The Legend of Cow Kitty

See that cat? The one right in the middle of the photo? That is the elusive Cow Kitty. The object of Little Girl's affections.




He lives somewhere in the neighborhood, I'm not sure where, and cuts through my yard to get into the back brush and hunt. Him and every other cat in the neighborhood.




The other morning, early, I heard cat hijinks of the yowling variety going on in the backyard. I got up, and went into the backyard, where I saw ...




... TWO cow kitties! One was white and gray, and one was white and black. They trotted off into the brush when they saw me coming. Holy crap! I thought. There's TWO of them!


Still half asleep, I turned around and went into the garage, and there, on top of the washer, was A THIRD COW KITTY! Who promptly scampered out to join his compatriots.




Now, I'd thought for a while that there may be two cow kitties, one gray and one black. But this third cow kitty was a complete surprise. Who knows? Maybe there's more! I'm pretty sure they're littermates, because they look so much alike. I'm also pretty sure that they belong to someone in the neighborhood, because that's where I see them coming from, and they're not ratty looking or skinny like strays are. And while at least one of them has figured out the pet door and is sometimes spotted INSIDE MY HOUSE, Little Girl's food is not being eaten (other than by her), so obviously, they're not hungry.

Whew! Three cow kitties! I'm outnumbered, here.

And it looks like Little Girl will not be lacking for friends this summer.

Here! Have some pretty flowers!

Okay, okay, so nobody wants to talk about gross shit. Sheesh. I GOT IT, okay? Let's see what's going on in my garden.



Here is an overhead shot of some Siberian iris(es). I bought one little clump of these from a roadside stand a couple of years ago, and they're going nuts:

Here is a regular iris-iris:

One of the peony bushes is blooming right now, and it's specTACular:

Here is a ladyslipper:

Weird, no? That was NOT taken in my garden. Ladyslippers are very, very particular about where they deign to grow. In all of the places I walk, covering hundreds of acres, I know of only three places where ladyslippers grow. And they are only in bloom for a short period in the spring; then they're gone again until the next year.

I've got all KINDS of stuff coming up right now that I put in last summer, so it'll be interesting to see what blooms. About the only thing that unequivocally did not make it through the winter was the Canterbury Bells. I'm going to be separating the tiger lilies and moving some to the side lawn down by the ditch; we'll see how that goes. Oh! And the hibiscus are coming up! I've never managed to grow hibiscus (hibiscuses? hibisci?) before, so this is gonna be fun!

Of course, some things have already bloomed and faded: The lilacs, the bleeding hearts, the bluebells and the lilies-of-the-valley have already had their day.

What's blooming around your place?

It's like goddam 'Nam around here

Okay, so here we go with another gross post. Turn away if you're squeamish. This will be the last one (for this week, anyway), I promise.

So! Yesterday was the tale of the toe.

And then last night I get home to discover that Little Girl had killed and eviscerated a mouse in the garage. A large mouse. A large, pregnant mouse.

Blllllarrrrgggggghhhhhhh.

Jesus. It was like high school biology class all over again.

And I feel really, really sorry for all the things she kills. It's awful. But then I got thinking, you know what? If you are a snake, or a bird, or a mouse, and a well-fed house cat WITH A HEART CONDITION can catch and kill you, your odds of making it in the wild are ZERO. Zip. Nada. You might as well give it up for the cat, because something else is gonna come along thirty seconds later and get you anyway.

Oh! And in other news, I unloaded my old piece-of-shit, won't-start lawnmower on a co-worker. I think he looks at it as a challenge. Good luck with that, E! And remember, no give-backs.

Holy SHIT you guys, they're gonna cut her flippin' TOE off

Okay, if you are squeamish, just TURN AWAY, okay? I'm warning you.

My sister TIB called last night.

"I just wanted to let you know," she said, "The doctor is going to amputate Mom's hammertoe tomorrow."

Huh? Whaaaaaaa?

A little backstory: My mother is an 86-year-old widow. She was diagnosed with dementia (Alzheimer's) eleven years ago. She lives with my sister TIB.

Mom has had the hammertoe for many years. She said it didn't hurt, and the doctor said that at her age, it was probably best to just leave it alone, as long as it wasn't causing problems. But in the last year, she started to develop sores on that foot where the hammertoe (and ohmyGOD do NOT google hammertoe it is DISGUSTING) was rubbing against her other toes. The doc was worried about infection. As it turns out, that toe is dislocated and she is not using it for balance anyway, so the doc says it has to go. Just like that. CHOP.

Oh my flippin' GOD what's NEXT? And you know what? They're not even going to KNOCK HER OUT. The doc says it's too risky, so they are going to do something called "twilight sleep" and CUT HER F*CKING BIG TOE OFF. And she's not even gonna get crutches or a wheelchair or ANYTHING, they're just gonna put one of those boot things on it. "There you go! Minus one toe! Have a good day!"

And you know what? Thanks to the Alzheimer's, she doesn't understand. I'm sure she was all, like, "Oh, if you think that's best, doctor, go right ahead!"

Whereas I would be out of that doctor's office so fast it would make your HEAD spin. Nobody's touching MY toes, areyououtofyourMIND?!

They are going to cut her toe off. Today. This is gross, you guys.

Blanket fort!

Remember when you were a little kid and you'd take a bunch of blankets and drape them over the dining room table to make a fort?

I took a bunch of the garage rugs and hosed them off this weekend, then set them over chairs to dry. Meet Little Girl's new hangout:

So! In the interest of full disclosure, a final count reveals that I got nine of the eighteen things on my to-do list done. Not too shabby, considering it was about a billion degrees out with high humidity. Not that I'm complaining, mind you - after the winter we just went through, I'll take the heat any day.

Summer. Bring it ON.

The Osprey Cam is back!

The Osprey Cam is back!

Click here!

Or over on my sidebar to the left, under "Interesting People", where is says "Osprey Cam"!

Go ospreys!

In other news (hahaha NICE SEGUE *cough*), I have eighteen items on my to-do list for this weekend. How many of them do you think I will actually accomplish? How many items are on YOUR list? Come on, make me feel good.

Two movies

Okay, first off, Country Boy won American Idol last night. Whoaaaa, THERE'S a shocker. Soon to be appearing near you in a touring company of "Oklahoma" . I'm pretty sure I'm over that show. ("American Idol", not "Oklahoma", that is.) And everybody's going, "what TOOK you so long?"

So, last Friday, the night before the supposed Rapture, I watched "2012". I mean, it was practically mandatory, right? Nothing like a good end-of-the-world movie to give you survival tips for the apocalypse that is coming the very next day.

Except, (a) the Rapture didn't happen, and (b) the movie sucked.

Did anybody else watch this dog? Holy cow, was it bad. And if John Cusack raked his hands through his hair ONE MORE TIME, I swear I was gonna snatch him bald.

