Bitchypoo

Wow. Is it really only Thursday? Is it just me, or has this been a really long week? I guess I’ve packed a lot into my week, between the iron infusion and the new kittens and the canning and laundry and stuff.

(Have I mentioned that adding a new litter of little bitty kittens to the household seems to triple the amount of laundry I do on a regular basis? Maybe I need to add some more baby blankets to my supply so I don’t have to keep doing a load of them every day.)

Yesterday I left the house at 8 am, ran into Huntsville to go to Sam’s, to Target, and then PetSmart. I absolutely love the fact that my Sam’s membership is a business membership (through Fred’s company), because it allows me to go there earlier than the regular public. And it’s never busy, and I can get in, get what I need, and get the hell out of there without having to dodge a bunch of other people. I got most of what was on my list (I wish Sam’s carried canning supplies, though. I could use a bulk supply of jelly jars!).

I ran to Target to get some canning jars and frozen fruit (I’m stocking up to begin making habanero-fruit jam and habanero hot sauces. It seems that I really am on schedule to start selling them at the beginning of October!), wandered around a little bit, and then headed for PetSmart.

My two goals at PetSmart were to get (1) nursing bottles with shorter nipples, if possible and (2) a little pyramid-cave type thing to put in the cage with the new kittens, so they could go in there and snuggle up and hide if they want to. As it turns out, I apparently made up having ever seen a little pyramid-cave in the ferret section at PetSmart, because they had no such thing. There was a soft-sided pyramid in the cat section, but it was so big that it would take up half the cage. I walked around and dithered and dithered and dithered some more, and then my reasonable side came out and said “They are perfectly happy, snuggled up to each other in that cage, stop fretting about it, GEEZ.” So I bought a cat condo with a shelf on it to put in the guest bedroom (for when they’re bigger and able to have the run of the room) and some kitten food, and called it good enough.

(That cat condo with a shelf on it (which I would provide a link to, but isn’t on the PetSmart page) was a HUGE hit with the True Bloods and Jake and Elwood when I brought it into the house. I didn’t get it three feet from the door, and it had four cats crawling on it.)

I got home, and it was time to feed the new guys, let them run around for a while, and do laundry. You know, the usual.

I’m thinking that the iron might have, in fact, given me a bit of a boost. I feel a tad more energetic*, and haven’t had my usual mid-day slump leading to a nap in the past couple of days. I also feel a bit more alert – or it might be all in my head. Who knows? I just know that the last two days I’ve been up at 4:30 (to feed the new kittens before Fred goes to work) and haven’t needed a nap AND I’m not ready to pass out at bedtime.

*Before I had the iron infusion done, I said hopefully to Fred “Maybe this will perk me up!” and he said “You never struck me as needing more energy.” But really, there are times when I have to force myself to get stuff done, and it would be nice to not have those days where it feels like I’m walking through quicksand. Maybe I am not, in fact, a lazy ass. Maybe I was just anemic all these years! On the other hand, I feel a whole new excuse coming on. When Fred calls me and asks me to do something for him, I can say “I’m feeling anemic today. I’m going to go take a nap instead.”

We have named the new guys! Well, Fred did. I thought we should name them after the How I Met Your Mother characters (Barney, Marshall, Lily and Robin), but then Fred suggested other names, and I thought they had a little more sass to them.

(We’re all about the sass.)

I particularly liked Amy’s suggestion for truck stop waitress names for the girls, but I’m going to hang on to that idea for when we have a whole little litter of girl kittens.

Without further ado, meet:

Augustus Gloop (I think we all know that his nickname’s going to be “Gus”!).

Violet Beaureguard (previously known as “The friendly calico”).

Mike Teevee.

Veruca Salt (previously known as “The hissy calico”).

These are all characters from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (in case you didn’t already know that). Collectively, I’ll be calling them the Wonkas. That’s right – we named characters after the book/ movie and didn’t include Willy Wonka or Charlie Bucket – we just liked (the name) Mike Teevee better.

The Wonkas are doing well – they’re eating well (still on the bottle, except for Gus, who likes to lick Gerber chicken baby food off a spoon, which is supplemented by a bottle. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before the others join in.) and they’re bright-eyed and active. Mike still has an immediate spitting reaction about just about everything, but they’ve all become so friendly in the past two days, that socialization is not a concern for us. Veruca and Violet and the purringest little things, love to climb on us, and then run across the room.

(Anything cuter than when they run at this age with their tails sticking straight up in the air? I think not.)

Gus enjoys a good belly rub (actually, all of them do), and after he’s done eating, he climbs in my lap and demands that I rub him all over. I imagine it feels like his mother giving him a bath.

GOD THEY ARE SO CUTE. Fred’s really pitching in with these guys, insists on getting me up at 4:30 before he leaves for work so we can feed them. I feed them once during the day, and then when he gets home in the afternoon we feed them again, and then again at bedtime. He’s really good at getting the food in them.

Veruca, running around like a crazy little thing.

