Cheep cheep cheep

I am ... cheap.  I have always been cheap, because I've always HAD to be cheap.  But I'm trying to get over it, now that things have changed.

The other weekend, instead of buying a burger from the dollar menu at the drive-thru for lunch, I ordered a regular-menu burger!  and fries!  and a soda! although I was still able to bundle them together for a value meal, so there.

And I went to the Thrifty Shopper and bought eighteen dollars worth of clothes, but then realized afterward that I actually had been overcharged because they used my birthday week discount instead of the color-tag discount that would have been cheaper, but instead of beating myself up over it for the next week, I had pretty much excused myself by the following day.

I opened up a brand-new can of reddi-whip the other night, instead of going without because I only want reddi-whip on my dessert once in a while, and god knows when the next time will be, and reddi-whip doesn't last forever once opened, so I pretty much just threw a two-dollar can of reddi-whip away for one use.  But I DID use it on a fifty-cent Walmart snack pie that expired a month ago, because I couldn't bear to toss a still-good fifty-cent pie.

I bought a new living room recliner!  on Thanksgiving day, because that's when Big Lots was having their big sale.  AND I splurged and had it delivered to the house.  AND THEN I actually paid my garbage service an extra fee to have my old recliner hauled away, instead of trying to manhandle it into the car and haul it to the dump myself.  Although I DID leave it out to the curb for a week, just to see if there were any takers, before calling the garbage service.  :) 

This year, instead of buying a 5 to 6 foot Christmas tree ($30.00), I bought a 6 to 7 foot tree ($40.00).  And that extra ten bucks is WORTH it.

I ... I am just not good at spending money.  I think I spent so many years scrimping and saving that it's now ingrained in me.    But there's nothing wrong with being thrifty, is there?  I mean, it's not like I'm reusing aluminum foil or something.  (No judgment here if you reuse aluminum foil, haha.)  I tell myself that I'm saving up for that house in Florida.  That I might be able to actually BUY, now!  Holy cow.  :)

So tell me:  Are you good at spending money? Is there, like, a secret to it?  Is it a skill?   Enquiring minds want to know. :) 

Thanksgiving Weekend

So, I was just sitting here watching TV on a Sunday night, and the ticking clock came on to announce that it was time for 60 Minutes (or, "60 Incriminating Minutes", as we used to call it in my family).

And then I remembered that it was a Thanksgiving Sunday, fifteen years ago, that I was watching 60 Minutes in California, where I had attended a funeral for a family member the day before.

Fifteen years.  Fifteen years!  Where on earth does the time go?

That family member has been dead for fifteen years now, and I'm still here. And I've been through so many incredible changes over the past fifteen years, well ... but here I am.  Still going.

Where were you fifteen years ago?  Enquiring minds want to know. 

A Theory - Now with updates!

So!  In the last post, we explored some of the more ... esoteric of the quilt squares.  James P. thinks that some of the images may be nursery rhyme characters.  And The Queen thought that the running man looked like a monopoly character.

Quilt running man:

Monopoly running man:

Well, I can definitely see a resemblance there!    Googling "nursery rhyme running man" leads to Wee Willie Winkie:

Yeah, not so much.  That google search also leads to The Gingerbread Man, which I think we can safely rule out here.

Googling "children's book running man" leads to about a million entries for Stephen King's novel The Running Man, which ... would make for an entirely DIFFERENT type of quilt, yikes.

So!  I'm not sure if we're making a lot of progress, here, but it sure is interesting!

UPDATE:  James P. brought up "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" in the comments, so a quick google search led to this:

Also a possibility! 

Quilting a mystery

In my previous post about the quilt, I mentioned some mystery squares.  Here they are:

Let's see, that's a pair of axes in the upper left, but what's that on the bottom right?  A ... sled?  A ... baseball with extended stitch lines?
 

Clearly, RHW was a big fan of ... underwear?  Swimming trunks?  Bloomers?

In the upper left of the above panel, we have a flower and either some leaves or a butterfly.  And in the bottom right, we have ... Saint Bernardcat.

