Monday, March 31

Here we go again...

The dinner party went well. I lived and didn’t burn the house down so that is considered a success!

All of our stuff made it out of storage. Our house is a disaster again. It looks like it did before we put the house on the market. We shoved all the stuff in the small dining room and just left it there. I mean really, there was wine to be had! The food turned out perfect and the company was great. The only hard part was steering the conversation to include everyone. Since Steve and Lena were in Newport the same time we were and worked in the same office they talked a lot about the people they used to work with. I had to keep trying to come up with topics that would include everyone. That wasn’t too hard though, and the more wine we had the easier it was to do. Lol.

We spent today cleaning out that small dining room and getting the living room all set up. We moved the TV to the opposite wall and brought down the recliners from the sitting room upstairs. We moved the couch to a different wall and left the window area open. We moved the boxes and the misc furniture to the upstairs and basement rooms that they belong in. Now we are planning on picking a room and completing it before we go to the next one.

We cant start on the next room until Thursday though. I have to be in Rockville tomorrow and then I am going shopping with Lena on Wednesday. So Thursday we are going to start in the office and get it set up and start moving stuff into the guest room. That room doesn’t need to be finished for a while since my mum isnt coming until June.

I have had people ask about my shower so I am adding the pix here. The Eff-er still leaks so we are having the plumber come next week. While he is here we are going to get him to give us an estimate on moving the laundry from the basement to the third floor. That would be so much more convenient and we really aren’t using all 4 of the upstairs bedrooms anyway.


For some reason the last 2 wont upload here so you can go to Flickr and see them. I am going to bed...I am beat.

Friday, March 28

Insanity Rocks!

WooHoo!!!

Now that I have gone insane, there is no need to fear it. How did this happen, you wonder? Well, it started like this:

I quit my job to move to Indiana. We then proceeded to put most of our stuff in storage and get the house on the market. We started looking for a place in IN and then realized that I didn’t really want to move after all (combination of loving my house, my neighbors and friends, and the charm of the area…who can beat the Hon Festival). So we took the house off the market and now are starting to bring stuff back from storage. That was still okay…I was still sane at that point.

Then…

We asked a few friends to help us move the heavy stuff out of storage this weekend…

Ok, still sane…

Michael has a tournament on Saturday so all of the moving has to be done on Sunday...

Ok, still sane…

I decide to throw a dinner party and serve my most time consuming dish - lasagna – on Sunday…with homemade Italian bread.

OK, that is where I think I lost my mind: Somewhere in that last sentence. “Well”, you think, “lasagna is an easy dish, just assemble and bake.” Ummm…you have never had my lasagna before. I have had people PAY me to make it for them. I only make it about once a year. Because it takes 2 days to make the shit!

“What can be so difficult about Lasagna? Do you make your own noodles?” No, and that is only because there is no way I can make them better than the store bought kind. Everything else though…

If I have a dinner party on Sunday, I start cooking on Friday. The sauce is home made and you know it tastes better after it sits for a day. I cook it slowly for about 5-8 hours on the first day, and then it rests overnight. The next day I start on the lasagna. I have to make the cheese/spice mixture( grate cheese, mix cheeses, check for right consistency, etc), I have to assemble the individual lasagna rolls, use the sauce I made the day before (heating it up a bit first), assemble in pan (making sure not to crowd the individual rolls), add more sauce, sprinkle with cheese, and then cook the hell out of it for about an hour.

So there is really just a lot to do the 2 days before the party. The day of the party I only have to make the bread (a WHOLE different blog!), make the salad, heat the main course, and open the wines. So really not a lot to do on the actual day…however…the actual day will be filled with me telling people where to put the boxes (heh) and various pieces of furniture. That means my house will look like a disaster area when the guests begin to arrive.

Like I said…now that I have embraced the insanity it isnt really all that bad…

Tuesday, March 25

Catching Up

Well, we finally got back and I didn’t kill anyone. Though, I have to say that at 10 pm on Sunday night it was pretty close.