That really looks like a splash of peachy-orange on his face, doesn’t it? I’m 99% sure he’s a boy, or I’d almost call him a dilute torti. (Making a mental note to double-check his nether regions…)

Gus, going crazy-eyed while he’s getting a belly rub.

Mike has a splash of white on his chest, and check out that “frosted” appearance.

Are these not the most gorgeous little kittens?

The first few days we let the True Bloods out into the house, we put them upstairs at 6:30 so they could calm down before bedtime. Last night, I shrugged and decided to let them stay out until it was time for us to go to bed. If the TV scared them, I figured they could run off and hide.

The TV did not scare them in the slightest. Bill snuggled up to me, Hoyt and Terry snuggled up in a cat bed on the couch next to Fred, and the rest of them hung out on the cat tree in the other part of the front room. It was a bit of a pain to get them all upstairs at bedtime, but we got it done. They complained a little, but I let them out bright and early this morning, so they’re none the worse for wear.

It’s funny – the Wonkas complain about being confined to a cage (though they never complain for long – they get plenty of running-around time at feeding time), the True Bloods complain about being confined to one room (or the entire upstairs) and until I open the back door so our cats can go out into the back yard in the morning, they complain about being confined to the house.

Never happy, are they?

Terry, napping in the cat bed on the couch.

Someone discovered the toilet paper!

Snoozin’ Sam.

Sam and Hoyt, asleep on the couch, and Sookie and Terry asleep on the upside-down cat bed on the floor (which was originally on the couch, but they knocked it to the floor.)

Man, is that a Mister Boogers look he’s got going on there, or what?? (I’m pretty sure that’s Elwood.)

Previously
2008: Taking time off to hang with Liz.
2007: I informed him, yesterday, that he should feel free to pull up the cucumber plants, because I’ll shoot dead the next person who brings any cucumbers into my house.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: Of course, it’s not like she gets much of an example on how to socialize from Fred and Robyn The Cranky Shut-Ins.
2003: SHE HAD TO BE KIDDING BECAUSE NO ONE IS THAT STUPID.
2002: A lemon hat! So cute.
2001: Damn cats.
2000: No update.

ATTENTION, Long Island, NY residents! Weren’t you just saying you needed a kitten?

Reader Rosemary has four kittens who need a home.

I am in Long Island, New York. The kittens were born to a feral (but friendly) mother in the boatyard where I work. We noticed them July 22, when they seemed to be three or four weeks old, so they were probably born the last week of June. A coworker and I had them spayed and got their rabies shots through a local animal rescue, but I had to bring them back to the boatyard because no shelter could take them and I am unable to foster them. They’re living in a barn on the boatyard, so they’ve been relatively safe and sheltered during the warm weather, but it’s not weather-tight for the winter. After I brought them back, Molly, the momma cat, disappeared – I hope she just decided that the kittens were old enough to take care of themselves. I’ve been feeding the babies, and they’ve gradually become more friendly. The kittens don’t realize they are supposed to be feral, and they don’t know how to hunt. They are used to being fed.

Barney is an orange boy, loves to play but needs some socialization.

Clown is a sweet and cuddly dilute calico female, grey and orange. She loves to be held.

Phantom is a beautiful all gray male, very skittish still but you can tell that when he gets some concentrated attention, he’s going to be a lovebug.

Skittles is a gray male with a white chest and paws, playful and bold but will purr if you hold him.

Anyone interested in adopting one or two or four kittens? Let me know, and I’ll pass your email along to Rosemary!

Things that are annoying the SHIT out of me lately.

1. My uterus. GODDAMN. I went on the pill to regulate my period and stop the between-period spotting, and for a few months it worked, but the spotting is back. IT’S BACK, O JOY. It’s not heavy spotting, it’s fairly light. Just heavy enough, y’know, to make it a pain in the ass. You know, I’m not USING the goddamn thing (my uterus, that is), I’m thisclose to demanding that my gynecologist just yank the fucking thing out. Yes, I’ve heard of the endometrial ablation, that’ll likely be the next step. STUPID FUCKING UTERUS.

2. We live across the street from a truck driver and his family. I rarely ever even see them over there, I just assume they’re all alive and well. What fucking irks me is that when he’s home and an 18-wheeler goes by, they feel the GODDAMN FUCKING NEED to blow their goddamn motherfucking air horns at his house to give him the ol’ HEYHOWYADOIN. This pisses me off because it scares the fucking shit out of every animal on the property. The chickens go screaming to the chicken coop, and cower underneath it. The dogs bark and bark and bark. And inside the house, every cat goes hauling ass to the back of the house. If they’re in the back yard, they come hauling ass inside and hide. I suppose I should just thank my lucky stars that they don’t do it at NIGHT.

