Author: Robyn

Didn’t I tell you that everyone loves that Super! Awesome! shoe box?

Cilantro and Cori, in and on the box.

Alice patiently waits her turn (which is very much NOT like Alice).

Cori and Cila do their daily inspection of the box (safety first!) (Note Alice’s paw in the lower right corner of the picture.)

Are the peek holes clear? Apparently so!

Alice has just about lost her patience – not that she had a firm grasp on it to begin with, you understand. But she IS working on her anger management…

So she takes her annoyance out on a toy mouse instead. Good anger management, Alice! (Poor toy mousie.)

::thlurrrrrp:: Admit it – that little spotted belly is about the cutest thing you’ve seen today, isn’t it?

“Maybe I’ll cut HER….”

All the Spice Girls (and Ciara, for that matter) are snuggly little snugglers.

Ciara’s making a mental note to add Cila to the Cut List.

Oh, Ciara. SO annoyed by EVERYTHING.

On Sunday, I went out and cut a bunch of fresh catnip, which I tied together and hung in the closet to dry. Without realizing it, I dropped several pieces on the floor. All the ‘nipheads in the house knew about it pretty much instantly, and before I knew it, they were gathered in the kitchen to get hiiiiiiiiiigh.

Newt’s like “I don’t know what they’re doing, but I disapprove.”

Spanky just eats the catnip. The rest of them roll around on it and sniff it, then roll around some more. Miz Poo is a mean drunk, and smacks at anyone who gets too close to her when she’s hiiiiiigh. (Okay, truthfully she does that whether she’s high or not.)

Previously
2010: Give Gus a little satin jacket, and he would have been at home in the 70s, no?
2009: I assumed wrong.
2008: No entry.
2007: Questions answered.
2006: I’m sorry, but my Aunt Fanny am I a size 40C.
2005: I suspect people as beautiful as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have to be a little bit nuts, anyway.
2004: WONDERFUL.
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: A Day in the Life of a Bitchypoo.
2000: Maine recap.

I don’t know if it’s the particularly hot, dry weather we’ve had this summer, but it certainly seems to be the summer of BUGS here at Crooked Acres. Last night, Fred and I were walking out to the back forty to give the pigs their cookies and the dogs their snacks, and I looked down to see a bright red ant-shaped bug walking across the top of the grass.

Back when we bought this house, in 2006, we were walking around the back of the property, and I spotted one, and then a few minutes later, another. After some research online, I found that they’re called “velvet ants” (info and pictures of them at Wikipedia), although they’re actually wingless wasps rather than true ants. They’re also called “cow killers” because their bite is very painful and is said to be strong enough to kill a cow (it isn’t really, though; that’s just hyperbole).

Fred’s stepmother told me that if you corner one of them, they’ll squeal. I haven’t found this out for myself because, although they are really interesting and exotic-looking bugs, when it comes down to it they’re BUGS and they have a painful bite and I don’t think we need them roaming around the property, thank you, so when I saw it last night I stomped on it.

Ten feet away, I spotted another one. And the ones we saw back in 2006 were tiny ones, but the ones I saw last night were huge, about the size of my pinky (which is not huge, unless you’re looking at a bug that size), and I feel that that does perhaps not bode well for us. Like maybe I’m going to wake up in the middle of the night face-to-face with one of the fucking things.

The middle of last week, I did a search on how to order a copy of Fred’s birth certificate. At some point in the past, we HAD his birth certificate – or at least I imagine we did, I’m pretty sure we had to have a copy to get our marriage license – and now I have no idea where it is. I’ve been through every file in the house and while I have every single report card that Fred got in his entire school career, along with every special award he got (attendance award for Bible School when he was five!), no birth certificate.

So I found that I could order it online from Vitalchek.com, and so I went and filled out the form and provided all the information they required. They were all “And you are…?” and I was all “His wife!” and they were all “Very good, then.”

But they didn’t require PROOF that I was his wife, in case you were wondering. Of course, they asked questions (his mother’s full maiden name, for one) that your average person isn’t going to know (I had to call and ask him what her middle name was, actually), so maybe they aren’t all that worried about it.

I placed the order, and what happens after you place the order is that Vitalchek passes the information along to the Alabama Vital Records division, and then they pull the birth certificate and send it to you in an expedited manner. “Expedited manner”, in this case, means that they sent it via UPS with a signature required.

