On Saturday, Fred and I went up to Tennessee to Amish country. I have a cabinet in my bathroom where I keep my assorted bathroom crap (I know I’ve put up a picture of it in the past, but I’m too lazy to go look for it). The problem is that I have the tendency to just shove stuff in there because I don’t want to dig through the various organizational baskets I’ve put in there, and then of course I can’t find anything.
I did some looking around online and found this storage etagere at JC Penney.
I thought about it and considered it and babbled at Fred about it, and then I came up with a better idea. Why not go up to Amish country and ask the man who built our pantry (still out in the garage, partially stained, waiting for cooler weather before Fred polyurethanes it) how much he’d charge to build something similar? That way I’d have, basically, the same thing – only it’d be a nice, solid version made of real wood and built to stand the tests of time.
We went to Lowe’s and found some baskets to use on the shelves, and then Fred drew up a rough sketch of what we wanted, and what the measurements for each shelf should be.
We got to Amish country late morning, Fred talked to the furniture builder, placed our order, we stopped at a few places for cabbage and cantaloupe and watermelon, and then we headed home. I’m pretty excited about having another solid piece of Amish-built furniture in the house, and I’ve promised that on this one, I’ll do the staining and polyurethaning.
At home, we each grabbed stuff out of the car and headed for the side stoop.
And there we found a mystery comprised of three parts (though it seems that probably two of the parts go together):
1. Egg cartons:
2. A Cool Whip container of cat food:
3. These guys:
No note. No “Please take good care of my kittens”, just kittens, egg cartons, and cat food.
(I haven’t the slightest idea whether the egg cartons and kittens/ kitten food came from the same person. Maybe, maybe not. It’s a mystery!)
The fact that several weeks after our favorite little gray cat died, two little gray kittens have shown up on our side stoop, well, kinda seems like a sign, doesn’t it?
(Fred’s got one version of how it might have happened…)
They are both boys. They both weigh right around 2 1/2 pounds, so I’m guesstimating their ages at about 9 or 10 weeks. One was friendlier than the other, right off the bat. He’s also got a lot of sass and charisma. The other one took a little time to warm up, but he’s coming around too. Less than two days after we brought them into the house, they both come running over to greet us when we walk into the guest bedroom (where they’re currently staying). They both seemed super healthy at first, but after the first few hours we realized that they both had diarrhea (SIGH), both sneezed a few times, and both have semi-watery eyes. We’re treating the diarrhea and keeping an eye on the sneezing.
I emailed the Challenger’s House shelter manager to see if they could become shelter cats, since we’re willing to foster them. She was perfectly fine with that, but I have to say that given Fred’s behavior in the last few days, those kittens aren’t going anywhere. Fred’s sister expressed some interest in adopting one of them, but I suspect she’d have a fight on her hands if she tried to take one of them.
I could be wrong – but I don’t think I am. I think we’ve got two new kittens.
As far as names, we first talked about giving them good old-fashioned biblical names (I was pushing for Ezekiel and Zebediah – Zeke and Zeb!), but Fred doesn’t seem to care for that idea any more. Then we talked about giving them demon names, but don’t really like any of the ones we’ve seen. Maybe angel names? Right now, we’re calling them “Scabby” (because the little Mister Boogers lookalike has a scab on the back of his neck) and “NonScabby”, and I’d really prefer it if those names didn’t stick.
(Fred wants to name them Lieutenant Dann and Boo Radley. I say they need to at least come from the same ERA. In fact, we should probably just give them both the same name since no doubt we’ll always be mistaking one for the other.)
Suggestions? We’re all ears!
So are they.
I spent Sunday cleaning the house, which I haven’t done in far too long (and by “cleaning the house”, of course I mean that I scrubbed the bathrooms, vacuumed, and puttered around putting stuff away. Did I dust? Did I clean the floors? Are you crazy??).
I really really need to clean the bathrooms on a semi-regular basis instead of waiting until the tubs are ready to stand up and stomp out of the house in search of a home where they’ll be cleaned more than every other month.
(That’s only a slight exaggeration.)
The last time I cleaned Fred’s bathroom, I scolded him. His tub gets way dirtier than mine does in the same amount of time because he showers at least twice a day, due to the fact that when he gets home he goes out and works in the garden and/ or cuts grass and/ or deals with the chickens/ pigs/ turkeys. He gets grimier than I do, so of course his tub gets grimier than mine does.
