Survey SAYS ...

... Dengue Fever.

Haaaaaa, not really, it's C-diff. 

D'oh!

Doc-lite called me last night to give me the news, and he's all serious, but luckily I knew enough not to be too freaked out, thanks to what you guys already told me, i.e., CURABLE, which is the operative word with any disease, as far as I'm concerned, and he's, all, "I'll call the prescription into your pharmacy now," and I'm, all, "Okay, thanks, I'll pick it up in the morning," and HE'S all, "No, no, you really should start this tonight," and I'm all, FINE, I'll go drive down to the drugstore TONIGHT, jeez, so then I get there, and he'd called in the prescrip with the wrong date of birth, thankyouverymuch, so I STILL don't have my prescrip.

I'll tell you what, health care around here is about as well-organized as a car full of drunken frat boys.

So now I'm supposed to call my REGULAR health care provider, and THAT ought to be a fun phone call.  "Oh hai!  Remember me?  The one you told that there was a lot of this going around, and it was cool to tough it out?  Guess what!  It's C-DIFF, motherf*cker!  How do you like me NOW?" 

Ha.  I need to get some "C-diff for the win" t-shirts printed up.

Oh, and I just tried calling my doc, and nobody picked up the phone.

*sigh*

So yeah, Flagyl it is, and I hope it's not too damn expensive, because while I DO have health insurance, I DO NOT have prescription coverage, so ... it's a good thing I got that raise, huh?  hahahahahaha sob.

I'll keep you guys posted.

Division of Labor

First off, I managed to make it into the office today.  Before you guys bite my head off, here's my reasoning:

1.  I knew it would be a slow, paperwork-catch-up kind of day.   Nothing too taxing.

2.  The weather is cold and rainy.  If it was hot and sunny, you'd better believe I'd be home.  Or rather, out in the backyard, snoozing on a lawn chair.

3.  Hell, I feel like sh*t.  I might as well get PAID while I'm feeling like sh*t.  Why feel like sh*t for free?


Okay, so.  Here I am at the office.  Doin' my job.  And I got to thinking about how the cats have divided up the labor around the house while I've been sick.

Tinks has taken over bed-companion duties.  Whenever I've decided that I've been upright long enough and crawl into bed for a few hours, a few minutes after I hit the sheets, I hear the "thunk" of Tinks hitting the side of the bed as he attempts to jump up on top.  "Try again, honey," I murmur, and then I feel the thud of him landing next to me.  (No, he doesn't need "pet steps".  He just needs to learn how to judge his jumps better.)  Then he circles around a couple of times, finally coming to rest with his butt directly in my face, naturally.  I gently prod him until he finds a better resting spot, i.e., one that doesn't involve his butt and my face, and we both drift off.  When I wake up, inevitably he is sleeping on his back with his paws waving lazily in the air, and I'm sorry, if there's anything cuter than that, I do not know what it is.

Soda has taken over recliner chores.  Whenever I'm ensconced in the recliner, Soda curls right up in the crook of my arm.  I'm sure he's just trying to suck the heat out of my body, but it is comforting.  And every once in a while, he'll jump down and race a few turns around the living room, just to crack me up.  Oh!  And he is maintaining his status quo as hunter-in-chief; he brought a mouse in just this morning.  Although judging by the number of leaves attached to said mouse, it had been dead for quite a while, but hey!  It's the thought that counts.

Pony is my cat-in-waiting.  When I am sleeping in the bedroom, he snoozes in his pet bed at the foot of my bed.  When I'm sleeping in the living room, he lies on the floor next to my chair.  Any time I move around, he's shadowing me, making sure I don't ... I don't know, wander away and leave him without anyone to open up his cans of cat food or something.  Pony's not taking any chances, here.

How about your pets? Do they act differently when you're not feeling well?

"C diff"? What the f*ck is "C diff"?

So, I was hoping to tough out my stomach bug, but by last night, when THREE BITES of pancake resulted in HOURS in the bathroom, I had to admit defeat.

I went to the walk-in this morning,  along with all the other poor motherless sadsacks in town who found themselves at the walk-in on a holiday Sunday, and talked to a doc lite.

