign up with MySpace. ONLY she stupidly put in her true birth date (September 17, 1999), and since MySpace doesn’t DO cat years, it was under the impression that she was only 8 years old and wouldn’t let her sign up.

3. Tried again with her age in cat years.

4. No success.

5. Started up YET ANOTHER Gmail address for herself and tried to sign up with MySpace.

6. No success.

7. Fumed and fussed and fidgeted.

8. Got on Fred’s computer and tried to sign up with MySpace.

9. SUCCESS.

Apparently her lack of opposable thumbs makes this whole computer thing difficult for her, though. Trying to manipulate the mouse makes her cranky. Also? Get your own damn computer, cat!

Fred got back from the vet yesterday to report that Sugarbutt has to keep the collar on for another week (his toes are healing, but slowly, and we need to keep him from licking between them and aggravating the condition). Also, the vet thinks that Newt’s tail was broken when he was younger and either never healed, or has been reinjured. We got pain pills for Newt: hopefully if the tail doesn’t hurt, he won’t worry at it and it can heal. But if it doesn’t get better in the next 10 days, the vet will have to remove the end of Newt’s tail and he’ll end up with a bobbed tail similar to Mister Boogers’.

I’m hoping it heals; I’m not looking forward to keeping Newt inside while his tail stumps heals.

Goddamn cats.

Kara and the kittens are venturing downstairs more and more often. They don’t stay downstairs for very long (although Inara really likes to hang out with us in the living room every evening for a while), but it’s nice to see them venturing forth. Yesterday, Sugarbutt and Kara almost came to blows because Sugarbutt was trying to go hide in his closet (in the hallway) and she was blocking the entrance.

Our cats are also occasionally venturing upstairs during the day. Spanky and Tom have both been seen nose-to-nose with Kara. There’s always lots of hissing, but eventually our cats retreat and peace is restored.

“You want a piece of ME? Because I will mess you UP.”

I went looking for Joe Bob the other day and thought he’d gotten out of the damn back yard again. After some closer looking, I realized he’d just taken refuge in the clump of whatever-it-is growing in a corner of the yard.

Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: Just a quick picture to let y’all know what we did with our Saturday morning.
2005: I turned and gave her the Bug-Eyed Look of Annoyance*, to no avail.
2004: “Agh!” I yelled. “I hate you kitties! I hate you all!”
2003: Do motherfuckers retain water?
2002: “Your cheatin’ heeeeeart…”
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.

Our Independence Day was pretty relaxed and low-key. We hung out at the house in the morning, Nance used my homemade laundry soap to do a load of laundry (and gave two thumbs up to the homemade laundry soap!) and hung it out to dry. Trey helped Fred with his work on the old chicken coop (it wasn’t up to Fred’s exacting standards and needed to be torn down to the frame and rebuilt) and then Nance and Trey and I abandoned Fred to his working-outside-in-the-unbearable-heat ways and went out for a late breakfast at Cracker Barrel. We swung by Publix, picked up a few things, and then headed home for the rest of the day.

I made the Fourth of July cake – the cake part – and let it cool.

By the way, the making of the cake took longer than it should have – I’d wanted to make it first thing in the morning – because it went like this “Okay, this butter has to be at room temperature, so I’m going to set it out now, and then it should be ready to go by 9:00.”

At 9:00 “Okay, I should be able to… (looking at the recipe) Well, shit! The sour cream is supposed to be at room temperature too!”

At 10:00 “Okay, this should be quick… (looking at the recipe) Well, shit! The eggs have to be at room temperature TOO!”

I didn’t end up baking the cake ’til we got back from breakfast and Publix, and it’s a good thing I glanced at the frosting recipe when I was making the cake, because the damn cream cheese needed to be at room temperature TOO.

A word of advice – read the entire recipe closely before you begin. DUH. You’d think I’d KNOW that by now.

