"Look What I Can Do! Look! Look!"

Baby is now almost six weeks old. Her eyes are starting to change color, from baby blue to a yellowish-green:

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(Oh, and that mark on her chin is not dirt. She actually has a little spot of black fur there, which makes her chin look perpetually smudgy. I keep wanting to reach over and wipe that spot off.)

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She's ready to rock out to my marching band records. (That's right, folks. Marching band. Records.)

She is ready and willing to climb on to anything she can sink her claws into:

And, last night, she (drum roll please) ate solid food for the first time:

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Lest you look at these pics and think I live in a van down by the river, please rest assured that my place is usually much neater and cleaner than this. It's just that with two cats tearing through the place 24/7, things are getting a little disorderly.

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Oh, and Baby followed her "first food" performance last night with her "first pee on the carpet" performance. Does anyone have any tips for litterbox training kittens?

What's the Punishment for Giving a Wedgie?

From the local newspaper:

SEVEN SECOND-GRADERS CHARGED IN BEATING PLOT

"Seven male second-grade students at Margaretville Central School District have been charged by New York State Police at Margaretville, accused of plotting to attack a classmate last week.

The charges were filed after a parent of the targeted student learned of the plot May 7 and informed school officials the next day, state police said.

The seven were charged with fifth-degree conspiracy, a misdemeanor. The boys were two 7-year-olds, four 8-year-olds, and one 9-year-old.

State police referred questions to the school district.

Margaretville School Superintendent John Riedl was not available for comment Tuesday."
- Jim Wright

I am just dying to learn the backstory on this one. I mean, come on, seven year olds? On the one hand, ok, maybe this is a group of vicious little bullies, and the school district finally got fed up and called the cops. But the State Police? Why not just call the Feds while you're at it, for Pete's sake?

And can you imagine that phone convo, when the superintendent called the Staties? "Um, well, officer, we thought maybe you could come over and just .... well, scare them. You know, take away their sippy cups or something."

And I can totally see Officer Whoever sighing, getting up from his desk, and heading over to the school to put the fear of God into the little thugs. But at what point did things escalate to charges being filed?

And why is a nine year old still in second grade? Get this kid some tutoring, or something. The worksheets are not that hard. If you can't make it through the second grade, I truly fear for the rest of your academic career.

And I'm sure the parents of the accused are all up in arms over the wrong done to their little angels. And to them I say: Think about this, Mom and Dad. Your seven-year-old is such a little bastard the police are filing charges against him. You might want to pay a little bit closer attention to what the little darling is up to.

And I was thinking, if schoolyard bullying had resulted in criminal charges being filed back when I was in elementary school, half the class would have ended up in Alcatraz.

Best Nine Bucks I've Spent In A While

Momma cat is a very, shall we say, enthusiastic litterbox user. She is not happy unless she can finish her bathroom break by flinging litter out of the box and into the hallway. I swear, I had a pet rabbit who had better litterbox manners than this cat.

I mean, it's not that I blame her. I don't know if she had ever even seen a litterbox before she and Baby came to visit with me. But vacuuming up litter several times a day (okay, okay, once a day) was getting kind of old. And so I went and bought a covered litterbox on Sunday. And I got it all set up, and Momma kind of sniffed around it, and all was cool.

And then I woke up in the middle of the night on Sunday to this: thud. thud. thudthudthud. THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUD.

It was Momma. She was in the litterbox, kicking the crap out of the sides of the thing. Obviously frustrated that she could. not. fling. the. litter. out. of. the. box.


Heh.


On a belated note, Happy Mother's Day to all of you mothers out there! I honestly do not know how you do it. But I know what you put up with. It's something like this:







Talk about multi-tasking!

Oh, and sorry, Exador. I hope the Rolling Stone mag in the background didn't send you into a state of shock.

Lost In The Woods!!!!!

......... and yeah, it pretty much sucks as much as you'd think it would. Hey, I do this stuff so you guys don't have to!