I placed the order on Wednesday. Friday, late morning, I went out to the back yard to dump the stuff in the kitchen compost bucket into the compost bin. The compost bin is at the back of the back yard, perhaps eighty feet from the house. In the two minutes that I was out of the house – THE FIRST TIME I LEFT THE FUCKING HOUSE ALL DAY LONG, MAY I ADD – UPS came, knocked on the door, and then left a “We were here and you were not, sucks to be you” note on the door.

So I turned the note over and signed where it had the “No really, it’s okay, use this as my signature” line.

Friday night, Fred and I were sitting in the front room – the room where the front door is located – watching TV from about 6:30 on. No one ever knocked on the door. According to the tracking info on UPS.com, UPS attempted a second delivery at 7:11 pm.

WE WERE SITTING THREE FEET FROM THE FUCKING DOOR AND NO ONE EVER KNOCKED.

Saturday morning, I looked on the front porch and found a second “Sucks to be you” note next to the first one, with “The sender required a signature at the time of delivery” circled. They indicated that they’d attempt delivery again on Monday between, basically, 10:30 and 5 pm.

I did not set ONE FUCKING FOOT outside the house after 9:00 yesterday morning, and at noon I glanced at the front door to find the third and final “suck to be you” note hanging on the door. I was within earshot of that fucking door with the exception of the five minutes I was upstairs in the foster room, which is located partly directly over the front room (where the fucking front door is located) and partly over the porch.

IF THERE HAD BEEN A KNOCK ON THE DOOR, I WOULD HAVE HEARD IT, FOR THE LOVE OF SWEET PICKLED BABY JESUS.

I was so beyond pissed off that I went into the bathroom, closed the door (I truly cannot for the life of me imagine what you think I’m going to say next) and screamed obscenities at the top of my lungs.

(I didn’t want to scare the cats. Though they did look pretty freaked out when I came back out of the bathroom.)

I shot off tersely worded “I’d like to know how you’re going to fix this” emails to UPS and to Vitalchek (though I think we can agree that Vitalchek could not possibly care less about this whole thing and if they ever respond to me, it will be to tell me that although they took $55 from me, I have to deal with Alabama Vital Records and it sucks to be me.)

The best part is that I could have just filled out the fucking form and taken it to any area county health department and they’d have printed the fucking thing right there for me, for fifteen fucking dollars, but I was so thrilled that I could just order the fucking thing online that I failed to notice that part.

I have zero love for UPS at this moment, believe you me, and I think what I’m going to do is immediately go and order as many extremely heavy things to be delivered by UPS and UPS alone so that my douchey UPS guy will throw out his fucking back and will be replaced by one who might understand the concept of knocking on the goddamn motherfucking door.

Ciara’s trying to decide who she’s gonna cut.

“Maybe I’ll cut this bratty little Spice for flipping over the Ham-mick.”

“Maybe I’ll cut the Ham-mick for letting itself be flipped over.”

“Maybe I’ll cut YOU.”

“Yeah, you. You look like you deserve it.”

Evil thing. (Except that she totally isn’t – she’s a complete sweetheart!)

Sleepy Clove.

That cat hair on the couch behind Clove horrified me enough that I immediately got up and ran the Fabric Sweeper over it. Nas-TAY.

Cilantro, sharpening her claws in the front room.

When Sheriff Mama (Kara) is asleep in the house instead of in the back yard keeping an eye on things, you know it’s GOTTA be hot!

Previously
2010: “You’re a douchebag category all your own!” he said.
2009: No entry.
2008: No entry.
2007: Really, here at Crooked Acres, it’s sometimes best to just look the other way, and not ask aaaaaaany questions.
2006: No entry. Sorry!
2005: I wanted to lay in bed and sniff my hair all day long.
2004: me: “Brian, I sure do love you, but I’m glad we’ll never have to sit this close to each other ever again.” Brian: “I feel the same.”
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: $1200 for one single washer. What the fuck’s up with that?
2000: can you say “Bring a book”?

One thing I do, when I’m sitting down to write an entry, is open a recent entry and copy and paste the code for the divider line – oh, it LOOKS all simple, but if I don’t put line breaks in there, things get too close to each other and I get all annoyed – from an already-posted entry to the entry I’m working on.

