October 2008 – Bitchypoo

10/31/08

Holy crap! Ten years! “Let’s do a picture with serious faces, Bessie.” “Okay. Wait. I don’t think I can stop from smirking. Are you making a face back there?” “Who, me? No.” “Okay, I think I had a straight face.” “Me too.” “Were you making a face back there?” “No, not at all.” (Bastard) (I … Continue reading “10/31/08”

Holy crap! Ten years!

“Let’s do a picture with serious faces, Bessie.”
“Okay. Wait. I don’t think I can stop from smirking. Are you making a face back there?”
“Who, me? No.”

“Okay, I think I had a straight face.”
“Me too.”
“Were you making a face back there?”
“No, not at all.”
(Bastard)

(I need a haircut in a serious way.)

Happy tenth anniversary, you cat-wrangling, coop-building, chicken-herding bastard!

(I give it another ten before you flee screaming from the house of ten thousand cats.)

And happy anniversary to our wedding twins Shelly and R, too!

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A few years ago, I announced that I’d started a savings account at Emigrant Direct to save up for a really nice tenth anniversary vacation. We were talking about going to the Bahamas or Hawaii. We were going to spend an entire week and do it up right.

And then we bought Crooked Acres and used all the vacation money to renovate the inside of the house.

Well worth it, in my opinion.

(Now I’ll start saving for our 15th anniversary. By then we’ll probably have about 3,000 chickens, so I’ll need to factor in the money to pay someone for a week of house sitting, chicken wrangling, and cat herding!)

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By the way, I facetiously said to Fred last week, “What special thing are we going to do for our anniversary?” (facetious because we don’t really ever do anything special on our anniversary because we are special snowflakes and WE don’t need a SPECIAL DAY to show that we love each other, we show each other EACH AND EVERY DAY how much we consider the other to be a great big pain in the ass!), Fred said “We should go out to dinner!”

I snorted. “Yeah, right.”

I’d eat out all the time if I had someone to go with, but Fred doesn’t like to go out to dinner (he claims I’m incorrect when I say this, but he lies.), so I figured he was just attempting to be funny.

So far, he seems to actually be serious about it. I’m not discounting the possibility that he’ll do a last-minute pick-up-dinner-on-the-way-home end run, but it looks like we might really do it.

HE REALLY DOES LOVE ME!!!!

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Anyone out there still watching The Shield? With four episodes left, they’re ratcheting up the tension nicely, aren’t they?

I predict that Shane and Vic are both going to end up dead and Ronnie will head up some new Strike Team. Or maybe Ronnie’ll be dead, too. I fell like there’s just no way Vic can come out of this alive, though.

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Once you came to live with Fred what surprised you, in a good way, that you hadn’t known about his personality?

How rock-solid and straight-forward he is. He doesn’t play games, he doesn’t use what you’ve said against you, he doesn’t avoid confrontation. He’d rather talk it out and clear the air and get it over with. He doesn’t hold grudges. He sees right through the manipulative bullshit people like to pull, and he doesn’t put up with that shit. He’s supportive and smart and he makes me laugh like nobody’s business. He can do absolutely anything he puts his mind to. Twelve years in, he still manages to surprise me often and did I mention how funny he is? He’s my safe place to fall, my rock (but not an island), and my best and most trusted and trustworthy friend. He’s my lobster, my bridge over troubled water.

Pardon the mush, but it’s my 10th anniversary. If I can’t be mushy now, when can I?

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Possibly asked and answered (though I didn’t see it listed in your book list) : Have you read Outlander by Diana Gabaldon?

I own it, but I haven’t read it yet. I believe it’s on the top shelf of my bookcase, which means it’s getting to the front of the queue to be read! I’m simultaneously looking forward to it, since so many of you loved it, and dreading it because HELLO that is one thick motherfucker of a book!

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I have a question about the frozen eggs (actually, I have a question for my coworker who just got her first chickens this summer). Can you do all the egg stuff with frozen eggs that you can with fresh eggs or does freezing do something to the texture and they become good for only baking and such?

and

I have never heard of freezing eggs! So what do you do when you are ready to cook them? Just thaw them out? Can you fix them any style and do they taste the same as fresh?

Frozen eggs, once thawed, can be used for all the same things you use fresh eggs for (aside from hard-boiling them, obviously), and to me the texture and taste is exactly the same. I’ve used them to bake with, I’ve made quiches with them, and I’ve scrambled them and had them for breakfast, and honestly can’t tell the difference between the ones that were frozen, and the fresh ones.

To thaw them out, just put them in a small bowl and set them on the counter ’til they’re thawed. If you need one right away, you can put the frozen egg in a sandwich baggie and put it in warm water.

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My uncle yells out in his sleep all the time. It’s gotten to the point that he wife doesn’t even do anything. That man has some really scary dreams. I actually heard him when I was kid and visiting them. I hope Fred was able to get back to sleep.

Oh, Fred was able to get back to sleep NO PROBLEM, the bastard. In fact, I finished reading about ten minutes later and when I put my book on the dresser, it fell off and landed on the floor with a loud bang. The next morning, I said “Did the book falling wake you up?” and he said that he hadn’t heard a thing. Hmph.

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I’ll be the first to say it. Maybe it wasn’t Fred who called out in the night. Maybe it was your house ghost? HA! just kidding of course.

One of the closets in my room (I have two!) tends to pop open in the middle of the night. I, personally, know that it’s because the temperature in my room and the temperature in the closet tends to vary widely, and the pressure causes the closet door to pop open.

Fred prefers to believe it’s due to a ghost.

I don’t believe in ghosts, and it’s going to take more than a door popping open occasionally to convince me otherwise.

THAT’S RIGHT, GHOSTS! I’M CALLING YOU OUT!

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What are you, Jainist? Squish the wasps.

Damn you for making me go look up Jainism. (For those who don’t want to go read, Compassion for all life, human and non-human, is central to Jainism.) Given my love for a nice cut of meat –

(pardon me while I snort like a 13 year-old boy)

I am SO not a Jainist. I don’t squish the wasps because I don’t like the crunching sound (or feeling) they make when squished. In fact, just thinking about that crunching sound/ feeling makes my skin crawl. BLEH.

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Bobpod is DEAD?!?!? Or was this Bobpod 2? I hope you get a replacement soon – KATG is finally posting shows again!

This was the second iPod, which I named Bawbpod. And I know they’re finally posting KATG shows again – it figures that they’re finally back from England and Israel, and my iPod craps out on me!

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I put my cell phone in my bra all the time. Sometimes I sweat and it stops working for a few days, but eventually drys out. Don’t buy a new one until you give it time to dry completely. I also heard you can put it in a jar of rice…who knows??

I’ve put that damn iPod in a bowl of (dry) rice, and am giving it the weekend to straighten itself out. If it doesn’t get its shit together by Monday, I’m going to buy a cheaper mp3 player and stop downloading TV shows on iTunes, since I hardly ever get around to watching them anyway!

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I was just reading back to you getting Miz Poo and Mr. Boogers, and I was wondering if the cats ever see you come home with another cat and just think “oh, Jesus CHRIST here they go again…”

I always wonder what on earth our cats must think about the comings and goings of other cats. Because I know at first every time there was a new cat, they’d all have a fit and hiss and growl at the new one and flounce about and have temper tantrums for days. These days, it’s kind of like “Oh, look. New cat. Le hiss. THAT never happens. Wonder if this one is staying or just visiting?”

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Poor Miz Poo! Freaky puffy lip, freaky butt tumor. I swear calico (or tortis or whatever) cats are just weird when it comes to health issues.