"Eleven days, hmmm?", he said.  "And you were on antibiotics right before that?"

"Actually", I said, "I was still  ON the antibiotics when I got sick!  Isn't that crazy?"

"Weeeelllllll ......", he said.

And that's when he started mentioning  "C diff", whatever the hell that is because I refuse to Google it, and how it may have been CAUSED by the antibiotics (THANKS,  PETEY), and here's your handy little take-home stool sample kit

bwahahahahahahaha KILL ME NOW.

But then he's all, like, "But on the bright side, you don't have a fever, and you're not vomiting, and ya don't LOOK sick!"

Gee, thanks, doc.  I don't LOOK sick,  so obviously everything's  FINE.  Good to know.

I dunno, guys.  I just miss food.

Remember Petey?

First off, I did call my doctor's office this morning.  I thought it might be wise to get checked out, because a week-and-a-half of the runs is a little extreme even by my standards, and I wanted to make sure I'm not, like, dying of dysentery I contracted on the Oregon Trail or something. 

So!  I talked to the nurse, who explained that, unfortunately, there is a particularly virulent viral strain of Yuck currently working its way through the area's intestinal tracts.  She advised me to keep hydrated, and to call back immediately if I got the dizzies or started hurling; she said that otherwise, the Yuck should be leaving its temporary home in me within the next few days.

So.  There.  I called the doctor's office.  Now I just tough it out.  Pass the Immodium, please!

I had actually started to feel a little better, the last couple of days, until four o'clock this morning, that is, when everything went right back to hell in a handbasket, thus prompting the doctor call this morning.  *sigh*


Okay! And, one more thing, before we get to the main thing:  My spellcheck has gone missing.  Just up and disappeared off the toolbar. So, if things are a little more confusing and grammatically screwed around here than usual, talk to Blogger about it.  I mean, yeah, sure, I could copy and paste into another format to spell check, but ain't nobody got time for that sh*t around here.  Sorry.




Now!  On to the big news!

Remember Petey?  Petey, the cat who tried to chew my hand off?  Well, here's what his new owners have to say:

"Hans Thomas we named him. Absolutely adore him. He is very comfortable in his space right now and approaches us. Almost able to pet him. Rotisserie chicken has opened new doors. Thank you so much for saving this guy. Loves his ping pong ball. Plan to expand his whole territory to the whole house this weekend. Will send some pictures soon."

I think these people get the "Adopter of the Year" award.  I don't care if it's only May.

Sadly, I cannot recommend this method

I had to weigh myself at work yesterday in order to figure out the shipping weight for a FedEx package (don't ask), and I discovered that I've lost seven pounds since the last time I was weighed.  Two weeks ago.

Normally, I'd be all, "whoo-hoo!  Stomach bug for the win!", but oh, MAN, this stomach bug is kicking my butt.  (I was going to put "Literally." right here, but I will refrain. You're welcome.)  I finally decided to double down with the meds, taking both Pepto AND Immodium and ... yeah. No. Blergh.

I mean, I COULD go to the doctor, but I've BEEN to the doctor for this exact same thing before, and all he'll tell me is to eat a bland diet and wait it out.  So I am waiting.  and waiting.  and waiting.

And!  You know how it is when you're sick, and nothing tastes good,  most certainly NOT the BRAT diet that the doctor recommends, and you keep trying and trying and TRYING to think of something yummy to eat?  Yesterday, I kept trying to think of something good, and you know what my whack-a** mind finally settled on?

Fried chicken.  and pasta salad.

Yerrrrp.  Greasy, crispy-skinned fried chicken, and oily, hot-peppered pasta salad.  THAT is what my insane mind decided would taste good, as my stomach churned in protest.

So I bought some.  I even went with the store-made fried chicken, instead of the Banquet boxed crap I usually buy.  And I bought store-made pasta salad, too, instead of the Suddenly Salad boxed stuff I usually cheap out on.

See what getting a raise does to you?  It makes you throw your money around like a mad woman, is what it does.