I opened Friday’s entry to copy the divider line code, and I glanced at the part where I’d posted the recipe, and for a moment I thought it said “Sweet Pickled Jesus.”

I cannot wait to use that line in a conversation. “Sweet pickled Jesus is it hot out there!”

I had what felt like a very busy weekend. Friday I blanched ears of corn that Fred had picked Thursday evening. I got them blanched and cooled, then wrapped each ear in plastic, put them all in a larger freezer bag, and put them in the freezer. That took longer than you’d expect, between the blanching, the cooling, and the waiting for the ears to drain, and I used up every bit of ice we had in the house.

(There may have been an afternoon nap that I just couldn’t seem to wake up from, also.)

Saturday, Fred harvested the rest of the corn, and I spent the morning blanching, cooling, and draining the ears. We left the house around 10:00 to do errands (Dollar Store, dropping off mail, buying feed at the Co-Op, browsing at Lowe’s, stopping by Publix to pick up lunch), and when we got home, I started cutting the kernels of corn off the ears. Now, I’ve always just frozen whole ears of corn, because it’s easier and they taste just fine. But we ended up with something like 150 ears of corn, and though we have a lot of freezer space, I didn’t want to take up all that freezer space with corn.

I had read, at some point over the winter, the idea of using a mandoline to cut the kernels off your ears of corn. I have this one, and it’s come in super handy this summer, I’ve used it a lot to slice squash for dehydrating. So I gave it a try with the corn, and it worked out really well. I spent a couple of hours running the ears of corn over the mandoline, and then using a knife to scrape all the left-behind corn goop off each ear. It was a pain in the ass, but when I was done I had something like 15 packages of 1 1/2 cups of creamed corn, ready for the freezer. In addition, I’ve got three dozen ears of corn in the freezer for when we’re having a hankering for corn on the cob.

I love the hell out of corn. Fred will eat it if it’s there, but I LOVE it. Especially paired with mashed potatoes!

What else did I do on Saturday? Oh, I sliced up a cantaloupe to dehydrate (we’re about to get a ton of cantaloupe from the garden and are looking to preserve it so that Fred can eat it all. I’m no fan of cantaloupe, but he loves it.) and I also sliced and pitted cherries he’d gotten on sale last week. By the time I was done dealing with the cherries, my fingers were stained purple and two days later they’re still stained a bit.

I’d intended to vacuum on Saturday, but that just didn’t happen. Oh, don’t give me that look – I’d just vacuumed on Thursday!

(Side note: I miss the hell out of my Dyson. I probably didn’t tell y’all, but I finally took my poor broken Dyson to the repair shop, and the problem turned out to be… something (I don’t remember what) that would have been way too expensive to fix. I’m currently using a Kenmore canister vacuum (one that we’ve had for five years), and I have to tell you that it does a fine job, but I hate the fuck sweet pickled Jesus out of canister vacuums because you have to pull the damn thing around like a dog on a leash, and it’s always getting in the way and making me want to kick it. I am noting VERY CLOSELY that the Dysons currently have five year warranties, and even though Dyson haven’t lasted very long for me in the past and I know that non-bag vacuums are no good for a home with 73 cats, I MISS MY DYSON, because everything else is clunky and heavy and annoying to me.)

When I got up Sunday morning, I did all my boring usual morning stuff (one day I’m going to capture the magic of my mornings in excruciating detail WITH PICTURES and y’all will have to bookmark it for those nights when you cannot fall asleep) and then I went outside to work in the garden. I got a ton of Sungold cherry tomatoes (they’re coming in like gangbusters), and then I had to pull up several tomato plants that were all blighty or dying for some other reason. Then I picked the jalapenos (which are also coming in like crazy) and THEN I went into my raised bed garden and started pulling up carrots.

I think I’m going to just give up on carrots. I like them well enough, but the thing I find annoying about them is that each carrot plants gives you (drum roll) one carrot. Unlike a tomato plant which gives you on average 3,794 tomatoes, you only get one lonely carrot from each carrot plant, and these carrots took for-sweetpickledjesus-ever to grow (I did start them early enough, but then there was this tornado and I had to replant and even though the directions on the packet claimed that they’d be ready in 60 days, they ended up taking more like 90 days), and I was a dumbass and didn’t thin the carrots once they’d started growing, so I ended up with all these tiny carrots, and fuck you carrots. YOU ARE NOT ALL THAT.