If Miz Poo’s anything to go by, tri-color cats are money pits. I always refer to Miz Poo as our “trouble child” when I’m talking to the vet’s assistant. Not only does she (Miz Poo, that is, not the vet’s assistant. That I’m aware of, anyway.) have puffy lip and butt tumor issues, she used to have problems with her eyes. Nothing’s flared up with her eyes in years, though, so I’m sure we’re just about due for something to happen THERE.

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Saturday must have been the day for cats bursting open. One of ours had a lovely (horrible) cyst burst and a big ol’ hole. We did take her to the emergency vet and blew $300 as she was obviously feeling miserable. May the rest of the week be better for cats and iPods.

When the vet said that he saw tumor tissue on Monday, I immediately recalled the fact that it seems like there’ve been a LOT of bloggers/ journalers who’ve had to put their cats to sleep lately, and my heart just sank. I mean, I know that 9 years old is getting up there for cats, but I hope like hell that Miz Poo is around for a good long time yet.

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I threw in a couple of handfuls of romaine lettuce at the end of the mixing to keep the indoor pigs (Fred and I) the hell out of the cookies. Sometimes I toss dried cherry tomatoes in the cookies, sometimes I toss in a handful of collard greens, whatever’s on hand and makes us think “Ewwww!” will work.

Pure.
Unadulterated.
Genius.

My other genius move is what I did last week. The spud’s birthday was on Sunday, so I sent out her box of birthday presents on Wednesday, and since I was having a hankering for cookies – these cookies are SO FREAKIN’ GOOD – I made a double batch of the cookies, sent a bunch to her with her birthday presents, sent a bunch more to my sister and nephew (I was sending her a box of books), and then had a few for us to eat ourselves.

I wouldn’t put it past myself to put chocolate chip cookies on the giveaway page at some point, just so I can make them, send most of them off to other people, and have a few to myself.

(Yes, I could make the dough, bake a few cookies, and put the rest of the dough in the freezer. What makes you think I wouldn’t eat frozen cookie dough straight from the freezer until I was sick? Do I strike you as having that kind of self control?)

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OMG, my cats also pee and have tried to poo in the drain. Like they aim in the drain and go about their business. And it doesn’t matter if the litter box is clean or not… OMG… I thought it was just me!!!!

Pleasepleaseplease oh please god, don’t let me utter the words “If any of my cats ever pooped in the sink I would strangle him with my bare hands”, please god, please note I AM NOT SAYING THAT because I know you are a cruel and angry god who would immediately make Mister Boogers go poop in the sink and I don’t want to have to kill him. Pleasepleaseplease.

I strongly suspect that it was that bastard Newt who taught Mister Boogers to pee in the kitchen sink, because one day NO ONE was peeing in the sink and the next day Newt did it and Mister Boogers was doing it, too. How did Newt know that peeing in the sink was acceptable (in our house, maybe not in everyone’s, but better in the sink than on the bed and I swear I scrub out that sink every single morning.), is what I want to know? Peeing in the sink he can master, but the cat door? Not so much.

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A nice Autumn/Winter wreath would look good above that table on your porch…

I agree!

I need to go shopping.

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Robyn, you MUST get a jack-o-lantern on that front porch ASAP!!!! 😀

I talked about it, actually, but Fred said “That would be like a friendly invitation for people to come knock on the door on Halloween!” He’s such a curmudgeon.

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In terms of beans and their effect on the digestive system: a few drops of beano (or a beano tablet) eaten with the beans works wonders for me. It’s a great product for reducing gas. Of course, if you have high blood pressure,you may want to keep the gas, but that’s another story….

and

Regarding beans and gas – if you soak dried beans and change the water 3 times during the first day, then the morning of the second day, you can cook them and will not get gas. (my father – who is from the country here in Texas) told me this recently – I had no idea.

I have absolutely tried Beano and also the changing of the water, and both of them work nicely, but Fred is so very sad when beans do NOT give him gas that I can’t bring myself to disappoint him.

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Kim is SO not 29!

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No way in hell is that Kim woman 29!!! And what are these emails of which you speak?

I’m starting to think that Kim is one of those “29 and holding” women and might be closer to 40.

The emails I was referring to (which I quoted from the past two weeks regarding RHoATL) are just emails I traded with a friend. I probably oughta just start up a forum somewhere for us to talk about the show, shouldn’t I?

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LOVING the True Blood! Bill, fine; Sam, fine; Rene? HOT. AS. FIRE.

I have to say, I do like me some Rene (though I have to admit that my favorite male on the show is LaFayette. He cracks me up every week.).

This most recent episode, where Sookie and Bill were babysitting Arlene’s kids? That whole scene with them goofing off at the kitchen table was just stupid and goofy and contrived and I hated it. I DO NOT WANT MY VAMPIRES TO ACT LIKE GOOFBALLS AND TRY TO CHARM CHILDREN, PLEASE.

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Thanks for asking about hand-held vacuums. I’m looking forward to the answers. Sounds like Dysons are hit or miss, but whatever I end up buying, I’ll use the heck out of for a week and return if it can’t do the job. My friend in Canada likes her Eureka EZ Clean Bagless Hand Vacuum; anybody else have one of those? A local friend likes her hand-held, but doesn’t remember what it is. She’s supposed to bring it to work on Monday and let me try it out for a couple of days.

and

For picking up the food that drops (or is thrown)off the trays of my just turned three year old, active, messy little boys, I use a cordless Black and Decker CHV1560 15.6 volt cyclonic action dustbuster. It works fine picking up both dry and wet things, like oatmeal.

Anyone else got a hand vacuum they love?

My Dyson hand held is currently housing about 10 wasps. I actually tried to free them, since you can just hit the lever to let the bottom drop open, and when I dropped the bottom off the canister, the dumbasses climbed up higher in the canister. I figure, if they’re going to be THAT GODDAMN STUPID when I’m trying to give them their freedom, then THEY DESERVE TO DIE.

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Does Kara ever get sad about not having her babies around? I must have missed the entry where you announced her adoption

I wrote about our adopting Kara here. Wow, it’s only been a week? It seems like it’s been much longer – I guess because she was with us for six months before we decided to adopt her!

Kara was sad and quiet and contemplative for a few days after her babies left, but she got over it pretty quickly. I often wonder what she’d do if she came face-to-face with one of her babies, whether she’d remember them or not. I had kind of hoped that when she saw the new foster kittens that her maternal instinct might kick in and she might want to mother them a little, but not so much: she continues to hiss and growl at them.

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Do the cats poop outside or save it for indoors?

It depends on the cat. Some of them prefer the outdoors, some of them prefer the indoors. I swear that Tommy, Sugarbutt, Mister Boogers, and Joe Bob will wait until I happen to glance out the window before they get into position right there where I can see them. The girls prefer to come inside and use the litter box, and Spanky can go either way.

Suffice it to say that we don’t walk barefoot through our back yard.

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Are you finding the pork from your piggies tastes different than store bought? We recently got a hobby farm side of beef and I found it delicious while hubby found it ‘gamey’. I think we are so used to all the crap in meats we don’t know what it is supposed to taste like.

We’re finding that the pork from Big Pig is very, very flavorful and tender, but it tends toward being fatty. Big Pig was a fat bastard, and we also let them get bigger than we should have before we took them off to be processed, so that probably has something to do with the amount of fat on our roasts and pork chops. The butcher took some of the shoulder and sliced it into very thin steaks, and OH MY GOD, that is the best stuff ever. Taste-wise, when pork shoulder steaks are cooked on the grill, it tastes just like beef. It’s a minor inconvenience to have to cut the fat off from around the edges of the meat.

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Foster kittens are doing well. I’m going to start letting them out of their room this weekend and see how that goes. So far, Lem seems most interested in finding out what’s on the other side of the door, but they’re kittens and thus nosy, so I suspect we’ll have them roaming all over the house before too long.

I wonder which kitten will be first to befriend one of our cats?

I suspect Lem.

More pics at L&H.