The special effects were cheesy, even on my dinky nineteen-inch TV, and the movie was full of ridiculous sub-plots like that Russian dude with his bratty kids and his trophy wife, although honestly, I couldn't watch enough of it at any given time to really pick up on any of the finer points. I kept switching away, and then after fifteen minutes or so, I'd switch back, thinking maybe a miracle had occurred and the movie had somehow gotten better in the interim, and ... no.

But! Last Sunday, I did watch a movie that was actually really good. "Anvil - The Story of Anvil" originally aired on VH-1, and it's about these dudes in a heavy metal band ("Anvil", duh), who basically had one moment in the sun back in the eighties and have been trying to get back in the spotlight for the past thirty years.

And really, they actually are pretty good musicians, they just can't catch a damn break. And, well, not to be blunt or anything, but ... oh, shit, the lead singer's so damn ugly it kind of hurts to look at him. Then again, Kiss made it big, and they were so flippin' ugly they had to wear disguises on stage. And you've gotta kind of love a guy who wears bondage gear on stage, the way the Anvil singer does.

But you wonder what would push these guys to keep trying, for DECADES, after all signs point to No.

It was kind of depressing, actually, but still really involving. I kind of want them to have big hit song, just to justify thirty years of tilting at windmills.

So! "2012", bad. "Anvil", good.

Seen any good movies lately?

Backstage at The Biggest Loser

First off, scroll down to the Mystery Tree, because I need some answers. Now, onward:

Okay, okay, I'll admit it - I watched (parts of) the finale of The Biggest Loser last night - I mean, how could I not? I've watched (bits and pieces of) the show all season, so it kind of behooved me to see how it ended.

And I have two questions:

What was UP with that blond chick in the (I think) blue dress? At one point, they showed all the contestants exiting the stage to change back into their workout clothes, and there was this blond chick all stomping off the stage, like, "I'ma gonna KILL somebody!". They even had a handler grabbing onto her arm, like she was about to punch somebody. Plus, she had the strangest looking boobs I've ever seen in my life. Who WAS she? Because I don't remember her from the show.

Second: Okay, so this was a LIVE finale, right? And they were getting weighed in, RIGHT THERE, to see who wins the money. And the opera singer won (yay!) by THREE POUNDS.

Question: When do you think was the last time any of them ate?

Seriously. As a contestant, you know when the live finale is going to be. You know that whether you win or not depends on how much you weigh, right then at the finale. You know that it could be close.

How far ahead do you stop eating? A day? A week? How many laxatives do you take? How do you finagle your way into a bathroom backstage so you can puke ONE LAST TIME before they weigh you?

Or - wait a minute - do the show's producers force them to eat? Are they all, like, "you HAVE to eat these green beans or else you'll be disqualified!" Because I could see this potentially turning pretty grim, otherwise. Like, "Coming soon to NBC, The Biggest Bulimic!"

What do you think?

Mystery tree

There is a tree on the park land next to my house that blooms every spring.




It smells really, really good, and the bees love it. It's around twenty-five feet tall.

The blooms are white tinged with pink and are approximately an inch across.

And here is where I confess that I'm about as good at tree identification as I am at bird ID, which is to say, not at all, so ...

... what is it? Name that tree! Please. Thank you.

Dude!

I was walking down by the creek the other day, when what did I see in my path:

Oh, man, I'm a sucker for a turtle. This dude was big. And judging by the nose, I think it was a snapper.

I was all, "Dude! What's up! It's all good!" and then, for some reason that I will never fathom, I added, "I'm just gettin' jiggy with it!"

*---*

Yeah, I don't know where that particular bon mot came from.

Neither does the turtle.

Saturday Afternoon Art Installation

aka, "The Neighbors Continue To Wonder About That Weird Lady Who Lives On The Corner".

And then there was that OTHER crappy thing I did ...

First off, yesterday's quote was from Sixteen Candles. I can't BELIEVE that nobody got that. I guess I really AM old. *sigh*



So anyway, we were on our way back from the cardiologist in Ithaca on Monday, driving through all the dinkytown speed traps between there and here, and we were going through this one particular town. Candor. It was Candor. You've gotta love a town called Candor, right?

So we are driving down the main drag, doing the 30 mph speed limit, because, speed trap, and there's this dude meandering up the sidewalk with a plastic bag full of cans, collecting empties from the side of the road.

And as I'm driving toward him, he bends down to pick up a can, and just kind of ... crumples onto the sidewalk. It was this slow-motion collapse.

And I was all, like, "hahaha DRUNK!" Another plastered hobo passes out while collecting cans to pay for his next 40-ouncer.

But then I was, like, "what if he ISN'T drunk? What if he's suffering from a medical condition? Maybe I should stop!"

And you know what I did?

I kept. on. driving.

F*CK that shit. I had just gotten some very bad, awful, no-good news, I had a scared cat in the back of the car who had been in her carrier for HOURS at that point, and I kept right. on. going.

And you know what? I don't feel bad about that at all. Sue me.

Hey, BIRTH DEFECT!

20 points to whoever can name that movie.

Okay, so I did something the other night, and I thought I was doing the right thing, but now I'm not so sure, so I'd like to ask your opinion.

As those of you who have been reading along know, my cat, The Runt, died suddenly of heart failure on April 21. He had a mild congenital heart murmur, which I didn't think was a major concern; obviously, I was as wrong as you can get.

The vet suggested I have his sister, Little Girl, tested for heart disease, as it tends to be hereditary. Sure enough, although Little Girl does not have a murmur, she does have heart disease and is currently under treatment.

Here's the thing: This condition is both congenital, meaning they were born with it, and hereditary, meaning it runs in their family.

There were two other kittens in their litter.

From left: Fluffy, Tuffy, The Runt, and Little Girl.

On Tuesday night, knowing it was a long shot because local shelters tend not to keep long-term records, I called the shelter from which I had fostered and then adopted The Runt and Little Girl. I called during shelter hours but my call went to voice mail, so I left a message explaining that I had adopted two kittens in the summer of 2008 who had developed heart disease; I knew that they had two littermates, who might benefit from testing and treatment.

When I got home from work last night, there was a message on my voicemail. It was a woman from the shelter; she thanked me for my information and said that they did, indeed, keep records; she would try to find out who adopted Fluffy and Tuffy and let them know that the cats should be tested for heart disease.

And at first I was, like, Yay! Maybe those cats' lives can be prolonged! It's a good thing!

But now I'm, like, how would I feel if the situation were reversed? What if the past month had never happened, and The Runt and Little Girl were perfectly fine, and all of a sudden I got a call from the shelter informing me that they both could have a deadly disease that would kill them if they didn't get testing and treatment right away? I'd be devastated.

So know I don't know if I did a good thing, or a really shitty thing. What do you think?

So, a lady and a cat go on a road trip ...

First of all, I want to reassure everybody that Little Girl is in no pain. Both of her vets told me that her condition is not at all painful. As I was telling BNG, what we are faced with here is a life-span issue, not a pain-control issue, and now that she's on the meds, her prospects for living a good life for a good while yet are, well, good.