3. About two miles down the road from us, they’re putting in an interchange off a major interstate. My life is going to get easier when they open it, because I can just drive down to the interchange and hop onto the interstate, then drive straight up the interstate to Tennessee to get to the vet. I’m estimating that it’ll cut about 5 minutes off the drive (which currently takes 25 minutes). To all appearances, it seems to be complete, but they’ve still got it blocked off. Most of the signs are up, the entire thing on both sides is completely paved, but it just SITS there, blocked off. Mocking me because I have to drive up into Closeville and hit 500 traffic lights to get on the interstate. I’m sure they’re waiting to have some sort of stupid-ass ribbon cutting ceremony, but I’m thisclose to just using the goddamn exit, blockades or no.

4. I made two batches of jam/ jelly yesterday, and of course – OF COURSE – I failed to check first to make sure I had enough jelly jars. I did not – and had to use two pint jars. Who the hell needs a pint jar of jalapeno jelly, I ask you? NO ONE. One day I’m going to get my shit together before I get the bright idea to start making jam.

5. I was super excited to find that in the shopping center where they’ve put the Publix I love so much, they were putting a Pet Dep0t. There are no other pet stores in the area, and my favorite pet store – Petsmart – is half an hour away. I figured, I’d keep Petsmart as my usual pet store, but Pet Dep0t could serve in a pinch since it’s only ten minutes away. I’ve had three or four pinches, and let me tell you – Pet Dep0t is absolutely fucking useless. They have two small aisles of cat food, none of the kind we use, and a few other cat supplies. I went in there yesterday to see if they had nursing bottles with shorter nipples than the bottles I had on hand, and they only had the same kind of bottles I already had. Which, you know, okay. Maybe they don’t MAKE nursing bottles with shorter nipples, what do I know? But then I started looking to see if I could find something for the new kittens to use as a little cave, and not only did they have NOTHING in the tiny, useless cat section, they didn’t even have little pyramids in the FERRET section, which I know Petsmart carries, because I’ve often considered buying one in the past. Of the three or four times I’ve run into Pet Dep0t, I’ve come out of there buying absolutely nothing every single time. Even Wal-Mart has a better selection.

6. It seems like at least three times a week, I sit down with my lunch in front of the computer (yeah, yeah, not supposed to read while you’re eating, tell someone who cares) and the goddamn motherfucking internet is down. And then I have to send a text message to Fred saying “O LOOK, INTERNET IS DOWN AGAIN, I AM SO GLAD WE PAY PROMPTLY EVERY MONTH JESUS GODDAMN FUCKING CHRIST OUR INTERNET PROVIDER SUCKS ASS, HAVE I MENTIONED?” and then I swear that one of these days I’m going to just toss my fucking computer right out the door and spend the rest of my life computer-free IMAGINE HOW MUCH MORE I COULD GET DONE and then after I’ve finished eating lunch the goddamn internet comes back up. Fuck you, internet provider. You might be the only choice in town right now, but it won’t always be so, and I dream of that day.

I only managed to get this one picture of one of the new guys (the friendly calico) yesterday, I was more concerned with getting them to eat. They’re all eating pretty well, we’re getting a nice amount of formula in them at each feeding, and at least two of them – the friendly calico and the gray kitten – are interested in Gerber chicken baby food, and will lick it off a spoon (I’ve tried putting it on a plate, but they just walk through it). The kittens are as of yet still unnamed, but Fred’s under strict instructions to come up with names for them today. The gray and black kittens are both boys, so we’ve got two boys and two girls.

They are so sweet, these little kittens. The black boy has a hair-trigger spitting reaction to just about everything. The hissy-spitty calico is less hissy as time goes by, but she’s still spitting plenty. The friendly calico is just that – very friendly. After we feed them, we let them run around the room for a while to explore, and she always ends up in my lap on her back demanding a belly rub.

The calicos are definitely peeing in the litter box. The boys might be too, but they’re still giving me plenty of urine when I stimulate them at meal time, so I’ll keep doing that ’til I actually see them in the litter box.

I’ll get more pictures of them today (the incredible sweet fluffiness of the gray boy MUST be documented), and hopefully by tomorrow morning they’ll have names!

I let the True Bloods out of their room yesterday morning at around 8, and they spent all day, until about 6:30, out and running around. They really REALLY like running around the house, as I’m sure you can imagine.

They also really like snoozing on the couch.

Hoyt cracks me up with his woe-is-me expressions.

Hoyt and Sam, asleep on the couch.

Sookie and Bill, snuggled up on the kitchen rug.

Terry and Lafayette, asleep on the filing cabinet next to my desk (and Miz Poo, asleep on my desk).

Bill and a toy on the kitchen floor.

Terry, asleep on the kitchen floor.

Sam, coming down the stairs to see what’s going on.

“I HAS A COMPLAINT.”

Look at how SMUG Hoyt is, laying there next to Miz Poo. And Miz Poo is struggling with the eternal dilemma – to smack, or not to smack?

Need a kitten? Just put out a box, and one will show up within five minutes. Guaranteed!