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I let Miz Poo out of the guest bedroom yesterday morning. Well, that is to say that I opened the guest bedroom door and she was snoozing on top of the kitty condo in a corner of the room. She stayed there for a couple of hours (I left the door open so she could come out whenever she wanted), and then all of a sudden I was sitting at my computer, and glanced out the window to see her slinking across the yard.

She spent the rest of the day alternating between hanging out in the back yard and snoozing in a cat bed in the front room.

I’d say she’s feeling better (and getting accustomed to the no-cone collar).

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Previously
2007: Holy crap, I’ve been married for 9 years!
2006: We’ve been married for eight years now. And they said it’d never last!
2005: Let the Seven Year Itch commence!
2004: Happy anniversary, you walnut-farting motherfucker.
2003: We’ve been married for five years as of today.
2002: He even sent me flowers.
2001: And they said it’d never last.
2000: And happy anniversary to Fred, who married me two years ago tonight, which was the smartest thing he’s ever done.
1999: “We don’t have to get married. We could just wait ’til next year. Shouldn’t we get married on the anniversary of the day we met? That would be more romantic!”

10/30/08

So, I couldn’t get online before I left for the pet store this morning, so I reacted like a great big baby and had a temper tantrum and posted some pictures via Flickr. You got to see me whine about my internet being down, whine about the sun in my eyes on the way to … Continue reading “10/30/08”

Who says it’s unexciting around here?!

If you ever check this site and see a crappy camera phone picture posted via Flickr, you can assume it’s because my goddamn internet is down AGAIN and the only way I can post is via Flickr (did I mention that Flickr ROCKS?).

I think if I’m going to be posting camera phone pictures, I need a phone that takes better pictures. Dontchathink?

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I belong to Goodreads, and every so often one of you ask to be my Goodreads BFF, and of course I’m happy to add you as a friend, even though I’m horribly bad at keeping up with adding the books I’ve read to my list.

But what really annoys me is when someone requests to be added as a Goodreads friend for the sole goddamn purpose of spamming me because they’ve written some shitty book and think because I read books, I’ll want to read the poorly-written book they’re flogging.

Hint: throwing extra adjectives into a book summary doesn’t actually make it sound more interesting. It makes it sound like it was written by a fifth grader with a thesaurus in hand.

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Do not cry for Miz Poo, y’all. She is being babied and given the full Princess treatment, to the max. Yesterday morning when I walked into the guest bedroom, she was hanging out in the cubby of the bedside table. I carried her out into the living room with me and we watched The Real Housewives of Atlanta (more on that in a moment), and I took the cone collar off her and scratched her ears and around her neck until she drooled. And then she slept for a long time, and demanded more scratching, and more drooling ensued. I eventually put her back in the guest bedroom so I could go out and touch up the paint on the new chicken coop (when I’m not around to keep an eye on her, I put her in the guest bedroom so the other cats won’t harass her), and then I spent another couple of hours on the couch with her in the afternoon. When I don’t actually have her in my lap, I put the no-cone collar on her. She hasn’t actually shown any interest in licking or biting at the drain or her stitches, but I’d hate to leave her alone and come back to find that she’d pulled the drain out.

Pardon me while I shudder at the idea.

She was a lot more bright-eyed and with-it yesterday morning than she’d been the night before, but we’ve got her on the pain medication so she’s still pretty doped up and sleeps a lot. I think the pain medication is doing a good job, because she doesn’t appear to be in any pain.

Last night when we sat down to watch TV, we took her collar off. She sat on a pillow on my lap for two and a half hours, and she cleaned herself for about two hours and twenty minutes of that time. She did try to lick at her stitches and drain, but I stopped her every time, and she’d look at me like “THIS IS MY BODY I WILL DO WHAT I WANT I HATE YOU WILL YOU SCRATCH MY EARS PLEASE?”

She’ll be fine – don’t worry about my baby, I’ll keep her spoiled rotten.

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Real Housewives of Atlanta (skip to the next section if you’re not interested!)

Honest to god, I kind of thought that they’d hype DeShawn’s gala event as being a big flop only so they could jump out of the closet and scream SURPRISE! when all of a sudden the bidding started and DeShawn managed to bring one million and ONE dollars in for her foundation. But holy cripes, what a flop. I thought she was kind of uninformed and naive about how to run a gala, but I ended up feeling sorry for her because of the HUGE flop it turned out to be. They ended up spending $20,000 more on putting the gala ON than they made!

I’m curious why that one woman made a point of asking if LeBron James (I don’t know sports, but even I recognize the name) was going to be there, acted all excited that there’d be some sort of LeBron-centric package being auctioned off, and then pointedly didn’t bid.

When DeShawn was looking for Mark Hayes, I thought she was looking for some guy named Marques. Heh.

When Kim decided to buy that diamond cuff at the gala and she was all “I have to call Big Poppa and tell him I bought this!”, I assume that was a call that went along the lines of “Big Poppa, listen to what you just bought me with the credit card you gave me!”

(By the way, if you’re curious, the word on the web seems to be that “Big Poppa” is married real estate developer Lee Najjar, whoever the hell that is. I don’t know that I’d consider him a “celebrity” as Kim said in the first show, but then I’m not part of the Atlanta social scene, so maybe he’s a celebrity in Atlanta.)

Am I getting this right? Lisa was going to a trunk show to showcase her jewelry, and she and a bunch of friends were sitting around MAKING the jewelry? Because I don’t actually think of jewelry at Macy’s being stringed together by a bunch of people at a kitchen table – but then I’m also not really Macy’s target jewelry (or “JOOORY”, as everyone on this damn show pronounces it) demographic either, so what do I know? (I think Lisa is absolutely gorgeous, by the way, but I prefer her hair curly to straight.)

You know, Kim’s insistence on continually telling Sheree how beautiful she is, is just weird and I think even Sheree was getting uncomfortable with all the smoke Kim was blowing up her ass.

There’s going to be some DRAMA next week, looks like. NeNe doesn’t back down from confrontation, so it should be something to see.

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Pictures from around Crooked Acres:

Kara’s assimilation into the Crooked Acres Gang is just about complete. You can’t see it in this picture, but she’s wearing a collar. She LOVES to be outside, and she’s mostly got the hang of the cat door. When she goes outside, she flops down at the bottom of the steps and rolls around. At night, when the door is closed, she tries to lead us to the door every time we head in that direction. I’m sure she’ll understand eventually that night time means no going outside.

Hello, Fall.

We call these three the Three Musketeers. In the few days since I took this picture, they actually got too big to squeeze through the fence, but for a while there they were spending all their time in the side yard cleaning up under the bird feeders.

These girls sure do flop down and sleep hard. Sometimes we have to call them several times before they wake up.

These two have suddenly started flying up and hanging out on top of the gate between the chicken yard and the back yard. Makes me wonder if we’ve got another couple of roosters on our hands.

Hawk, checking out the chickens.

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I told Fred yesterday that if I had the naming to do over again, I’d name him Dr. Google instead of Delmar. At least once a day I get the once-over from him. He sniffs my nostrils, my eyes and my breath before he decides that I continue to be healthy. And then he gives me an arm massage before he flops down for petting. He’s part-physician, part-masseuse, ALL lovebug!

The kittens got over being mad at me for taking them off to the scary place pretty quickly – yesterday afternoon Delmar, Marion and Lem all crowded around me and climbed on me, head-butted me for petting, and then complained when I wasn’t quick enough with the petting. They’re so demanding.

Tonight they get their vaccinations, and I expect in the next few days, if they’re interested, I’ll let them out to roam the house. I’ve let Kara in the kitten room to visit with them a few times. She hisses at them and puffs up, but they just look at her like, “What’s YOUR problem?” Our cats might have freaked them out initially, but now they’re not scared at all when Kara or Tommy or Mister Boogers pokes their head into the room.