We left Missouri Sunday morning around 11 am and finally stopped in Columbus OH around 11 hours later. For the most part, I really enjoy road trips. Michael insists on driving the whole way, and I am not going to complain. We get books on cassette and I just listen to the books and knit to my little heart’s content. I get so much knitting done on a road trip. I can get 2 pieces of my quilt finished in an hour and knock out a good book at the same time. This time we listened to a couple of Terry Pratchett books. The man is a friggin genius. He is hysterically funny as well as very insightful. Anyway, we stopped in Columbus at the usual hotel chain and I couldn’t have been happier when we got in the room. I swear, we have been travelling so much lately that the hotel suites feel more like home than our house does! Even with all the travelling and the fact that we lived in a hotel for almost 2 weeks, I still love hotel rooms.

We left the next morning around 11 and got back home around 5. I was happy to be home with my kitties. They all came out to greet us and Autumn Savannah’s feet didn’t touch the ground the whole time I was home. She was either sitting on my shoulder or I was carrying her around. We went to supper with some friends and then came right home. After that I figured the kitties needed some Human Time so I just changed into Jammies and sat on the couch and tried to read. No such luck. Autumn Savannah decided that she had to sit on my lap no matter what and heaven help the poor kitty who got close! I love that cat but she is a bully at times. I finally gave up and just read in bed for a while…at least that way all 4 kitties could spend time with me. Michael was in the basement watching Sports Center and walking on the treadmill. The man is so damn healthy that it is disgusting.

On a brighter note, we are waiting for kittens. We have 2 strays in the cul de sac who are pregnant. During the warm spell they went into heat and I have calculated their due dates from March 31st to April 3rd. the normal gestation period for a cat is 62-63 days so we are getting close. We are trying not to bother the kitties because we don’t want them to move the kittens to a place where we can’t find them. As soon as the kittens are born we usually go on a kitten hunt and then bottle raise them and find good homes for them. It is heartbreaking to take the kittens, but only about 40% of the kittens in our cul de sac make it to adults – they either succumb to the cold, are killed by predators, or get sick and die. I just keep telling myself that it is much better for them this way.

We have tried trapping the 2 females, but they have an abundant supply of food between the neighbors and the woods so they never get curious about the food in the traps. My vet has agreed to do the spay for a minimal charge so all we have to do is trap them. I just hope they reach Kitty Menopause soon, I cant foster every year. In fact, last year I could only foster 2 kittens and we ended up losing 3 of the ones I couldn’t take in time…one was killed by a predator and eaten under my car. With this cold weather hanging on, I just hope the mommy kitties hold out as long as possible…it is too cold for kittens right now.

Anyway, I have to make a storage run…I will write about that whole thing later…

Friday, March 14

Subtle


Ok, you know it is time to shave when you show your husband something on your leg and he looks at you and asks, "Wow, are you European now?"

Monday, March 10

Please! For the sake of Humanity, STOP!!!

This is not right!!

These are not your lives to take. You are not superior to these animals and cannot dictate when they die. Though I am thinking that death is better for them than what they are suffering though at the moment - People giving their pets away simply because someone tells them to. These pets only crimes were trusting the humans they lived with. Now they are being shoved out the door in the middle of the night to suffer an ordeal that will only lead to their death. If they are lucky they will die quickly so they won’t have to live long with both a broken body and a broken heart. Hopefully they won’t live long remembering the nights sleeping on the beds with their humans, or sitting on their human’s lap during quiet times. Hopefully they won’t live long remembering all the head butts and purr-y kisses they gave to the human they considered their protector and parent and best friend.

It is shit like this that makes me ashamed to be part of the human race. We are not cattle, People! Think for yourselves for a change! It is shit like this that makes me want to go make sure these monsters don’t inflict pain on any additional animals. It is an unspoken rule that animals and children are off limits - mess with someone who can defend themselves.

For fuck’s sake People, we are not superior to animals - we are barely equal to them! In fact, I have never met an animal I didn’t like, but I am surrounded by people I can’t stand. Most animals are better people than the people are! These are not expendable commodities to dispose of at our will – each and every one of these animals serves a purpose…and that purpose is not to show kindergarteners that it is okay to club a pregnant cat and her unborn kittens to death. God! What a painful and terrifying way to die.

Shit, everything I do in order to ensure that any animal near me is healthy and happy is wiped out by stuff like this. All the spays/neuters, all the fostering of newborns, all the rescues I have nursed back to health, all the kitties I have found healthy homes for, ALL OF IT, is wiped out by another human killing indiscriminately. These are not your lives to take…please stop!