Below we have a dog, surrounded by the moon and stars, staring at a bear wearing a collar (?).  The collar-bear also appeared in another block of the quilt.

Okay, so in the lower right of the panel below, we have a welding glove.  And in the upper left, we have four interlocking rings.  And an arrow.  BUT WHAT DOES IT MEEEEEAAAAAN?:

And finally, we have what I think is my favorite panel of all:

In the upper left, we have a monogram.  And in the bottom right, we have a little man running away with something tucked under his arm:

WHUT

I do not know what the little man represents, but he is charming.  As are all of these panels, even though I have not been able to crack their codes.  Ideas welcome!

Okay, this is just too weird not to share

Did I mention the lump on my foot?  I had a lump on my foot.  One morning last week, I got up, took a shower, went to step out of the shower, and it felt like I'd stepped on a big old pebble.  OUCH!

Except I DIDN'T step on a pebble.  I didn't step on ANYthing, other than the bathroom floor.  It felt like I had a big old LUMP on the bottom of my foot, on the ball-part where the little toe connects.  Except there WASN'T any lump; not anything visible, anyway.  That foot looked exactly like the other foot, except it felt like there was a giant pebble (think somewhere between dime-sized and quarter-sized, and fairly flat, not round) taped to the bottom of my foot, so that each time I'd take a step, I'd have to LURCH.  It wasn't really terribly painful; it just FELT weird, like that part of my foot was asleep and tingly and had a giant pebble taped to it.

Oh lord.  Is it just me?  It's just me, isn't it?

So I hobbled around for a few days, going to work and running errands and setting and checking the cemetery trap, and by last Saturday (the day of the party!  yippee!), I noticed that my foot was starting to bruise.  That whole one side of my foot, along with my little toe, was all black and purple and bruise-y.  And by SUNday, the "lump" feeling was going away.  The foot looked like somebody hit it with a hammer, but at least I wasn't careening madly anymore.

Today?  The foot is still horribly bruised, but it FEELS normal, except for perhaps a little tenderness.

What. da. fuq.

How did I suddenly develop a giant invisible lump on my foot?  And how did it go away?  And why did my foot get all bruise-y?!  It's aliens, isn't it? It's aliens coming to live in my foot.

Given the way things are going lately, that sounds like the most logical explanation.  HA.

A question for all you cat fosterers out there

Have you ever had a kitten start eating solids at two-and-a-half weeks?

Because this little girl is kinda blowing my mind:

Lemme in, Mom, I'm hungry!:

"Can you believe this kid?":

And she's not just sniffing at it, or blindly stumbling through the bowl.  She is flat-out PIGGING OUT, complete with slurping noises and a messy face.

It's almost scary, like I've got a super-advanced genius kitten in the bunch.  So, all you cat fosterers, have you ever had a kitten start eating this young?  Enquiring minds want to know.

Ding ding ding we have a winner!

As Anonymous commented on the last post, this:

Is for this:

I didn't even know that was a thing!  Live and learn.

A mystery

Other than that of where I've been, I mean.

I'm sorry, guys.  I'm just so damn BUSY right now!  I think the fosters may be moving on this weekend, and hopefully I'll have more time after that.  Unless, of course, another litter lands on my doorstep right away, which is always a possibility this time of year.

I went to a local nature preserve last weekend.  Or maybe the weekend before that?  I DON'T KNOW. *sigh*  ANYway,  I didn't stay long, because there were a lot of other people there as well (how DARE they?!) (ha), but I did manage to find some less-populated areas of the preserve, where the forget-me-nots were growing:

Along with the skunk cabbage:

Hmmm ... What's this?

Anybody want to hazard a guess?

Okay, all you financial whizzes, let me run something by you

Disclaimer:  Money talk ahead.

When my mom died a few years back, I inherited a bit of  money.  Let's just say it's more than fifteen thousand, and less than twenty thousand.  Okay?

I promptly invested that money in an investment fund, a mix of stocks, bonds, and overseas investments with a "moderate", middle-of-the-road strategy - nothing too risky.