Makes sense.
Anyway, I scolded him the last time I cleaned his tub because it was WAY past needing to be scrubbed. I told him that before it got to that state, he needed to let me know because that was just NASTAY and there’s no reason for a tub to look like that.
(Aside from my innate laziness, of course.)
“Why don’t you set a regular time to clean the bathrooms and then it wouldn’t get into that state,” he said, all reasonable-like.
Yes, yes, because of course the three million times in the past I’ve set a cleaning schedule for myself has worked out SO VERY WELL. Monday, clean kitchen. Tuesday, clean bathrooms. Wednesday, vacuum. And so forth. Usually I get about halfway into Monday’s task and then I either get distracted by something shiny, or I think “It’s clean enough. FUCK THIS.” and go off to do something I’d rather be doing.
I guess mine is just not meant to be a spotless house.
I had to go to the credit union on Friday to deposit a check, and as I pulled up to the drive-thru, there were at least four cars in each line, and I know from experience this means at least 20 minutes of sitting in the drive-thru.
Life is too goddamn short to sit in the drive-thru for 20 minutes, especially when you’ve got shit to do and kittens at home that need some love.
I pulled out of the drive-thru line with the intention of just leaving, and then I decided to park and go inside and see how bad the line there was.
I walked in, deposited my check, and walked back out in LESS THAN sixty seconds.
I will never sit in the freakin’ drive-thru again, so help me god.
Thanks, you guys, for your concern regarding the True Blood kittens. Still waiting to hear what the next step is, but these kittens are not suffering, believe me. I put drops in the eyes that need it twice a day, and while that’s not particularly any fun, they manage to shake it off and go jump on another kitten or chase a ball or race around like their tails are on fire.
(And when I say I’m putting “drops” in their eyes, the stuff I’m actually using is an ointment meant for severely dry eyes. The vet recommended it, it’s called “Gen-Teal”, it’s a gel and I imagine it works a lot better than trying to put actual drops in their eyes. I can’t imagine how THAT would go!)
I weighed them this weekend, hoping that they’d all gained half a pound in the past week so I could have them spayed and neutered. Not that I’m so desperate to spay and neuter them, but when Terry is neutered, he’ll have his hernia fixed at the same time and I’ve got to confess, his hernia is FREAKIN’ ME OUT, MAN. It doesn’t bother him in the slightest, he’ll let me pick him up and hold him with my palm over his stomach to encourage the hernia to go back from whence it came, but it always slithers back out into a bulge. I guess that hernia’s got places to go and things to do, and staying where it outta be isn’t one of those things it wants to be doing.
(For the record, it just looks and feels like a little bulge of fat sitting there on his tummy. And the vet did look at it and said that it could wait until he was neutered, rather than put him through a separate operation.)
I had a brief time of worry this weekend wherein I decided that all the kittens were deaf – because wouldn’t that be the CAPPER? I am a worrywart, and apparently felt I didn’t have enough to worry about with these guys – but as it turns out, they were just ignoring me. I guess if you baby-talk kittens for long enough, they’re not so impressed by it anymore.
All six in one picture! That rarely happens, as you can imagine.
He looks more cross-eyed sometimes and less cross-eyed other times. But at ALL times he is adorable!
Sookie’s playing hard to get.
Oh, Sammy-Sam.
I love how it looks like Terry is scolding the plastic ring (which, you’ll note, is mid-air). He says “Plastic ring, you said you would play with me, and now you’re not playing with me, and that is MEAN! I’m gonna tell my Mommy on you!”
Sam checks out the outside world.
Stinkerbelle has decided that if I don’t look directly at her, I can’t see her and will eventually GO AWAY.
Previously
2008: No entry.
2007: “Muff the magic pussy, lived by the cheeeeeeks!”
2006: I also thought my brother made up the word “fart” when I was a kid, so apparently I think he’s a real trend-setter.
2005: You know who really just completely repulses me?
2004: The only way it’d be better is if we could call and vote on who’s the most annoying.
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: Wouldn’t it have been ironic if I’d made assurances to the spud that we would probably all live for a long, long time, then promptly tripped over the cat, fallen down the stairs, broken my neck, and died?
2000: Man, I’m so unmotivated today (nothing new there).