Claudette continues to be a scaredy cat. It’s like she wants to be friendly, but she’s just too scared to come over for petting. It seems like tortis are always either terrified little scaredy cats, or completely nuts.

(Well, I suppose that goes for ALL cats, really, doesn’t it?)

I expect that she’ll come around eventually, and when she gives in to her deep-down desire to be a snugglebug, she’ll really be a sight to behold.

“Whyyyyyyyy are you not petting me right now? Whyyyyyyyyyy?”

More pics over at L&H.

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Stinkerbelle would like you all to know that those of you who pointed out that she’s no longer a “little thing” can KISS HER ASS.

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Previously
2007: “Jesus christ, LENNY. I’m not going to PET THE DEAD SQUIRREL.”
2006: Isn’t it nice that I named cats that aren’t mine?
2005: No entry.
2004: List of fives.
2003: (Also, Nance called me “nice.” That bitch!)
2002: But I don’t guess that introspection is the forte of that particular diva.
2001: Who tells stories about you?
2000: This morning, red and goopy.
1999: (Side note: I did nothing, and that just pisses me off. I wish I could go back and smack the shit out of that jerk. I hope his life is hellish).

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10-30-08_0809.jpeg, originally uploaded by RobynAnd3rson. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

10-30-08_0809.jpeg, originally uploaded by RobynAnd3rson.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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10-30-08_0744.jpeg, originally uploaded by RobynAnd3rson. Jabbers says hiiiiii!

10-30-08_0744.jpeg, originally uploaded by RobynAnd3rson.

Jabbers says hiiiiii!

10-30-08_0719.jpeg

10-30-08_0719.jpeg, originally uploaded by RobynAnd3rson. This time next week, the sun won’t be in my eyes on the drive into the pet store. I love turning the clocks back!

10-30-08_0719.jpeg, originally uploaded by RobynAnd3rson.

This time next week, the sun won’t be in my eyes on the drive into the pet store. I love turning the clocks back!

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10-30-08_0629.jpeg, originally uploaded by RobynAnd3rson. Oh look, internet’s down again. Shocking. Must be a day that ends in y. Thanks for the stellar service as usual, pcl. Could I maybe send you more money for nothing? I’d be thrilled to!

10-30-08_0629.jpeg, originally uploaded by RobynAnd3rson.

Oh look, internet’s down again. Shocking. Must be a day that ends in y. Thanks for the stellar service as usual, pcl. Could I maybe send you more money for nothing? I’d be thrilled to!

10/29/08

Thanks, all y’all, for your well-wishes for Miz Poo. I picked her up yesterday morning after I dropped the kittens off at the other vet to be spayed and neutered. She was doped up to the gills, but seemed glad to see me. The vet said that it would probably be best to keep her crated until her drain comes out next Monday, but there’s just no way I could see trying to keep a portly Poo in a little crate. I set up a litter box and some blankets and a bowl of food and water in the upstairs bathroom and put her in there. She hated it.

She was wearing a cone collar when I picked her up because like I mentioned, she has a drain in place and without something to stop her, she’ll try to pull it out, and to lick at her stitches. I went up and sat with her for an hour at a time several times yesterday, and each time she would slowly climb into my lap and sit there while I petted her. Eventually she’d purr.

My poor Poo.

When Fred got home, he called the vet’s office to see if there was a particular reason they’d put a cone collar on her instead of a collar like the one they’d put on Sugarbutt back when he was having issues with his foot and had to be restrained from licking. They told him they’d tried one on her, but she was still able to reach her back end. He hung up and told me we should give it a try anyway.

We put the collar on her and she didn’t like it, but in my opinion it was better than the cone collar – at least with the no-cone collar, there’s nothing right there in her face. Fred sat with her on the couch for a while, and then I sat with her on my lap while we were watching TV. She couldn’t get in a comfortable position with the no-cone collar on, though, so we switched her back to the cone, and she mostly snoozed the entire time we watched TV. By the end of the evening she was moving around better than she had been, so that’s a good thing, right? I put her in the guest bedroom, and she flopped down in a cat bed and went to sleep, and didn’t make a noise all night long.

She’s on pain medication for the next few days, so I’m hoping that that will keep her doped up enough that all she’ll want to do is sleep, at least until some good healing gets underway.

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Every night at bedtime, after Fred and I spent time with the kittens, we go into my bedroom and lay in there in the dark, talking and petting Kara and whichever cat comes along.

(Usually Mister Boogers tromps across the bed and then digs frantically at the covers until Fred holds them up. Then Mister Boogers climbs under the covers, curls up next to Fred’s legs, and then if Fred dares to move even the slightest bit, Mister Boogers bitches at him for having THE UTTER NERVE.)

After half an hour or so of cuddling, talking, and hanging out, Fred kisses me goodnight and goes to his room.

Now, very important point here: Fred’s door doesn’t close right, so to prevent the cats from getting into his room during the day, there’s a hook on the outside of the door. To prevent the cats from getting inside his room at night (he’s a light sleeper and often unable to get back to sleep once he’s been woken up) there’s a hook on the inside of the door.

So Saturday night, Fred toddled off to bed. I wasn’t tired, though, so I decided to stay up and read. Half an hour later, I was deep into my book when I heard Fred cry out frantically from his room. I can’t swear one hundred percent to it, but it sounded very much like he said “Help!”, and like I said, he sounded frantic.

I jumped out of bed immediately and went to the door to his room. I was mostly hoping that he was just dreaming, but as you can imagine I was pretty freaked out.

“Hey,” I said in a low voice, knocking lightly on his door. “Hey.” Usually this is more than enough to wake him up. He didn’t respond. I knocked slightly harder and when there was no response, I grabbed the door handle and pulled on it.

At this point, I was completely certain that, in the midst of a fatal heart attack he’d summoned the strength to cry out “Help!” and then died. After pulling on the door handle as hard as I could, I resumed knocking on the door, only this time instead of knocking I was pounding and instead of quietly saying “Hey,” I was bellowing “HEY!” I don’t know how long this went on, maybe ten seconds and I was just on the verge of going downstairs to find something to break the door down with, when I finally heard a disoriented “Huh?” from Fred.

“ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?” I bellowed. “ARE YOU OKAY?”

Sounding slightly annoyed, Fred said “What?”

“OPEN THE DOOR!” I yelled.

Finally, he stumbled to the door, opened it, and blinked at me. I felt his forehead (I don’t know, it seemed like the thing to do) and made sure he wasn’t in the midst of a heart attack, told him briefly what happened, and let him go back to bed.

I listened at his door a few times, making sure I could hear him breathing, before I went to sleep.

That night, I had an anxiety dream. My anxiety dreams have taken a turn these past few years. It used to be that in my anxiety dreams, I’d dream that Fred had died. I didn’t have them often, maybe a few times a year, but I always woke up crying. Since we bought this house, my anxiety dreams have taken the form wherein we decided on the spur of the moment to sell this house and – when the dreams take place – we’re living in a soulless McMansion on a postage-stamp piece of land. We are always completely miserable, can’t understand what got into our heads, and are scheming to sell the McMansion and buy this house back.

I’d like to stop with the anxiety dreams, thank you.

The next morning I gave Fred hell (“Sleep WELL, did you?”) and made him reposition the hook on his door so that NEXT TIME he calls out in his sleep, I can open the damn door and get to him instead of just standing there like an idiot, pounding on the door, and bellowing to wake him up.

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With the weather turning so much cooler lately (it’s supposed to go down below freezing tonight), the wasps have started looking for a warm place to hang out. They think my house would do quite nicely.