I was going to take my Mom out to lunch yesterday, but TIB and TIB's hubby took her up to the lake for the day. So, I decided to go for a walk instead. I decided on a state forest I had never been to before, grabbed my map, and off I went (insert ominous music here).

I drove out in the boonies for several miles, and the road went from paved, to oiled gravel, to dirt. I finally reached the turnoff for the forest and had to drive another mile down a dirt access road to get to the turn-around where the trails started.

It was not a good sign that I was sharing the turn-around with a rotting deer carcass, a "no target shooting in this area" sign that had the obligatory bullet holes in it, and not one other car. Hey! More room for me! 500 acres all to myself!

My guide book said the trails were marked, but ...... yeah ........ not so much. Not one trail marker. But the trail I elected to take was actually an old logging road, so it was nice and wide. Hard to miss. Now let me say, I started off down this trail and got a creepy vibe. A Pet Cemetery kind of vibe. Like the banjo-playing kid from Deliverance was going to pop out around the next corner. But it was a beautiful day, and I elected to keep walking. I walked and walked and walked, and then started back. Except ...... after a while I was passing stuff I was sure I had not passed before. Like a creepy, tarpaulin-covered lean-to. (insert Deliverance banjo music here.) Oops! So I started backtracking. And then I got pissed off.

Let me say this: I have been doing weekend walks for over ten years, oftentimes in large, isolated areas, and this is the first time I've ever gotten lost. And it really sucks, and I was mad at myself. Not too scared, because hey, this place was only 500 acres. There is a limit to how lost you can get yourself in 500 acres. And the trail I had been on originally had ended at a paved road, so I knew that if worse came to worst, I could just walk back until I got to the road and then take the road back to my car. And yes, I do carry a cell phone, which was actually picking up a signal out there (you bet I checked).

I started marking the trails which I knew were the wrong ones, and pretty soon, I was back on the access road and heading for my car. Which I was never so glad to see in my life. It turns out that on the way back, I had gone wrong at a trail intersection not more than 100 yards from my car.

So! That was my big idiotic adventure yesterday. Will I be going back there? Not on your life. Or at least, not until they mark the damn trails. And probably not then. Because that place? Was creepy.

Here On The African Plains

As soon as it got light out this morning, Momma and Baby starting tearing around the apartment. (Oh yes! The Baby, she is running now! Also climbing up on furniture and eee-eee-EEE-ing when she can't figure out how to get back down.) And for one seven-pound cat and one tiny kitten, they sure can make a lot of noise. It sounded like a herd of elephants running back and forth.

Now, my apartment is small. Basically, if you are running around in it, as soon as you get up a good head of steam, you have to come to a screeching halt, or you're going to run into something. Now Momma is pretty good at that. Baby? Not so much. While her body is finally growing to match her ginormous head, and her tail is finally growing enough to give her some rudder control, she is still kind of unsteady on her feet.

So this morning, I am lying in bed, and I am hearing this: runrunrunrunrun(thud). runrunrunrunrun(thud). runrunrunrunrun(thud). And I laid there and giggled.

Garden Stuff - Feel Free To Skip This One

The peony has shot up to almost a foot tall in the last week. And it has buds! I just put this peony in last year, and everybody was like, "oh, peonies are hard, if you plant them too deep they'll never bloom, and if you plant them too shallow they'll croak." Hah! I have peony buds!

The bleeding heart that I separated is huge, as usual. I swear, I divided out at least half of that thing, and it's still almost as big as it was last year. I gave some to my sister Ditzy, and the rest I planted along the sides of the yard - now I've got three bleeding hearts instead of one. And I've got lilies of the valley all over the place - they keep spreading, and spreading, and spreading.

The tiger lilies that I dug up from the side yard at my sister Alabama's summer place are coming up. It's a good thing I got 'em last summer, seeing as how she sold the place this spring. She also gave me a "bubblegum lily" that she had at her place, and that's coming up as well.