Then I cut a bunch of catnip off the catnip plants (I hear that they’re hardy plants and will respond to being cut back by growing even more vigorously) and I brought everything inside and started dealing with it. At some point, some catnip fell onto the floor, and all the ‘nipheads in the house (Spanky, Miz Poo, Jake and Elwood, and Sugarbutt) came running and had themselves a bit of a ‘nipfest. I bundled up the catnip I’d brought inside, and hung it in the hall closet to dry.

Probably the Brown Recluses will have a field day with it. I’m imagining them rolling them into ‘nip doobies and toking up.

I vacuumed, did Fred’s laundry, let the Spice Girls and Ciara out of the foster room, and took a shower. Then I sliced about three billion cherry tomatoes in half and put them in the dehydrator.

It’s my goal to get a gallon jar full of dehydrated cherry tomatoes before the tomatoes stop growing. I’m about 1/3 of the way there!

Then I started slicing jalapenos and made another triple batch of sweet pickled Jesus jalapenos. While I was waiting for the liquid to boil, I seared a pork roast and then put it in the crock pot.

Dinner last night was pork roast, boiled carrots, and tomato mozzarella melts. All grown at Crooked Acres (well, except for the spices on the roast and the mozzarella on the tomatoes!) and it was really really good.

And that was my weekend. How was yours?

When I first got the Spice Girls, Cori was a bitey little thing. She’d bite and bite with her sharp little teeth, and OH was it annoying (and painful). But she has turned into the biggest lovebug in the last couple of weeks. All she wants to do is sit on your lap and be petted, and she never bites any more. She’s a lovah, not a biter.

::thlurrrp!::

Clove and Ciara, playing with one of the many packing straps floating around the house.

Cilantro, biting the ham-mick.

Cilantro and Cori, fighting. (Also, we have too many shoes in this house.)

She’s ALWAYS giving me this look. Fred says she looks smug. I think she looks like she wants to cut me.

Sweet Miss Clove.

All fosters in this house eventually love to hang out by the back door.

No longer a tiny thing, Alice is on her way to being portly. One good thing, though – remember when we first got her, and she was always making that wheezing sound? And then we took her to the special vet so they could knock her out and stick a tube down her throat to see what was what? And they found nothing but a little scar tissue? Well, she’s not making that wheezing sound any more at all! Fred thinks it might come back in the Fall. We’ll see. At least she’s not sounding like she’s at death’s door any more!

Previously
2010: No entry.
2009: No entry.
2008: (This site does not condone stealing.)
2007: Did the Zodiac Killer curse them with doughy bodies, was that the unspoken conspiracy?
2006: No entry.
2005: Debbie: “Oh, right. I used to boil Brian’s nipples when he was a baby.”
2004: Hawaii.
2003: No entry.
2002: Y’know, I have way too much fun making fun of that man.
2001: Excuse me, he’s known about this closing for well over a month and still can’t manage to be on time? How self-important can you be?
2000: Fucking every time I drive through Pennsylvania it fucking pours down rain.

Gotta love a sleeping kitten!

I always want to kiss Clove (and luckily she puts up with it!)

Cilantro would like to know whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?

Ciara and the crazy eyes.

Her favorite feather teaser, even though the feathers have been chewed off.

Smackin’ at it (she chatters at it, too!)

She knocked the door closed, and then was interested that someone was sticking their paw underneath the door.

Sweet girl.

Her other favorite teaser toy!

“What ARE you talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” (That’s Spanky.)

Previously
2010: Like it’s a rule that if both vehicles are here SOMEONE BETTER BE HERE TO SELL HIM EGGS DAMNIT.
2009: I screamed at the top of my lungs, and then I took a gasping breath, and I screamed some more.
2008: No entry.
2007: (Unless there’s a secret “Robyn is a blithering idiot” message board somewhere, which is possible but – given that the world apparently does NOT revolve around me (even though it should), my blithering idiotness probably doesn’t occupy the minds of others the way it occupies mine.)
2006: I look like a fucking Simpson!
2005: “I dropped my purse!” I lied.
2004: I’m a slug in a family of energizer bunnies.
2003: No entry.
2002: My primitive mind can’t grasp these concepts.
2001: No entry.
2000: I’m just not feeling very chatty today.

