6/30/08

Holy crap, Nance and Trey are going to be here tomorrow, and I haven’t scrubbed the baseboards or put a fresh coat of paint on the downstairs bathroom!

(Ha!)

I’ve warned Nance that the house is a pig sty, but I don’t think she believes me.

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I had a busy and productive Saturday, which allowed for some slacking on Sunday. I love it when that happens. Not only did I have 3,000 pounds of summer squash and green beans to process, I also had to clean the kitchen and move some stuff around and… hm. I sure did think I got a lot more than that done, but at least my kitchen is clean and kind of organized.

Fred suggested that I use the dressing in the 3-Bean Salad recipe to make a 3-squash salad out of some of the summer squash, zucchini, and cucumbers we had. I cubed everything up, added half a sliced onion, and dumped the dressing over it. I made it in the morning and let it marinate all day before we had it at dinnertime. It was really good, but my digestive system disagreed with that assessment, and I got up so many times early yesterday morning to use the bathroom that at 4:30 I finally said FUCK THIS and just got up instead of trying to go back to sleep.

By 9:00 I’d done some laundry, some more kitchen cleaning, taken the recycling to the recycling center, and gotten groceries and was home again. I spent the morning cleaning the kitchen, including both refrigerators, and cleaning out the last couple of cabinets I hadn’t gotten to on Saturday. I moved some stuff around on the counter tops in an attempt to declutter, moved the furniture in the front room around, vacuumed the downstairs, and then spent the rest of the day kind of slacking, along with hanging out with the kittens and doing some more laundry.

One of the things I did on Saturday was make my own laundry detergent. I used this recipe, and it was really pretty easy. For a few dollars, I ended up with two gallons of detergent. I haven’t used any yet (I want to use up the old stuff before I do), but I’ve heard it works well. I didn’t add any scent to mine, because the smell of the Fels Naptha soap is kind of pleasant.

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Foods which I have recently made:

Lemon Crisps. They’re like small lemon sugar cookies. They’re supposed to be round, but the whole “roll dough into a tube, refrigerate for three hours, then cut into nice neat thin round cookies” is apparently beyond my skill set. They were good, despite their odd shapes, with a very light lemon flavor. I had thought that they’d be crispy, considering the name, but they were soft. Maybe I did it wrong, I don’t know, but in any case they were damn good.

Sweet Potato-Pecan Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting. These were very reminiscent of carrot cake (maybe because of the cinnamon and nutmeg). I liked them, but Fred LOVED them, declaring the recipe a “keeper”. The pigs also gave them two grunts up. (What? The recipe made two dozen cupcakes. We can’t eat two dozen cupcakes by ourselves, so the pigs – as usual – benefit.)

Also, the three-squash salad I referenced above was really good – I’d probably add a handful of lightly steamed green beans next time – though as I also mentioned, my digestive system wasn’t a fan. Stupid digestive system.

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It was with great joy (NOT) that we realized, Thursday evening, that Kara had gone into heat. How, you ask, did we know such a thing? Well, if the super-friendly rolling around and purring wasn’t a clue (she’s always been, after all, a friendly girl), and the yowling didn’t clue us in, the fact that any time we touched her anywhere near her tail she crouched down and presented her back end was what made us realize what was going on.

I think you can bet that by bedtime Thursday I was kicking myself for not taking her to be spayed after her first mini-bout of being in heat a few weeks ago. The yowling of a female cat in need of some attention is ear-piercing, to say the least. I called Friday morning to make an appointment to have her spayed – and made an appointment for the kittens at the same time – and the first available time they had was Wednesday. I went ahead and made the appointment, but told Fred that if Kara got too loud at night, we’d have to set her up in the garage overnight.

Luckily, she’s been settling down at night and not yowling THANK GOD. We’ve taken up the gate at the bottom of the stairs so she can be downstairs with me if she wants, and on Saturday she drove poor Spanky crazy. She’s apparently latched onto the idea that he’s the big stud in the house (poor lonely Momma cat and a houseful of neutered males!) and if she’s in the mood for love and sees him, she’ll flop down in front of him and present her back end. He just looks at her like “I don’t know what you want, but I wish you’d be quiet about it!”

She got going with the yowling and low crawling Sunday afternoon and Tommy (who was laying in a cat bed on my desk) got up and jumped to the floor. Fred said “He’s going to go take care of her!” A minute later, I saw Tommy stomping across the back yard to the patio, looking for some peace and quiet.

Our cats are being remarkably patient with her – there have been some dustups, but interestingly they only happen when one of our cats ventures upstairs during the day when Kara and her kittens are out of the foster room. On Friday I was in the kitchen and heard a loud noise, Miz Poo came flying by all puffed up, and I went upstairs to see Kara all puffed up and sending hate rays toward the stairs. It appears that Miz Poo had gotten too close to a baby, and Kara had to show her that that was NOT okay. Saturday she went after Mister Boogers and scared the shit out of him.

He’s not as badass as he’d like to think, apparently.

So anyway, Kara and the kittens are going to be spayed and neutered on Wednesday (welcome to Crooked Acres, Nance and Trey! Here, listen to a cat in heat! Accompany me to the vet first thing Wednesday morning! Do we know how to PARTY here, or what?!) and then it’s just a matter of waiting until room opens up at the pet store.

(I’m in no hurry for them to go. For the record!)

They’re still occasionally nursing (if you look by River’s (the gray tabby in the middle) right ear, you’ll see Kaylee’s orange ear sticking up). Because I was curious, I timed them this time to see how long she’d let them nurse before she got up and walked off. 90 seconds is all they got – and I managed to get a ton of pictures of them during those 90 seconds. I always grab the camera when I see them nursing, because I always think it’s going to be the last time!

More kitten pics over at Flickr.

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::HET::

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Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: Must be ’cause I’m so approachable.
2005: Hobbies.
2004: Fred calls Miz Poo “Musty.”
2003: He sighed. “Because everybody knows that 256 (the total number of pages in the book) is 2 to the 8th, which is 2 to the 6th times two squared, which is 64 times 4, so you should print four blocks of 64 pages.”
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: Folks, it’s Dumbass Day.