And let me tell you right now, that cat is a saint. On Monday, we had to go to Ithaca to consult with the cardiologist. According to my car's odometer, the cardiologist's office is 55 miles from my house. We were at the office for three hours. Little Girl was in her crate from quarter to nine in the morning until two-thirty in the afternoon, except when she was removed to be ultrasounded and EKG'd and x-rayed and examined, and that little sweetheart never made a peep.

Oh! And let me tell you about the greatest invention EVER. While we were at the cardiologist, after all the tests had been run and analyzed, the vet started going over the pills that Little Girl would have to take. She asked if I was okay with pilling a cat, and I told her, "it depends on the cat". See, some cats are easier to pill than others. Rocky, my old cat, did not object to being pilled. The Runt haaaaaated being pilled, but I could usually get the pills down him.

Little Girl? She barely tolerates being petted, so I knew pilling her could be, well, difficult.


I explained all this to the vet, and she said, (oh! And she had this really charming accent! I think it was Polish, but I'm not sure. It was ADORABLE. I wanted to marry her just to listen to that accent.) "Have you tried a pill pusher?"


And I'm, like, "Huh"? Because in my mind, "pill pusher" sounded like "drug dealer". I'm, like, what exactly is she asking me, here?

"A pill pusher!", she said. "You put the pills in one end, and push the plunger, and it pills the cat!"

As it turns out, the technical name is "pet piller". It looks like this:









And yeah, you put the pills in one end, put the thing in the cat's mouth, toward the back, and push the plunger.



And it works! Oh, IT WORKS. The cat has no chance to p-tooey the pills back out - they just go right down the hatch.



My life, and Little Girl's, got a lot easier with that thing.

So! That is where we are. She is on an ACE inhibitor for her heart, a diuretic to counteract side effects from the ACE inhibitor, and baby aspirin to prevent clots. And hopefully the rain that has been falling for a freaking MONTH now will stop soon, so we can both get back outside.

Because that lawn ain't gonna mow itself.

Like a pack of flippin' vultures

I was out of the office for one day - ONE DAY - and came back to find the following items missing from my desk:

All the pens.

All the pencils.

All the post-it note pads.

The white-out thingies.

And, most egregious of all, my stapler.

For f*ck's sake, you'd think this shit was gold, not office supplies.

Jeez.

She seemed a little ... listless

Exam - Comprehensive. Radiograph- Large Plate. CBC w/Diff and Platelet Count. Chemistry Panel. Cardiopet (proBNP).

She scored over 700.

Examination - Cardiology. Cardiology - EKG. Echocardiogram. Radiographs.

Diagnosis: Restrictive Cardiology. Mild congestive heart failure.

Enalapril 2.5 mg tablet 2x day. Lasix 12.5 mg 2x day. Baby aspirin 1x every 3 days.

Prognosis: Guarded.

I do not want to have to write this

... Little Girl has heart disease.

The same thing that killed her brother.

She seemed to be feeling a little ... listless, last week, so on Thursday we went to the vet. The vet couldn't find any obvious reason for her distress, but suggested we have some blood work done, just to rule out any problems. One of the tests was for heart function.

Last night, the vet called me with the results. A normal "count" for the heart test is under 100. A count of 100 to 240 is reason for concern, and anything over 240 is not good.

Little Girl scored over 700.

We are going to see an animal cardiologist in Ithaca on Monday morning. She will do an ultrasound, and an EKG, and probably a PB&J and God knows what else. The results of these tests will indicate what treatment Little Girl will need.

Look, my lack of action with The Runt was a mistake. With Little Girl, it would be murder. She will get the treatment she needs.

Hopefully, we have caught this in time. We do have that. We do have hope.

It's art if I SAY it's art, amiright?

and you guys are all, like, "my GOD, she really IS crazy."

Heh.

You know what this reminds me of? When I was a kid, one wall of the dining room in the house I grew up in was wallpapered with a mural of a tree. I guess that was, like, the thing to do back in the fifties when the house was built.

But ANYWAY, when I was little, I had a little mutt of a dog, Rufus*, who would - you guessed it - pee on the wall, because he thought it was a REAL tree.

That is why I prefer cats. Cats would NEVER make a mistake like that.

*Yes, I named a dog-in-real-life after a stuffed dog. Go figure.

Recently Read

Okay, first off, I put this up here on, like, Wednesday, and then evidently Blogger went all batshit and took it down. They promised to put it back up again but they LIED, big surpise, boohoohoo, so there it is again, except I think BNG left a comment that I can't get back because Blogger disappeared it into the ether, so BNG, please accept my apologies.

Now, a "Recently Read" that you may have seen before, if you were here on Wednesday, when it went up the first time. Skip it if you wanna.



1. Scorched Earth by David Robbins - This was a murder mystery, which I don't normally read, but Badass Nature Girl was kind enough to send it to me, and I'm glad she did, because it was a real page-turner with lots of plot twists. Good!



2. Talk to the Tail by Revilo - BNG also send me this cartoon book - cute!



3. A Separate Peace by John Knowles - Novel about boarding-school students in New England during WWII - I've got a sneaking suspicion that this is a favorite of English teachers. I found it boring, although I'm not the target audience, which I would presume to be teenage boys. Meh.



4. Hey! Let's throw a movie review in here. A Piece of Work is a doc about Joan Rivers. This was interesting. She was a ground-breaking comedian and is still a tough old broad. I just hope that when I'm her age, I'm not working that damn hard, but then again, her work seems to fulfill her, so who am I to judge.



But oh! Speaking of judging, Ms. Rivers has had so much work done, she's starting to look like Jocelyn Wildenstein, which ... why? She's in her seventies; she's supposed to look old, for Pete's sake. Maybe she thought it was the only way she could keep getting work, which is sad. Because it could be true.



5. Okay, back to books. Petal Pusher by Laurie Lindeen - Memoir about life in an indie band (Zuzu's Petals) in the eighties. Good. And she recounted getting an abortion, which a lot of women are (still) reluctant to do.



6. Summer of Night by Dan Simmons. This was so similar to "It" by Stephen King that I actually checked the dates to see which one was written first. (It was "It".) Summer of Night is about a group of kids fighting a supernatural evil power in a small town. It was kind of cliche-ridden, but still very good, and a real page-turner. I'd read it again. Oh, but you might not want to read it right before bed. Word.



7. Child of My Heart by Alice McDermott. Novel about a teenager's summer spent babysitting. I'll say one thing about Ms. McDermott - she sure can suck the life right out of a story. With both this book and Charming Billy, she takes good premises and makes them dry as dust. Her writing is almost robotic, it's so unfeeling. Blech.



8. On High Steel by Mike Cherry - This out-of-print memoir is about an ironworker learning his trade. Interesting read! My only carp that would be at one point, he talks about working on a twenty-story hospital addition in my hometown, and there ARE no twenty-story hospital additions in my hometown. Still, a good book.


9. Brothel by Alexa Albert - Study of the Mustang Ranch in Nevada - Interesting, especially the part about how a lot of legalized prostitutes still have pimps.

The. Lawn. Is. Mowed.