Randomness:

I thought I was going to get myself a pet sparrow this morning. I went out to pet Maxi, and was sitting on the top step. This little sparrow came so close to me – AND Maxi! – that I could have reached out and touched him. I had no food for him (and the bird feeders are full), so I just watched him hop back and forth and eyeball my toes before he came to his senses and flew off.

I saw one single hummingbird last week. I was sitting at my computer and it hovered by the window, right in front of my face, giving me a meaningful look and tilting it’s head toward the side porch, all “Howzabout it, sister?” I filled and put up three hummingbird feeders (one at the side porch, two on the front porch) and haven’t seen another hummingbird since. They usually show up in early August, I think, so I guess I’ll keep the feeders filled with fresh hummingbird food so once they come around they’ll stay around for a while. I do love those hummingbirds.

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this before: I really like to go to the live camera at Abbey Road and watch the people go by. I don’t think I’ve ever had to wait longer than five minutes to see a person – or three – have their picture taken as they go across the crosswalk. It’s oddly mesmerizing.

Is there any American who married “royalty” more impressed with themselves than LuAnn De Lesseps? Because you know what you want more than anything is to marry a royal, here are her useless tips.For fuck’s sake. (Tip #8: swear as often and as colorfully as possible.)

Why do people insist on talking on their cell phones in public bathrooms? And then give you a dirty look when you use the hand drying machine to dry your hands? People are assholes (she probably said the same about me!)

Fred called Elwood “L Ron Chubbard” last week and we both laughed until we cried.

Speaking of laughing ’til I cry, have you heard of the Talking Tom app? I need to figure out how to turn these into ringtones.

A few weeks ago, someone pulled into the driveway. When I went out to see who it was, a man got out of a truck and came over to the bottom of the side stoop.

“Did you want eggs?” I said.

He looked at me and thought about it for a long moment, then opened his mouth and earnestly said “Yeff.”

“I… I’m sorry?” I said.

He looked out toward the chickens and said it again. “Yeff?”

“I….” I began, then just stopped and stared at him.

Another guy stuck his head out the truck window and bellowed “EGGS!”

I still don’t know what he was trying to say with “Yeff,” but he ended up with a dozen (“one pack” is what our non-English speaking customers ask for; they’ll occasionally ask for “twelve” but never say “dozen” or even the Spanish word for dozen, docena. According to Fred’s niece’s husband, that’s because docena is like slang and perhaps isn’t in regular usage in Hispanic communities. I’d be interested in any input anyone out there has on the topic, because I find it interesting.)

I got a ton of pictures yesterday, but now I’m having issues getting the pictures off the camera. So y’all don’t have to go without kitty pics, I’m going to post some random foster pics and I promise I’ll provide you with new ones tomorrow!

Awww, it’s Peter Brady!

Tiny scaredy-cat Alice.

Cindy Bwady.

Gus and his floof!

More Gus!

Dorfy, clearly stressed.

Starsky and Hutch.

Martin, after his bath.

Pancho and his “Glamour Shots” pose.

Garrity, cracking a joke.

Wee baby Corbie!

Newt, in 2008. Don’t you want to kiss his silly little face?

Previously
2010: Apparently I’ve got food on my mind this morning.
2009: And no one was even drinking!
2008: No entry.
2007: I think y’all know that I happily contribute to charities and have donated to a lot of your causes and will continue to do so, but I don’t support Blogathon, haven’t for a couple of years, and don’t intend to in the future.
2006: I may have Hepatitis.
2005: But not to worry, it was just cramps. Whew!
2004: I want to rip her goddamn fucking ::fliiiip::TAP::TAP::TAP::FLIIIP::TAP::TAP::TAP::FLIP::TAP::TAP::TAP::FLIP::TAP::TAP::TAP:: head off her stupid fucking goddamn neck
2003: No entry.
2002: I caught the eye of one of them, who noticed my intensely guilty terrorist-like face, and waved me over to wand me down.
2001: No entry.
2000: Because, you know, my life is so damn chaotic. Yeah.

