Vote for Suzanne!
Good Mood Gig from SAM-e
I’d ordinarily do a little bit of an entry before the comment-answering begins, but man – there just isn’t shit going on ’round these parts. How about some randomness?
The house is a mess. I vacuumed the downstairs last night for the first time since Sunday, and was appalled at all the crap the Dyson picked up. (And I didn’t even vacuum the guest bedroom! I didn’t want to traumatize the baby kittens.)
I made a batch of Sweet-Hot Habanero sauce last night, and it smelled so good that I think I’m going to make the sauce without habaneros for myself.
Made another batch of Caramel-Apple Jam. It’s so popular, I might have to just keep it as a regular feature on the jam page. I’m going to make Caramel-Apple turnovers again this weekend to use up the partial jars I end up with at the end of each batch. I suspect they will be super tasty.
Took Sugarbutt and two of the Wonkas to the vet. They all got fecals (diarrhea for the kittens, blood in the litter box from Sugarbutt) and none of the fecals turned up anything at all. Had a long discussion with the vet about fleas and how – since here in Alabama the weather pretty much encourages flea growth from April on – the problem isn’t so much that Advantage and Frontline aren’t working, but that the environment (ie, house and yard) needs to be treated to stop them from growing. Did you know that fleas don’t generally hop from animal to animal, that once they set up house on an animal and find it hospitable, they stay there? I had no idea. I thought they were roaming little motherfuckers! Bought some spray from the vet’s office. I haven’t seen a single flea since we treated the Cookies last week, but I’ve gotten paranoid about it. (Tip: If you’re looking for something to spray your house with to discourage fleas, look for something with “insect growth regulator.”)
Motherfucking tiny little ants discovered there was a corn syrup bottle in the cupboard that I hadn’t properly cleaned last time I made seed cakes for the squirrels, and threw a par-tay. I had to empty out the cabinet, scrub it down, and Fred sprayed a trail of ant poison across their trail. I opened the cabinet later that day, and there were dead ants everywhere. It was like the ant version of the opening of The Stand. Two days later, they’re still stomping across the poison and dying, then landing on the counter. I’m wiping up ten to twenty ants several times a day. (Thank god they’re nowhere near the area where I prepare food.) What I want to know is HOW THE HOLY FUCK did they stumble across that corn syrup? What were they LOOKING for? (Corn syrup, apparently!) Do ants just randomly send out scouts all over my kitchen all the time and I simply never notice? At least they were those tiny little ants and not the big juicy ones. Gah, I hate those big ants. They creep me out.
After my bragging yesterday about not being fazed by wasps, one flew at my face yesterday, and I nearly dropped dead of a heart attack.
I got into the car yesterday to go to the vet, and thought “Why does my car smell like MEAT? What the FUCK?” It wasn’t until I got into the car to come home from the vets that I realized it wasn’t meat I was smelling. It was vinegar. I went to Sam’s the other day, picked up a box of two gallon-size jugs of white vinegar, and one of them leaked a bit in the back of my car. (Both bottles are still sitting in my car because it was raining when I got home from Sam’s and I don’t unload the car in the rain except for the stuff that needs to go into the freezer.) I’m not sure why I thought it smelled like meat. At least vinegar doesn’t leave a stink behind.
Every time I type “Sam’s”, I think of Sam’s, and it’s making me crave a sub and a whoopie pie.
Fred came in from the chicken yard yesterday and said “I sure am tired of shitty litter boxes.” He’d come through the laundry room, so I assumed someone had befouled one of the three litter boxes in there. I said, “Oh, sorry. Did someone stink it up in there?” and he went on to rant a little more. Which is when I realized he meant “nest boxes”, not litter boxes. Some of the chickens have taken to sleeping in the nest boxes (they’re not supposed to. Those nest boxes are for egg laying. They’re SUPPOSED to sleep on the roosts like normal chickens.) and left lots of poop behind, which means that after we gather eggs, we have to clean off the poopy ones. I’ve done funner things.
I’ve said the sentence “Did you just wipe your BUTT on me?!” more times in the last week than you could ever imagine. Last night I said it to Mike when we were sitting in with the Wonkas before bed time, and Fred laughed and said “I assure you, I did NOT!”
Tomorrow’s our 11th anniversary. Fred told me last night that for my anniversary present, maybe he’d put a coat of polyurethane on the pantry (which is still sitting out in the garage). I’m hoping maybe the second coat of polyurethane could be my Christmas present, and then for my birthday, perhaps we could move it into the house! A girl can dream.
I am tired of the motherfucking rain. I could use a good year-long drought PLEASE.