Once the cake was out of the oven, we all kind of scattered. Nance said she was going off to read, and I claimed I was going off to read as well, but – as I told Trey – “Saying I’m going to go read means I’m going to read for about ten minutes and then take a nap.” While I was reading, it started to rain, and then I watched it rain for a few minutes and started to doze off. Then the kittens did something to wake me up. Then I’d doze again and they’d do something to wake me up. Repeat 10,000 times until I figured it was about time to get my ass up and make the frosting for the cake.

The frosting was especially easy, so once it was made and the cake was frosted, I thought about just sprinkling the blueberries and raspberries on the cake in a random pattern – I was NOT getting the damn pastry bag out and piping stripes and stars on the damn thing. But in the end, I did use the blueberries to mark off a blue square in the upper left corner and the raspberries to mark off stripes.

I took a picture, of course. But I couldn’t get a good picture with the pan on the stove, so I put the pan on the floor, and when Nance walked into the kitchen, there I was bent over the cake trying to get a good picture.

Here’s a tip: if someone teases you about being a Housewife of Doom and a perfectionist, it is difficult to refute that assertion if you’re caught in a compromising position. Just so you know.

So for dinner, we were going to grill out steaks, but due to the weather I ended up having to make them inside. Nance and Trey also got to experience the green beans I’ve made several times since I “discovered” it (did I ever mention that I leave out the red peppers and it’s perfectly fantastic anyway?) and oven-fried summer squash and zucchini.

Later, we cut the cake and Nance and Trey and I each had a piece, and we all pronounced it fabulous. I couldn’t finish the piece I took, and neither could Trey and for that matter neither could Nance (word of advice: take half as much cake as you think you’ll want. You can always go back for more!) and we later fed it to the pigs. Fred didn’t try a piece until sometime Saturday morning, and he was distinctly underwhelmed. Which is fine with me – it’s not like I was planning to ever make it again, I just wanted to give it a try. (We froze about half of what was left and fed the rest to the pigs and chickens.)

Fred and Trey went off to watch movies, and Nance and I hung out, then put the chickens up and fed the pigs their nightly snack and hung out some more. Nance was packing and we were hanging out, and she called me into the guest bedroom to see that Sugarbutt had burrowed up under the comforter and was napping there, and we laughed.

Not ten minutes later, Mister Boogers came over to me, looking for a pet and acting generally guilty, and a minute later Nance discovered that someone had peed on the guest bed.

GODDAMN CATS.

So we stripped the bed and remade it, and I told all the cats that I hated them – I mean, Nance completely understood, she has cats herself, but GODDAMN the little fuckers. Why must they be such assholes, I ask you?

Saturday morning we planned to leave the house at 7:00 so we’d get to the airport around 7:30, which would give Nance and Trey an hour and a half to get through the ticketing process and security and all that. I figured I’d wake up around 5:15, as I’ve been doing most days, so when I woke up and glanced toward the window and saw that it was light I assumed it was 5:15ish. I lay in bed and petted Miz Poo and let my mind wander, and then I wondered if I should get up, and so I looked to see what time it was.

I am so blind without my glasses and the bedside table is far enough away that to see what time it is, I have to squint very very hard and then lean off the side of the bed a little, in the direction of the clock on the table. Imagine my surprise when I realized it was 6:21!

I managed to shower, scoop the litter boxes and let the kittens out of the foster room, and still had time to sit and talk with Nance and Trey before we left the house.

At the airport, we headed for the Delta counter and were told that Nance had to check in at the kiosk, she couldn’t just go and stand in line. Further, there were at least two Delta employees circulating, helping people check in, and it was RAWTHER a great big clusterfuck and I’m not sure why those two employees couldn’t just stand behind the counter and print out tickets to make things go faster, but I’m not in charge of that sort of thing so WHATEVS.

I talked Nance through checking herself and Trey in at the kiosk – well, actually I started to talk her through it, then I elbowed her out of the way and did most of it myself because I’m a bossy bitch. She had their tickets, checked their luggage, we stopped and looked at the gift shop, and then we were at Security.

I waited ’til they got through Security, waved goodbye to them, then left the airport. I stopped at Publix to get groceries, then went home.