Previously
2008: I’m sure SOMETHING will get peed on while she’s here, anyway.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: UGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH.
2004: Questions and answers.
2003: I feel like Eudora’s a creepy old lady hovering over my shoulder, reading my email, and threatening to tell my mommy on me.
2002: Anything more complicated than that, and I think you’ll have to look elsewhere.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.

SAFE Haven for Cats, in the North Raleigh area of NC could use your help!

Safe Haven for Cats has a live auction every year. This year, however, not enough items have been donated:

For a complete list of items we know we can sell please go to http://www.safehavenforcats.org/auction.html#like

Hey, anyone out there heard of Sensory Processing Disorder or had a child who suffers from it?

After doing some reading about it, I’m guessing that there are some overlaps with ADHD and Autism and Aspergers. In fact, so many of those overlap each other that I’m wondering how the hell anyone ever comes up with a solid diagnosis for one or the other!

Last weekend, when Fred and I stopped by the flea market in Cullman and then went to the Tool Shed to look around (AWESOME store!), we saw these signs which made us laugh.

(We need this one for the pig shelter, I think!)

Sadly, though, there were none that read “Horseshit Alley”, because I would have had to buy that one.

(I’ve claimed, since I was in my twenties, that I was going to win the lottery and then build a huge house with a long driveway, and name it Horseshit Alley just to piss the neighbors off. Hasn’t happened yet, but I’m still young!)

WARNING: SPIDER PICTURES IN THIS SECTION. SKIP TO THE NEXT SECTION IF SPIDERS GIVE YOU THE OOGIES.

A few weekends ago, I was going to get groceries, and I glanced up at the garage as I pulled out of my parking spot. Hanging there was a huge Orb Weaver, so as I pulled out of the driveway, I called Fred and told him it was there.

Naturally, he went out to look at it, and took some pictures.

It stayed there for a week or so, then I think the rain we’ve had lately drove it into hiding or off to a more hospitable environment.

And in a related (perhaps) story, I slept in ’til 6:30 Saturday morning. What woke me up?

A spider crawling down my cheek.

(A little one, not an orb weaver. If it had been an orb weaver, I’d be writing this from the Great Beyond, having died due to a heart attack brought on by the horror of having something the size of my head crawling down my face. The baby spider was bad enough, believe me.)

Back in July, Janice left a comment, and in the comment she left a link to Ina Garten’s Easy Sticky Buns recipe.

I printed it out, and then I forgot about it, and then a few weeks ago I re-found it and decided to give it a try.

They are a BIG hit around here. The first time I made them, they got a little overcooked. The second time I made them, I cooked them for about three minutes less, and they came out perfectly. And then the third time I made them (this past weekend), I cooked them for about three minutes less AND cut the amount of topping (the butter and brown sugar part, not the pecans) to 1 1/2 teaspoons in each cup rather than 1 Tablespoon, and they were deemed absolutely perfect, don’t change a thing.

(I also left the raisins out all three times, because I don’t like cooked raisins. Blech.)

Like the name of the recipe says, they’re very easy to make (although I always have an issue with my second sheet of puff pastry sticking together, and that drives me nuts), and they’re easily halved so you can end up with only six instead of a dozen. Also, I recently bought a couple of Silicone Muffin Pans, and they make life SO much easier when it comes to getting the sticky buns out of the cups – they’re also a lot easier to deal with when I make Bacon, Egg and Toast Cups. No matter how much I buttered the muffin tins, my BE&T cups were sticking to the cups. With the silicone cups, not only do they not stick but I can skip buttering the cups altogether!

Highly recommended (the recipe AND the pans) – and thanks, Janice!!!

Sam is king of the (small) cat tower!

Every evening, I turn the hanging light on, and Sam is just obsessed with sitting and staring up at it. Maybe he thinks it’s the sun.

“Bleh.”

“Halp! Halp! CALL 911!!!” (Sam, with Bill laying behind him, biting the back of his neck.)

These kittens ADORE walking carefully (and sometimes not-so-carefully) along the footboard of my bed.

Sprawling Bill.

Snoozin’ Joe Bob.

Previously
2008: No entry.
2007: I think I need more sleep.
2006: Photographic proof that I met a (Not So)Scary Internet Person and lived to tell the tale!
2005: I mean, it’s not bad enough the man has road rage, he’s got to have fucking walking-through-the-house rage too?
2004: “No, this is real time!” Fred sighed.
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: Written by hand.
2000: No entry.

So the scheduler called from the hematologist’s office yesterday, and I’m scheduled to have my iron infusions next week, Monday through Friday at 8:30 every morning. The process will take about an hour each time. I imagine that the drive will get to be a pain in the ass by mid-week, but at the moment I’m kind of looking forward to having an excuse to spend time on that side of Huntsville. There are lots of stores I’ve always wanted to check out, and assuming I’m not too wiped out by the infusions, I’ll have plenty of time to do so.