Halle-freakin'-lujah, the goddamn lawn is mowed.

I got home from work last night, and

Oh! There was a package on the porch from Badass Nature Girl!

I knew she'd been working on something top-secret, and it had arrived!

"No!" I told myself. You mow that goddamn lawn FIRST, and THEN you can open the package. "It will be your treat." I'm all about the carrot and the stick, don't you know.

But! First, I went in the house, where there was ANOTHER surprise!

Little Girl had left me a great big bullfrog, right in the middle of the hallway.

Jeeeeeeezzzzzz.

And here's the thing: She always brings 'em in alive. She's got a mouth like a Labrador, I swear. How the heck she can transport a big ol' frog all the way from the bog out back, up the yard, through the pet door, and into the house without injuring it I have no idea, but she manages.

So! Out came the Cool Whip container, and Mr. Frog went back to the swamp.

Now! It was time to mow. I gassed up the new mower, put in the oil, held my breath, and turned the key.

Vroom-VROOOOOOOM!

And the angels sang.

I mowed the front yard, and the side yards, and the front of the backyard. I even managed to mow some of the back-backyard, out back by the Okefenokee, where the land is all squishy. The old lawn mower would NEVER have done that; last year I ended up weed-whacking that part of the yard. But the new mower said "no problem!"

So! An hour-and-a-half later, and it's time to open Badass's package.

You guys.

She looked at this picture:

And painted this:

It's a little box. For mementos, or photos, or, you know, ashes. Isn't it gorgeous?

I sure wish I had that kind of talent.

And she does all KINDS of cool stuff that she sells at her Etsy shop. Oh! And she also donated her home-made pet gifts to her local animal shelter, in memory of The Runt. How cool is THAT?

BNG, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your kindness is very much appreciated.

And now, I go home to weed-whack. The work is never really done, is it? *sigh*

Carriage bolt? What the hell is a carriage bolt?

First off: Catnip. I don't know WHY I didn't think of it before, seeing as how the house is chock-full of catnip toys, including some that BNG gifted us with. On Friday night I busted out the loose catnip, and Little Girl had a party. She even did the paper-plate-on-the-head trick, for which The Runt was justifiably famous.

Yesterday I went out to mow. And I pulled that pull cord and pulled and pulled and PULLED, and that Christless no-good motherf*cking piece-of-shit of a lawn mower WOULD. NOT. START.

I THOUGHT we had an agreement. Evidently the terms of the contract were voided without my knowledge.

So I went to Lowe's and bought a new lawn mower. One with an ELECTRIC start.

And I got it home and wrestled the elephant-sized box out of the back of the car and started putting it together. Which ... why do they call it a carriage bolt? Why can't they call it, "that doohickey that connects the bottom handle to the top handle"? It would have made my afternoon much easier.

So! The mower got assembled. I'm ready to mow! Which is when I discover that the electric start has to charge for eight to ten HOURS before using.

Shit.

Well, I know what I'm doing after work tonight.

Hopefully.

Not chopped liver anymore

I always said that Little Girl was her own cat, but The Runt was mine.

Neither one of them was particularly demonstrative. Their mother was feral, and both of them were deemed "unadoptable" by the shelter as kittens because they were "too wild".


They weren't lap cats, nor were they snugglers. But The Runt would act happy to see me when I got home from work. He loved to hop up on the bed next to me for some quality time with his nuk-nuk towel, and if I was puttering in the garden he'd stay close by. He liked for me to comb him in the morning, and he'd hang out in the bathroom while I was getting ready for work.

Little Girl? Not so much.

I always got the feeling that I was pretty much on the periphery of Little Girl's radar - I was The Lady with the Cat Food. Oh, she'd tolerate a petting on occasion, but she was more likely to meow with indignation if I tried to pick her up. On summer days, sometimes the only time I'd see her was when she'd come in to eat.


But now that she's lost her brudder, I'm not looking so bad to her. Imagine that. She brings me (dead) mice and (live) frogs*, she actually hopped up on the bed and cuddled with me the other morning, and she's decided that SHE wants to get combed in the morning, thankyouverymuch.

Oh, and it's not just me. There's a neighborhood cat whom I call the Cow Kitty, and Little Girl has started a campaign to become Cow Kitty's bff. It's adorable to watch her moon after him.

If she's out in the yard with me and she sees Cow Kitty in a neighbor's yard, she's off to pal around with him.

Little Girl sure misses her brudder. I wish I could make it all better for her. I just don't know how. Any suggestions on how to cheer up a mourning cat?

*oh sweet Jeezus I awoke at four-thirty the other morning to a giant FROG in my bedroom - gah.

Okay, so let's talk about American Idol

... seeing as how nobody wants to talk about Survivor. FINE.

I've gotta try to squish this in here, 'cause I think tonight somebody gets voted off Idol, which means if I let this sit here until tomorrow, it will no longer be relevant, but then again, is American Idol ever really "relevant"?

Anyway.

Again, as with Survivor, I'm not paying much attention this season, so I'm not really sure who's left on Idol at this point.



There's the squinty dude, who has a pretty good range, but dude, lose the squint! I mean, I guess he's got, like, Tourette's or something, which makes me wish he'd let loose with some f-bombs in the middle of a song, but seriously, that squint is unnerving. It makes me wonder what the kids would look like if he and Renee Zellwegger got married.



Okay, and there's the big black dude who is evidently channeling Pee-Wee Herman. Trying to live in the group home with THAT dude must be a serious ass-ache. I'll bet it's all drama, all the time with THAT guy.

Who else? Oh yeah - country dude! Why is he still there? I'm pretty sure he's been singing the same damn song, week after week. And that haircut? Horrible. I will guarantee RIGHT NOW that he's gonna be selling cars by the time he's, like, twenty-five.



Okay, now who's that girl - the gravel voiced one? She's actually pretty good, if she'd just stop trying to growwwwwwwwl her way through every damn song. Even Janis only broke that out once in a while, honey.

So ... that's four. And there's five left, right? Who am I missing? Who's going home tonight? Do I care? Um ... no. I predict squinty dude. Although it could be gravel girl, because evidently the masses of teenage girls who comprise the main voting bloc of this show tend to oust their own. Whatever happened to girl power? Sheesh.

a hundred and ten degrees?!

So! I haven't been paying attention to ... well ... much of anything recently, really, but I thought maybe they were gonna have the first ever Survivor fatality last night after a contest involving running stairs in a-hundred-and-ten-degree heat.

Poor Rob! He won, but then he starts wobbling all over the platform and his voice went up about two octaves and he asked two of the other contestants to hold him up, and I'm, like, holy CRAP, this dude's about to bite it, but then I'm like, nah, if he had actually croaked, they would've dragged it out into at LEAST a three-hour special, with all kinds of promos about "a very special episode of Survivor", so then I was okay to watch the rest, 'cause I knew he was gonna make it.

But! You know who I really want to win? That blond religious dude. Matt? Is that his name? That poor bastard's spent the entire show on Exile Island or whatever the hell they're calling it this season. He deserves to win.