I get the idea that Nance never ever ever EVER wants to fly again, but I could be wrong, she’s kind of vague about it. Heh. Hopefully we didn’t bore Trey too much – that kid cracked me up. He got a hockey jersey at Hot Topic and he was way excited about it. He checked out the gym in the garage, and we had several talks about weight-lifting, his jersey, his friends, the cats, and… the jersey. He loves that jersey and I hope for his sake that it lives a long life. He loved it so much I was starting to wish I’d bought myself a damn jersey. He was making me jealous! Over a hockey jersey for a band I don’t even know! He’s a good kid and funny and he is welcome back any time!

Miz Poo, especially, took a shine to him. I mean, all the cats liked him but Miz Poo was all “This my boyfriend, y’all back OFF.” I do believe that all the cats approached him (and Nance!) for love and allowed themselves to be petted except for Stinkerbelle.

Nance texted me to let me know when they’d arrived home, and I suggested she just turn around and come back because I was bored, but oddly enough she wasn’t up for that. Hmph.

Because the cucumbers have started coming in with a vengeance, I spent most of Saturday morning and afternoon making pickles. I made a batch of dill pickles for Fred, a batch of faux-Wickles that a reader sent (only the recipe called for thai chilis, and since I couldn’t find any of those I ended up using cayenne peppers instead; we’ll see how that turns out), and a batch of Aunt Teh’s Bread and Butter Pickles. I have a few more pickle recipes to try, and then we’ll probably end up feeding the rest of the cukes to the chickens. We can only eat so many pickles in a year!

Sunday morning I got up around 6:30 (slacker!) and started right in doing the fun stuff – laundry, vacuuming the house, taking the recyclables to the recycling center, stopping at the grocery store, stopping at Lowe’s. I spent most of the day puttering around the house, getting little things done. We decided to have an all-veggie meal for dinner, so I prepared stuff like the oven-fried squash and sauteed vegetables ahead of time to lessen the amount of work that would need to be done in the hour before dinner.

The menu ended up being: corn on the cob; oven-fried pattypan squash, eggplant, and okra; black-eyed peas (from the freezer, left over from last summer), cherry tomatoes and mozzarella; cucumbers; and cubed summer squash, pattypan squash, eggplant, onions, and roma tomatoes sauteed together in a pan. For dessert: peach cobbler made with Splenda. Of that, the only things we didn’t grow ourselves: the coating on the oven-fried vegetables, the mozzarella, and the bisquick in the cobbler. And the Splenda, of course.

This farming thing is a pain in the ass sometimes, but when we can have an entire meal made of stuff that grew in our own garden, that’s pretty freakin’ cool.

Kara and the babies are doing well. I let them out pretty much as soon as I get up in the morning, and they stay out all day until bedtime, when I give them a plate of baby food and then lock them in the foster room for the night. When I open the door in the morning, they about knock me over in their eagerness to get out, but when they realize I’ve got a plate of baby food they run right back in (except for Kaylee, who could not be less interested).

Every now and then the babies will try to nurse, but Kara shuts that down IMMEDIATELY.

I spend as much time with them as I can, and Zoe likes to snuggle up against me and let me pet her. I know their days are numbered and they’ll be going to the pet store when there’s room, and I think that if I can smother them with as much love as I can, it’ll carry them through those scary days until someone falls in love with them and takes them home.

Letting these guys go is going to be HARD.

More kitten pics over at Flickr.

I think this damn collar is breaking his spirit. All he does is lay around and sleep; no running around like his ass is on fire, no hanging out on top of the cupboards. It’s for the best, I know he needs to heal, but it’s hard to see.

Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: Damn freaky cats.
2005: “It’s cancer,” Fred said. “That’s a tumorous lip if I’ve ever seen one!”
2004: I didn’t tell her that I think scars are badass and it can scar up all it wants.
2003: God, I hate people.
2002: No entry.
2001: So the house situation, oh what a story it is.
2000: This week, the devil won.