Yesterday, after I dropped Terry off at the vet, I stopped and got a few groceries, and then came home and cooked four whole chickens, one at a time, in the pressure cooker. Once they cooled, I deboned the chickens and shredded them (while Jake and Elwood walked around the kitchen rubbing on my legs (and the cabinets, and anything else they came across), crying that they were starrrrrrving to death and that chicken sure did smell good…). Later today, I’m going to can them. We have a lot of recipes that call for shredded chicken (or can be adapted to use shredded chicken), and I’ve been talking about canning chicken for several months now. I’ve certainly used canned chicken in the past from the grocery store, hopefully the home-canned chicken will be tastier.

I plan to clear out the garage freezer, actually, and can all the chickens we have out there. A guy who bought hatching eggs from us several months ago ended up with 15 roosters (out of 3 dozen eggs, so those aren’t bad odds). He doesn’t want roosters (and you really can’t have that many roosters in a flock as small as his), so he’s letting us have them for a very low price. We have roosters from our own flock that need to be processed too, so Fred’s going to be one chicken-processing fool this weekend.

You may have seen the link going around that shows what happens in many big hatcheries to male chicks (I won’t link to it, I’m sure you can find it if you Google around) – they’re tossed into a grinder alive, because there’s a much larger demand for hens. When we get chickens from hatcheries, we get a “straight run”, which is basically a “you get what you get” sort of thing – they don’t sort them by sex, they just grab ’em and box ’em. As a result, we tend to process and eat roosters exclusively (you can only have so many roosters – too many roosters in a flock, and you end up with harassed hens who have bare backs).

But it makes us both happy to know that rather being tossed alive in a grinder, the roosters are allowed to live a pretty pampered life before they’re quickly and painlessly killed and then processed.

(Fred once said “It makes me sad that they’re killed like that just because they’re male.” I said “In a world where human babies are abandoned and allowed to die on the street because they were born female, I’m having a hard time mustering up too much sympathy for male chickens.” But I lied – it makes me sad, too. Of course, if we were the true softies we like to think we are, we’d be vegetarians. THAT ain’t gonna happen.)

Terry ended up spending the night at the vet’s last night. His surgery took longer than she expected – I know I’ve mentioned he’s got the worst eyes of any of the kittens – and when I showed up at almost 5:30 to pick him up, she was just finishing his surgery. She said that I could hang out and wait for him to be ready to go, or let him spend the night. Since I knew I would be dropped Sookie off this morning for her eye surgery, I opted to leave him there overnight. I figured that being confined to a cage wouldn’t hurt, and I knew he’d be safe and warm.

I can’t wait to see him in a little while, though!

When I took Hoyt, Lafayette, and Sam to the vet on Monday, she mentioned that Sookie has the most normal eyelids of any of them – it’s not ’til you look closely at her eyes that you see there’s eyelid missing on each eye. Kind of funny that the one with the worst eyes (Terry) and the one with the best eyes (Sookie) are the last two to get their new eyelips.

I got these pictures on Monday, after the kittens got their vaccinations, which made them sleepy for the rest of the day. Obviously the only way to get a decent shot of all six of them, they need to be drugged and very, very sleepy. (I still couldn’t get them to sit in a line, though. Brats!)

Spanky disapproves of this “foster kitten” nonsense.

Previously
2008: The Godfather Catmother
2007: I don’t know what you do to surprise your husband – lingerie, or a gift from the local “adult” store, perhaps – but I know the direct way to Fred’s heart, and mowing the lawn so he was free to come home and work on his shed instead of having to mow the lawn made him one happy man.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: How’d you like to wake up in the dark and see the Baldwin noggin coming toward you? I bet your life would flash in front of your eyes.
2003: “Freakass freak” is two words.
2002: As I pointed out to Fred this afternoon, it makes me uncomfortable when Dr. Phil is nice.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.

I left the house yesterday afternoon at 2:20 – I had an appointment on the south side of Huntsville at 3:30, and since it was a new doctor, they wanted me there half an hour earlier. I showed up on the dot of 3:00, gave them the paperwork they’d sent me in the mail, and waited for fifteen minutes.

(Luckily I’d brought a book with me. Although, they did have a pretty good selection of magazines, too.)

The nurse called me back, weighed me and took my vitals, and then told me to go into another waiting room until they had an empty room.

At 4:15, I texted Fred to tell him that my prediction that I’d see the doctor at 4:15 (given my appointment time of 3:30) was wrong. A few minutes later, the nurse came and got me, and took me to an exam room. I had been sitting there reading for a good solid five minutes when the door suddenly opened and an old man – definitely not the doctor – stood there, blinking at me.

“They snuck you in here while I was in the bathroom!” he exclaimed. We went out to see if a nurse could solve this dilemma, and finally the old man flagged down the doctor, who was suitably embarrassed and ushered me into another exam room to wait. Another nurse bustled in a moment later and apologized profusely, changed out the paper on the exam table, and then left again.

I was just texting Fred to ask him to give the cats their Snack! when the doctor finally came in.

(It was 4:50. Good thing I showed up at 3:00, isn’t it?)

