3/15/11 – Tuesday

AS OF LAST NIGHT, THE LG OPTIMUS V WAS AVAILABLE AT VIRGINMOBILE.COM! IF YOU’RE WANTING ONE!

(Of course, it’s $149.99 plus tax, which is kind of expensive, but I’ve ordered mine and I wanted to let y’all know.)

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So, as soon as I reported last week that I was sleeping really well, I immediately started having problems falling asleep. So Friday night I took a melatonin before I went to bed and I slept like a rock, but I was really damn sleepy all day Saturday. Then Sunday night I thought I should give it another try to see if it really had that effect on me or if it was more that I was tired because Fred woke me up early (5:30! God!). As it turned out, I spent most of yesterday lazing in the recliner in front of the TV, so either I need to cut my melatonin dose in half (I took a 3 mg pill each night) or maybe melatonin just isn’t for me.

I’m going to tempt fate by announcing that most of the time, I’m luck that I don’t have any problems falling asleep or staying asleep.

(This time next week I should be telling y’all that I haven’t slept more than an hour at a time since I wrote the above.)

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I’m back to doing the cooking these days, for which Fred is thankful, I’m sure. All the meals I cooked ahead of time worked out really well, and we even have some chimichangas left in the freezer. Sunday for dinner I made a pork roast, spaghetti squash, mashed summer squash with onions and garlic, and oven roasted okra. Except for the spices on the pork roast and the onions and garlic in the mashed summer squash, everything was grown here. And that was one tasty meal!

I’m planning pork chops, corn on the cob, and baked beans for dinner tonight and tomorrow (didn’t grow the baked beans here, but I canned ’em myself!), and then Thursday will be a New England Boiled dinner, which I make every single year on St. Patrick’s Day. LOVE that stuff!

Last weekend, we bought some of the seeds for the garden, and Fred started his pepper seeds. We’re growing Bhut Jolokia (Ghost Chiles), Cayennes, and a LOT of Jalapenos for a friend who has a particular fondness for sweet pickled Jalapenos. It’s a long way from here to the point where the Jalapenos will be ready for picking and pickling, but it’s the first step!

As always, I did what I say every Fall I’m not going to do. I get so caught up in the different things we could be growing, that I buy way more than we really need. New things we’re growing this year include purslane, butternut and acorn squashes, garlic chives, cilantro, dill, and brussels sprouts. We’re also going to make another run at growing sweet potatoes (this time with real seed sweet potatoes rather than a sweet potato from the grocery store. That one grew pretty well, but gave us very bland sweet potatoes.) and I’m thinking about growing potatoes in straw. Oh, and onions!

See how I am? The more I think about it, the more I want to grow! This year I’m taking a more active role in the gardening than in previous years. Last year I mostly took care of the tomatoes and peppers and occasionally picked some okra, but this year I want to keep an eye on all of it!

I have about six different kinds of tomato seeds, too. Last year I said “We do NOT need to plant so many tomatoes!”, this year I’m saying “We have the room. Shut UP, 2010 Robyn!” I read an amazing post somewhere (I don’t remember where, though!) where someone saves the ends from her tomatoes when she’s canning, and she dehydrates them and grinds them into powder, sifts out the stem ends, and then when she needs tomato paste she adds some water to the tomato powder and voila!

This is totally the best time of the year – revving up for gardening season is awesome!

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Corbie’s afraid you might have forgotten how beautiful he is.

Goofy Corbs.

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Thanks, you guys, for your kitten name suggestions! I have to weed through them and pick out my favorites, then double-check that they haven’t already been used before I enter them into my serious-consideration list.

STILL no babies, and Maggie is still eating like a horse. Is it too much to hope that she’ll wait ’til Thursday? Because that would be kind of neat. I mean, not that it matters what I want (GOD, Maggie, so selfish!) or anything, she’ll birth ’em when she wants to.

Every time I go into the foster room, I say “Where are my babies, Maggie?”, and she talks to me, then comes over to be petted, flops over for a belly rub, and then moseys over to the food to graze.

We set up a big carrier in one corner of the room, and put a towel over it to make it nice and dark. I lined the bottom with several towels to make it comfy, and yesterday when I went up to visit with her, she couldn’t hear me coming because it was raining outside (otherwise she would have met me at the door), and I found her hanging out in her cave. I got kind of excited, but she came right out to greet me, and there were clearly no babies nor did she spontaneously go into labor or anything.

What makes me think that perhaps she’s got a little way to go is that when I rub her belly I don’t feel bumps and points like I’d expect, just solid muscle mass. You’d think I’d remember what it was like when Kara had her babies, but that was three years ago, and one of my charms is that after about two weeks any kind of knowledge I have about pretty much everything goes right out of my brain.

I do know that I felt the very faint movement of a kitten in her stomach, so that was neat. Felt like a muscle spasm.

“That was gas.”

Such a sweet girl.

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Yesterday, for the first time, Rufus actually climbed into my lap. I wasn’t expecting it, and in fact wasn’t even trying to get him to climb into my lap (usually what I have to do is pull him into my lap, then he stays there, perfectly happy), but he was sitting there letting me pet him, and he was purring like mad, then suddenly he’d climbed into my lap!

We can occasionally hear him in the guest bedroom playing with the toys in there, but I haven’t been successful in getting him to play while I’m in there. I guess that’ll be the next step, when he’s comfortable enough to play while I’m in there.

Such a sweet boy!

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Tommy looks like he’s startled here, but he was actually in the process of kneading. When he kneads, he does it for a long, long time. He stares off into space and just kneads and kneads. I always announce “Tommy’s begun the long, slow march to nowhere! Still marching. Stillllll marching,” etc.

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Previously
2010: “GIVE TO ME THE PREGNANT CAT!”
2009: No entry.
2008: No entry.
2007: No entry.
2006: Mad Boog disease!
2005: MY BOX!
2004: (”He sighed at me, your honor, and then I had to kill him.” “Case dismissed!”)
2003: No entry.
2002: Bastards.
2001: You’re thinking If you had a clue how to tell which hamsters are girls and which are boys, you wouldn’t have this problem in the first place!
2000: Yes, I’m a goober, I think we all know that.