The damn thing's been losing money ever since.  Nothing much, but it's two years on, and instead of making money, I'm down by a few hundred bucks.   The fees are eating up any gains that I make.

So what I'm thinking is, instead of letting that money sit there and stagnant, hoping that at some point the fund will turn the corner and start earning me some interest, I should take that money and pay down my mortgage.

My mortgage interest rate is currently 5.75%.  I've been paying extra on the principal every month for the past couple of years, and if I continue at that pace, I'll have the thing paid off in eight years or so.  If I take the money out of the fund and put it against the mortgage, I'll have the mortgage paid off much, much quicker.  (If I put the fund money against the mortgage, it'll bring the remaining mortgage down to 14K.)

But!, you say.  Your job situation is not stable!  Yes, that is true.  HOWEVER, I do have other savings, which will carry me through if necessary for several months until I get find another position, and in the meantime,  I feel like I would sleep easier at night knowing that my mortgage was practically all paid off, PLUS the fund money, instead of making me zip-zero-nada, would instantly generate a return of 5.75%, or the interest rate on the mortgage.

I ran it by someone IRL who I trust very much, and they said it sounded like a solid plan.  Now I would like to know:  What do YOU think?  Enquiring minds want to know.

(And I've been thinking about this for some time now, so no, it's not the meds talking.  I've also been thinking about this since before the whole my-boss-is-a-lunatic thing, so it's not *just* the job situation talking.)

Let me hear it!

PG or not PG? That is the question

Okay, first off, an update:  The (alleged) babydaddy has been captured!  He is going to be neutered, and then, because he is feral, he will released in the same place where Kitty Mama will be released if she decides to remain feral.  That leaves one remaining cat, the tabby, still to go, and then the Walmart feral colony will be all taken care of.  We're going to let the raccoons and the possums fend for themselves, thankyouverymuch.

Now, to the question at hand.

Just like it's not a good idea to ask a woman if she's pregnant, it also can be tricky telling if a CAT is pregnant, and how far along she is.  With the last pregnant cat I fostered, Honey, I was SURE that she had a couple of weeks to go, or possibly wasn't even pregnant at all, when I went in the foster room one morning, and, Surprise!  Kittens!

It is not uncommon at all for a foster cat thought to be pregnant to turn out to be not pregnant at all.  Short of doing an ultrasound, which most rescues can't afford to have done simply to determine pregnancy, there really isn't any good way to tell, as many cats can carry a pregnancy without showing much at all until the last few days.  And some cats blow up like balloons and turn out to be simply well-fed.

So!  We come to Kitty Mama.  I am taking the word of the woman who rescued her that she's pregnant.  I mean, that was the big hurry on trapping her.  It really doesn't matter much to me one way or the other:  I'll either be fostering her and her kittens, or just her, for the next couple of months.  But!  I have to admit that I wouldn't mind having some itty-bitty baby kittens in the foster room, along with Kitty Mama.

Let's go to the game cam, shall we?


Hmmm, she doesn't look pregnant to me:
















Oh, but wait, I think I see a bulge:

Nope, she looks totally normal:

But waaaaaaait a minute!:

Haha basically, I have no idea at this point.  Anyone care to hazard any guesses?

Random

Every time I hear that old Billy Joel song, "You're My Home", I used to always think, "yeah, she WAS your home, until you became famous and ditched her and married a supermodel."  But then!  I found out that his first wife was actually married to another man when they first hooked up, so pot calling out the kettle and all that. 

NPR keeps pushing websites named "News in Slow Spanish", "News in Slow French", and "News in Slow Italian".  I think any of those would make an excellent band name.

There is a squirrel (or possibly two) living in the crawlspace above the offices at work.  We can hear him (or them) thumping around like crazy up there most days.  Once I saw a tail drop down into a light fixture screen, and my co-worker saw one of the culprits on top of a bookcase once, where he had dropped out out of a removed ceiling panel.  I guess it's all fun and games until a computer wire gets chewed through.