So!  I ate that fried chicken and that pasta salad last night, and my poor, riled-up stomach said, "Eh.  Whatever.  I'm so sick right now that a little grease and oil ain't gonna make any difference."  Rock on, fried chicken! 

But today?  Today the THOUGHT of fried chicken is making me want to hurl.  Today I'm thinking ice cream ...

I don't know what they think they'll do with one if they CATCH it

This morning, in the park next door:

Soda decided that Canada Goose would make a fine breakfast.  He enrolled his buddy Tinks to help him out:

And they were off to the races:

Oooops.  Got a little too close .... RUN AWAY!  RUN AWAY!  (it's hard to tell, but Soda is hauling a** back toward me at this point):

Time for a meeting on the mound:

Tinks says, I'm goin' in:



But it ends, as cat v. goose always does, in a draw:

I swear, these guys are more fun than an amusement park.






Disclaimer:  No geese were harmed in the filming of this blog post.  Trust me, the cats never, ever get the goose.

Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherf*cking ants in this motherf*cking house!

A couple of weeks ago, I had my annual spring ant infestation at the house.  Not the cute, little brown ants - the ones we used to call "sweet ants" when I was a kid - but the big, black variety - the ones who crunch when you step on them.

I went and bought ant traps, like I do every year, and spent a couple of days squishing ants, finally bringing a roll of toilet paper out to the kitchen (Klassy!) because it's cheaper than Kleenex when it comes to wiping up ant remains.  Then, when a few days passed and I STILL had ants, I went and bought MORE ant traps, scattered them around, and finally seemed to get rid of the Great Ant Infestation of 2013.

Last night, I had to get up to use the bathroom (thanks, stomach bug!  YOU HAVE WORN OUT YOUR WELCOME), and when I laid back down,

OUCH!

Something had BITTEN me on the NECK!

I grabbed my neck and JUMPED out of bed, turning on the bedside light, and what was there in my bed?

A GIANT ANT.

MOTHERF*CKER!, I yelled, grabbing a shoe to flip it off the bed and crush it.  and crush it.  and crush it.

I mean, the upside is, it could have been worse.  It could have been a spider.  Ants are skeevy, but spiders are creepy, and in the moment before I hit the light, I was actually all, "don't let it be a spider.  don't let it be a spider."

But what the F*CK was a giant ANT doing in my BED?  I have had enough with the motherf*cking CRITTERS in my motherf*cking BEDROOM!   First it was the raccoon, and then it was the nine thousand MICE that the cats bring in and deposit under the bed "for later", and now it's ANTS.

Welcome to warm weather, I guess.  GOD.

How it all went down

Yesterday, I asked my boss for a raise. 

Timing is critical in this kind of thing, and I figured that if I was willing to go in to the office on a Sunday morning to get a project out the door, that would reflect well on my chance of succeeding.

Also critical to success in this sort of thing?  A couple of factors:  You have to be willing to fail, and you have to do your research.

As far as the failure thing goes, you need to go into salary negotiations cognizant of the fact that you may well walk back out with no job at all, much less a raise.  I have actually SEEN my boss fire someone who asked for a raise.  It wasn't pretty.

And that's where the research comes in.  I didn't just wander in, all, "Gee, the cost of gas keeps going up, and it's been a while since my last raise, and, well, I really deserve more money ..."

First, I compiled my salary history.  As someone who is not really money-motivated, other than the fact that having enough to pay my bills is nice, I actually could not remember the last time I had a salary increase, other than that it had been a while.  So I put together a quick spreadsheet.

Then, I looked into cost-of-living increases for the past few years.  There are all sorts of numbers you can go with; I try to pick something middle-of-the-road.   I was actually surprised to find that the cost of living had not increased as much as I thought it had, gas prices notwithstanding, so I adjusted my expectations.  This kind of research is really important to keep you from looking like an uninformed jerk when it's time to start talking.

