Month: May 2011

Since I did nothing of interest yesterday (worked in the garden, vacuumed, did laundry, cleaned the kitchen, snorrrrre) and need to clear off my hard drive before I go through the ten million pictures on my camera’s memory stick, I present nothin’ but kitty pics to you. THOU ART WELCOME.

Miss Dorfy loves her some Jake.

She’s so happy, she’s making biscuits on the back of his neck.

Did I mention that pile of cat beds? I took them off the guest bedroom and tossed them near the back door, which is by the washer and dryer, intending to wash them at some point. Before I could wash them, the cats discovered them, and there’s been at least one cat on that pile of beds at all times. Usually it’s Dorothy, sometimes it’s Alice, occasionally Jake’s there, too. Had I realized what a huge hit that pile of beds would be, I’d have put some there long ago.

The Spice Girls are settling in nicely. We’re having some litterbox issues, which really is a theme for us – we get kittens who have perfectly perfect litterbox leavings, and after a few days things get soft and messy. These girls – at least one of them, probably all of them – have roundworms and are currently being treated. It’s not slowing them down any, though.

Cilantro and Clove.

Clove at the water bowl.

I don’t know what it is about this scratcher, but all the kittens who have entered the foster room like to sniff this corner while they’re considering their next move.

Sweet Cilantro, perfecting the look of innocence (don’t be fooled).

Coriander, relaxing…

::maniacal laughter::

The McMaos, before I moved them to the guest bedroom.

Declan, sniffing the stuffed parrot whilst considering his next move.

Cillian in motion.

Declan, watching whatever it is that’s going on over there.

Finnegan surrenders. “Ya gots me, copper!”

Fergus Simon’s spotted belly just kills me dead. He is such a beautiful boy.

My favorite part of this picture is Declan over there to the right with the green plastic ring in his mouth, all “Eh? What’s he doin’?”

I’m pretty sure that all kittens are 89% insane, as illustrated by Macushla. If those aren’t crazy eyes, I don’t know what is (are?)

“Up or down? Climb up so I can throw myself off the top platform, or down so I can kick my brother’s tail? Oh, the dilemma!”

This is totally like that episode of Friends where they were trying to poke Ugly Naked Guy to make sure he was still alive, no?

Like mother…

…like daughter. ‘Nipheads, both of ’em!

Thanks to reader Cyndi, the McMaos are undergoing rigorous box training. Here we see Cillian doing his best to get his daily intake of cardboard.

I suspect when I’m not around, Fergus Simon gives up all pretense and actually walks around on his hind feet all the time. Then it’s like “Oh, here comes the human!” and he drops to all fours.

::leap::

I’m not sure what caused it, but Declan was feeling a bit floofy.

I love how Macushla’s all frantically “No! Stop! Don’t!” and Declan’s not even aware Mac is there.

Ciara in motion.

Cillian’s got the crazies.

::chompchompchomp:: “This stuff is almost tasty. I hope it really does help me grow up big and strong!”

“You want to feed me. Youuuuu waaaaaant to feeeed meeeee…”

“I’m IN the box. NOW what?”

Sheriff Kara keeps an eye on things. Who’s misbehaving? Or rather, I should ask: who ISN’T misbehaving?

Previously
2010: No entry.
2009: No entry.
2008: No entry.
2007: The thing I hate about canisters is that that goddamn canister is always in the way.
2006: “TURN LEFT HERE OR I WILL EAT YOUR SOUL.”
2005: No entry.
2004: It was like being in a flying SUV.
2003: No entry.
2002: It was a stank that coated the inside of my nostrils, and was so thick and noxious that I could actually TASTE it.
2001: A buncha links.
2000: Something about that rictus grin just gives me nightmares.