Oh! And I was kind of surprised when the other religious dude, the dark-haired guy, said something last night along the lines of "God wants me to win."

Dude? Okay, two things:
A. There is no God.
B. If there was a God, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't give a shit about Survivor.

That's what kills me about religious people. They always presume to know what God wants. Shit, maybe all God wants is a beer and a joint, okay?

One other thing I noticed during last night's show - When it was time for their significant others to show up for a tearful reunion, the "others" didn't really seem all that "significant".

I mean, there were no girlfriends or wives or boyfriend or husbands. It was all, like, moms and sisters and, in one case, a brother-in-law. And I was all, Dude! That's the best you could do? Your brother-in-law?

Okay, I mean, I can get how people would be reluctant to make the trip. I'm assuming it's a pretty long flight, and the contestants only have eight days left anyway, but still, I would have thought at least one hubby or wife would have shown up. I mean, I know Rob's married, because he met his wife on the damn SHOW, which is both awesome and cringe-worthy. Then again, I get how his wife, Amber, has maybe had enough of bug-infested, hot-as-hell tropical islands.

Oh! And I totally understand why Phillip is still there, strategy-wise, but seriously? Dude's gotta go.

So! I was going to talk about American Idol now, but this has already gone on way too long. Coming soon: Why is that country dude still on the show? And also: Little Girl decides I'm not so bad.

Random

The place that did The Runt's ashes is named Whispering Pines, which I suppose is better than Fiery Fiery Furnaces.

I started to get my whistle back. A little. It came out as sad little disjointed squawks. Then it went away again. I'm sure my co-workers are grateful.

As much as you guys are probably thinking, "Holy shit, she killed her cat", trust me, you are not thinking it as much as I am. Although I do keep trying not to beat myself up too much. Then again, I'm sure that Hitler considered himself a pretty decent guy, too.

A week after The Runt's death, we had some pretty major storms here, with, like, tornados and flooding and shit. And friends were calling me at ten o'clock at night, all, "OMG, are you going to be evacuated? Do we need to come help you get away?" And I was all, like, "meh". The park next door flooded pretty big-time, and my crawlspace was full of water, and I was just, "whatever." I guess a death pretty much numbs you to everything else.

The crying has finally eased up, although I do spontaneously sob at odd moments, usually while in line at a store or similarly surrounded by strangers.

The gutters finally got done. The day they came to do the install, it was pouring rain. Those poor bastards spend two-and-a-half hours up on ladders tearing off the old gutters and installing the new ones. They looked like they'd just gone swimming by the time they were done.

I found a pretty wooden box at an antiques store for The Runt's ashes, only to discover when I got it home that it was not big enough for both his ashes and his nuk-nuk towel. I'll keep looking.

There is supposed to be more flooding tomorrow. Whatever.

The Michigan Bulb magnolia tree I planted last year has a leaf on it! One. Leaf. Go tree!

Wobbly

Yesterday afternoon, one of the kids from the neighborhood was learning how to ride a bike on the street in front of my house.

He had his whole family out there cheering him on. His first attempts were along the lines of -

wobble wobbbbbllllllle CLUNK

wobbbbbblllllle wobble wobble THUD

Honestly? I think this kid was more uncoordinated than I am, which frankly I did not think was possible.

But! Dad stepped up with a hand to the back, the pedaling increased in speed, and by dinnertime, the kid almost had it down. I'm pretty sure he'll be biking around the neighborhood by the end of the week.

So. I am back. Things are still terribly sad, of course, but Little Girl and I are soldiering on. The annual neighborhood Mexican standoff over who's going to be the first to break down and mow ended on Saturday, when I got home from work to find my neighbor B. (of driveway fame) mowing his lawn.

I got out my pain-in-the-ass mower, which fought me all last summer. I gave it a little talking-to, letting it know that I was fully prepared to jump in my car and go to Home Depot and buy its replacement if it didn't for the love of Christ START already, and it started on the second pull.

I think we've come to an agreement.

And! Um, was I the only one who thought Bin Laden was, well, already dead? I mean, he hasn't exactly been on my radar screen for the past few years. Oh, and now that the Tea Party nutjobs have lost their birther bone to chew on, how long before they start questioning whether he's REALLY dead? I'm sure that whole "burial-at-sea" thing will give them a whole new conspiracy theory to work on.

I am ready for spring.

Sweetie

Kindness

Thank you to my boss's girlfriend, who sent flowers.

Thank you to my sister Texas, who held my hand over the phone lines.

Thank you to Badass Nature Girl, who has been stepping me back from the ledge via email, and who, because she is evidently psychic, sent me a card before she even knew what had happened.
Thank you to my boss, who decided that in this instance, grievance pay was applicable. It's not that the money mattered; he was acknowledging that for some of us, our pets are our family.

Thank you to my sister's friend, who sent a condolence card.

Thank you to the guys in the office, who tactfully failed to notice a teary-eyed secretary.

Thank you to all of you who have posted comments and sent emails.

Thank you for thinking of us.

The ancient garden seems at night
a deeper gloom to bear
as if some silent shadow's blight
were hov'ring in the air

With hidden griefs the grasses sway,
unable quite to word them
remembering from yesterday
the little paws that stirred them.

- H.P. Lovecraft

Brudder? Is that YOU?

Poor Little Girl.

So Sad

On Thursday evening, April 21, The Runt experienced what the vet described as a massive heart attack. Death was instantaneous; he was here, and then he was gone.


The cats had their dinner that evening, and then we went outside so he and Little Girl could supervise my work in the garden. After a while I went inside and the cats were going in and out; I found him around nine o'clock in the garage.


I didn't even know he was dead; I bent down to pet him and he didn't move. I picked him up and carried him in the house and put him in his pet bed, asking him what was wrong. He was so warm! And his ears were pricked forward. And he was not breathing.


On Friday morning, I took him to the vet so that arrangements could be made. I said my goodbyes, and then I got in the car and drove. And drove and drove and drove. You can't outrun sorrow, but I sure tried.


They say grief makes you do strange, strange things, and I now know this to be true, because on Saturday I found myself buying a cat statue. With wings.


SHUT IT, alright? I contend that grief gives you a free pass to do things you would never in a million years do otherwise.


So I took the winged cat home, and I was trying to decide where to put it. In the garden? On the porch? In his pet bed? I finally decided to put it in The Runt's favorite spot in the kitchen, which was on a ledge looking out the window. While I put the statue on the ledge, I noticed that Little Girl was out in the backyard.


She looked up, saw that cat statue in the window, and came running across the yard. She flew into the kitchen and up onto the ledge ...

... she thought it was The Runt.

She sat next to that statue for a long time. And then she laid down next to it.

Oh! And every time she hears a noise, she jerks around, like, "Brudder? Is that you?"


So, yes, we are grieving. Dammit, I KNEW that "look on the bright side" shit would come back to bite me in the ass. That, and the whole "I think I'll wait until the fall to have the ultrasound done" thing.


