Thank you to everyone who’s donated so far – I have more than $500 in my PayPal account; I can’t wait to write that check to the shelter! The rest of you – get to donating! Whatcha waiting for?
You can donate to the shelter directly via PayPal now, too.
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People, please. For the love of all that is holy, it is NOT “You’ve got another thing coming.” It’s “You’ve got another THINK coming.” THINK. NOT THING.
Thank you.
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Sometimes when we drive back from Smallville, we take a different, less country road, route. On the way, there’s a stand that sells apples. A few weeks ago we passed the sign that said “Fresh orchard apples” and I said to Fred, “Doesn’t that sound like a euphemism for cow shit?” and he laughed and agreed.
Now I can’t pass that sign without thinking “I wonder how much they’d charge for a bushel of cow shit?”
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I think I mentioned the other day that Fezzik, Westley, and Princess Buttercup had been adopted when I went to the pet store. Poor Inigo was in a cage all by himself, and when he saw me walk into the room, he started howling and pushing his little face against the cage. I usually start by cleaning out the cages on the bottom, letting the cats out of each cage as I get to it, so that when the most cats are out running around, I’ve got the bottom cages all cleaned and am working on the top cages, which they can’t run in and out of and get in my way.
However.
Inigo was one of my BAYBEES, so I wasn’t about to make him stay in his cage until I got done with the bottom cages. I opened the door to take him out, and he threw himself at me, purring, and let me hold him for the longest time before he demanded that I put him down so he could go play.
I basically let him stay out and play the entire time I was at the pet store, and he played very nicely with the other cats. I thought about putting him in a cage with the kitten he seemed to be having the most fun playing with, but there were no big cages available, so I didn’t.
The entire time I was cleaning, he’d play and play and play, and then come over and politely tap at my leg as if to say “Please, ma’am, may I have another?” and I’d pick him up and cuddle him for a few minutes.
When it was time for me to leave, I popped him in his cage and booked it out of there before he could give me the betrayed look and howls of rage.
It was actually easier for me to leave him than I thought it would be. Last year when I left
Jodie and Rambo and had to come back the next day to clean, it was very difficult to leave them, because they – Jodie, especially – were so scared. The fact that Inigo was pretty much taking it in stride made it easier to leave him.
I hope like hell he gets adopted before next Monday, though.
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Note to myself: Do not give Miz Poo medicine on your desk. Because when she fights the medicine – and she WILL – it will go flying all over the damn place, and you will end up with little splatters of medicine all over your monitor, your desk, and your keyboard, and that medicine is some sticky-ass shit.
(Mister Boogers, Spanky, Miz Poo, and now Sugarbutt appear to have developed Upper Respiratory Infections. According to the
know-it-all front desk lady at the vet’s office, kittens can be carriers of Upper Respiratory Infections while not actually getting sick themselves. I think she just hates kittens and is a big fat LIAR.)
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We went to the house last night, and I intended to get the rest of the switches and plugs in the upstairs changed out, but it was already too dark by the time we got there, so I’ll have to wait and do it this weekend. Fred spent a little time out on the roof of the house dealing with something that was causing a leak (I wasn’t listening all that closely when he explained it to me), and I started cleaning the paint spatters off the stairs. It took me an hour and a half to get down to the landing, and then Fred wanted to start rehanging the doors in the upstairs, so I never did get the lower half of the stairs cleaned.
The cleaned stairs, by the way, look pretty damn good. We’d pretty much decided not to paint the stairs (since so many people in Fred’s comments were opposed to it) and thought we might stain them, but actually I think they look just fine the way they are, so we might just leave them alone.
We started hanging doors upstairs, which quickly turned out to be a bit of a cluster fuck since we hadn’t made any attempt to keep the correct hinge with each door/ doorway. We got the door to one of the spud’s closets hung, but then it wouldn’t close, so we had to take it back down and start comparing hinges to find the right one for the door. We finally did, and Fred was so frustrated that he snapped “We are NOT taking ANY MORE doors down!”
When I thought of how crappy the doors would look, he gave me a long-suffering look and said in his “Look how patient and long-suffering I am” voice, “I’ll paint them.”
Yeah, well, I’ve
seen the paint job he’s done on a door we left standing in place and I WAS NOT IMPRESSED. But I bit my tongue and said nothing.
It is my considered opinion that I don’t pull my weight when it comes to renovating the house because I can’t cut or hang crown molding (though I can help hang it), I suck at painting, you DON’T want me to replace lights (trust me), and it’s taking me forever to replace the switches because it’s hard to get the wires out of the back of the switch thingy. I feel like I spend a lot of time wandering around, listening to my iPod and half-assedly swiping at things with a cleaning cloth, and doing dumbfuck things like slicing through the extension cord with the hedge trimmer. So when Fred says something that indicates that he thinks I’m not pulling my weight, it makes me squawk indignantly.
As I mentioned, though, I bit my tongue and didn’t say anything, but a few minutes later when he was trying to put the screws in the bottom of the door to the spud’s room and he said, impatiently “Hold the door UP a little!”, because I’d held the door up a little and then apparently let it go back to where it was without realizing it, I squawked indignantly “I AM!” and he said “No you’re not, you let it go back too close to the wall!” and I squawked indignantly “NO I’M NOT!” and he laughed at me and I
killed him and buried him in the back forty told him to shut up, and then felt better about it.
Today, my hip is KILLING me. I have no idea what I did to it, but it hurts to lift my leg, and I’m walking with a limp.
I’m sure it’s Fred’s fault.
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Previously
2005: “Fascinating.”
2004: All your frog are belong to us.
2003: No entry.
2002: I am freezing to death.
2001: I think I need to get a life…
2000: In other words, Robyn is a total spaz about her eyes, comprende?
1999: On the way into work, and the whole time I worked today, I reconsidered that reconsideration.]]>