Saturday morning I got up before I wanted to, not only because Miz Poo was wheezing her usual death-rattle in my face (that cat wheezes like she’s been smoking three packs a day every single day of her 11+ years; in the course of one of her many surgeries, there was some scarring to the tissue at the back of her throat, and spit or phlegm gets caught there every once in a while, and she wheezes raspily until it annoys her (which is long after it’s annoying to everyone else in the vicinity) and she coughs and clears her throat), and not only because there was a mourning dove mourning in the tree outside my window, but also because the alarm clock in the back of my brain sounded because I knew Fred wanted to go somewhere bright and early.

So I got up and got dressed, and we headed for Decatur. Every year on Memorial Day Weekend, they have something called Jubilee, which is a hot air balloon “classic” (according to the web site), and a million (est’d) hot air balloons go up into the air. Fred remembered that it was going on, and wanted to go see the balloons go up.

I have to admit, it was pretty neat. Once they’re up, the balloons actually go a lot faster than you’d expect.

After we stood and watched the balloons for a while, we headed toward home, which is actually in the same directions that the hot air balloons were headed. We saw a couple land, and later a few went over our property, spurring George and Gracie to bark their fool heads off in defense of their chickens.

Reflection in a ditch.

When we got home, we worked in the garden for a while. Then I hung out with the kittens and did some housework and laundry ’til Lisa stopped by to visit with the McMaos and The Spice Girls (and me!), and at one point she had Clove laying asleep in the bottom of her shirt, and it was so adorable that I was silently cursing my failure to bring a camera into the room with us.

Lisa left, and I did a little (very little) more housework before I landed on the couch and took a nice long nap.

Really, I’m pretty sure they only invented weekends so everyone could take Saturday and Sunday afternoon naps. I hope y’all got yours in!

Sunday morning I was up and dressed by 6:30, and we were out working in the garden by 7. Fred came back inside to do something, and I weeded the compost heap (there are so many volunteer tomato plants growing on the compost heap that we’ve decided to let them be and just pick the tomatoes they offer all summer long. But there was so much Amaranthus and Bermuda growing alongside the tomato plants that it was getting difficult to even see the tomato plants, so I yanked up the non-tomato stuff, tossed it in the cart, and then pulled the cart out to the pig yard. I tossed everything I’d yanked up into the pig yard and called to the pigs, and they ambled out of their shelter, where they’d been snoozing (I swear, these little girl pigs are the laziest pigs we’ve ever had. They’re always piled up in their shelter sleeping!) and the spotted the pile of greens and acted like it was the best treat EVER.

Then I finally planted my three watermelon seeds in the bale in my little raised-bed garden (I’m experimenting with limited bale gardening this year – two tomato plants on one bale, and three watermelon plants on another), and finally got the soaker hose run to all my various raised beds and bales and pots of herbs, tested it to make sure it would work (it does!). I then spent about 45 minutes raking up the leaves and random detritus in the side yard and carting it all out to the spot where we decided to start the new compost heap. Then I was done – DONE – working outside for the day, because it was after 9, and already hot, and I refuse to work outside past 9:00 during the summer.

After I ate breakfast, we went up into town to Tractor Supply and bought a yard sweeper. It was a big one, one that could be pulled by the riding lawnmower. Fred mowed the back forty on Saturday, and we had decided that we’re going to put weed-blocking fabric in the garden so that he doesn’t have to spend all his spare time weeding the damn garden. But we needed to put something down on top of the fabric, and I’ve been lobbying for years now to put grass clippings down on the weed fabric, and he apparently decided that that would work.

So we got the yard sweeper, and when we got home Fred started putting it together, and wouldn’t you figure? The fucking thing wouldn’t go together right no matter what he did, and Fred was ready to drive directly to the company that makes the yard sweeper and burn it down (figuratively speaking, of course), but in the end we simply returned the goddamn thing. We’re still talking about what we’re going to do. SIGH. I’m up for doing whatever it takes in the garden that will require the least amount of work, long-term. It’s too damn hot here for him to come home from work and spend time weeding in the garden, and honestly? I have no desire to do it either, buh-leave me.

We’ll see.