Yesterday, 17 wasps came into the house. They mostly come into the dining room and computer room – I think they’re coming down the chimney – and I’ve gotten to the point where instead of getting out the Dyson hand held vacuum, it’s become easier for me to just grab a piece of paper towel (I have a folded square of paper towel on a corner of my desk for just this purpose), snatch the wasp up, open the door, and toss the wasp out. The wasps usually take flight and fly directly away from the house, though I’ve wondered if the same three wasps are coming into the house over and over again.

I should paint tiny numbers on their legs so I can track them.

So when I grabbed wasp number 17 yesterday, I assumed all would go as usual, I’d open the door, toss the wasp, and it’d fly off as fast as its wings could carry it.

Not so much. Instead, wasp number 17 flew away from me for a very short distance, got confused, flew back at me and tried to land ON MY FACE.

I think the dance I immediately performed would be best described as a jig. I flailed around, arms flying everywhere, screaming some wordless sound of horror.

Luckily no one else was around.

The wasp rethought its flight plan and eventually turned around and headed back out toward freedom, and apparently sent out word to his wasp brethren that our house is not so much the place to be.

I don’t expect that’s the last wasp I’ll see in the house, but it certainly would be nice to NOT have another 17-wasp day, please.

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The kittens could not have been any easier to put in the carriers for their trip to the vet yesterday. In fact, I walked in to find that Delmar was already sitting in one of the carriers. He came running over to me when I walked in, and I picked him up and put him back in the carrier and closed the top (our carriers are the kind that open at one end and on top), grabbed Lem and put him in the carrier, then put the two girls in the other carrier. They all looked confused and worried, and they were obviously scared during the car trip, but they behaved themselves very well when they were being weighed. Quite the difference from their first trip to the vet!

I picked them up last night, and they were dopey and groggy and I thought for sure they’d never forgive me, but an hour after I got them home I went upstairs and Delmar and Lem were all over me, rubbing against me, purring, telling me how awesome I am. Marion and Claudette stayed on the cat tree and let me know that they didn’t think I was awesome at ALL. That’s okay; they’ll forgive me soon enough. And if not, I can always buy their love with a plate of chicken baby food!

More pics at L&H.

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I completely forgot that this kitty condo – located in a corner of the guest bedroom – was there until I happened to glance over one day and saw Newt all settled in.

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Previously
2007: I have no idea on earth how we’d ever tell if a chicken was insane, since they seem to lean toward The Crazy even when they’re (we assume) perfectly normal.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: In case you were wondering, we are officially Crazy Cat People.
2003: I always look like a fucking lunatic when I take my own picture.
2002: (Is it just me who always thinks of Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally saying “I would be pleased to partake of your pecan piiiiiiiiiiiiie” when I hear, say, or read the word “partake”?)
2001: (For the record, her verdict was that the real-life prostitutes were “creepy”.)
2000: No entry.
1999: And going blind would just suck.

10/28/08

This is how my Monday went: 1. I didn’t sleep worth a shit Sunday night, got maybe two hours, and when Fred woke me up to say goodbye, we talked long enough that I woke up completely and couldn’t get back to sleep. 2. On Saturday, we noticed that Miz Poo had a swelling near … Continue reading “10/28/08”

This is how my Monday went:

1. I didn’t sleep worth a shit Sunday night, got maybe two hours, and when Fred woke me up to say goodbye, we talked long enough that I woke up completely and couldn’t get back to sleep.

2. On Saturday, we noticed that Miz Poo had a swelling near the base of her tail. We looked at it and Fred Googled around and we decided it was likely an abscess. We decided it wasn’t an occasion for the emergency vet (unlike a few years ago when I think we took Spot to the emergency vet and blew a few hundred dollars on the visit because he looked “funny.”) and checked on her during the day. Saturday night Fred looked over in the padded pyramid near the couch where Miz Poo was hanging out (which in itself is weird, because she’s usually on the couch with me or on the couch with Fred, she’s an equal opportunity lovah.) and she was licking at the swollen area. When he got down to check on her, he found that it had burst, and poor Miz Poo was trying to lick up the flood of bloody puss and had the most disgusted look on her face.

You weren’t eating, were you?

We did our best to clean her up, dabbed off the puss, and put antibiotic ointment on the area and checked on it again Sunday. Yesterday I took her to the vet, figuring that they’d have to clean out the area (it looked pretty nasty, but not infected) and might have to knock her out to do so. The vet looked at the area and said that he thought he saw some tumor tissue, that they needed to knock her out, remove the tissue around the area, and try to close it back up. I left her there so they could do it. Apparently they doped her up to see if they could clean the area before operating, and she vomited, so they had to wait a while to operate. Yesterday evening the vet talked to Fred and told him it turned out to be an anal gland adenoma. That they usually come back and turn into a chronic condition, but sometimes they never reoccur. Fred asked him if this was a death sentence, and the vet said that ultimately (if it turns into a chronic condition) it would probably be what kills her, but not to break out the ash and sackcloth just yet.

She stayed overnight at the vet and hopefully I’ll be able to pick her up after I drop the kittens off at the vet to be spayed and neutered.

3. I spent three hours painting the outside of the big coop (we’re going with dark green this time around). Today my leg aches like a motherfucker; I guess I stand funny when I’m using a paint roller.

I got green paint on the palm of my right hand, and I scrubbed and scrubbed at it and it mostly came off, but my hand is so dry that I can’t quite get all the paint off, so my right palm is tinged slightly green. I look like I’m about to start turning into the Hulk.

Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

4. I’m a fucking idiot and put my iPod in my bra while I was painting (what? I don’t usually wear pants with pockets, that’s where I usually store the damn thing when I’m doing stuff.) and sweated all over it. It stopped working completely at first, and now it’ll light up and I can synch it, but the menu buttons won’t work at all, so it’s pretty much useless.

If the week knows what’s good for it, things will be downhill for the next few days!

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I have to box up the kittens and take them to be spayed and neutered. I don’t know how that’s going to go – the boys are okay with being picked up (Delmar actually seems to like it) but the girls hate it, especially Claudette, who’s a tiny little scrapper when you pick her up. I put two carriers in their room Sunday and they’ve been checking them out and jumping in and out of them and sniffing them all over, so they’re not scared of carriers.

I’m sure this experience will change that!

More pictures up over at L&H.

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Stinkerbelle in the sun. Pretty little thing, isn’t she?

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Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: (”GOD. No WONDER you’re so fat, if you eat stuff like that ALL THE TIME! All you have to do is stop eating crap like that, and exercise! I should know! I’m an anonymous asshole you’ve never heard of before, so listen to me!”)
2004: No entry.
2003: I’m going to DIE. Someday, I’m going to die. I’m going to die, you’re going to die, Fred will die, the spud will die. We’re going to DIE. All of us.
2002: I’m an AMERICAN, after all. I should never, for one second feel the slightest bit of discomfort.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.
1999: As far as I’m concerned, to each his own.

10/27/08

I spent a good part of Saturday morning feeling disgruntled and not wanting to do anything. Fred made a bunch of dorky suggestions of what I could do (“Let’s go get some more chickens! You could go to the mall! You could go to the movies!”), but it turned out that I wanted to sulk … Continue reading “10/27/08”

Sulking and doing nothing is greatly helped by a sweet little litter of fluffy kittens, if you were curious.

After lunch, I finally geared up and made a batch of Caramel-Apple Jam. I think I told y’all that last weekend I’d made a batch of Caramel-Apple Jam with the apple diced in small pieces, and I was intending to make a batch that started with cooked, pureed apple to see which I liked more. (The recipe for the kind using small pieces of apple here, the recipe using pureed apple here.)

It’s actually a lot easier to make the jam with apple puree, because you can core and cut the apples, cook them, then run them through a food mill or Magic Tomato Machine, which takes care of the pureeing and the skins at the same time.