The white lilac is starting to bloom, but it seems to be a couple of weeks behind everybody else's lilacs. I can't remember if it was late last year as well. That, my friends, is why I'm writing all this stuff down.

The rose-of-sharons are starting to green up, as are the hydrangeas. I sulfated the hydrangeas a few weeks ago; last year they were starting to go from blue to pink, and I'd like to keep them blue if possible. The cinnamon fern is starting to uncurl its way up; it's about 8" tall now. The eastern fern, which I thought was dead, was actually just struggling to send up new growth through all of last year's fronds. When I cut all the old stuff back, there was quite a bit coming up underneath. Note to self: Cut that thing way back next fall. The honeysuckle is back with a vengeance; one of these days I'm afraid it's going to topple the garden arch right over. The turks-cap lilies are coming up (yay! they were an experiment), and the asiatic lily I divided a couple of weeks ago is huge again. The phlox that I dug up down by the creek (shhh!) is doing good, as is my store-bought phlox. The poppy and daylilies are doing good. The azaleas don't look so hot, but they do have buds. Maybe I'll move them this fall. The catnip's back. The hosta and sedum are looking good. You know, actually, I DO NOT LIKE either hosta or sedum, but my Mom gave them to me, and so I let them live. Big of me. The teeny rose bush that she gave me is leafing out as well. Every year I think that poor thing is gonna croak, and every year it surprises me by going nuts at the tail end of the summer. The jacob's ladder has mysteriously disappeared.

On a sucky note, someone stole my copper flamingo out of the garden! I had a three-foot-tall flamingo that was made out of copper tubing (tacky much?), and someone stole it this past week! I'm sure it was probably the neighborhood kids (darn whippersnappers!).

First viewing of a hummingbird at the feeder was Wednesday night. First goldfinches were last night. The goldfinches are late this year.

If you see a copper-tube flamingo laying around anywhere, it's mine.

Too Stunned To Swear

Or, "BEWARE THE RECYCLABLES!"

Warning to squeamish people: Squeams ahead.

Last night, I was being Miss Good Do-Bee, washing out the recyclable cans before I took them down to the bin, when I reached the dishcloth into a Progresso soup can (Yes, Progresso, I BLAME YOU! It's all your fault!) and cut the holy living shit out of my hand. The big knuckle on my right hand, to be specific.

And I just kind of looked down at it, and it had not yet started to bleed, but I could tell that the cut was pretty deep, and I swear, the first thing I thought of was that old Julia Child skit on SNL. You know, the one where one of the guys (I think it was Dan Akroyd) was playing Julia Child, and she was, like, de-boning a turkey or something, and she cut the shit out of herself? And Julia/Dan's voice ran through my head last night as I looked down at the cut - "Ohhhhh, you've gone and done it this time! You've cut the dickens out of yourself!"

And the cut still wasn't bleeding much, and I was thinking, "I reaallllly don't want to have to go to the emergency room." Because if I had ended up at the emergency room last night, I would quite possibly still be there. So I decided to try and see how deep the cut was, and to see if any tendons or bones or anything were visible, so I kind of ..... spread the cut apart a little.

And the blood, it was spectacular. Rivers of blood flowing out of my knuckle and into the dishwater. And all I could think was, "well, if I have to go get stitches, I won't be able to get this hand wet for a while, so I guess I better finish up washing these cans." Because I am an idiot. So I'm trying to finish the last few cans, and the blood it is flowing all through the water, and it looked like Shark Week on TBS in my kitchen sink.

Cans washed (with BLOOD!), I grabbed a kitchen towel, wrapped it around my hand, and headed for the bathroom for some bandages. And here is one of the few things that suck about living alone: It is hard as hell to open up a box of bandages when one of your hands is bleeding like a stuck pig. Seriously, I had to press the towel-wrapped knuckle up against my flippin' CHIN to keep applying pressure and bring the box of bandages up with my other hand in order to use both hands to get the box open. Suck!