Thank you for all your kind thoughts. They mean the world to me. I will be sad for some time to come. And so will Little Girl.

We will have a sad season and mourn. We will abide. And we will miss and remember our friend.

The Runt

May 2008 - April 21, 2011

Oh, you were a good boy!

Goodbye, sweetie.

I love you.

A question for the guys

Dear guys:

How hard is it to pee into a toilet bowl?

Seriously, how freakin' hard is it to aim into a goddam toilet bowl?

And let's say, oh, I don't know, you get distracted, say a car alarm goes off or something, and you wander off course a little, and pee on the floor.

HOW F*CKING HARD IS IT TO GRAB A PIECE OF TOILET PAPER AND WIPE UP YOUR MESS?

Gah.

Not for the world and everything in it

Okay, so, I admit it - I was watching The Biggest Loser, AGAIN, last night. Well, all except for the boring-ass weigh-in stuff, of course.

And then they get to the *gulp* bungee jumping. And let me tell you right now, there are two things that I can say with a fair amount of certainty I will never do in life:

1. Heroin
2. Bungee jumping

Heroin, because, well, I can just see myself trying it once and then doing a fast-forward montage to becoming a sparkless sparktoid in a gutter someplace, and

Bungee jumping, because, PLEASE!

Look. I work for an structural engineering company which does a fair amount of forensic engineering work. Trust me when I tell you this: Shit breaks. Shit breaks ALL THE DAMN TIME. There is metal fatigue, calculation error, some dude rigging the cables who had a fight with his wife the night before and showed up to work shitfaced ... and it doesn't matter what your engineering safety factor is. SHIT GOES WRONG.

Oh! And that poor bastard Rulon! They're getting ready to make everybody bungee jump OVER WATER, and he's all, like, "um, I don't know if you're aware of this, but today is the four-year anniversary of the day I was on a plane that crashed INTO WATER."

And they made him jump anyway.

Note to self: Do not ever, EVER go on The Biggest Loser. They'd probably make me do heroin. Or, you know, bungee jump.

I'm not really one to get into politics, but ...

... to all those assholes on the right who keep bitching about how we can't possibly raise taxes on the rich, about how it isn't fair to punish people for working hard, blahblahblah ....

... I just got a peek at my boss's tax returns for last year. He makes approximately FIVE TIMES what I make, and ...

... I paid MORE in Federal and State taxes last year than he did.

Dear right-wing assholes: STFU.

Straight outta the obits

A line from an obit in today's paper:

"The Angles have come to take her home to them."

So ... I'm guessing she was a mathematician?

Smells like Ben-Gay

On Saturday, in a moment of insanity, I did Level 3 of the Shred.

As a result, I have been sleeping with a heating pad, smelling of muscle rub, and peeing blood.

Oh, Jillian, why do you torment me so? You know, when she trash-talked about "gargling your heart out" and "feeling like you're going to die" during the workout, I really feel like she should have included the part about "pissing blood". Just as, you know, a friendly heads-up.

Oh! But for once, a medical google search was actually less frightening than I thought it might be. Turns out peeing blood is actually pretty common. Now THERE'S a relief.

and you know, it's really too bad that the Shred only goes to 3. Right now I'm picturing Level 4, where velociraptors come and pick you to pieces. Or Level 5, where as soon as you press play, it activates an alarm at the firehouse so the EMTs can come wait in your driveway for you to drop dead.

Get on that, Jillian, would ya? You could test-market it on The Biggest Loser. Now there's an episode I'd watch. Or, you know, not.

Guilty

Oh howdy! Here I am, at the office on Palm Sunday. Is fun! For the paycheck, anyway.

I went to Target yesterday, where I hardly ever go, to pick up one item. Which I found. And then -

oh! But first I have to ask - Is the Target store-brand honey-almond low-fat yogurt any good? I wasn't planning on buying yogurt, really, but I got looking at that yogurt, and I thought, hmm, honey-almond could go either way - it could taste really good or really odd, but in the end, I went ahead and bought six things of it. So! I haven't tried it yet - Is it good or bad?

And then! I wandered into the home area, looking for a bath rug, and instead I found the prettiest bath towel in the woorrrrllllddddd. Seriously, this towel is gorgeous - it's got swallows and flowering trees on it. And they only had one left.

And it was $9.99, which is about four times what I would usually pay for a towel, but - so pretty! I bought it. The last one. hahahahahahahahahaaaaaaa.

Oh! But they still have one hand towel and one washcloth left. But! The hand towel is $7.99 and the washcloth is $5.99, which is SO FAR out of my normal spending on towels it's insane. But I may go back and see if they're still there. I checked online, and they're not on the web site, so this is my last chance.

So! Here I sit, feeling guilty about spending too much money on towels. But you know what? When I got home yesterday, and took that towel out of the bag and unfolded it, it was so dang pretty that I got out my hammer and some nails and hung that towel right on the living room wall. Like a tapestry.

It's very pretty.

Maybe he's ... an alien?

I'm beginning to think that The Runt may not be a cat at all. I'm beginning to think he's an alien from another planet.

First off, just look at his baby pictures. He doesn't look like a cat at all - he looks like some kind of mutant alien baby:

Add to that the fact that he's got an extra row of teeth, that he stares at the ceiling all the time, that he has a heart murmur ... maybe instead of a heart, he's got some kind of alien engine? Because just look at his new best friend:

See that car? See The Runt up on the windshield, HUGGING THE CAR? He's all, "are you my mommy?"

Does he hang out on his nice soft cat bed? No. On the couch? No. On the nine kabillion kitty-resting-places in the house? NO. He cuddles with the car.

Here's another look:

"I love you, Miss Kia."

Poor guy. He thinks he's found the mothership, and if he justs waits long enough, it'll beam him up to his home planet.

Aw, Runt. I hope you'll stay here with me for a while.

Pollyanna

I was reading a book of essays last night, mostly light-hearted stuff, when I came to an essay about something really, really sad. And I started to sniffle. And I was all, like, "Dammit! I was really enjoying this book, and they had to go and make me cry." I don't want to read anything sad, you see. And I don't want to watch any sad movies or listen to any sad songs, either.

Is there something wrong with me?

It's just ... life is hard ENOUGH, you know? We all go through our own share of sorrow, without having to borrow somebody else's. And sure, some sad things we HAVE to know about, like the Holocaust and stuff, in order to make sure that they never happen again. But in general? I'd rather be sunny. I mean, sure, I can bitch and piss and moan with the best of them (especially about Blogger, which is STILL refusing to recognize paragraph spacings), but overall, I'd rather just forget about the bad shit, when I can.

There's a scene at the end of The Life of Brian, where they're being crucified (!), and somebody starts to whistle, which leads to a song ...

"Always look on the bright side of life

Always look on the light side of life

If life seems jolly rotten

There's something you've forgotten

And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing ...