My favorite brand/flavor of toothpaste has been discontinued, and I am bereft.  Damn you, Colgate!

I can't even with The Voice anymore, ever since Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani hooked up.  I mean, I never liked Gwen Stefani, and I only tolerated Blake Shelton because he was married to Miranda Lambert, so a Gwen/Blake mashup is just too much for me to take, dislikeability-wise.  Blech.  I can't believe I actually THINK about stuff like this, but there ya go.

Friskies has recently come out with several new canned cat food flavors, one of which is named "With Lamb in Clam Flavored Sauce" , or, as it will be forever called in my house, "Lamb 'n Clams".  hahahaha I don't know why, but that just cracks me up.  Unfortunately, the cats don't care for the taste of it, but I still love that name.

I keep a string of Christmas tree lights up in a window in my kitchen all year round, because it makes me smile, and the other night I was bereft, BEREFT I tell you, to discover that half the string had gone out.  I toyed briefly with trying to figure out which bulb, exactly, needed to be replaced, but then said Eff That Noise and tossed the string of lights, only to panic at the idea that there would be no replacement Christmas tree light strings available in stores for several months.  So I rushed to ebay, just to make SURE that I would be able to buy a replacement string right away, and went ahead and bought one.  Heaven forbid my kitchen window be without its Christmas lights.

I flipped over a bookmark the other day to find it had been published by "The Mouth and Foot Painting Artists."  Hmmmm, I wondered, is that really a thing?  Why, yes.  Yes it is.  Live and learn.  And I will tell you what, those people can paint a helluva lot better than I can.

I am pleased to be able to say that Kitty Mama broke her hunger strike last night.  Progress!

The daffodils are up in my gardens.  What's coming up at your place?

Pop question: Getting Lost

I was watching Still Alice the other night, with Julianne Moore as a woman who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's.

And of course, I got to thinking about my mom, who passed away from the regular type of Alzheimer's in 2013, so the movie was ... not easy for me to watch.

In the movie, one of the first outward signs of Julianne Moore's character's disease is when she can't find the bathroom in her house, and ends up wetting her pants.  And I remembered how, a few years before my mom was actually diagnosed, I knew that there was something wrong.  She was forgetting things, and losing things, and then, one day, she was relating an anecdote to a few of us about how she had gotten lost in Walmart, how she had been doing her regular shopping, and then got turned around somehow, and realized that she didn't know where the front of the store was or how to find the exit.

And everybody laughed, talking about how big the big-box stores were, and how disorienting, and how everybody gets lost in one from time to time.

And I was, well, nonplussed.  Because I can't even imagine getting lost inside a store.  How could you possibly get so confused that you couldn't find your way to the exits?  And I still remember how worried I felt about my mom when she told that story, and how baffled I was that other people were relating to it, because WHO GETS LOST INSIDE A STORE?!

So:  Here's my question:  Have you ever gotten lost inside a store?  Enquiring minds want to know.

Facebook. Hoo boy.

Yesterday, an acquaintance re-posted a thing on Facebook.  One of those annoying re-posted ... things.  I don't know what you call them. Those sayings that get re-posted all over the place.  This one was all, "My parents spanked me when I was a child and I turned out okay!  Kids NEED a little discipline.  Lack of discipline is what's wrong with our country today!  Spanking is not abuse.  Share if you agree."

I'm paraphrasing, here, because I'm not about to go digging through my feed to find that piece of work again, but that was the general gist.

Um.  Man oh MAN, I wanted to reply:

Physical abuse is not okay.  If you messed up at work, would you think that a logical reaction would be for your boss to put you over his knee and spank you?  No?  THEN WHY IS IT OKAY TO HIT A KID?

Do you think it's okay to hit the family pet?  No?  THEN WHY IS IT OKAY TO HIT A KID?