Finally, bandages were opened, adhesive tape was found (because adhesive bandages WILL NOT STICK to me. Seriously. It's like my lame superpower or something: No bandage will adhere to my skin. I have to take adhesive tape and, like, wrap it around and around the bandage and any nearby skin to have any hope of the bandage staying on for more than five minutes or so before it gives up and falls off. Duct tape actually works really well, but it looks a little white-trashy for my tastes.

ANYHOW, I washed off more blood, and took another look at the cut, and while it was still bleeding like holy hell and probably could have used a couple of stitches, I threw some gauze on it and covered it with a bandage and covered the bandage and my hand with adhesive tape and called it a day. And this morning, while that knuckle is really sore, the cut is not gaping open and apparently will heal, so I guess I'll live. The end.

And the moral of the story? Throw those fucking Progresso soup cans in the garbage. Because they will gut you like a fish. Oh, and as a side note? Do not ever, ever, let your pets eat directly out of cans. I had read that somewhere once before, and now I totally understand.

You Sneeze Like a Girl

You know how some women, when they sneeze, kind of like suppress the sneeze, so instead of coming out "achoo!", it's more like, "squeak!"

That drives me crazy.

On the other end of the spectrum are the histrionic sneezers, who instead of going "achoo!", go, like, "ah-ah-ah-ah-AH-CHHHOOOOOOOO-oo-oo-*snort**sniffle**coughcoughcough*-loudly-blow-nose-then-sigh."

Give me a break. Unless you are suffering from swine flu, you do not need to sneeze like that. And if you are suffering from swine flu, go home and get the fuck away from me.

Hack-Em-Up-Ed, one of my coworkers, sneezes like a girl. Which is mystifying to me, because he has absolutely no compunction whatsoever about coughing up his lungs, LOUDLY, on a regular basis. But every time he sneezes, it's that little "squeak!" And then I want to punch him. Oh, and also, every time I walk behind him, I want to grab a pair of scissors and cut off his ponytail. (Seriously, dude? You're in your thirties. You have a wife and two kids. It's time to lose the freaking ponytail.)

Now, some would say I'm being judgmental. Lately, it seems, that word is all over the internet. "He's so judgmental." "Don't be so judgmental."

You know what? Damn right, I'm judgmental. I judge people all the time, every single day. And frankly, I don't know what's wrong with that. How are we to form our own moral compasses without judging the actions of others? Tell me, what's wrong with being judgmental?! Oh, and plus, it's fun!

Phew. That's out. I feel better now. And judgmental.

And seriously? I really feel like that word needs another "e". It should totally be spelled "judgemental". Shouldn't it? Doesn't it look better that way? You be the judge.

D.A.L.

I was talking to my sister Texas last night, and she was talking about a golf tournament she was in, and she said, "Well, at least we didn't come in D.A.L."

And I said, "What's D.A.L.?"

And she said, "Dead Ass Last!"

Hahahahahaha! You learn something new every day.

In other initial-related news, I was switching through the radio stations on my way to work this morning, and the "oldies" station was playing an ELO song. ELO songs are now "oldies"? Really? Sigh.

Poor Jesus House

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I wrote earlier about the Jesus House. It turns out that the guy who decorated it was a renter and did not own the house.

The City has ordered that the Jesus House and the house next to it have to come down. Supposedly, the house next door is supposed to come down right away, and the owner of the Jesus House has up to a month to have it demolished. I say "supposedly" because in that part of town, the (usually out-of-town) landlords of burned-up houses tend to just stop paying their property taxes and answering notices from the City, so that the City has to take them to court and the whole thing drags on for years and years until the City finally takes ownership of the buildings and tears them down. Although things might go a little quicker with the blue house on the right, because it is so badly structurally damaged that the entire building is actually leaning, the Jesus House could be standing for quite a while longer.

Last week I swung by the neighborhood to get a couple of pictures.

Poor Jesus House. I'll miss you.