When you're feeling in the dumps

Don't be silly chumps

Just purse your lips and whistle - that's the thing

ANNDDDDDD

Always look on the bright side of life

Always look on the light side of life"

There's another verse that starts, "Life's a piece of shit, when you look at it,", but I can't remember the rest of that one.

And I mean, OF COURSE, it's supposed to be funny, and not, like, a LIFE LESSON or something, but seriously? I'll take the bright side.

Today's burning question

First off, thanks for all the input on yesterday's post about The Runt. I'm going to wait until his next vet visit, and then ask some more questions and hopefully make an informed decision, although honestly? I really don't see myself paying a grand a year for meds, especially for his particular condition. I think I'll probably go ahead and pop for the ultrasound, just to see what's going on in there, and then go from there. That's the plan right now, anyway. And it makes me feel like a bad pet owner, but maybe I deserve that.

Now! On to lighter fare. What is up with the teeth-veneers on all the reality-show contestants?

I was watching the Biggest Loser last night, which, that one dude who keeps whining is REALLY starting to get on my nerves, and WHY do they drag out the weigh-ins? I mean, I don't watch the show all the time or anything, but anytime they start with the weigh-ins I change the channel, because, COME ON, is there anything more boring than watching people get weighed? Jeez.

What's that? That's the POINT of the damn SHOW, you say? Yeah, well, whatevs. I just want to watch them exercise their guts out, and then watch Rulon cram doritos into his mouth in the middle of the night.

But! I was watching last night, and I noticed what pretty teeth one of the girl contestants had. And hey, that's dudes got great teeth, too! And him, and her, and ...

... veneers. Every single contestant on that show, as far as I can tell, was sportin' a bright shiny set of fake teeth. And now that I think about it, I don't recall any snaggle-teeth on Survivor, either, at least not since that great big farmer dude a few years back. What was his name? The one who got a consolation prize 'cause everybody loved him?

Hmmmm. Let's see. American Idol. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they've all got great teeth, too, not that I've been paying all that much attention this year.

Look, about all I know about veneers is what my hygienist was telling me the other day while she was cleaning my teeth, about how one of HER veneers fell off the other morning and it was a two-hour procedure to get it fixed back on, which leads me to think that they're like ... press-on nails? Maybe?

And I don't know how much they cost, either, except I'm pretty sure that it would be pretty damn expensive to outfit the entire cast of a reality show with them, but then again, those shows are pretty cheap to produce, so ...

... what's my point? Oh yeah, veneers! Do you have them? Would you get them if somebody offered to do it for free? Do you like your teeth?

See, I had braces when I was a kid, so my teeth are pretty straight, except I've got this one canine up top that decided it didn't want to be straight anymore, it wanted to be free! so now I've got a little bit of the snaggletooth going on, but honestly? I think it's kind of cute. It certainly doesn't bother me. And I'm sure that, after I smoked for thirty years, my teeth could be whiter, but then again, it's kind of scary to me when someone smiles and you have to shield your eyes from the glare of their blinding-white teeth. It just looks ... fake. Like veneers!

Oh my God! WHO was that dude on the Carol Burnett show? Lyle Waggoner? Remember him? And every time he smiled, they'd do a fake glint-thing with the camera? I wonder if he had veneers? Whoaaaa ...

I guess I won't be getting any press-on teeth any time soon. Or boob implants, as far as that goes. Or a nose job or a face lift or ... anything. Shoot. I guess I'm stuck with myself.

Cost v. Outcome

So! As I mentioned, while we were at the vet's the other night, we discussed The Runt's heart murmur. The vet would like to do an ultrasound in the fall to determine the extent of the problem, and possibly put him on heart medication, which is not cheap. And I'm kind of conflicted about the whole thing, especially since LOTS of cats live long, healthy lives with heart murmurs and without medication.

I guess it boils down to two conflicting things:

He. is. a. CAT.

He is my cat.

Let's say The Runt, I don't know, fell out of a tree. And broke his leg. And I rushed him to the vet, and she said, "We can fix him! It's a pretty bad break, so he will need surgery and pins and plates and recuperation time, but we can fix him! And it will cost $5,000."

Would I spend the five grand? Of course.

NOW, let's say that The Runt has a congenital health condition. Say, a HEART MURMUR. *cough* That he was diagnosed with as a kitten, and that has not gotten any worse as he ages. And NOW the vet says, "We can fix him! We can put him on heart meds, which usually help, although even WITH the meds, there is still a possibility that he could keel over from a heart attack. And for five years on the meds, it will cost $5,000.00".

Would I spend the five grand? Let me think about that one.

Five grand for meds that may or may not prevent a heart attack, for a condition that he may very well live his entire life with, without suffering any adverse effects, without being on the meds. Oh, and if he lives as long as Rocky did, that would be a total of sixteen grand, over his lifetime.

Okay, now I can hear what you're thinking - "What if it was your kid?" And all I can say to that is, but he's NOT my kid. He's a CAT. And like it or not, there is a difference.

Okay, so now I can hear you saying, "Well, if it was medicine for YOU, you'd spend the money, right?" And to that I say ... maybe? I know a LOT of people who go without prescribed medications, either because they can't afford them or they don't like the side effects or they don't agree with the diagnosis or whatever, so who's to say if I would take the meds myself? I'm not in that position.

All I know is, in this situation at least, I need to weigh cost versus outcome. Do I love The Runt? Absolutely. Am I ready to spend a bunch of money on medication that may or may not help, that may or may not be necessary? Let me think about that a little more.

Am I a bad pet owner? I don't know.

Bye-bye now, winter

... and don't let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.

Things that are coming up in my garden(s):

Bluebells!

Bleeding heart

Lily-of-the-Valley

Daffofils

Hyacinths

Chives

Tiger lilies

Weeping cherry

Foxgloves

Lungwort

Sweet william

Phlox

Columbine

Lupine

Globe flowers

Colts-foot (feet?)

and skunk cabbage by the creek

Dude! I think winter is maybe, truly, FINALLY over. Saturday night I was on the phone with Texas, and I kept hearing something outside. Some ... noise. I was all, like, "What the hell IS that?", and I opened up the window, and ...

PEEEEEEEEPERS!

The spring peepers are back! I made Texas listen over the phone, to the first real sign of spring. I even slept with a window open last night, so that every time I woke up, I'd hear the peepers calling away.

Ah, peepers. I'm SO GLAD you're back.

The Remedy

So! We all went to the vet's last night. And I will tell you right now, trying to find those two cats and get them into their carriers is the worst part of any trip to the vet's, and akin to the miracle of the loaves and the fishes once it's actually DONE. Once they've been lovingly placed (or, you know, SHOVED) into their carriers, my job is over. The vet does the rest.

We get to the vet's, and - oh! wait! The first thing that happens when we get to the vet's is that there's a Crazy Cat Lady in the waiting room, except it's a dude. Yep, I, too, thought that Crazy Cat Ladies were exclusively female, but as it turns out, men can be Crazy Cat Ladies, too. Who knew?

So anyway, the vet takes one look at The Runt's ear, nods her head, and says, "oh yeah." And I was all, "what is it? What is it?" And she says, "It's the ear meds."