I think I was in the room with him for approximately 7 minutes, he did a cursory exam, and then I was on my way.

The physical I had a few weeks ago showed that I was severely anemic (despite the fact that I take a daily iron supplement), so my doctor referred me to a hematologist (who’s also an oncologist, and boy THAT is a fun waiting room), who told me he wanted to order iron infusions (once a day for five days) to bring my iron level up. It was what I’d expected (well, the five days came as a surprise, but I’m assuming he knows what he’s doing), and he told me that the scheduler had left for the day, so she’d call me to schedule them.

(I wanted to say “Oh, really? Your scheduler leaves at 3:30? OH WAIT. IT’S 5:00!”)

Observations:

1. This doctor had the coldest hands I’ve ever felt on another living being in my LIFE.

2. This doctor happens to be married to the doctor who put a tube in my ear almost 10 years ago (something I discovered through Google, when I was looking to see where his office was, not because it came up in the course of the exam). He’s as nice as she is, but he has the added benefit of not having a thick Indian accent, so I had no problem understanding him. (Thank god – being unable to understand someone with a thick accent always makes me feel incredibly stupid.)

3. If anyone ever schedules me for an appointment in South Huntsville at that time of day again, I will promptly call and reschedule the appointment for another day, much earlier. The location that took me 35 minutes to get to, took over an hour to get home from at rush hour.

4. I will (consider) shoot(ing) the next goddamn motherfucking asshole I find who’s just goddamn fucking lollygagging along in the left lane. Do people UNDERSTAND that if you’re driving down the interstate in the left lane, NOT in the act of passing someone, you’re DOING IT WRONG? I’m a fairly patient, non-aggressive driver, but people who just drive along in the left lane drives me fucking NUTS. If you couldn’t tell.

Okay. So. Who’s had an iron infusion, and what can I expect?

FYI, it’s not unheard of for people who’ve had weight loss surgery to have a problem with low iron; the changed innards can lead to the inhibition of iron absorption. It’s almost certainly connected to my weight loss surgery. In case you were wondering!

Off goes my sweet boy Terry, to get his fancy new eyelips.

I hate having to take him to the vet and leave him there. He’s my sweet little snuggler, and I hate the thought of him being scared and alone.

(And I know they’ll take really good care of him. They always do!)

I will be so glad when the operations are over and the eyelips are healed.

(I might miss his squint a little bit, though, once it’s gone. I love it when he peers up at me like a little old man.)

In my comments yesterday, Helene asked for a close-up of Sam’s face.

This is the eye where part of the graft fell off. It looks really good, compared to how it looked before surgery. It just looks a little hairless! (See it larger, here.)

I wasn’t able to get a straight-on shot of him, but you can see his still-healing eye on the right side of the picture (his left eye). (See the picture larger, here.)

Kara found herself on the outside window ledge (she jumped from the ground to the air conditioning unit and from there to the window ledge; Tommy does it all the time), and didn’t seem to know what to make of the experience.

Previously
2008: I’m certainly enjoying all the naked male behinds that pop across the screen pretty regularly, too.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: Just call us the three bears.
2004: small things that will remind me of my grandmother.
2003: Man, this whole running-a-business thing is strictly FOR THE FUCKING BIRDS.
2002: Fred (as if narrating a book): “She was a bitter-butted woman….”
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.

Psst! You, searching on “fajita pie” yesterday. Did you mean quesadilla pie, maybe?

(I tend toward calling it “tortilla pie, I mean quesadilla pie. No. Tortilla pie. Wait. What the hell is it called again?”, myself.)

I am in the market for a decent dutch oven, but NOT one of those freakin’ Le Creuset dutch ovens that cost $200+ because, please. I’m not spending no $200+ for a dutch oven, I don’t care how awesome it is. I’m looking for a bigger one, in the area of 5 – 6 quarts.

I was thinking of one of these.

Opinions, suggestions?

On Sunday, when Fred and I were driving to look at the boat we ultimately did not buy, Fred said “We need to come up with a code phrase in case there’s something about it that you absolutely hate, to let me know that I shouldn’t buy it.”

We considered, and then I grinned and said “How about ‘tippytoe’?”

Fred laughed out loud, and I was pleased that he’d gotten my joke. And then he said “Why ‘tippytoe’?”, and my bubble burst.

(For the uninformed, it’s from an episode of Seinfeld. God, I miss that show. Friends, too. And no, I didn’t see the Seinfeld reunion on that Larry David show because we have no premium channels like HBO or Showtime. I figure I’ll see it when it comes out on DVD.)

Doesn’t it just SUCK when you make an inside joke like that and the other person doesn’t get it?

A few weeks ago, June wrote an entry, and in it she mentioned that she’s doing this crazy-ass new thing she’s calling Make June Do It wherein her readers tell her to do something they’ve always wondered about but never done, and she’ll do it. Naturally, everyone wants her to get a Brazilian wax, because frankly who does NOT want to cause someone on the internet a great deal of pain?

