You’d think after having a day of FAIL on Thursday that Friday would be so very much better. It started off better, I got out of the house bright and early to take the recycling (which had been piled high for days, but taking the recycling to the recycling center is BORING, so I put it off for several days past the point where any civilized human being would have loaded up the car and gotten it done). On my way down the road I called Fred on my cell phone to ask if he needed anything at the grocery store. Since I was going to be in town anyway, I figured I’d stop at the grocery store.
Oh, FINE. That’s a LIE. I was going to town BECAUSE I wanted to go to the grocery store to buy powdered sugar to make cupcakes (well, the powdered sugar was for the frosting), and figured since I was going to town anyway, I’d take the recycling back. If I hadn’t needed powdered sugar, I’d be typing this to you from atop a fifteen-foot tower of cat food cans, I’m sure.
Anyway, when I called Fred he told me that he’d called Dish N3twork and found that they could come out to set up our new service on Saturday, and this meant that we needed to get the Dir3ctTV DVR cleared off because as of midnight, our Dir3ctTV service would be cut off.
So I dropped off the recycling and then went to the grocery store, and I was standing the checkout line when the lady who was bagging the groceries for the person ahead of me seemed to recognize me. She looked at me several times and smiled at me, and she didn’t look familiar. I’m guessing either she’s a reader, she remembers me from the article in the local newspaper (the one about Flappy McGee (GODRESTHERTASTYSOUL) laying an egg inside an egg) last year, or we had a conversation at some point in the past that I’m totally blanking on. Who knows?
I ran home, went and spent some time with the kittens, and then headed for the living room with purpose. I knew I had an episode of Lost to watch, a couple of episodes of Jon & Kate Plus Eight, and an episode of Brothers & Sisters as well. I put on my slippers – which were laying near the couch, which I point out only because it’ll be important in a minute – and sat down to watch TV. Then I thought “Oh! I need to go take my lunch out of the freezer so it’ll thaw before lunch time!”
I did that, and I walked back into the living room, and I glanced down at the floor between the two ottomans (ottomen?), and I said “Huh. The floor is.. wet? What the hell?” I got down on my hands and knees to investigate, and quickly became aware that it wasn’t water. IT WASN’T WATER AT ALL.
Goddamn motherfucking cats. And the part where the cat – or cats – had peed was exactly where my slippers had been laying. I took off my slippers and sniffed them, and sure enough, the far-too-familiar odor was there.
I went and got the bottle of Cat Odor Off (which I use alternately with Stink-Free these days) and some cleaning rags, and I cleaned up the goddamn cat pee, and I saturated the rug near that area, and I tossed my slippers in the washer. And then I decided that since I had the spray and the cleaning rags out, I’d go check out the far corner of the room to see if anyone had peed there. I don’t know why, and I don’t know who (though of course I have my suspicions), but in the corner of the front room where the stairs that Fred built are located (there’s a platform at the top of the stairs for a cat bed), someone regularly sprays. I went over to check it out, and there were a few drops on the floor. So I wiped them up and I stood up and decided I still smelled cat pee.
A few weeks ago, on my one day of productivity, when I got out the sewing machine and sewed a few beds for the cats, I sewed a bed to go on the top of the stairs. And because I knew that someone likes to spray over there regularly, I got all smarty-pants, and on the inside of that cat bed, I sewed a piece of shower curtain. My idea was that the shower curtain would catch any cat urine that was left on the cat bed, which would protect the platform.
So on Friday, I picked up that bed, and apparently the piece of shower curtain worked REALLY well, because when I picked up the goddamn bed, a gallon of cat pee when pouring out all over the goddamn motherfucking place. And such is my life, my soaked-in-cat-pee life, that I didn’t even have a temper tantrum. I just shot a strong look of loathing at the nearest cat, and I began cleaning.
In the end, I had to scrub down that whole area of the room, and then strip off my clothes and toss them in the washer.
And then finally I sat my ass down in front of the TV and I watched Jon & Kate Plus Eight and Lost, and about ten minutes of Brothers & Sisters before deciding I wasn’t in the mood for those goddamn Walkers, and then I deleted Castle (which I’d been taping but hadn’t watched) and a million episodes of Oprah, and then I went out and hung out with the kittens for a long, long time.
At some point in there I went into the kitchen and made a batch of Sugar Cupcakes, the recipe for which I’d ripped out of a magazine. During the making of the cupcakes, I made two crucial mistakes.
First, I lined the muffin (cupcake) tins with silicon liners. Second, I followed the directions to a T and used almond extract.
When Fred got home from work, I made the frosting for the cupcakes and he frosted them, and then he went to eat one of them. Which is when we discovered that those silicon liners don’t pull away from the cupcake, like, at ALL. So half the fucking cupcake stuck to the liner, and then he took a bite of the cupcake and Princess Fred doesn’t care for almond flavored things. Like, at all.
(I was apparently supposed to magically KNOW of his dislike of almond flavoring, but somehow I managed to not add this tidbit to my Super Important Fred Database, so I DIDN’T FUCKING KNOW.)
So he had a small temper tantrum, and as my belief is that you should respond to an uprising by nuking the village, I had a SUPER temper tantrum and told him I was never baking anything for him again EVER DO YOU HEAR ME YOU GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKER?!