Bastards! I hope there is a special place in Hell for them.

Monday, March 3

Freak!!


Okay, its official – my cat is a freak. Well, obviously, because she loves me. But really, I have never met a cat that likes this activity. I have tried it on my other cats and they run screaming from the room and then hide for the next 10 hours.

Autumn Savannah loves to be swung around on the office chair. Not just any office chair though, it has to be the one with the arms. She takes a running leap and jumps onto the chair between the back and an arm. That gets the chair spinning on its own. If I am there then it is my duty to make sure she keeps spinning. I spin her one way, and then the other. She hangs onto the back with her paws while sitting on the seat. If I stop she yells at me. In order to get her to forget about spinning for a few minutes I use her “feathers on a stick” toy to distract her. She runs and jumps after that toy like it is her last chance at food. I have to stop and get her to calm down before her one remaining lung pops. She has so much energy and is so active that I keep expecting to stumble across a Kitty Meth Lab one day. What happened to ‘cats sleep 20 hours a day’?

Sunday, March 2

Non Sequiter


While I was feeding the kitties this morning, I noticed an expiration date on the bottom of the Fancy Feast can.


My question is: How do they know?

Saturday, March 1

Warning Shot

My dad is 56 years old…and was in the hospital this week for heart problems.

Being from Kansas it is not surprising that he is a ‘meat and potatoes’ kind of guy, and fried is always better – add cheese and it is a food Trifecta. It is also not surprising that he has smoked for 40 years considering 26 of them were spent in the Navy. He is a computer guy so it is not surprising that his activity level is right up there with…mushrooms. I am not surprised his heart was screaming for help. That being said, why was I surprised when my sister called to tell me he was in the hospital? The news threw me even though I knew it would come someday.

They were getting ready to go to the desert – they go and play in the sand dunes with their quads – and my dad was starting to feel worse. He had been having a backache for a few days but now it had moved around to his chest and both his arms. When he started feeling nauseous he decided to go to the Dr. This was an hour before they were supposed to leave for the desert and after all the Dr’s offices were closed. They went to Urgent Care who sent him to the Emergency Room. There they started running tests and decided to keep him overnight. The next day he had a stress test. Immediately after that they scheduled him for an angiogram.

The diagnosis was 3 blocked arteries - 2 of them at 75% and the other at 100%. The one that was 100% blocked was forming offshoots so his body was actively trying to remedy the situation (I think that is good). The day after the angiogram they did the Balloon Angioplasty and inserted stents in the arteries to open them up. The Dr’s finished the arteries that were 75% blocked and Dad was doing so well that they went ahead and tried to do the artery that was 100% blocked. They were successful with that one as well. Yippee! Dad went home yesterday with instructions to see a cardiologist and to change his lifestyle. This is where the hard work begins.

Considering the fact that I was not surprised to get the phone call from my sister, I was surprised by my reaction to it. I was not panicked even though they are in San Diego and I was unable to be there and boss people around. In fact I got the call around midnight and was calm enough to go to bed shortly afterwards. I kept the phones on the headboard just in case there were new developments but I figured no news is good news. The next day I waited until around 1pm to call and find out anything and was calm then too.

Thursday, the day of the procedure I was a mess. I wasn’t a sloppy mess, there was no crying or freaking out, but I was terribly unsettled - I couldn’t focus and was very restless. I wandered around the house looking for something to take my mind off of it but everything that was thought consuming I didn’t want to do. When I got the call that he was okay I was relieved but I had so much residual anxiety that I didn’t really calm down again until Friday – which is the day Dad went home.

We know that our parents are going to die. It is a fact of life and is unavoidable. I know this and yet I have never really given it much thought. Sure, being the type of person that I am, I have considered the logistics of the whole thing, but never the feelings. I know at some point I will have to move to California and take care of them and I have pondered the way life will be after they are gone. I have even gone so far as to imagine how we would feel at their funerals…but never their actual death. I have never thought about the process of their passing.

I am going to consider it a type of healthy avoidance and move forward. My dad is okay for now, and if he takes this warning shot across his bow to heart (heh, pun intended) I will have many more years to make sure he knows how important he is to me. But…just in case…I love you, Daddy…please stick around.