Next, I researched comparable salaries for my position in my area.  There are all kinds of bogus numbers out there, so you really do need to dig a little to get some actual, real-world figures, and not some vague bullsh*t like the nationwide average salary for a position that may or may not resemble the one that you actually occupy.  I generally go straight for the online hiring sites, to pull real-time positions currently available in my area that compare to the position I perform.  And you need a bunch, not just one or two.  The boss may or may not ask to see the information, but you need to have it.  This information also requires a little digging, as most companies are hesitant to put exact numbers on line for the world to see. 

So!  I had my numbers, and it was time to talk.  I actually almost backed out yesterday, because I've picked up some nasty little stomach bug and am feeling somewhat green-ish around the gills, but again, I had to use my in-the-office-on-a-Sunday advantage, so I plowed ahead.

After the work was done and the project was wrapped, I asked my boss if I could speak with him, took in my numbers and my spreadsheets, and presented my case.  You really, really should NOT get emotional, no matter what happens.  I explained what I had contributed to the company since my last salary increase, including those weeks a year ago when I was running the place while my boss was hospitalized.  I pleaded my case, and then sat back, waiting for the boss to ask me how much I wanted (or to show me the door).  Instead, he had a few questions about my numbers (yes, you HAVE to do the research), then he started running his own numbers, and came up with a number that was ...

... twice what I was going to ask for.

Praise the lord and pass the ammunition, Rocky got a raise.

So, here I am, at 10:30 on a Sunday morning ...

... sitting in the office, getting paid time-and-a-half to blog.  Oh, and to research comparable salaries for my position, so that when the boss finally does manage to wander in so we can get our work done, and after the work is finally finished, I can hit him up for a raise.

"Don't do it!," you say.  "The economy sucks right now!," you say.  "There are lots of people looking for work!"

Yep.  It does. There are.  And I haven't had a raise in an embarrassingly long time, and the boss has been such a pain in the a** lately that I'm not happy here ANYway, and my research shows that I could walk out that door and get a higher-paying job in fairly short order should it prove necessary, and

I'm going for it. 

If the boss ever actually shows, that is.

Wish me luck!

Random

By switching stations on my office desk radio, I can listen to NPR's "Morning Edition" three times in a row.  Which is three times more than necessary, most days.

Email I got from Netflix:  "Has The Queen of Versailles arrived?"  Ha.  Yeah, she's in the bedroom, powdering her wig.

I must have stork legs, or T-Rex arms, or both, because Downward Dog just ain't happening for me.  Pike position is ... not achievable.

Do you ever eat something just so it will be gone and you can't eat it anymore?  Like, say, cake?

Okay, so, a while back, we were talking about names.  Does a name ever get spoiled for you by its owner?  When I was a kid, there was a girl in elementary school named Liz who treated me shabbily.  The name "Liz" is now forever associated with "Jerk" in my mind.

I had to give the kittens their first dose of Coccidiosis meds last night.  It tastes (yes, I tasted it) kind of like melted cookie dough ice cream.  Bianca and Hannah were, like, "YUM!  Overnotes of vanilla with an almond base!  More, please!"  And Smoky and Boots were, like, "Auugggggggggh!  This stuff is POISON!" *spit* *spit* *head shake*    Those boys are SUCH drama queens. 

Oh!  And in other kitten room news, Bianca is limping.  I guess kitten room play got a little rough overnight.  Please send kind thoughts to Bianca's leg.

Sometimes I like tater tots.  Does that make me a weirdo?

Is anyone surprised that Candice won American Idol last night?  Wasn't that, like, a foregone conclusion?




Okay, that's my Random for today.  Feel free to add your own in the comments.

"We don't NEED his help! Maybe he KNOWS that!"

Oh man, it's kind of cruel to laugh at crazy, but I was just now made aware of last week's episode of Kitchen Nightmares, and hahahahahaha.

I stopped watching that show a long time ago, mainly because I got tired of watching Gordon Ramsay scream at people, but dlisted clued me in about the Amy's Bakery episode that aired last Friday, and oh man, it's a doozy.

Click here for links to all of the insanity.