(I’m not sure that two days before your wife’s period is due is really the time to get pissy with her.)
And so the pigs got themselves quite the treat that night, let me tell you. I could handle the almond flavoring (I am not a pretty pretty princess with delicate tastes), but the fact that the bottom half of the cupcakes stuck to the silicon liners got all over my nerves.
(Also, I’m not crazy about cream cheese icing.)
So that was Friday. Friday = FAIL.
Saturday was quite a bit better, actually. I boxed the kittens up into carriers and spent half an hour vacuuming their room, changing out litter boxes, and wiping down various surfaces. I spent lots of time with the kittens, vacuumed the house, painted the spots on the ceiling I’d primed earlier in the week.
Mid-morning, Fred ran over to the post office which is literally less than 200 yards from our house. He had some eggs to mail, and before he left he reminded me that he had the “eggs for sale” sign up.
“Try to hold off the hordes!” he joked. It’s always his job to deal with the public when it comes to selling eggs, whether they be for eating or for hatching, and I give him a hard time if there’s even the slightest possibility that I might have to talk to a stranger about the price of our eggs.
He’d been gone for MAYBE a minute and a half, and I was sitting in front of my computer when I heard a sound in the driveway. I looked out, and there was a man waving to get my attention.
He wanted to buy eggs, of course. We had a discussion about the price of eggs – or rather, I guess he knew how much the eggs were (it’s on the sign), but he wasn’t sure how many eggs you’d get for $2. I told him it was $2 for a dozen, but he didn’t understand “dozen”, so I rephrased it as being $2 for 12, and he asked for 24.
(The majority of people who buy eggs from us are primarily Spanish speakers with a bit of English thrown in, and it kind of makes me want to take a course in elementary Spanish so I can better communicate with them.)
He took the eggs and paid, and as he was walking back to his truck, Fred pulled into the driveway and grinned at me, because what are the chances he’d leave for three minutes and someone would come buy eggs?
Later in the morning, I made a batch of Sugar Cupcakes, this time with lemon instead of almond, and with buttercream frosting instead of cream cheese. They came out good and they were tasty, but I think Fred liked them more than I did, and in the end the pigs got about half of them.
Saturday afternoon I was hanging out in the kitten room, and Beulah climbed up in my arms and went to sleep, and then Ezra and Elijah did, and I had the other four in my lap, sound asleep. And I wished like hell that Fred would come upstairs with a camera, and so I started sending very strong thought waves at him to COME UPSTAIRS VERY QUIETLY WITH THE CAMERA AND TAKE A PICTURE OF THIS THE CUTE WILL KILL YOU, and I thought this many times and as hard as I could think it, but that bastard just sat downstairs, oblivious to the thoughts that were being aimed at him. Hmph.
(Seriously, it was so cute you would have died.)
Sunday I put an eight-pound pork roast in the oven. This was a roast we’d gotten off our very first pig and we hadn’t eaten because it was so fucking HUGE, and finally I said “Let’s just cook this up and eat it so I can free up some freezer space!” I had no idea how long it was going to take to cook, but I put it in at 8:00 at 275º F, and it took about 5 hours to cook.
We had it last night for dinner with baked squash and green beans, and it was nice to have another meal comprised of things we’d grown ourselves.
And we’ll be eating roast pork for the rest of the week, I expect.
Sunday afternoon I was hanging out in the kitten room, and all the kittens were racing around except for Beulah, who was perched on my leg. I picked her up and laid down on my side, and she settled in to take a nap, and then suddenly from all points of the room kittens ran over and climbed on top of me, so I rolled onto my back, and all the kittens except Phinneas took a nap on me. I dozed for a little while, waking occasionally to protect my nose from a kitten butt invasion (they REALLY like to try to sit on my nose, I swear to god. It must be warm.)
I also sent more strong thought waves at Fred to come upstairs with the camera, but again – nada. Hmph.
And that was the weekend. It started out with a day of FAIL and ended with good food and purring kittens.
I’m not complaining.
I weighed the kittens yesterday. At the large end there’s Phinneas, who weighed in at a pound and 7 ounces. On the petite end, there’s Beulah who only gained an ounce in the last week, and now weighs a whopping 9.5 ounces.
When I fretted about her weight, Fred pointed out that she’d gained 1/12th 12% of her body weight. And then I thought about it some more and decided that she acts just like a healthy kitten, she’s just tiny. So I’m not going to worry about it.
The other kittens were all right around 1 pound 2 – 3 ounces.
Elijah and Beulah battle it out for the title of Supreme Ruler of the Kittehs. (Beulah won. She’s tiny, but she’s scrappy!)
More kitten pics over at L&H.
Also, there was an entry over there yesterday, complete with a video!
“Do these daffodils make me look less porky?”
Previously
2008: No entry.
2007: Love you! Mean it!
2006: I am absolutely the last person on Earth you want in the vicinity if there’s an emergency.
2005: Questions answered.
2004: I am absolutely stunned that… I frankly couldn’t give less of a shit.
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: I have to wonder, what the hell do all you skinny people do?
2000: Yes, this is a lame, short entry, but since y’all love me, you’ll be back. Right?