You know, I was never spanked as a child.  Not once.  My parents put up with a lot of age-typical bullsh*t from Toddler Me, loved me dearly, and as I grew older they made clear what their age-appropriate expectations were of me.  If I got out of line, all it took was a look from Dad or a word from Mom and I was so embarrassed that I had disappointed them that I corrected myself.  And really, I don't know if they had an actual No Hitting policy or if it had more to do with the fact that my parents were not the touchy-huggy physical contact type in general, but regardless, I was never hit as a kid.  And somehow I came out FINE.  Go figure.

And you know, I used to be of the "spanking is NBD" persuasion.  But after enduring domestic violence myself (no, not recently, many years ago), I just can't justify hitting other people anymore.  LEAST OF ALL CHILDREN.

I didn't say anything in reply to that post last night from my acquaintance.  It wasn't going to change her mind.  And, I mean, that is the same person who says she likes Trump because "he says what he thinks", so ugh, consider the source. You say tomato, I say tomahto, whatevs. Plus, having never been a parent myself, I suspect I may lack a vital perspective when it comes to issues involving offspring.  But more and more, I AM SO HAPPY I HAVE THIS BLOG RIGHT HERE, because this is where I go to vent about Facebook.  Ha.


And now I'm curious - Where do you stand?  Spanking, right or wrong?

Okay, YOU be the judge

Because I evidently can't let anything go, and this whole thing from last night is STILL upsetting me, here is the picture my sister (not Texas; another sister) (Alabama it was Alabama OF COURSE it was Alabama) posted to Facebook:

HOW is that not racist, exactly?  HOW?

I could not help myself.  That offensive pic showed up in MY FEED.  I commented:


"What the hell does that even mean? That the Obamas aren't "classy" because they're black? Jesus Christ."


When someone else commented that the picture wasn't racist, but was instead meant to be a commentary on Michelle Obama's table manners (HUH?), I said,
 

"If you post a pic of a bunch of rich white people in evening attire, calling them "classy", as a dig at the non-white people currently in the White House? Yeah, I'd call that racist. If you wanted to make a comment about their political leanings, you would have posted a policy paper or something."

Facebook:  Bringing those holiday dinnertable arguments with your racist relatives into the Modern Age.  *sigh*

And if there is anybody who can explain to me how that picture is NOT racist, I'd be more than happy to hear it.

 

Let's hear your most hilarious/horrific wedding stories

So, I got talking on Facebook the other day about how I don't like the Cake Boss, and that led to a discussion about wedding cakes, and I remembered when I was planning my own wedding, back in the Dark Ages.

I had gone to the best bakery in town to look at cakes.  When the staff learned that I was getting married, they took me into a super-posh room with music playing, beautiful furnishings, art on the walls, the whole nine yards.  The woman in charge of wedding cakes started discussing tier layouts, flavor combos, etc., etc., until I explained that I was really just looking for a sheet cake.

*insert sound of needle being screeched across a record here*

I got hustled out of that room faster than you can believe and was given an old binder of sheet-cake pictures and a folding chair to sit in while looking through the binder.

HA.

I still remember that.  Wagner's Bakery.  I don't think they're around anymore.

So yeah, that's my funny wedding story.  What's yours?

Okay, I'll admit it, I just don't get it

So! Another day, another mass shooting.  Yaaaaawn.

It's not going to stop until guns (and ammunition) are more tightly regulated, but nobody wants to hear my opinion. 

What I'm wondering about is, back in 2009, we had our very own mass shooting, right here in my little town.  You can read about it here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binghamton_shootings

And for approximately half a day, there was pretty intense news coverage.  After a day or two, a brief mention every once in a while.  After that? Zip.

Cut to this week, when a gunman opened fire at an office party in San Bernadino.

Non-stop coverage.  There has been nothing BUT coverage of this incident on the news.  All San Bernadino, all the time.  All week long.

And I can't help but wonder, why?  Is it because the shooter this week is (presumably) Muslim, and "our" shooter was Vietnamese?  Is it because it happened in OMG California, where the rich people live, and not LOL Upstate New York, which is poverty-riddled?  Is it because the victims were middle-class, professional people, and not poor immigrants taking ESL classes?

I don't know.  But I wonder.