While he was out working on getting that piece of shit put together, I was inside making cookies. I’ve been seeing the recipe for OMG THESE ARE THE BEST CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES EVER for ages now, and finally I decided to give ’em a try. I made the dough on Friday and then let it sit for 36 hours in the fridge, and on Sunday I scooped the dough out and sprinkled it with sea salt and baked them, and after much careful consideration, here’s my opinion:

Meh.

The Cooking Light Chocolate Chip Cookies are still far and away my favorite cookies and the best chocolate chip cookies ever AND you don’t have to use cake flour and bread flour and let the dough sit in the fridge forever and a day and then carefully scoop out dough and ask Your Lord and Savior to help these cookies rise and tiptoe around the house and kiss each kitten twice on the nose and once behind each ear and caaaaarefully remove the cookies from the oven only to be completely disappointed by the spectacular unspectacularness of the damn things.

But that’s just my opinion.

And while I’m talking about baking, I made a chocolate cake with whipped cream icing as a belated birthday cake for Fred (since his birthday was on Thursday and we don’t eat that stuff during the week) on Saturday, and again I say: meh. I should have just made a damn Black Forest Torte because THAT, my friends, is something to write home about.

There was another nap on Sunday afternoon, and lots of snuggling with kittens, and the best part is that Fred has today off. I don’t know what we’re going to do (my prediction: nothing much), but I’m sure there’ll be a nap involved!

Someone asked the other day, Someone else asked, and I was wondering too actually… what will happen to the lovely Maggie?

Once her babies are spayed and neutered and have gone off to Petsmart to be adopted immediately (fingers crossed!), Maggie will stay here with us. I’ll wait about a week to be sure her milk has dried up, and then I’ll have her spayed (id chipped, rabies shots, all that) and she’ll hang out here with us until room opens up at Petsmart for her, whereupon she will go to Petsmart (and hopefully be immediately adopted!).

I will tell y’all, I would really like to release the McMaos to explore the rest of the house, but I’m worried that Maggie’s protective instincts will kick in. Jake was so desperate to get into the guest bedroom Saturday that we let him in to see what would happen. What happened is that he bellied up to the kitten food and ate while growling at any kittens who came near, and then Maggie went ::FLOOF:: and started chasing him in a threatening manner around the room, so we ushered him out of the room. I’m tempted to let just Maggie out into the house to meet the other cats (without the kittens around for her to feel protective over) and see how that goes.

“I’m flying! I’M FLYIIIIIIING!”
“Holy cow! He’s flying!”

“So then I was all ‘You want yerself a real man, you know where to find me!’ She’ll call, right?”
“Sure she will, bro. Sure she will.”

“I’ve got it! I’VE GOT IT!”

I don’t know what kitten tails taste like, but they must be really tasty given all the chewing that goes on.

Attitudinous little brat.

I have this cheap little rechargeable sweeper that I use in the foster room when the floor has gotten so bad I can’t stand it, and don’t want to put all the kittens into carriers and bring them out of the room. It’s fairly quiet, as that sort of thing goes, so I’m not too worried about scaring the heck out of the kittens the way a real plug-in vacuum would. However, the McMaos are not the bravest of kittens, and last time I used the sweeper in the room, they all ran to the closet and hid from me.

“That is SKEERY, lady!”

“I don’t like it. I tried to cram myself in this old baby wipe container, but I wouldn’t fit all the way.”

“We was ALL skeered, even Fergus Simon the hellion.”

“Ferguson tried to get into the wipes container with me, but I told him ‘Bro, if I won’t fit, we’re not BOTH going to fit, and this is MY safe place!'”

Since there’s been such a lot of interest in Dorothy lately, I’ll break my usual don’t-want-to-jinx-anything stance on the topic and let y’all know that Dorothy has a forever home, and she’ll be going there this weekend. I won’t give you details ’til after the adoption is done (see above about not wanting to jinx anything), but I think she’s going to be very happy in her new home!

Dorothy and Alice, hanging out in the sun.