Basically, the lady and her husband were running a restaurant and claimed that "bloggers and Reddit and Yelp" were slamming the business unfairly.  She called in Kitchen Nightmares to salvage her reputation, and the rest is history.  And in a classic bored-at-work timesuck, the deeper you go, the crazier it gets - I knocked off about the time the commenters started talking about Afghans and money laundering.

Wanna kill a couple hours?  Click here.  You're welcome.




p.s. This should probably go without saying, but I was in no way compensated by dlisted or anyone else to put up this post.  I just wanted to share the insanity.

All worship at the foot of God

Actually, it was just a new cat toy.

They don't know the difference.

Yep, it was a Monday

Yesterday involved a sick boss coughing all over job files and then handing them to me (not cool, dude, not cool) a lost wallet (found by a cashier at Walmart (dear cashier, I hope you don't mind that I hugged you)), a smelly bedroom (decomposing mouse under the bed - oh HURL), a smelly cat (Soda's been digging in molehills again), and a diagnosis of one of the Spectacular Six with both tapeworms and Coccidiosis, which means they ALL have tapeworms and Coccidiosis (meds are on the way). 

Thank goodness it's Tuesday now.

Oakley-Doakley

Yesterday, after mowing and before going to visit my mom, I went to Oakley Corners.  (The visit with mom was, sadly, pretty awful.  I learned that she's becoming violent - she tried to brain one of my nieces with a can of beans, which would be funny if it wasn't terrible - and she's now in diapers.  Dear Flying Spaghetti Monster:  She's eighty-eight years old.  Her mind is gone.  She's trying to kill people.  She's hallucinating.  She's incontinent.  Can't you just, like, END THIS already?  I know that sounds awful, but man oh man, this sucks.)

But!  Oakley Corners was lovely, as usual.

The beavers are hard at work:

People have been busy making rock piles:

Look at the top of that one!:

This was at one of the trail crossings - is it supposed to be a sign?   Or maybe somebody was setting up a pine-cone campfire for the next passers-by.  Do pine cones even burn?  I do not know.

I don't find the deer bones - the deer bones find me:

Does anybody know the name of this flower?

I never realized how many different shades of purple there were until I started looking at wildflowers:

And the trillium is blooming!

How was everybody's Mother's Day?

Carpet of the sun

Half of the year, my back-backyard looks like this:

(The other half of the year, it's covered with snow. *sigh*)

But every spring, invaders appear:

See those spiky little things sticking up out of the lawn?

They turn into THIS:

The pictures don't do it justice - it's like a SEA of pinkish-purple flowers.  The cats LOVE to skulk around in there - last night they captured a garter snake, which I (gingerly) rescued and tossed into the woods.  And by the time the flowers die, the grass will be so high that I'll probably have to weedwhack it before I can mow, but I don't care.

It's beautiful.

Poser

Okay, first off, scroll down to an earlier post, where we're talking about movies.

Now.  Back?  Okay.

The rescue group has offered to reimburse my medical costs for Petey's bite.  It's a total of sixty bucks, for the doc copay and the prescription.

And a part of me is all, "No, no, it's a non-profit, consider it my contribution to the cause", and a part of me is, "You know what?  Money's really tight for me right now.  Thanks!"

And I wouldn't even CONSIDER taking the money, except it's a well-known fact that the founder of the group spends a some of the group's funds on ... well ... her own pets.  But two wrongs don't make a right, right?

And! Taking money from a non-profit?  Isn't that like taking candy from a baby?  And while money IS tight this month, it's not like I'm out scouring the sides of the highway picking up cans.

What if I took half?  Thirty bucks?  Split the difference, so to speak?  Or said keep the money, but how about if the rescue picks up some cat litter for the six foster kittens? 

I dunno.  What do you guys think?

Movies I haven't seen

A while back, somebody was blogging about popular movies they had somehow missed.  If I could remember who it was, I'd link to it, but I can't remember, so if it was you, feel free to chime in.

Anyway, me + movies = not so much.  I mean, I LIKE a good movie as much as the next person, but I just don't have the time or the patience to sit through two or three hours of movie.  It can take me two or three DAYS to get through one of my Netflix movies, one fifteen-minute chunk at a time.  And I think a movie kind of loses something when you're watching it piece-by-piece instead of all the way through.