TMI! TMI! Tee - Emm - f*cking - Eye!

So, I was at a thing last weekend, chatting with some other people, and one gal volunteered that she had a sore on her butt that was making her sit funny.

Um, okay?

And then ANOTHER gal started talking about her botched tummy-tuck surgery, and the mesh that they fitted from HERE to HERE, and blah blah blah

holy mary mother of god I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT.

These people are acquaintances of mine.  Not pals, not long-time-no-see old buddies, acquaintances.

Is this a thing, now?  Telling people you barely know the intimate details of your life?  Because I don't get it.

I do have some chronic medical conditions, myself, but I would rather off myself than start blabbing about them to other people.  I do bring up my allergies, on occasion, said occasion being when the meds have failed and I have to apologize for blowing my nose every thirty seconds.  I just feel better if people know that my nose is running like crazy because of tree pollen, not because of a nasty coke habit or something.  But even then, I just say, "excuse me, I have allergies" before I haul out the Kleenex.

My take on med stuff is that it should be shared on a need-to-know basis.  If it's going to interfere with my work schedule, then work needs to know about it.  If I am going to have to change plans because of it, then the people I was doing the planning with need to know about it.  They don't need to know the gory details, they just need to know that my plans are changing.

Other than that?  NO. 

I dunno. Is it just me?  Because I feel really, really uncomfortable when someone who is practically a stranger starts telling me in GREAT DETAIL about her recent struggles with shingles.  Just, ick.

Facebook Etiquette

So!  Over the past few days, a couple of sticky situations have arisen on my Facebook page.

First off, no, believe me, you ain't missin' nothing.  About the only thing I ever post there is pics of whichever foster kittens I'm tending at the time, to try to stir up interest in their adoptions.  I also link to stuff on local rescues' sites, blah blah blah, all kittens all the time.

It's like the Crazy Cat Lady's Facebook page.

But!  Over the weekend, my boss (yes, that boss, the racist one) sent me a friend request.

Umm ... When your boss wants to "friend" you on Facebook, is there really any way to say no?

yeah, I didn't think so.

And besides, like I said, all I ever post there is kitten pics, so who cares, right?

But!  I also received another friend request, from a guy who is "friends" with the woman who runs the rescue for which I volunteer.  He sometimes posts kitten pics, blah blah blah, on the rescue's page, so I thought, oh, okay, and accepted the request.

But then I went and checked out his page, and he's this hard-core right-wing nutbag.  Like, posting really obnoxious crap complaining about ... well, about stuff that right-wing a**holes complain about.  Welfare, "Unamericans", the whole nine yards.

Jeez.

So, I adjusted my settings so that his crap won't show up in my feed.  Problem solved!

Except now, he has started commenting on some of the stuff I put up. See again:  All kittens, all the time, and all he's commenting is stuff like, "Cute kittens!" or "It must be fun fostering!", but now that I know his politics, I'm just, like, all ... ick.

So I'm just "liking" his comments, without commenting back, and I don't really feel like I should unfriend him, because he's involved with the rescue, but


*sigh*

Facebook.  It's complicated.

If it quacks like a duck ...

Now that the weather's warmer and I've been sleeping with the windows open, I've been hearing something ...odd.

Seems like every night, around three a.m., I hear something that sounds like a duck quacking in the brushland adjacent to my property.

"quack ... quack .. quack ...", quietly, off and on, until I drift back to sleep.

Do ducks even quack at night?  What the hell am I hearing?  Any ideas?

And a lesser Beatle, at that

A company for which our firm provides consulting services has an employee named Ringo.

Ringo.

I just ... who would think it's a good idea to name your kid Ringo?

It's one of those names that is just ... taken.  Like, REALLY taken. 

I mean, not in a bad connotation, really; it's not like they named him Adolph.  But Ringo wasn't (isn't?) even that good of a musician, for Pete's sake.  And this guy is in his thirties, tops, so it's not like it was coincidental.  And no, it's not a nickname - it's his given name.

Why would you name your kid Ringo?

Enquiring minds want to know.