The Spice Girls are doing very well. They’re healthy and happy, and in the evenings when we’re watching TV, we can hear them running around like little wild things, playing. Jake really wanted into the foster room on Sunday, so I let him in. He walked to the middle of the room, looked at the girl kitties, and then walked out. They, in turn, were interested in Jake, but a little leery of him as well. They all floofed up a bit, but weren’t terribly freaked out.

Cilantro, trying to decide in which direction to run.

Clove. I love her markings.

Coriander, considering.

Snoozin’ Coriander.

They sure do love that scratcher.

Clove demonstrates that these girls are well-trained in the litterbox arts.

Coltrane, hanging out near the pig yard. One day last week, I was out checking on the pigs or feeding them, and I heard George bark, and looked up to see he and Gracie running full-tilt toward the far back corner of the back forty. My heart almost stopped when I saw that they were running toward Coltrane, and I thought I was about to see some carnage (I yelled for the dogs to stop, but they didn’t seem to hear me), but as it turned out (it’s hard to tell from a distance), Coltrane was outside the fence. George and Gracie stopped short of the fence, seemed to recognize Coltrane, and turned and ran back toward me.

(For the record, I really don’t think G&G would have killed Coltrane, but I also can’t swear that they wouldn’t – it’s possible they would have seen him as a threat to their flock.)

Previously
2010: No entry.
2009: No entry.
2008: I always forget what bitey little brats they are at this age. They’re so MEAN.
2007: “I’m so happy,” he said. “That if this were a movie, in the next scene you’d be raped or killed.”
2006: No entry.
2005: Every time I type in “u” instead of “you”, I die a little inside.
2004: No entry.
2003: What happens if you put a box on the floor?
2002: “Where was it, Bessie?” he asked, trying to draw me into the trap with him, so he could perhaps trip me and then run away, leaving me there for her to latch onto.
2001: What do you s’pose a realtor’s house looks like? I always assumed it’d be a real showplace, with everything just so, all appliances gleaming and so on.
2000: Every time I blow-dry my hair, it sounds like the phone is ringing.

“Hmm… this seems to be about the right size for me!”

“A little tight, but comfy.”

The perfect vantage point to see what’s going on…

Bath time.

Checking to be sure he didn’t miss anything…

So sweepy.

Ciara investigates…

…then keeps on moving.

Room for Cillian?

Guess not.

“Eh?”

Zzzzzz.

Sugarbutt hopes y’all have a nice, relaxing Saturday.

Previously
2010: I HAVE BETTER THINGS TO DO THAN HOVER OVER THE PAN TO MAKE SURE THE ONIONS DON’T BROWN.
2009: I traumatized Fred by telling him I was going to have it professionally framed.
2008: Now that I have only the one drain, which will be tucked under my clothes, I don’t have to worry about the kittens puncturing anything and blood spurting all over the place.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: No entry.
2003: Today I’m still burning with curiosity, and I wish I’d asked anyway.
2002: So yes, the vacation rocked.
2001: If vacation pictures aren’t your thing, I’ll see ya tomorrow.
2000: I’m so so SO glad to be home.

Happy, happy birthday, Nance!!!!

For those of you who asked where I got those adorable plates in yesterday’s Snackin’! Time! pictures, here’s a closeup of them:

I got them at Petsmart, quite some time ago. It just so happened that I had seven of them on hand. I don’t use them for snack time for the McMaos because it’s a huge pain to try to carry 7 plates at once, just used them the once so I could get some pictures of all of them in a row. These days I’m doing what I thought of last week: I mix up their snack (one can of kitten food, one jar of Gerber chicken and gravy baby food – they don’t need the baby food, but they like it, and I like to make them happy as I’m sure you’re shocked to hear) and then put seven blops of food around the edge of a regular sized (human) dinner plate, and that works out really well.

I need to get a picture of that, too, while I’m thinking of it!

Poor Maggie. She sure does put up with a lot from those bratty little brats.

“Hi Mama! ::thwap::”

“HI Mama! Make way!”

Note, please, that he’s standing ON her.

And now he’s biting her tail. She just lays there and puts up with it.

That look on her face epitomizes ::SIGH::, doesn’t it?