So I got thinking about popular movies that I've never seen.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off - I have never liked Matthew Broderick.  EVER. I feel fairly confident in saying that I will never watch this movie.  I have nothing against the genre - I loved Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and even Dazed and Confused has grown on me over time, but Ferris?  Nah.

Avatar.  Every time I watch an animated movie, I feel somehow embarrassed, like I'm watching something that is supposed to be reserved for kids.  I did watch Wall-E, and The Iron Giant, and I think I even watched Finding Nemo once, and every time, I felt disgusted with myself.  I am not four.  I do not watch cartoons.  Sheesh.  (Although I did read the comics in the newspaper until well into middle age.  I don't know why.  It was just ... habit.  But once The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes went away, I stopped reading them.  "Zits" and "Cathy" and "Crankshaft"?  no thanks.  Although I will admit to checking in with The Comics Curmudgeon on line.)

The Godfather.  Goodfellas.  Scarface.  Any mob movie ever.  Violent a**holes being violent?  Nope. 
Although I was faaaaascinated by Pulp Fiction, so go figure.

How bout you?  Any popular movies that you've missed?  Any popular movies that you've seen and then wished you HADN'T watched?

Survey SAYS ...

... tetanus shot.  Antibiotics.  Possible nerve damage to the index finger (it's both numb and tingly, like I slept on it), which may fade with time.

That cat could BITE.

... and then he bit through the Kevlar.

Warning:  There is talk of injuries and blood ahead.  Human, not animal.  You've been warned!

There was an adoption at the rescue center Saturday morning.  We'll call him "Petey".  Petey was one of our hard cases.  He came in as a stray, and he wanted NOTHING TO DO with the adoption center, the other cats, or people.  He would stay in his cage, all pissed off, and he would LUNGE at anyone who tried to approach him.

A week ago, a couple came in who were interested in Petey.  They had recently lost a cat to kidney disease who looked a lot like Petey, and they were not put off by the fact that he was ... less than friendly.  They were willing to work with him, and Petey would actually eat treats out of the man's hand, although he still would not let them pet him.  It helped that he was an orange tabby - everybody loves orange tabbies.  We had them come in a couple of different times, to make sure they knew what they were getting into.  We knew that a lot of Petey's aggression was out of fear, but we didn't know how much he might settle down in a home environment.  We could offer no guarantees, and we made sure the couple understood that.  (With the hard cases, we try to make very sure that people go into the adoption with their eyes open.  We HATE returns, because it's awfully hard on the cat.)

So!  Saturday was Petey's big day.  Now ... we had to get him into a carrier for the trip home.  I had brought in one of my top-loading carriers, because they are much easier to use with resistant cats than the regular front-loaders.

The man who was adopting him worked with him for a while, trying to coax him out of his cage with treats.  No go.  It became obvious that Petey was getting agitated, and it was time to get it over with.

I volunteered.  Because I'm an idiot, and because I REALLY wanted to see Petey go home.  Some cats do better in the center with time, but Petey's behavior was actually regressing the longer he stayed  there.  That cat needed out.

So.  I put on a long-sleeved sweatshirt and donned the rescue gloves.  Rescue gloves are like work gloves, but they are made out of Kevlar - the same thing used in bulletproof vests.  Rescue gloves protect you from bites and scratches.

I started by trying to scruff Petey (the easiest way to handle an aggressive cat), and that is when the sh*t hit  the fan.  Petey lunged.  He bit, although all he was biting was the gloves.  He scratched.  He howled and yowled and got all the other cats in the center howling and yowling.  It was bedlam.

I finally managed to get him out of the cage and onto the floor of the center, where he went tearing around in crazy circles, trying to get away.  And then he started fear-pooping.  I am not even kidding you when I say there was poop ALL OVER.  That cat let loose.  And I COULD NOT get a firm grip on him - Every time I'd try to scruff him, he'd lunge and bite, or turn and kick.  I tried throwing a towel over him, but he'd just squirm out of it, fighting all the way.  Time was passing. 