So, you remember the whole thing where I found a Brown Recluse in the house a few weeks ago and Fred ran around in circles clutching his pearls and spraying every surface of the house with spider-killing spray in hopes that he’d kill the 30,000 Brown Recluses in the house before they could find him and take a big juicy bite out of his butt?

Well, the other thing we did was to buy a bunch of glue traps online. When they arrived, Fred set about 20 of them up in various spots through the house. He put them in closets and under furniture.

At this point, three weeks later, we have caught no spiders at all. We did catch one Tom Cullen, but since his bites aren’t poisonous we removed him from the trap (or rather, the trap from him) and let him live.

Fred was telling his father about our Brown Recluse travails, and his father said that they’d used glue traps and never caught a single Brown Recluse with them. (The glue traps supposedly have some sort of attractant in the glue that will, uh, attract spiders to them.)

Fred has told me many times that his father and stepmother had a big problem with Brown Recluses in their house – in Fred’s teenage bedroom, as a matter of fact. So when his father told him they’d never caught a single Brown Recluse with the glue traps, Fred was confused.

“But wait,” he said to his father. “I remember coming over and using the bathroom off that bedroom and seeing traps that had a TON of Brown Recluses on them!”

As it turned out, the Brown Recluses that Fred saw stuck to the glue traps? They hadn’t wandered there of their own volition. Fred’s father told him that what he’d do was wait until after dark, when no one had been in the room for a while. Then he’d go in and turn the light on, and I’m imagining a herd of Brown Recluses, frozen in surprise as light floods the room.

But you’re wondering, I’m sure, how oh how did the Brown Recluses make it onto the glue traps? Did they think they were seeking refuge on the glue traps? Were they running to the glue traps to hide until such a time that the big human would turn the light off and leave the room so they could wander at will in the dark with no one to watch and judge them?

No. What would happen, after Fred’s father went into the room and surprised the colony of Brown Recluses, is that he would use a ruler to HERD the Brown Recluses onto the glue traps. Where they would get stuck and die while (in my imagination) Fred’s father stood over them and laughed evilly.

He would herd the Brown Recluses onto the glue traps.

I’m sorry, perhaps you didn’t hear me. Let us run through the sequence of events: he’d walk into a dark room and turn on the light. And there would be a thousand Brown Recluses, all frozen like “Shit! Y’all don’t move! If we don’t move, he can’t see us!” Then, where you or I might be all ::stompity::stomp::stomp::stomp:: with our shoe-covered feet (one shouldn’t stomp Brown Recluses unless one is wearing shoes, I imagine. A little tip from me to you. You can also squoosh a Brown Recluse with a litter scoop. If you were wondering. Or so I’ve heard. Not that I’ve had any experience with such a thing.), Fred’s father would pick up a ruler and patiently herd the spiders, one by one, to their last moments of life atop the glue trap.

I like to imagine that one of the Brown Recluses managed to make it look like he was firmly stuck to the glue trap but only had ONE leg stuck there, and that these days wherever the Brown Recluses (they’re reclusive spiders, those Brown Recluses, they’re not Brown Sociables) hole up, there are young spiders yelling “Oh god, Grampa’s talking about how he escaped the Evil Glue Trap Herder by leaving a leg behind AGAIN. RUN!”

(I do not intend to take up Brown Recluse herding, for the record, not least because I’ve only ever found the one BR in the house. If things change and I decide to start training for the annual Brown Recluse Herding Championship, I’ll let you know.)

In my little raised garden, at the beginning of the summer, I put some feed bags down on the ground so that I could put the pots where I’d planted various herbs on top of the feed bags and wouldn’t have to worry about cutting the grass growing around the pots (since there wouldn’t be any grass growing, I mean). Over the weekend, I decided to pull them up, because the bags were getting shredded and had holes in them, and grass and weeds were growing up through the holes anyway. It looked like shit, and was bugging me, so I decided to put down fresh bags, move the potted herbs over near the raised beds, and call it good enough.

When I pulled up one of the feed bags, I caught sight of a small bit of red, and I knew immediately what I’d found. There, with a body the size of the tip of my pinky, was a big fat dead Black Widow. I poked it with a stick ’til it was good and squished (I wanted to be sure it was dead) and then I pushed it into the ground and covered it with a bit of dirt.