I ended up with 9 half-pints of Caramel-Apple Jam, and I have to say that on the whole, I actually prefer the kind with the tiny diced apple pieces. The kind with the pureed apple was certainly very good, but the texture reminds me a lot of applesauce. The kind with the tiny diced apple pieces tastes sweeter to me (Fred had some explanation for why that was, but I don’t remember what he said) and god knows I like the sweet stuff.

I’d tell you what I did Saturday afternoon, but fuck if I can remember.

Sunday morning I woke up all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and I popped out of bed (after sleeping ’til 7 ’cause I’m a slacker) and put Fred’s laundry in, went to the recycling center and Lowe’s with Fred, came home and vacuumed the downstairs, then went to the Dollar Store to pick up a few things.

Then I put a dozen eggs in the freezer to freeze. How do I do this, you ask? Well, let me tell you! I bought a dozen silicone cupcake liners at Target one day. To freeze eggs, I put the cupcake liners on a cookie sheet, crack one egg into each liner, then put the whole thing in the freezer for a couple of hours until each egg is good and frozen. Then I pop each egg out of its liner, put them in a Ziploc bag, write the date on the outside of the bag, and put the whole bag back in the freezer.

Why do I freeze eggs, you ask? Because chickens tend to lay less in the winter and last year I had to buy several dozen eggs FROM THE STORE, the horror!

I ended up freezing four dozen eggs, and would like to do another six or so to get us through the winter. The girls aren’t putting out quite as many eggs as they were a month ago (14 – 17 a day), and at least two of them have started to moult, so I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before production drops way down.

Once the eggs were in the freezer, I went out to the front porch and carried all the plants that were there across the yard into the garage. I’ve had two big potted impatiens on the front porch since the beginning of summer, and two big potted Mexican Heather plants, and I’d like to see if I can get them to stay alive in the garage ’til next summer, whereupon they can adorn the front porch again. It’s supposed to get pretty cold this week, so I figured now was the time to move them. I also had four house plants to move to the garage – yes, I could move them into the house, but I get annoyed at cleaning up barfed-up plant pieces, so I’d rather have them in the garage. The top floor of the garage – which we were originally going to finish out to use for a cat room, but ended up using for storage – has some windows that catch the light all day long. Hopefully the plants will be happy up there, as long as I remember to water them once a week or so.

The front porch looks kind of empty now. I need to come up with some sort of seasonal decoration for the plant rack next to the door, and maybe the steps.

I took a short break, cuddling the kittens, and then went back into the kitchen. It has absolutely reeked under the kitchen sink for the past little while, and so it was my intention to scrub under there and take care of the smell (I won’t go into specifics, but it involves CATS PEEING IN THE GODDAMN SINK and a crappy sink). I thought at first I’d just use lots of hot water and soap and scrub where the smell is coming from, but it just so ended up that after taking a look at the pipes under the sink, it’s not so very hard to take the pipes under the sink apart and clean them, and soon Fred was walking into the kitchen to get a drink, and found me sitting there with towels and rags all over the place, spraying pieces of pipe and scrubbing the hell out of them. He ended up having to run silicone under the drain (?), and I got all the pipes put back together not QUITE correctly, but Fred realized there was a problem right away and fixed it, so no big deal.

(It still stinks under the sink a little bit, but there’s only so damn much I can do, right?)

I took a break for lunch, spent a little more time with the kittens, and then started up the ol’ KitchenAid mixer. We’ve been feeding the pigs crappy cookies from the dollar store lately, but we were low on those cookies and I had all the ingredients for Piggerdoodles, so I decided to make a double batch of cookies for them.

That double batch made a ton of cookies, so we’re set on pig cookies for a good long time.

I also did laundry, picked up around the house, spent a little more time with the kittens, checked out Fred’s progress on the big-ass chicken coop (I assume he’ll put up an entry about that later, but let me tell you – that is one BIG-ASS chicken coop. He said, as we were standing inside it, “We could fit two hundred chickens in here if we had to!”

Knowing us, we’ll either need to add on to the chicken coop, or have a second coop by this time next year.

All in all, a pretty good weekend.

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The kittens are going to be spayed and neutered tomorrow, poor babies. Last night I got two carriers out and put them in the kitten room. Marion and Lem thought they were the funnest toys ever, kept running in and sniffing them and then racing back out. Delmar and Claudette were uninterested. Hopefully they’ll remain uninterested right until I pick them up and pop them inside tomorrow morning.

Know what’s annoying? Let me TELL you what’s annoying. I go up and visit with the kittens many times a day. I bring them a snack. I pet them. I tell them how pretty they are. I rub their fuzzy little bellies. I gently toss toy mice across the room for them to chase. I lay down and let them crawl all over me. They purr and rub against me, they tell me I’m awesome.

And then. AND THEN. At bedtime, Fred goes upstairs and into the kitten room. I don’t know what he does in there in the few minutes that I’m brushing my teeth and taking out my contacts, but when I go into the room, the kittens could NOT care less about me. They’re chasing the feather-on-a-stick toy, they’re rolling around on their backs play-fighting with Fred, they’re rubbing against him purring and telling him how awesome he is.

They might eventually come over and allow me to pet them for a brief instant before they go back to THE FUN GUY, but they always abandon me for him.

I’m the one who gives them snacks! I’m the one who scoops out their litter boxes!

This is completely unfair.

More pictures at L&H.

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Uh oh… that’s Suggie’s bed! He is NOT going to be happy when he sees this…

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Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: I’m sorry, but “Sell yourself to me” is Interviewer-speak for “I’m too lazy to come up with a real question, so try to answer this stupid-ass question I read on a bad interview webpage somewhere or perhaps even pulled directly from my ass.”
2004: I cannot stand this song. I cannot stand this video. I am filled with extreme hatred every time I happen across either the song or the video.
2003: We went to see Miss Saigon on Sunday.
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: The man drove two hours to spend one hour with his grandchild and then drove two hours back. How cool is that?
1999: May I say that the child gets an UNGODLY amount of presents.

10-24-08

I FINALLY read The Thirteenth Tale, and let me say – the many of you who recommended the book? You were right. That was a really good book! You know how you really really want to finish a book to see what happened, but then you really really just don’t want it to end? That’s … Continue reading “10-24-08”

This morning I started Winning After Losing, by Stacey Halprin (those of you who watch Oprah probably remember her – she weighed 550 pounds at one point and had weight loss surgery). I read the acknowledgements section in the front, and it caused me great emotional distress to find that she used “lol” in said acknowledgements.

I know there are a lot of things that start out on the internet and make it into real life, and many of those things are good things, but “lol” should not be included. “lol” should be shot on sight when seen outside the internet. I honestly came very close to closing the book and tossing it on the giveaway pile after I saw “lol” (and did I mention it’s in there TWICE in the first three pages?), but I’m going to give it another chance.

I will BURN that book if I spot a 🙂 , though.

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How’s your blood pressure?

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You mentioned this awhile back, but I didn’t get a chance to respond earlier, about washing one’s face with some type of oil concoction. I haven’t tried pure oil, but for a time I did wash my face with Orange Essence Facial Cleanser from Burt’s Bees, which is very much an oil-type cleanser. It was OK, but I wasn’t thrilled enough with it to continue using. However, what I do use is a mild Cetaphil-type cleanser at night, followed by a thin layer of Aquaphor all over my face. Anyway, the Aquaphor totally rocks. My combination, temperamental skin really responds well to the Aquaphor. I think it just calms my skin down. I didn’t expect it to work, my T-zone is super oily, but it is absolutely fabulous. Just thought I’d share!

Thanks for the input! I still have a hard time thinking about using oil to clean my face, but I should probably get over it and give it a try.

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Atlanta Housewives– Robyn, I live within 7 miles of where these “ladies” do and I am amazed that type of behavior goes on. I guess that shows you what having lots of money and too much time on your hands can do to people.