And then.  And then.  I got a good grip around his shoulders, and he turned and bit my hand. 

Through the Kevlar.

That cat bit THROUGH Kevlar and sunk his teeth into my knuckles.

Now, most cats, when they bite, will bite and then retreat.  Petey?  Held on.  It was like having a flipping Pit Bull attached to my hand.  I swear to God, I could FEEL his teeth against my knucklebones.

But!  I had him.  I had ahold of Petey!  Or, you know, he had ahold of me.  Sensing my big chance, I flung my hand, with Petey attached, into the carrier, slammed the door down, and pulled my hand out, leaving Petey behind. 

Success!

And then?  It was time to assess the damage.  I pulled the glove off the hand that Petey had bitten, and blood started RUNNING down my arm.  I had three puncture wounds in the knuckles.  I wrapped the hand in a towel and headed for the bathroom,  where I started rinsing out the wounds, watching kind of woozily as the blood swirled down the drain.  Honestly, I was so jazzed about getting Petey that I wasn't as worried as I ordinarily would be over the fact that I had just had a hand shredded by a cat.

Once I got everything cleaned up and sterilized and bandaged, I headed back for the center, where Petey was residing calmly, if warily, in the carrier. 

We got an email from Petey's new parents on Saturday night, along about the time my hand FINALLY stopped bleeding.  He was residing calmly in their spare bedroom.  He let them touch his paws.  They were very happy.

Dontcha love a happy ending?  Now if the swelling and the pain would just go away ...

It's a hardship, I tell ya ...

... having all these kittens in the spare bedroom ...

... watching them make little dogpiles, er, CATpiles in the sun ...

... supervising as they practice their hugging skills at naptime ...

... heck, it's a tough job, but SOMEBODY's gotta do it.

*snicker*

Tommy

So, I went to the Sal on my lunch break yesterday because it was half-price Wednesday and I needed a pair of jeans.

I actually have several pairs of jeans, but most of them are not really ... presentable, and I need to wear jeans to the adoption center (see:  kitten claws), so I picked up a pair for three bucks.

Tommy Hilfiger jeans.

I am not a big aficionado of labels, per se, but these jeans fit me and they were better-looking than most of the jeans I own which are all frayed and hole-y, and hey, three bucks.  Thankfully, there was not a huge "Tommy" label embedded on the back of the waistband, which is what happens to most label-brand jeans, so I bought them.

And then I got to thinking about Tommy Hilfiger, who actually grew up not far from here, and why a grown man would call himself "Tommy".  The only other grown Tommy I could come up with off the top of my head was Tommy ... Shaw?  Is that the name?  The singer for Styx?  And he was kind of small and elf-ish, too, like Tommy Hilfiger, so I thought, well, maybe if you're named Thomas, and called Tommy as a child, and then you grow up, but you stay small, you just keep the Tommy?

I don't know.  My mind goes weird places.

And THEN I got thinking about a girl I went to high school with who was named Dolly.  Any other girl named Dolly probably would have been teased mercilessly, but this Dolly was gorgeous and popular and polite and really, really nice to everybody, so she was bulletproof.  I don't know why someone would name a child Dolly, really; I had a grandma Dolly but her real name was Edwina and her nickname was Dolly.  I don't know why anyone would name a child Edwina, either, but it happened to my grandma.  Maybe it was a family name; if so, it ended with her, because you can bet your *ss nobody else after her saddled their kid with "Edwina".  Or maybe her parents wanted a boy, and they were going to name it Edward, but it was a girl instead, and just to make sure she never, ever forgot that they REALLY wanted a BOY, they named her Edwina.  Take that, tiny child.  My apologies to any Edwinas out there.  At least they didn't nickname her "Winnie".  Great, now all I can think of is Frau Blucher.

I don't know.  Names are funny things.  When I was baking, my older sisters were lobbying really, really hard for me to be named "Heather", which I actually love, but my mom named me Rocky* instead, which is an okay name, but honestly?  I like Heather better.

Yeah, I'm just hung up on names today.  What's your favorite name?






*not my actual name. ha.