(Please note that there will NEVER be a “Make Robyn Do It” portion of this journal.)

Anyway, she told her husband Marvin about it, and he was less than enthusiastic about the idea, and she wrote I have the only husband in the world who prefers the Jiffy Pop look.

When I read that, I laughed so loud that all the cats in the room folded their ears back and went running for cover.

So a few nights later I was telling Fred about what I’d read (I meant to tell him immediately after I read it, but then I saw something shiny and I forgot for a few days until the memory bubbled up to the surface of my brain) and I was all “BWAH! HAH! HAH! AND THEN SHE SAID SHE HAS THE ONLY HUSBAND WHO PREFERS THE JIFFY POP LOOK!”

He did not get it. At all. I tried to explain, but he failed again to get it. He tried to say that maybe it was because he’d never HAD Jiffy Pop. I tried again to explain. Nope. Didn’t get it, wasn’t funny.

I HATE IT when the person who’s supposed to understand and giggle along at the things that make you laugh REFUSES TO GET IT. It’s like he purposely didn’t get it. Oooh, it just enraged me. I wanted to smack him. I wanted to file for divorce.

DAMN IT.

And now instead of thinking “June has the only husband in the world who prefers the Jiffy Pop look” and guffawing silently to myself, I will forever be consumed with rage that Fred DELIBERATELY AND WITH MALICE AFORETHOUGHT did not get it.

Bastard.

So, on Saturday morning when I went in to give the True Blood 6 their morning snack and shoot antibiotics down the throats of some of them and ointment in the eyes of most of them, I noticed something odd was going on with Sam’s right eye. Basically, his eyelip had peeled off and was hanging there by a stitch. There was no blood and what was left where the eyelip had been looked pretty good, actually. It being Saturday, I couldn’t take him to the vet, so I just smeared ointment on the part where the eyelip had been and shot worried looks at it for the rest of the weekend.

Yesterday morning, I called the clinic and made an appointment for late afternoon to bring Sam in, as well as Lafayette and Hoyt. Both their eyelips are looking pretty ugly right now, like they want to peel away, and I wanted her to take a look and see what was going on.

In the morning, though, I put all six of them in carriers and took them up to the shelter so they could get their vaccinations.

(Jake and Elwood investigate the carriers to make sure they’re secure.)

They handled it fairly well (except for Lafayette, who always fights everything. He’s always the hardest to medicate, and as for putting the ointment in his eyes – boy, he REALLY fights that. He sure is a sweet boy otherwise, though!) and soon enough we were home again.

I let them out of their carriers, and they all went and ate and drank a little, and when I checked on them about ten minutes later, they were all napping. As it turned out, the vaccinations they’d received really knocked them for a loop, and they napped all afternoon long.

At 3:30 I put Hoyt, Lafayette, and Sam in one carrier and headed for the vet. They slept the entire way.

Basically, most of the eyelip graft on Sam’s right eye took. Once she clipped the dangling eyelip away (it was literally only hanging there by a stitch, so it didn’t hurt him), we could see underneath, and it looked really good. She thinks that, ultimately, all their eyelips will slough off, leaving healthy tissue behind. Hopefully all their grafts will take underneath, because that’s really the important part, the part that’s actually touching their eyes. If need be, skin can be pulled down to make their eyelids look right.

She checked both Hoyt and Lafayette, and said that both their grafts are vascularizing and look okay (they’re ugly, but like she said – they’re going to get ugly before they get pretty!), so we’re going to leave them alone.

As always, it was good to hear that all is well and I don’t need to worry!

At home, once I let the three of them out of their carrier, all six of them piled up to sleep. They were uninterested in their evening snack, and spent most of the evening sleeping, as well.

This morning? Back to normal, completely. It’s amazing how quickly they bounce back, isn’t it?

Hoyt and Sookie.

Hoyt (left), Lafayette (right), and Bill (background).

Sam thinks the carrier’s a great spot for napping. He hasn’t developed fear of the carrier yet.

Sookie, napping hard.

Snoozin’ Lafayette.

Previously
2008: It took me ’til dinner time to get the house cleaned, and I swear to god the house doesn’t look any different at ALL.
2007: No entry.
2006: He shifted position and eyed Fred with bright-eye malevolence.
2005: Maybe I just like to bitch, y’think?
2004: Waiting for Ivan.
2003: No more Benifer. How sad.
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: Speaking of N Sync – that Lance Bass is a cutie, but I get the distinct feeling that although the lights are on, no one’s home.

(Fred sent me these links this morning.)

Kanye: Douchebag.

Beyonce: Class act.

There are entries up at Love & Hisses for Friday and yesterday. Bill had to have a little maintenance work done on one of his eyelips, and so far it’s looking pretty good.