“HI MAMA! Hi!”

“You takin’ a nap? You takin’ a nap, huh, Mama? You gonna take a nap? You want me to take a nap with you? Huh, Mama, huh?”

“Lord help me from killing this mouthy little child.”

“Just a little bite on the side of his neck will make me feel so much better.”

“HOLD STILL, child, I’m gonna bite you.”
“No, Mama, noooooo! Mama! Hi Mama! Hi Mama, what you doin’?”

“Come on, guys, Mama’s drinking water! That means WE need to drink water, too!”

“Hi Mama, hi! Hi Mama!”

“MAMA! I said HI! HI Mama, can you HEAR me?”

“Mama, I smack you on the face! I smack you, Mama! Hi!”

“Mama, I’m hungry. Is it time to eat, Mama?”

Note that she’s holding Declan down with one paw while she bites Fergus Simon on the neck. She’s multi-talented!

Boy, someone’s a little crankypants and apparently missed her afternoon nap.

Miz Poo in the Poo Cave.

Previously
2010: Now they need to have a follow-up series, LOST: Life After the Island.
2009: “Go get the ladder, Joe. GO GET THE LADDER. I’m a portly cat. A jump from here would kill me!”
2008: No entry.
2007: No entry.
2006: Goofy cats.
2005: Grackles are kind of evil-looking and have great big beaks and I’m sure their bite is far, far worse than their bark.
2004: I sure am MIGHTY FUCKING TIRED of going to the FUCKING doctor’s office all the damn time.
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.

So, I didn’t lay on the couch and watch TV all day yesterday as I thought I might, but I got a lot of small tasks accomplished, so that’s good. But don’t worry – I know you were worried – I got caught up on some of my reality TV while I went through the three-foot stack of paper that’s been sitting next to my desk for ages. The stack was comprised of mostly recipes, and I ended up dividing the recipes into several different categories and paper clipped each category together, then stuck a post-it on the front page of each so I’d know which stack belonged to which category.

It was all very harrowing, as I’m sure you can imagine, trying to decide whether frozen hot chocolate (these are recipes I’ve never made, by the way, once I make the recipe I either toss it or commit it to a recipe card in the recipe box – and that one’s been sitting in my stack of “make this someday” recipes for about a year) belongs in “breakfast” or “dessert.” If I called it “drinks”, it would have been in a category by itself. Oh, the dilemma!

(I put it in “dessert.” You know you wanted to know.)

I also found a large number of printed out comments from last year when some of you gave me some gardening advice, and maybe this year I’ll actually take some of that advice now that I know where it is!

(In the “gardening” category, obv.)

Speaking of the garden, yesterday I saw that there are flowers on the tomato plants that were planted before the tornado went through. And there are tiny little tomatoes-to-be on a couple of the tomato plants I transplanted from the compost heap to the garden. The corn and beans Fred planted are coming up nicely and the squash plants… well, they’re hanging in there.

We just may have a decent garden this summer after all!

I got my dumbphone from Virgin Mobile last week, and it’s working out pretty well for me. I got the Samsung Restore and so far the only thing I don’t like about it is the way it “threads” text messages. Well that, and the fact that the pull-out QWERTY keyboard is bigger than the one on my Kyocera Wild Card was (which is what I had before the LG Optimus V), and I find it awkward with my tiny doll hands and short fingers to type messages on it.

Never happy, am I?

(I admit, I miss my Wild Card a wee bit, but the camera on the Samsung is better, and I can check my email on the Samsung too, so I guess I’ll learn to deal.)

Also, I charged the new phone on Thursday and didn’t have to charge it again ’til Sunday EVEN THOUGH I sent and received text messages IN THE DOUBLE DIGITS. Go, Samsung Restore!

Alice is all “If I wasn’t so sleepy, I would NOT be putting up with this, you little upstart.”

“Dorfy sweepy too. I can haz a snuggle?”
Alice: “Don’t push it, whippersnapper.”

