Thanks, you guys, for your photo editing suggestions. I was emailing with local reader Jean, and I realized that there’s nothing I need to do that I probably couldn’t do perfectly well with PaintShop Pro. It’s not like I really need to PhotoShop my pictures all to hell and back – I prefer the more natural look, so aside from lightening, sharpening, and cropping pictures, I don’t really do anything that should be all that difficult. I’m going to get me a book that teaches me how to use PaintShop Pro, and if I find that it’s not meeting my needs, I’ll move over to PhotoShop Elements and then maybe some of your other suggestions.
I had no idea, by the way, that PhotoShop is THAT expensive. Holy cow! For a price like that, I hope they provide you with an instructor who’ll come to your house and yell at you for doing it wrong and maybe bake you a cake on the way out.
Thanks, also, those of you who recommended the over-the-door towel rack. I know I’ve seen those before, but had completely forgotten that they exist – that’s exactly what I need, and I’ll be looking for one when I go out tomorrow. Several of you suggested putting a towel rack on the side of the cabinet, but I don’t want to do that, because I’m not sure how well it would work (I don’t think the cabinet’s made of solid wood) and I don’t want to mark up the side of the cabinet in case I suddenly decide I don’t need ANY of that bathroom stuff, toss it, and decide to use it for something else.
And yes, Smocha, Fred could move the towel rack to another spot, but the issue is that there are no other spots in the bathroom where the towel rack would work, unless he hung it over the litter box and I don’t relish the thought of drying myself with a litterbox-smelling towel.
So, Monday night Fred said something, and I realized that I hadn’t, as he’d asked via email earlier in the day, taken two pounds of coffee out of the freezer and left them by the side door so he’d remember to take them to work with him. Yes, they provide coffee at work, but it’s Folger’s or Maxwell House, and his delicate taste buds shudder at the very idea and so he has a coffee maker in his office and he makes himself the fancy stuff and won’t share it with anyone else, because did they pay for the fancy stuff? They did not.
I said “Oh, I forgot to take your coffee out, why don’t you go do that while I finish making dinner?”, and he gave me a skeptical “You just PRETENDED to forget, you always make me do everything WOE IS ME” look and he went and started looking through the freezer. A moment later he said “We may have a problem.”
“WE don’t have a problem,” I said. “I don’t drink coffee!” I helped him look through the freezer, and sure enough, he was down to one pound of coffee. While I was searching, I came across some frozen broccoli I’d put in the freezer a few months ago. At the time, I was making stir-fry a couple of times a week for lunch, and so I’d bought a big bag of fresh broccoli and separated it out and froze it so that when I needed broccoli, I’d have the perfect amount I needed, on hand. Naturally, I’d fallen out of love with the stir fry and moved on to something else and the broccoli had been sitting in the freezer unused.
“I’m never going to use this,” I said, taking the frozen bags out of the freezer and setting them on the counter. “I’m going to let them thaw, I bet the pigs would love some broccoli.”
And so, on the counter the broccoli sat all evening long and into Tuesday morning. Mid-morning, when I was getting ready to make breakfast, I rediscovered the broccoli and decided to open the bags and put the broccoli into the pig bucket sitting on the counter so that when Fred got home from work, he could add whatever he was taking out to them (which he mixes with their Pig Chow) and the pigs could have themselves a nice, healthy snack.
I cut open the first bag and dumped the broccoli into the pig bucket, then tossed the bag into the sink (Food Saver bags can be washed and reused, as long as they aren’t holding meat. I mean, I’m sure bags that held meat could probably be sanitized enough for reuse, but I don’t like to take the chance) and turned to grab the second bag. I was about to cut the top off the second bag when the smell from the broccoli I’d tossed into the pig bucket hit my nose.
As an aside, let me inform you that I have a fairly strong stomach. I clean out litter boxes twice a day, and the damage Joe Bob does to a litter box – both visually and olfactorally – would do a weaker-stomached person in. I eat lunch at my desk which overlooks the back yard, and it’s not uncommon for me to look up from my lunch to see a cat making the back yard their super-sized litter box, and I am unfazed and go right back to eating. We routinely discuss cat and chicken poop while we’re eating, I suffer cat farts with mere exclamations of disgust, I walk through clouds of septic tank stank with just a grimace. I am not easily overcome by the nastiness of daily life, is what I’m telling you.
So when the smell from the opened bag of broccoli hit my nose, I was surprised to find myself standing over the sink gagging. It was the nastiest thing I have ever smelled in my entire life.
It smelled like evil.
Holding my nose closed, I dumped the broccoli from the pig bucket into the trash, took the trash out to the trash can, and came back inside to find the awful stench dancing merrily from one end of the house to the other. It took the better part of a day that included scrubbing down the counters, sinks, and pig bucket with bleach, lighting matches, spraying air freshener, and lighting candles in every room of the house before the smell was completely gone.