Saturday was a super-busy day for me, a day I spent mostly in the kitchen. When we went to the flea market two weeks ago, we bought a big bag of apples so that I could make some Caramel-Apple Jam and some applesauce. I let the apples sit in the kitchen because I didn’t want to deal with them, and finally Saturday I decided it was time to get my ass in gear. I made a batch of Caramel-Apple Jam, but unfortunately after all the work of peeling and slicing and dicing the apples, the fucking stuff didn’t gel, and so what I’m left with are 7 pints of Caramel-Apple syrup.

(I guess that means I’ll need to start making pancakes or french toast to use the syrup on, right?)

I actually think the syrup would be a good hand pie filling. I may have to give that a try.

I have plenty of apples left, so I’ll likely try another batch of the jam this week before I use the rest of the apples to make and can applesauce.

I also made a Reese’s Cup Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake. Really, really good cake, but also very filling, and the pigs ended up getting about 3/4 of the cake when all was said and done. Next time I make it, I’m going to freeze half of it, right off the bat, I think.

I cut the tops off and froze about a gallon of habaneros (I have a ton of them put away now, which is a good thing – Fred says he thinks the habanero plants in the garden are just about done producing), and put a couple of trays of cayenne peppers in the dehydrator to dry (to grind up into cayenne powder because we have about three years’ worth of cayenne powder, but apparently we need to just KEEP ON GROWING the goddamn things, so what the hell else am I going to do with them?).

We had a late lunch/ early dinner at Logan’s Roadhouse, then swung by the grocery store to pick up a few groceries. At home, I spent some time with the kittens and then put together a batch of King’s Ranch Chicken to have for dinner on Sunday, because we had plans and didn’t know what time we were going to get home for dinner.

(Also, I did several loads of laundry at some point during the day and hung them out to dry, then brought it all in and put it away. I am SUCH the Superwoman!)

After that, between Snackin’! Time! and medicating the kittens and scooping the litter boxes, it was time to sit down and watch TV for the evening.

Sunday morning I got up with the intention of making baked blueberry french toast, which I had started the night before, and do you know what I fucking hate? I fucking hate it when recipes say, for an ingredient, “Family-size bag of (whatever)”, and at the grocery store there’s a small bag and a big bag, but the big bag doesn’t say “Family-size bag”, but you assume it’s the family size bag, since it’s the big bag, and yet it turns out to be way too fucking much.

Why can’t recipes list the size of the bag required as “10 oz” or whatever? God, I fucking hate that shit.

(And no, I’m not providing a link to the baked blueberry french toast, because I’m not recommending it, because once I determined that there were too fucking many of this item in the dish, instead of going the rest of the way to make the dish, I gave all that shit to the fucking pigs. If you’re desperate to find a baked blueberry french toast recipe, Google is your friend. And you’ll likely find a recipe that doesn’t start with a goddamn “family size bag” of pita chips FOR THE RECORD.)

So I vacuumed the downstairs, which desperately needed it, and I made pickled jalapeno peppers for Fred, and I checked my cayenne peppers in the dehydrator, and found that they were not, in fact, dry enough to put through the blender.

Fred and I ate breakfast, and then we hit the road in his truck. We drove for an hour and a half to get to Smith Lake, to test-drive a boat, and something was wrong with the engine, so that is yet another boat we did not buy.

We stopped at a flea market on the way home and it was the same old crap that all flea markets always have (but it’s always fun to look, anyway). Then we stopped at a store near the flea market, and it had just about anything you could imagine. There were tools galore and metal signs and all manner of ugly home decor. It was kind of neat to look around that place, actually, and we must have spent 45 minutes wandering around that place before we left.

We got home around 2:30, and I ate lunch and then took a nap with the kittens and pretended to listen to Fred babble on about boats much in the way he pretends to listen to me babble on about kittens, and then I mostly slacked for the rest of the day.

(When I put it that way, I feel like I didn’t accomplish nearly everything I’d intended to over the weekend. Oh! I also emptied, scrubbed out, and refilled all the litter boxes in the house Saturday morning. How about that?)

Wild Hoyt, jumping into the cat tower cubby.

Feeling smug about his conquering of the cat tower cubby.

Bill, in the cat tower cubby, kept biting the end of his tail and then squealing in outrage that someone was biting his tail. He might not be the brains of the operation.

Bill’s Jazz! Paws! as he lays in the cat tower cubby.

Annoyed Hoyt.

“Hey, you! I said no paparazzi!”

“I swear to be cute, the whole cute, and nothing but the cute, so help me dog.”

Jake. Maybe Elwood. How the hell would I know? These boys need to wear collars so I can have some kind of clue who’s who when I see them from a distance or in a picture.

Previously
2008: No entry.
2007: By the way, I still want a pet hummingbird.
2006: Maddy sadly contemplates the vast expanse of my thigh. How will she ever cross it and reach freedom?!
2005: For the record, there’s a big fucking difference between pranking someone and just being an asshole.
2004: Like, so world-weary, like “I can’t be bothered to sign ‘love’, because it sounds so warm, I need something COLDER, so I’ll just scrawl ‘as ever’”.
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.