More snackin’ time for the McMaos. Note that even though Maggie has her very own plate, she goes up the line partaking of the kittens’ snacks.

I can’t swear to it, but I think the lineup is, left to right: Macushla, Cillian, Ciara, Fergus Simon, Maggie, Finnegan, and Declan. It’s hard to know for sure from this angle.

The McMaos tussle.

Maggie takes a breather.

They really really love this little basket. Sometimes one of them will sit in it and another one will bat at them through the openings. Also sometimes we put the basket over the top of one of them, and the others gather around and mock him.

Finnegan makes with the crazy eyes.

Cillian. Don’t you want to kiss his little nose?

Fergus Simon, about to tip over backwards.

Macushla in my lap.

Loony Jake is annoyed.

Previously
2010: One thing y’all do not know about Fred And3rson is that when it comes toward clothing, he gravitates toward the bright, flamboyant colors.
2009: No entry.
2008: One of the many things I don’t get: sour cream.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: WHERE’S THE SENSE?
2004: ”It’s HOT in the SOUTH in the SUMMER?! You don’t say!”
2003: No entry.
2002: I hope you’re planning on marking the occasion with style and panache, people.
2001: And so on until it’s lunchtime and I’m so excited at the thought of Lime Jello for dessert (it being Tuesday and all) that I hang up on her and go hobbling out to the lunchroom with all the other old people.
2000: Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.

On Saturday, after taking a road trip to Tennessee that took up most of the morning (and somehow, I managed to not take a single picture while I was up there, wtf??), we swung by Egg the Pig Man’s place and got ourselves some little pigs. I took a bunch of pictures around Egg’s place (which I will share with you on Thursday), but for now you can feast your eyes on the three little cuties.

Egg is always having issues with his back, and it hurts me just to see him walk. He’s 78 years old, and it’s been a rough 78 years. His wife’s trying to get him to give up the piggin’ business (and probably the cow business as well), but I think he just loves it too much. The day after the tornadoes went through (he had no damage to his property), he was checking his fence, and got his boots stuck in the mud and couldn’t pull them out, so he was barefooted. He was pulling himself up with his arms and got tangled in his electric fence, and when he got zapped by it, he pulled back and twisted his back which made him fall, and he busted his hand up when he fell.

Last week, he forgot his truck was in park and started to get out, then got his head stuck between the steering wheel and rearview mirror, and got a bruise on his head.

Poor Egg.

In the past, Egg’s always been the one to wrestle the pigs we were buying into the carriers, but this time he let Fred do it. We had told him that we wanted two pigs, but on the way up there we got to talking, and Fred’s got a couple of people at work who want to buy pigs (or rather, half a pig). We decided that if Egg had another pig around the same size as the other two for sale, then we’d buy a third. If not, then the people who want to buy pigs from us would have to wait. (We determined, after the other two pigs went to be processed in February and it was a godawful mess getting them into the truck because it was so wet in the back forty, that we’re only going to have pigs once a year from here on out.)

As it turned out, Egg had five little pigs for sale, so we got that third pig. Then he and Fred talked about how we should buy a sow from him and raise our own pigs, and yeah. I don’t think so. Especially after Egg casually says things like “She had about twelve of them, but she mashed a couple.” I’d rather not have to see any piglets who got mashed by their mama rolling over on them, thanks anyway.

There was a mama pig there with a large number of tiny little piglets (much smaller than the three we ended up getting) and I would have dearly loved to touch a wee piglet, but mama pig was giving me the “I will mess you UP, lady” eyes, so I didn’t even think about trying that.