This show is just amazing. I’m going to cut and paste from an email I sent out about this week’s Real Housewives of Atlanta (just so I don’t have to come up with original thoughts on the show):

I am SO shocked that Kim is 29, because I thought she was more along the lines of a well-preserved 40. I’m sorry, that girl just does not look good for 29. When you’re 29, you’re still supposed to be all dewy-skinned! All the makeup probably doesn’t help. And to hear her compare herself to Faith Hill and Carrie Underwood? PLEASE. Those songs are HORRIFIC, I can’t believe she’d really be serious about bringing them to a (never done country music before!) honest to god music producer. Who did not look SO interested in producing a record for her, just in getting his face in front of the camera. And of course Kim wants to be a singer. EVERYONE wants to be a singer. Hell, I want to be a singer. Problem: I CAN’T SING WORTH A SHIT. I bet the fact that Kim’s never sung around her friends is a great big hint that she can’t sing. But not to worry, they can accomplish anything with technology in the studios these days. Maybe Kim and Jo from OC can tour together.

I don’t know how old Deshawn is, but she’s VERY naive to think that you can toss together a fundraiser in a few weeks and seriously hope for a million dollars. This is going to be a spectacular crash and burn. And if she’d said “joooory” instead of “jewelry” one more time, I was going to have to take a quick trip to Atlanta and strangle her.

That letter to NeNe from her aunt – did you pause while they showed the sheet of paper online? I did (both times!) and read it, and my god. My eyes were crossed. Auntie WantsSomeMoney is not the best writer. I couldn’t really even understand most of what I read, though I got the part where now that NeNe has money, she needs to share the wealth. Isn’t it interesting that the aunt who apparently did NOT bring her up is the one who has her hand out?

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That kitchen device is a potato masher.

and

Potato ricer or masher, and pastry cutter. Some potato ricers are more like a garlic press and traditionally a ricer has smaller openings, but it’s kind of a catchall phrase.

Get out, you guys, with your fancy terminology!

Speaking of potato ricers, I have one that’s like a big garlic press, and I always use it for mashed potatoes and it works fabulously. I highly recommend the potato ricer!

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Hey Robyn, I know you said your hand-held vacuum wasn’t good for much but sucking up wasps, but will you please ask your readers if anyone can recommend a good one? I am having a major flea problem and I would like to hand-vacuum the cat condos and human furniture with something that has enough suction that I could believe it was sucking up any fleas and flea eggs/dirt.

Megan said: Ginni, I also have the Dyson handheld, though I just got it a few weeks ago. I don’t know if they’ve made modifications or if I just got lucky with a “good” one, but mine works really well. I agree with Robyn that it doesn’t work as well as the big Dyson, but for a small handheld, it’s awesome!

And ChristineQ said: I have the Dyson handheld and it is HORRIBLE. Brand new and fully charged it only worked for about 5 minutes. It did an ok job during that 5 minutes but I bought it with the purpose of vacuuming my staircase in mind and 5 minutes gets me through about 4 steps. Now, it won’t even charge up anymore. I’ve since graduated to a Dirt Devil (I think, it’s red anyway) handheld that plugs into the wall. Works like a dream!

So how about it readers, who has a handheld that they love and adore? Tell us about it!

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Robyn, you were in my dream last night!!! LOL! I just moved in real life, and in the dream I had moved into this weird house and you were there helping me unpack and put things away… RANDOM! I woke up and started laughing this morning! And Fred was there but he didn’t look like Fred. You looked like you, though.

and

I had a Bitchypoo dream! Except you weren’t in it, only your cats. I dreamt I was at my father’s house, and my friend came over with her cat, and the cat looked very different from the last time I’d seen her. The next day, in the drema, I found out my friend had had to leave because she got a migraine, but the cat had been left behind, and could I find her for her? Only now it’s your house, and I’m going from room to room picking sleepy kitties off of cat beds to see if they are the missing cat. They were all very mellow about it. I remember finding Spanky in a room on the top floor (your house was a multi-story haunted-house victorian) and guessing that it was Fred’s room because Spanky was sleeping there. Then when I finally left the house, I took a wrong turn and ended up at a dog shelter, where a mushy doberman followed me around giving me puppy eyes.

I think my subconscious is telling me it’s time to adopt another pet.

I agree – can I interest you in a wee little kitty? 🙂

I LOVE IT when you guys dream about me (or the cats), it always cracks me up!

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Is there a pea under that pile o’ cat beds?

There was! Thus the reason the princess looks so disgruntled.

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The banana peel thingy is good for roses also. Just bury the peel within a handspan of the base of the rosebush. Just deep enough to keep it covered so that it decomposes into the soil. It’s the potassium that makes it great for tomatoes and roses.

So, is it just certain plants that banana peels work well for, or is it all plants? Because I’ll happily make a banana cake a week if it would help our garden grow well. It’s a sacrifice I’ll make, if I have to!

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Hey Robyn, just wanted to share a tip about the butternut squash, or any squash for that matter. Unless you like the particular texture of squash that’s oven baked, you can also microwave it. I often make spaghetti squash. I serve it with my homemade spaghetti sauce. Hubby and kids prefer pasta so I make pasta for them, and I don’t want to eat AFTER them, so while the water for the pasta is boiling, I cut the squash in half, scoop out the seeds, sit the squash half (I only make half at a time since it’s only for me) on a plate or in a shallow bowl, fill the hole where the seeds were, with water, and microwave on high for about 8 minutes (depending on the size of the squash and the strength of your microwave, of course). I haven’t baked a spaghetti squash since someone shared this method.

I always microwave my spaghetti squash, but how is it that it never occurred to me that I could microwave my butternut squash, too? Life will be so much easier now that I don’t have to wait around for my butternut squash to be done!

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you HAVE to see this if you haven’t already

Oh, I’ve seen it. And it gives me many ideas (none of which Fred will implement, damn him!). For one, wouldn’t it be awesome to have a walkway around the top of the foster room, with stairs leading up to it? I bet the foster kittens would LOVE that!

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I am so jealous of those who can have beans for lunch (quick, easy, tasty, inexpensive)…. I lurve me some beans, but my tummy/intestines do NOT. I could fill a goodyear blimp with the gas that appears after I eat beans. Le sigh.

Amen to that. Fred LOVES to use the excuse “You fed me black beans, what did you expect?!” if I get mad at him for farting in the evenings. Hmph.

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Spanky is my Pepe Le Pew.

and

Um, nevermind the kittehs (who are completely adorable, BTW) how do you not squeeze the crap out of Spanky? He’s just heartbreakingly gorgeous.

I can’t deny that – Spanky is one good-looking boy. He’s so clean and white and sweet and funny. In the evenings, he sits next to Fred on the couch, and you can just SEE him becoming overwhelmed with love for Fred. He’ll politely put his paw out and tap Fred until Fred pets him. If you speak to him, he “talks” back, and expects you to know what he’s saying. He is just the sweetest thing on earth. Pardon me while I go smooch him atop his head.

Also, he has very silky fur that’s just a pure pleasure to touch. He’s not just a pretty face, though. If it’s time to treat the cats with Frontline or Advantage, you HAVE to treat Spanky first and take him by surprise, because if you don’t, he KNOWS what you’re doing, and you’ll never get hold of him. He does not care for the Frontline or Advantage.

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Are you watching True Blood (HBO)?

I certainly am, and I’m liking it a lot. I wasn’t sure about Anna Pacquin as Sookie at first, but now I think she’s perfect for the role. Tara annoyed me initially, but now I really like her (is it just me, or has her super-thick accent calmed down a little? It was almost a parody in the first couple of episodes, it seemed like.). Every time Bill says “Sssssssoo-kay”, Fred and I repeat it about a hundred times to each other.

I like Bill, but I LOVE Sam.