LMAO over your 2004 comment…
“In case you were wondering, we are officially Crazy Cat People. We have 8 cat beds in this house and only four cats. How fucked up is that?”
Wanna do a recount?
I recall that wayyyyy back when we got Spanky (he’s 13 now!), Fred fretted about how many cats we had – and we only had three. Then we went up to four and we were all “This is SO many cats! How can people LIVE with more cats than this?!” I refuse to say that we’ll never get any more cats, because every time I say that, we end up with like 3 more.
One day I’ll get up and go through the house and count cat beds. But I’m a little afraid to find out how many we have.
Love the cookie names for the new little guys, so cute. Have you ever used candy bar names?
I’m the momma of “Snickers Nelson” and he suggests you sometime in the future use these:
Snickers – Baby Ruth – Starburst – Skittles – Tootsie – Gum drop – jelly bean – Kit Kat – Hershey – Gum Drop
I’ve never personally used candy bar names, but I’m pretty sure Snickers and Twix have been used by the shelter in the past. I’ll save the rest of those names for a future litter, though. I really like the idea of naming a cat “Kit Kat”!
How much do I love it that 1999’s entry is Why We Don’t Need Another Cat, by Fred. Har!
and
I noticed the same thing! I went back and read Fred’s letter….Fred, what say you now about those reasons you listed 10 years ago???
I haven’t even discussed this with Fred, but I think his answer would be along the lines of “Shut up.” 🙂
Jake and Elwood are so cute. I am not sure what you call it… the rounded part that sticks out with their nose and mouth… the muzzle?!?!? but theirs look especially pronounced. Is it bigger and rounder than most or is just the way they look in pictures?
It should not surprise you that I subscribe to Cat Fancy magazine, and in just the past few days I was reading a back issue, and discovered that that part of their face is called the “whisker pad.” Makes sense, doesn’t it?
I think that their whisker pads are definitely more rounded than the average cat’s whisker pads, especially Jake’s. That’s what makes him look like such a lunatic, I suspect!
You must be the champion of all bottle-feeders! I’ve done that for 5 different kittens in my life & I’m not very successful. If I ever get one again, I’m calling you!
Oh, let me tell you. When they refuse to latch on to the nipple and just bite at it and then act like they’re starving, it is SO frustrating. The Cookies are the first batch that nursed properly (though the Wonkas got it after a few days) and now it’s a crapshoot as to whether they’ll latch on and nurse or just bite the nipple. We’ve started trying to get them to eat food, but they couldn’t be less interested. I shoved a bit of food in Hydrox’s mouth yesterday and he made the MOST disgusted little face. I love it when kittens make the disgusted face, it’s so exaggerated.
And something I’ve been drifting back to over and over in the last few weeks, so what the hell… I just hope this comes off in the spirit in which it is intended and not as an assy question. (Remember: I was traumatized by kitten-in-pain dreams last night! Go easy on me!)
I didn’t read you for very long prior to your move to Crooked Acres, so I don’t know what your eating/cooking/food/activity habits were like then. But I am constantly amazed now to read about all the cooking and various types of food prep you do – canning, freezing, etc. (My hand to God, I thought about making toast for breakfast the other morning but it was just too much work. You made homemade jam before breakfast. That broke my brain.) And then of course there’s all the activity and exertion that comes with managing the various animals and grounds – sloppin’ the hogs, feeding the chickens, fighting off the turkeys, herding the cats, all that.
Meanwhile, one of the doctors I work for has just talked a patient out of having weight reduction surgery because – in addition to her having several existing medical conditions which make her a bad candidate for any kind of surgery – he said that there are some indicators that it’s not the permanent fix that people think it will be, that five or more years after surgery a lot of people have regained a significant percentage of the weight they lost.
Now, I don’t know whether or not that’s true, but its accuracy is irrelevant to what I’m thinking about. Which is this: Do you think, if you had moved to Crooked Acres without having had the WLS, that your new lifestyle would have resulted in significant weight loss over time, and the maintenance of that weight loss? Or do you think that you wouldn’t be able to do the things you do now without having lost the weight in the first place? (Or something completely different..?)
I often think that if I could change one or two habits, that would make me healthier enough to then change one or two more, and then… – but I wonder, in your particular case, which you think is more of a cause and which is more an effect – or if you think there’s a cause/effect thing at all.
This is what I think – I think that if I’d still weighed 300 or more pounds when we bought this house, there’s no way I could have physically done all I’ve done over the past three years. I wouldn’t have felt safe standing on a ladder, I don’t think I could have painted all those rooms and all that trim, I don’t know that I could have mowed the yard with the push mower. I think I would have attempted all that, but my size was literally holding me back from everything I wanted to do.