(I bet a Black Widow tree will totally sprout in the next few days. I don’t know what the fruit on a Black Widow tree would look like, but I imagine it’s some evil-looking shit.)

I don’t ever work in the garden or pick veggies unless I’m wearing gardening gloves to protect my hands, so even if it had been alive, and even if it had gotten on me, I would have been okay.

But still – ::shudder:: It’s funny, because I’m scared more by Black Widows than by Brown Recluses, even though Brown Recluse bites can do more damage. Black Widows are just EVIL looking (also, they’re more aggressive than Brown Recluses. The Brown Recluse hangs out in the corner at a party saying “I’ll just be over here, don’t look at me pls, thx.” whereas the Black Widow’s all “I SAW YOU LOOKING AT ME I WILL FUCK YOU UP!”)

You can do your own Google search on this topic, but I will tell you that there are people out there who keep Black Widows as PETS, and the thought just makes me shudder. Gah.

First, the good news: Fergus Simon was adopted on Saturday!

And then the OTHER good news: MAGGIE WAS, TOO!!!!

(They didn’t go to the same home. But I think they’ll be just fine!)

The fact that Maggie was adopted just makes me SO happy. At this time of year there are so many kittens that the adults often get overlooked, and I was concerned that that would happen with Maggie. I’m so glad that it didn’t, and that she’s gone to a good home where she will be loved and pampered. Yay!!!

So we’ve still got Ciara with us, of course, and the Spice Girls. They’ll all be going to Petsmart when there’s room, but it will likely be a little while yet. I hate that they’ll be going, but this is really my favorite time with fosters: they’re all past their shots and surgeries, they’re happy and healthy and are having no issues, so all we have to do is enjoy them! It’s a rough job, but I think we’ll manage.

Those of you who don’t remember – or who haven’t been reading long enough to have read about it – I did write about what was going on with Corbie back in March, but I’ll cut and paste what I wrote then, so you don’t have to go back and read it:

So I haven’t told you exactly what’s going on with Corbie – don’t worry, it’s not bad! It’s just that he’s a thin cat, and in the past couple of months, we’ve noticed that from the waist up (not that cats have waists, but you know what I mean) he looks perfectly fine. But from the waist back, he looks like he’s starving to death. Which he’s NOT, let me tell you, boyfriend can eat when he wants to.

He might have a skinny back end, but he’s perfect to me!

That’s what I was referring to in Friday’s entry – these days, we aren’t giving him the Taurine and L-Carnitine because it didn’t seem to make a difference, and it was getting to be a struggle (he was starting to run every time he saw Fred) and the stress to Corbie wasn’t worth it. He hasn’t improved, but he hasn’t gotten worse either, and whatever the issue is, it’s not interfering with his quality of life.

So that’s what that was about. 🙂

Want your own “I love cats, it’s people who annoy me” gear? Go get that stuff here. Everything’s marked up by $2, which will go to Challenger’s House. (I’ll put a link in the sidebar at some point.)

Don’t you just love Ciara’s dramatic eyeliner?

Giving me the crazy eyes.

“You keep on pettin’ ’til I say stop, lady.”

Coriander on the cat tree.

Clove’s orange patches are really starting to show.

I have been a horrible slacker regarding snapping pictures of the Crooked Acres Gang (permanent residents), so here’s the very first picture I posted of Spanky on Flickr, from way back in 2005.

He was only (doing the math….) a young and spry eight and a half back then, but if you showed me that picture and told me it was taken yesterday, I’m pretty sure I’d believe you. At almost fifteen, he’s in great shape for an old guy!

Previously
2010: No entry.
2009: Hello from Pennsylvania.
2008: You’ve got questions, I’ve got answers.
2007: Evan Rachel Wood! You are throwing away your youth and beauty on a talentless freak! You are wasting the pretty! Stop it right now, young lady!
2006: No entry.
2005: Home again, home again.
2004: I am a SUCKAH for the bullshit claims on bottles of lotion.
2003: Momma always said, stupid is as stupid does…
2002: No entry.
2001: Oh joy.
2000: I’m such a wimp that even a confrontation on TV ties my stomach in knots.