And that’s always a fun way to spend your day.
These goddamn kittens are never going to open their eyes. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that they’re all going to be blind (well, except for Inara, whose eyes are actually open) and plan to take up a collection to buy little white canes and miniature seeing-eye dogs for them.
(pic) Little pink toes and little round belleh.
(pic) Kaylee, nursing.
(pic) Not an uncommon sight – River, Inara, and Zoe snoozing in a pile while Kaylee communes with the wall of the box. She likes to scratch at it, I think she likes the sound it makes.
There are some truly awful pictures up over at Flickr. Like I said yesterday, I’m refraining from using the flash so as to avoid damaging their brand new eyeballs (assuming there are eyeballs IN there) but I couldn’t let their 12th day go by unrecorded.
(pic) Newt wonders who that good-lookin’ guy in the mirror is.
Previously
2007: I think you can imagine our happiness.
2006: No entry.
2005: Always/ Sometimes/ Never
2004: Erin should be more concerned with the fact that he’s been killing people and burying them in the back yard and less with his lying.
2003: I believe there’s a seat in the ass-singe section with my name on it.
2002: Sucks to be her.
2001: “Fuuuuuuuuck,” he said.
2000: Don’t come back here looking for no entry, my friends.
I eagerly await adorable kitten videos such as this one:
http://www.metacafe.co.il/watch/772271/kittens_coca_cola_box/
You know, the pigs would have LOVED that stinky broccoli! 🙂
We actually do a “pig mix” with our goat milk and grain. We have a big garbage can with a lid — fill with grain (whatever is cheapest) and then we dump milk in it and let it rot! More is dumped in daily to what is left. Man you rip the lid off that sucker on a 80 degree summer day — whoooooo. But they do great on it and love to eat it.
Farmwife, the pigs might have loved the stanky broccoli, but Robyn might have died taking it out to them. 😀
THEN who would we read every morning?
I don’t know what kind of camera you are using but if you increase the ISO you might get a better picture since you are not wanting to use the flash. Don’t know how camera savy you are, maybe you are already doing this and so then tell me to shaddup!
I am in love with Kaylee and honestly? Do pigs CARE if things are rotten or smell bad? 😉
Oh to rub one of their wittle bellies!
I looked at the flickr photos and read each caption in my head – including the “the pictures aren’t so good I’m refraining from using the flash, etc. etc” EVERY SINGLE TIME. I’m a slow learner.
Oh, Robyn — unfortunately I know that broccoli smell and it truly does smell like evil (perfect description). And the hang time! My GOD! It lingers for HOURS. Rotting potatos have nothing on room temperature broccoli that has been left out too long. Rotting CORPSES have nothing on it. Ew. ::tells self “shake it off, it’s over…you’re okay now.” You have my deepest sympathy.
I left a container of broccoli in my work fridge too long, and when i opened it and emptied it out, I had the exact same thought: absolute, unequivocal, EVIL. I had to drive home with the car windows open, even after the container was sealed back up.
If the over the door towel rack doesn’t work, you should consider buying one of those removeable hooks that 3M makes. We use the small ones for hand towels in our bathroom…They have the “gummy” kind of adhesive that you can remove whenever you want, and it doesn’t leave a mark. They make them in all sizes…you could stick it right to the side of the storage thing, or in whatever spot is convenient for you. Takes up less space, disposable when you get sick of it being there.
I am hard pressed to find a worse smell than spoiled broccoli!
My mother once forgot broccoli in the microwave. We started smelling something a day or two later, but we could not figure out what it was. We almost never used that microwave … but the smell was so bad, we feared something may have died in a wall. At about three days, we were praying something had died in the wall. At 6 days, we were making plans to sell the house and move. After a week, we wondered if the neighbors would mind if we moved our belongings onto the front lawn and lived out there. *Then* we opened the microwave. Oh, the humanity. I feel your pain.
Forgive me if you have already ‘splained this (I’m a horrible skimmer), but I was wondering: I know that Mama Kitty will litter-train her babies when they are big enough, but in the meantime does she dispose of their little poops (poopettes?) herself?
Brenna’s kitten video link is so cute and funny. I don’t know what they remind me off. How can such little creatures have that much energy?
I know you’re not supposed to, but I actually do re-use Food Saver bags after they have been used to freeze meat. I fill them with hot soapy water and let them sit for a while and then scrub them out. Been doing that for a couple of years and no problems – but of course now that I mentioned it we’ll probably come down with a case of botchalism or something…
Uh oh- I just remembered I have some left over broccoli in my fridge! Better take care of it tonight.