That said, I should point out that most of the hog-slopping, chicken-feeding, and turkey-wrangling is done by Fred. I don’t feel like I lead a particularly active life, but I do think it’s more active than it was before we moved here.
Really, I don’t know – I don’t think that the lifestyle change would have led to significant weight loss, but who knows?
Oh! thought I’d remind you, tonight on Bravo is the Atlanta Housewives reunion, suppose to be lots of screaming and drama drama drama….Which one of the housewives shows do you like the best ?
I double-checked, but my DVR was actually set up to tape the reunion, so I’ll be watching that later today!
I have a soft spot for the O.C. Housewives, though I’m not sure if it’s because it’s a better show or just because they’ve been around so long. In second place would be New York, and the New Jersey ladies are in third place. I don’t think that Atlanta is that interesting, frankly – I’ve fast forwarded through most of Nene’s “Who’s my daddy?” story because I find it BO.RING. I’ve also fast forwarded through most of Lisa’s as well, because her “Who’s your teammate? I’m your teammate!” shtick gets on my nerves. I’ve gotta say, Kandi and Kim have been the most interesting this year. I hope Kandi’s around for the next season – she’s the only one on that show who’s not a complete idiot.
Mike and Violet are suffering from diarrhea, I’m sad to report. I took them to the vet to have a fecal test done, and they didn’t find anything at all. I’ve started them on Slippery Elm and Forti-Flora, and if they’re not better by Monday, back they’ll go. I’m hoping that if things aren’t better by Monday, I can get a good fecal sample here and run it up to the vet, rather than having to put the babies through that trauma again.
Not fond of having a fecal sample taken, to say the least. Can’t say as I blame them!
Such a little worrywart.
Gus, contemplative.
Yesterday, after my run to the vet and back, I was eating breakfast, and I suddenly heard the Cookies get especially vocal. It sounded like there might be a problem, so I went and cracked the door to the Cookie room open, and saw the kittens in their cage just sitting there howling. But… there didn’t seem to be quite enough kittens in the cage. I did a quick count, realized that one was missing, and stepped into the room.
Skipping across the floor, super proud of himself, was Keebler. As it turns out, the Cookies are still small enough to squeeze through the cage bars. It’s a tight fit, but a determined kitten can do surprising things, and it appears Keebler had decided he had places to go.
I immediately became worried that one of them would try to squeeze through the cage and get stuck, or they’d change their minds and try to pull their heads back through the cage, and their head would pop clean off and go bouncing across the floor, spilling marshmallow fluff all over the place.
So we’ve started leaving the cage door open. At bedtime we did put them in the cage just because I feel safer with them contained (like they’ll be safer, I should say. Not that their wandering around the room at night somehow threatens my well-being. Just my sanity!) Most of the time, once we leave the room, they eventually end up back in the cage, curled up and sound asleep. When I go in there, they all spill out of the cage and come howling at me.
It’s rough to try to feed one kitten at a time when the other four are crawling all over you, trying to steal the bottle from whoever’s being fed, and clawing at your hand because they are STARVING. I solved that issue by taking them one at a time up onto the bed. The other kittens can’t get up onto the bed, so it works out pretty well.
I bought this Snuggle Kittie last year when it was half-price at Petsmart. It’s got a little “heart” that runs off two watch batteries that fits into a pocket on the bottom of the cat and sounds like (or is supposed to sound like) a mother’s heart beat. I figured sooner or later I’d have kittens who were small enough to appreciate it. The Wonkas were completely uninterested in it, except for Gus, who used it as a bed. The Cookies, on the other hand, loved it immediately. They snuggle up to it every night – in fact, when we first got them, they’d nuzzle up to the Snuggle Kittie, need on it, and purr like mad. It’s a little sad, actually, but also very sweet. Every now and then one or the other of the kittens will flop across it and it’s so cute I can barely stand it.
Pink’s a loner. She spends a lot of time off by herself (though when I’m in the room, she seems happiest curled up in my lap). Everyone else was sleeping in the cage, but Pink was curled up on this cat bed in the middle of the floor. She needs her space, that one.
“Um, hey… Someone said there’s a bottle around here?”
Hydrox sometimes sleeps with his eyes open and it CREEPS ME OUT.
“Uh, hi. Did you say there was a bottle up here? Because I could use one. RIGHT NOW.”
I love it that even when they’re all grown up, Tommy and Sugarbutt still snuggle from time to time.
Previously
2008: Hint: throwing extra adjectives into a book summary doesn’t actually make it sound more interesting.
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).