Teh babeez are all grown up!

Check out the ospreycam, guys! The babies are ready to fledge! Go, little ospreys!

A few minutes with Andy Rooney

How many people work on The Pioneer Woman's blog? Seriously, there is no way one home-schooling mother of four is putting that thing together. I want to know how many people it takes to put that sucker up.



What is up with the fruit flies in my kitchen? Holy mother of God, I made the mistake of bringing THREE bananas into the house last week, and now my kitchen looks like a biology lab. And the annoying thing is, they don't seem to actually EAT anything, they just, well ..... hover. How the hell do I get rid of the little bastards?



I think Dooce's fifteen minutes are over. Once your second book comes out and you've got your husband working full-time on your blog (paging Jon Gosselin!), I don't think you can pretend that you're just a cute little mommyblogger anymore. And this week she's cranking up the latest spawn's birth story, which ....... no. For the love of God, Dooce, no.



It's mid-July, and the high temp this weekend is supposed to be 73. I haven't turned on my AC once this year, and I am not happy about that.



Anybody have anything to add? Anything driving you crazy lately? Feel free to chime in!

What is a flood vent, you ask?

Okay, okay, so technically, nobody's asking. But I am doing this as a public service today, in case you have found yourself in the position I was in a few weeks ago, frantically googling "what is a flood vent" in a desperate attempt to get my flood insurance premiums down to an affordable level. Because my insurance agent was helpful enough to mention that "flood vents" would reduce my premium, but he was not helpful enough to know what a flood vent was or how to install one.

And I found a ton of information via google, but most of it was put up by manufacturers of flood vents. Which was helpful, but naturally, these companies are pushing their own products, which are not cheap.

Here is the good news: You don't have to spend a ton of money on flood vents! All a flood vent is, is a way for water to flow unimpeded into and out of areas of your home (foundation, garage, etc.) that are in the flood zone. You need to have one square inch of opening for each square foot of area to be covered, and there has to be at least two openings, on two different walls, not more than one foot above grade, for each area.

Here is a flood vent!:





In the picture below, see that hole in the bottom of the garage door? That's another flood vent!




All you have to do is cut openings of the proper size, frame them, and screen them! That's it!

For more information, you can refer to FEMA Technical Bulletin 1 dated August 2008, "Openings in Foundation Walls and Walls of Enclosures". I'd link to it here, but I'm too lazy, so go ahead and google that. This technical bulletin has illustrations of the different kinds of flood vents, the parameters for which flood vents are acceptable, etc. Your insurance underwriter will probably want a letter from you stating exactly what you intend to do, the size of the openings, etc., and they may also want some pictures showing the installation.

There! I have performed my public service for today. You're welcome!

F*cking FINALLY

After weeks of wrangling with FEMA, the NFIP, and my insurance company, the flood vents have FINALLY been approved.

Hey, Fight Against Red Tape! Remember the big secret? This is it! Of course, it finally came to fruition TWO WEEKS after I thought the deal was done, but in the end all my painstaking flood vent research worked!

And instead of paying a thousand bucks a year *gulp* for flood insurance, I will be paying $429.00. For forty bucks worth of materials and a couple of hours of labor, I'm going to save almost $600.00 a year.

Whew.

Folks, I can usually roll with the punches as well as the next person, but this whole home-buying thing? Is a whole nother game. I actually had to go home sick yesterday, as my body finally started to collapse under all the stress.

Wake me when it's over, would ya?

Resting comfortably

Friday night, I picked up The Runt at the vet's. The digital x-rays, while fascinating (you could even see the gas bubbles in his intestines) revealed no abnormalities, so he was good to go. The vet's best guess is that he ate something (bird, chipmunk, mouse) that was diseased, and the bad meat made him sick.

Friday night and Saturday morning, he was fine, and then Saturday afternoon he crashed again; I think he'd just had a little bit too much at that point. Yesterday and this morning he was doing well; now I've just got to get him fattened up. He was skinny to begin with, and this episode brought more weight loss. He won't touch the special prescription canned stuff the vet sent us home with (of course he won't; the damned stuff costs over a buck a can!), but he is eating his regular food, and he continues to snarf down cat treats like a champ.

Now if I can just get him to lay off the wildlife. The cats' latest playtime fun is catch-and-release with grackles; they'll catch them, carry them around for a while like a stuffed toy, and then drop them so they go flying off. I can't even imagine how these guys are getting ahold of full-sized grackles, but hopefully the birds will wise up soon.

The Runt is coming home!

After two days in the vet hospital and every test known to man, the vets are basically stumped, but the Runt is doing better and he's coming home!

Early Wednesday morning, The Runt threw up. If you have cats, you know that's not unusual - cats are champeen thrower-uppers. But he also refused breakfast, and was acting really logy.

When I got home from work Wednesday night, he had thrown up again, and was laying on the bed not moving. I picked him up and he let out a pitiful little mew. I put him back down and called the vet's, because here's the thing about cats: By the time they are showing signs of being sick, they are almost always desperately ill. Cats hide their symptoms; it's a way of avoiding becoming prey in the wild. So when The Runt was acting sick, I knew there must be something really wrong.

We made a rushed trip to the vet's, where they determined that his vital signs were all stable and there were no obvious reasons for his distress. Oh, and there is a new vet at the practice: A newly minted Cornell grad! I think she's about half my age, which made me feel really, really old.

Anyway, The Runt was dehydrated, so they wanted to keep him overnight to get some fluids in him and run some blood tests. Oh, and if you're squeamish around needles, you DO NOT want to be in the room when they draw your cat's blood, because that needle is BIG. And it has a crook in it; I shit you not.

By this morning, I was heartsick. I hadn't heard anything in two days, and I was bracing for the worst. So when the phone rang and the caller ID revealed the vet's office, it was hard for me to pick up the phone. Keep in mind that I had been through this with another beloved cat not all that long ago, with heartbreaking results.

The vet must have known what I was going through, because his first words were, "The Runt can come home today". I think I went a little limp.

It turns out, as it sometimes does with cats, that they don't really know what happened. All they know is that he has his energy back and is eating, and seems to be past the crisis. They are going to do an x-ray before he comes home, just to make sure he didn't swallow something funky that got caught in his gut, but other than that, he's good to go.

Sometimes things turn out okay. The Runt is coming home.

Please

The Runt is ill.

He is currently at the vet's, receiving IV fluids and undergoing bloodwork.

If you could send a kind thought his way, it would be appreciated.