We got home and then carried the carriers out to the pig yard and set the girls free, and they immediately ran around and ate grass and chased each other. They are certainly cute girls, but we realized that one of them has a bulge in her mid-section and that means one of the following: (1) It’s a boy OR (2) It’s a hernia OR (3) It’s an umbilicus (this is a Fred And3rson theory, and I don’t know what the fuck he could possibly be talking about, the pigs are NOT newborns, but he says it with enough self-assurance that he seems to think it’s a real theory, so I’m going to leave it in) OR (4) It’s a hermaphrodite pig. After much quality time spent staring at Bulgy’s back end, Fred is pretty sure that she’s a she and that the bulge is a hernia because it’s not pointy enough to be, y’know. Male equipment. The last time we dealt with hernia-having pigs, it didn’t work out so well and we ended up taking the pigs back from whence they came, but Fred doesn’t seem inclined to do that with this pig, so I don’t know. Whatever. Pigs are his area of expertise, not mine, so I’m going to let him figure out what he wants to do as far as that goes.

Saturday evening, I was wiped out (I think due to a Zyrtec I’d taken earlier in the day. I felt sleepy all day long, and that’s what I’ve decided to blame it on.) and we put in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 and I watched it when I wasn’t dozing.

Sunday morning I was awakened bright and early (5:45!) by Fred, who came upstairs to tell me that he’d seen the possum who eats out of the food bowl on our side porch, and the poor guy doesn’t have a tail anymore. We discussed what could have happened to it, then Fred told me something else that I don’t recall, and he went downstairs.

Since I was awake, I got up and got dressed, then went into the foster room to give the kittens and Maggie their morning snack and scoop the litter boxes. I found a kitten pee situation that required getting all the McMaos out of the foster room so I could do a thorough cleaning, which took about half an hour. I got all the litter boxes scooped and took a few minutes to relax before I headed out to start working in the garden.

I spent the next couple of hours cutting empty pig and chicken feed bags open and cutting a slit down the middle of each so that I could put a bag around each and every tomato plant so I won’t spend my summer weeding. While I did that, Fred got out the tomato cages and put one over each tomato plant. We took a break to eat breakfast, then he started driving T posts in the tomato row and tying twine along the row of cages, attaching the cages to the T posts.

It was all very exciting, as I’m sure you can imagine.

Then I put drip hoses along each of my rows of tomatoes and one along my row of onions and cucumbers, mowed the grass around my raised beds, planted two tomato plants in my straw bale (it’s an experiment), and declared that I was done working outside for the day. I went inside, took a shower, and then proceeded to putter around the house for a few hours. Fred’s father and stepmother stopped by and we spent about an hour chatting with them before they headed home.

It was a fairly productive weekend (well, Sunday) for me, but I have so much more on my to-do list that all I want to do is lay in front of the TV and do nothin’.

Sounds like a plan!

As the oldest cat, Spanky thinks that what to watch should be HIS decision.

“But *I* wanna watch those wacky Real Housewives!” says Dorothy.
Jake: ::facepalm::

(Dorothy won. She always does.)

Seven weeks old! Can you believe it?

Ciara goes for the butt bite as Cillian attempts to flee up the cat tree.

Declan (left) and Fergus Simon (right) in my lap. They’re looking all wild-eyed because the camera strap is hanging down, tempting them.

Their little faces crack me up (please note the foot-sniffer in the background).

Macushla and his fangs.

Finnegan at play (note to self: someone really needs to paint those baseboards.)

“I feel skeered, but I don’t know WHY.”

Ciara, hanging on the cat tree while Cillian’s over there all “I don’t know why you’re taking HER picture, she’s not doing anything all THAT impressive. I can hang there like that. I can hang there from only ONE paw. She’s nothin’ special. Hmph.”

“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the Bat signal, and I am BatCat!”

“::sigh:: Picking that up would be SO much easier if I had opposable thumbs.”

Are we comfy, Suggie? (Sugarbutt and Tommy love to lay like this on the back of Fred’s chair.)

Previously
2010: No entry.
2009: No entry.
2008: Home! Will post when I can, don’t know when that will be.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: Yes, a child’s dose of Benadryl on an empty stomach, and I’m about ready to dance on the bars and twirl my bra over my head.
2004: No entry.
2003: He’s a badass motherfucker, that’s right.
2002: Little baby piglets!
2001: “This is our song, Robbie,” she said.
2000: I can’t believe I’ve been doing this journalling thing for over 7 months now.