Did anyone else notice in the first episode that when Sookie came into the kitchen where Gran was sitting, Gran was reading a book by Charlaine Harris? I was probably a little too amused by that.

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I work at home and whenever a client comes into my “office” my computer makes a doorbell ringing sound. I usually have this turned up pretty high so I can do stuff around the house while working and it never fails…when it goes off all 3 cats in the house run in panic as if someone were actually at the door! It’s absolutely hilarious and I enjoy it every single time.

We’ve had the cats freak out when there’s a doorbell sound on TV. Which is funny, because our actual doorbell doesn’t chime like a doorbell; some dork (NOT ME) set it to play “It’s a small world” (we really need to change that).

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I think you need to hold a basics class on using the cat door with Newt and Maxi. Maybe when they whined to come in, you go out the door with the cat door and lead them to the door and push them in – really hard. OK, maybe very gently. Maybe they’ll get it.

Oh, Maxi KNOWS how to use the cat door, and she does frequently. Just sometimes she feels the very strong need to go into the SIDE outdoors or the FRONT outdoors and not the BACK outdoors.

I’ve tried teaching Newt to use the cat door, but he’s just too freaked out by it. He’s actually not as bad about wanting in and out as Maxi – usually he waits until I’m heading in the general direction of the door and then he “leads” me to the door (and he’s not as picky about WHICH outdoors he goes to; if I ignore him “leading” me to the side door, he’ll attempt to “lead” me to the back door if I’m headed in that direction.

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Well, you officially passed into “crazy cat people” territory a few cats ago, so, eh. What’s one more? I’m glad to see that she’s *home* now.

I object! The Itty Bitty Kitty Committee lady says that it takes 13 cats to be classified crazy cat people. That gives us a nice three-cat cushion!

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I can’t remember if I originally saw this on your site or not, (galloping Alzheimer’s, I swear) but in case not:

Oh my god. That is HILARIOUS! I just choked on my water, watching that!

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I’m glad Kara’s staying.. and here I was thinking Delmar was going to be the 10th!! will he be the 11th?

He will not. STOP THAT.

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I suggested we foster kittens at one point; Darren said flat out “No” because we’d end up with about 50 cats. We is both softies like that.

We’ve been fostering for three and a half years – and we actually stopped for almost a year after we adopted Sugarbutt and Tommy, at Fred’s insistence that he didn’t want any more strange cats in the house until Tommy and Suggie were old enough to… I don’t remember what the issue was. I think he wanted them to be old enough to not pick up every disease that came into the house via strange cats or something. When we started, we had four cats: Spanky, Miz Poo, Mister Boogers, and Spot. Now we have TEN, though Maxi and Newt don’t count in this discussion, since they weren’t fosters. So we’ve adopted FIVE of our fosters. Five. We’ve more than doubled our cat population.

We’re so screwed.

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Now, be honest… is Fred building a Chicken Mansion-Coop or do you guys just need a barn for your herd of cats? You guys are gonna be cat herding very soon…

Sometimes, when I walk through the house and the cats all scatter in front of me (especially on days like today when it’s raining out, so everyone’s inside) I feel like I’m herding them already.

I tried to convince Fred that he should build an outbuilding so we can foster even MORE cats, but he doesn’t seem to be going for it. I can’t imagine why. 🙂

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Am I the only one who really didn’t see this coming? I was (am) fully expecting one of the current group to be staying though. Which one will it be? Cornbread??? where did that come from? So Robyn, how many goats are y’all going to get? *snicker*

I’m not worried about the current group, because they’re little and cute and I know they’ll be adopted fairly quickly (kittens always get adopted faster) and it won’t be by US.

We are getting NO goats. Now that Fred’s fencing in the back forty for the chickens, we have no room for goats. Ha!

By the way, reader Liz suggested the name Captain Cornbread (CC for short) and I kind of like it. I suggested Sargeant Beans to Fred, and he didn’t think it was nearly as funny as I did.

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Well, get her moved out of the fosters section in the side bar into the permanent residents!!! I’m verrrry sorrrrrrry, but you are officially a crazy cat lady. Altho, from all I can tell (unless you lie about your daily life), your house smells fine!

This weekend, I’ll be updating the sidebar. Maybe later today. It’s not that it’s such a complicated thing to do, I just have to get motivated to DO it.

As far as I know – and unless people are lying to me – my house smells okay. That’s what I worry about the most, that my house will stink. I’m doing my best to ensure that my house doesn’t smell like boiled ass.

If you ever come to my house and it stinks like a great big litterbox PLEASE TELL ME.

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I’m a little confused as to why there is so much ceremony over the official name….we all know you guys will call her something totally different anyway. 😛

Hey now, we DO call Sugarbutt, Tommy, Joe Bob, Spanky, Newt, and Stinkerbelle by their names! I am leaning toward just calling her Kara until her nickname presents itself, though.

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When you decide to get a kitty – go get him or her. Why make her wait in a sad, tiny space. I agree with Fred. Good to see he did not wait.

Because I wanted to give her the chance to be adopted Tuesday night, is why!

(I’m glad Fred didn’t wait, though. I sure am liking having her around!)

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I read that line about the monkeys, and for a split second thought, “Fred and Robyn have monkeys now? Man, these people are crazy!”

Oh, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time!

(I kid. I hope.)

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I’ve got a question for you about kittens/cats. I have a 4 month old kitten that seems to have allergies or a cold or something. He sneezes and one of his eyes has a clear discharge sometimes. It’s always the same eye that is leaky and it’s never gunky or anything. But he doesn’t seem affected by it at all. He’s been looked at by three vets and they all said he’s fine, but that just seems weird to me. Have you ever had a sneezy, snotty cat that was just naturally sneezy and snotty? (Seriously, when he sneezes and gets a little snot smeared under his nose, it’s just about the cutest thing ever. I know…I’m weird). He’s been this way since he was first brought in to the shelter, according to his previous foster mom. Any ideas?

Mister Boogers has an issue with one of his eyes, especially in the spring and fall. One eye has discharge, and he tends toward sneeziness. We give him chlorpheniramine, which the vet originally prescribed, and then which we started buying at WalMart. It helps to stop him being so sneezy, and clears his eye up. (Obviously, you’ll want to check with your vet before you start giving your kitten anything!)

Also, Val said:

Kim, It could be allergies, or I have a kitty who has the worst sneezing and runny eyes. Nothing I can do for him. When I got him, he had a URI for several months that went untreated (I’m still mad about that). The doctor said the sometimes if a URI goes untreated, they get scars in their sinus cavity and they are stuck with permanent sinus problems. As long as the goop isn’t yellow or green, you are OK. Gus could care less – he’s still the boss of my 3 cats. I’m always cleaning the goop from his eyes and the sneeze remnants from the walls. He also has the dirtiest ears I’ve seen in a cat. Poor baby.

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Two in the lap, one in the waiting area.

More kitten pics over at L&H.

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“My stump. MINE.”

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Previously
2007: Then I’m sure they hung up and said “We just bought ourselves six weeks of NO CALLS from Mr. And3rson. Boo-yah!”
2006: Okay. I have a LOT of favorite things about the house, I cannot lie.
2005: “That makes me want to get pregnant and have a baby, just so I can name it Lavernicus,” I admitted. “That WOULD be an excellent name.”
2004: No entry.
2003: It took two days from the first time I called Stanley “Beanie-bean” in front of Fred before Fred started doing it too. He’s such a copycat.
2002: “She was giving me a handjob under the water, and I didn’t stop her, even though I’m not attracted to her, BECAUSE I AM ONLY HUMAN.”
2001: Fred is a freak.
2000: “Uhhhh….” I said, casting around for something smart-ass or impressive to say.
1999: My desk is a total shitheap, because I’m Robyn and I’m a slob