As I've said before, The Runt has had wonky ears since he was a kitten. Various medications have been tried, and for the past six months he's been on an ointment that is squirted into the ear canal. Of course, once you let him loose, he shakes his head and ointment flies everywhere. As it turns out, the ointment contains corticosteriods, which can soften the ear cartilage over time, causing the ears to droop. While only one ear is currently drooping, the vet assured me that if we continued with those particular meds, pretty soon the other one would be drooping, too. Mystery solved!

So we are taking him off the super-duper expensive ear meds and putting him on ... mineral oil. Yep, from now on I am to squirt mineral oil into his ears once a week (FUN), and we'll go from there.

So! The Runt is fine. We DID discuss his heart murmur some more, but that is a WHOLE NOTHER POST, right there. Rest assured that he is FINE, and we will be re-evaluating the heart murmur sitch in the fall.

Oh! And I asked the vet about the whole staring-upward thing, and she said, "Um ... I have no idea. Maybe you have bats in your attic and The Runt can hear them up there?"

Bats. God, I hope not. I'd rather have ghosts.

Now! On to Little Girl. As it turns out, she did indeed have the problem that Anonymous mentioned in the comments of Wednesday's post. And I will tell you what - When the vet puts on the ol' latex glove - just one, mind you - you can be pretty sure your cat's about to get it.

And what happened next could be a "Dirty Jobs" episode all by itself, and for all I know it already IS. There was much yowling and losing of dignity, but Little Girl will be right-as-rain. And! The vet only charged twelve bucks for that little procedure, and Dear Vet? YOU'RE NOT CHARGING ENOUGH.

So! The cats are fine. I took them home and treated them to a little Fancy Feast, 'cause I'm a big spender like that, and they didn't even hold a grudge about the whole v-e-t thing, so all is well. The end!

Oh! And would anybody like to swap To-Do lists for this weekend? 'Cause the weather is supposed to be halfway decent here, i.e., above freezing/not snowing, and I've got a T0-Do list that is threatening to spill onto another page, so if anybody wants to trade, just let me know.

Unless your list includes doing what the vet did to Little Girl last night, in which case you can KEEP your list. Please.

Mug Shot

See his right ear? THAT'S why he's going to the vet's tonight.

And let me say right now, I feel PRETTY DAMN STUPID taking a cat to the vet's for a case of "Droopy-Ear".

(Actually, a quick glance at that wall calendar also reveals that it's not like I have anything better to do, so there's that ...)

ANYway, his ears have always been messed up, and now that one ear has started to DROOP, and he DOES have a heart murmur, and I swear to GOD, this is how strange I am, I'm all, like, "what if Droopy-Ear is a sign of diminished blood flow due to a worsening heart murmur? WHAT IF he's about to stroke out, and I could have prevented it if I had JUST PAID ATTENTION to the Droopy-Ear Syndrome ..."

Hahahahaha it's a barrel of laughs around my place, guys. Come on over!

So of course I call the vet's, and when I described the Droopy-Ear, the vet tech, instead of laughing and telling me to GET A LIFE, already, is all, "Oh, you'd better bring him in so the vet can take a look at him", because, COME ON, this is how they make their money, off of dipshits like me, so

we are going to the vet's tonight. The Runt with Droopy-Ear, and Little Girl with Scootchy-Butt.

Christ.

Enter pitchforks and torches, Stage Right

You know, I should KNOW better than to go off on these kinds of rants, but here I go, pissing off Blogland again ...

... it's just my opinion, but I really feel that a certain blogger* should have, maybe, oh ... STAYED BY HER DYING FATHER'S BEDSIDE instead of leaving to shuttle her kid to yet another preschool evaluation.

Okay. This strikes a nerve, because I was not at my own father's bedside when he died. He and my mom were living in Florida at the time. He had been diagnosed with cancer, and the doctors had given him six months to live, and of course, all of us family members were making plans to fly down to stay with him and mom. Six weeks after his diagnosis, two DAYS before I was scheduled to fly down to spend time with him, he died in the night. And it KILLS me that I wasn't there. I will always regret that I wasn't there to say goodbye.

So to read about this spoiled little twit blogger, who LEFT HER DYING DAD'S BEDSIDE because she had, you know, MORE IMPORTANT STUFF TO DO, just makes me livid.

Grrrrrrr.

(This is why Blogland hates me.) (If I don't show up here anymore, you'll know that this gal's friends hunted me down and killed me. Except I'm pretty sure we don't travel in the same, you know, bloggy circles, so I should be safe.)(And I mean, COME ON, she left her dying dad's bedside to take her kid to a routine appointment. SHEESH.)

*email me if you want the ID.

Maybe he's getting instructions from Ceiling Cat?

Okay, I am going to try to post this without manually inserting all the paragraph breaks in Html. If it comes up and then goes right back down, that means Blogger is still being an asshole. Here goes nothin'.

(updated) Ha! THAT went over like a lead balloon. Dear Blogger: I hate you.

A few months ago I mentioned The Runt's habit of staring upward at nothing.

Yeah, he's still doing it. In the above pic, he's staring up at a corner of the window. There are no lights in the backyard, so it's not like he's watching something outside. Here, he's staring at closed curtains:

And it's not just by the windows that he does it, either. He'll hang out on the couch in the living room or on the bed in my bedroom and just look at the ceiling, like there's a TV up there.

You know, I'm starting to wonder. His ears have been mucked up since he was a kitten. I wonder if he's got some kind of inner-ear imbalance that's relieved when he tilts his head up?

The cats have an appointment at the vet's tomorrow night- The Runt for his cloggy ears and allergies, and Little Girl for a condition that I call "scootch-butt". No, she doesn't have worms - that's been tested. Actually, I would PREFER worms to the condition she evidently has, which I am not going to discuss here because I am a delicate little flower. And so is Little Girl.

ANYhow, I'll have to ask the vet about The Runt's upward stare. Any ideas? 'Cause I'm stumped.

MVP's customer service can suck it

First off, kudos to BNG, who dug around in the archives here until she found a photo of me. Granted, it was just a headshot, but still, congrats, BNG - although you should probably know that I haven't been that blond in quite some time. *cough*

Now! On to the story! Back a few months ago, one of our employees was heading off for (presumably) greener pastures. So I called our service representative at our insurance company, MVP, to have the employee taken off of our health care plan.

My call went straight to voice mail, and after several days, the service rep still hadn't called back. Okay, fine, so I emailed her. Nothing. I faxed her our request. Still nothing, except for during this time period, we got a letter from MVP stating that our rates were going up.

Yeah.

I tried logging onto the MVP web site, which would not accept my log-in info. And by now, we were getting bills from MVP with this employee's coverage still on them, because I could not find one single way to contact MVP about his leaving the company. And our service rep was still not returning my increasingly-panicky calls. Panicky because, if we had to pay bills past this guy's coverage date, my boss was gonna shit a brick.

So! While trying to get this dude off our health care rolls, I started researching other health insurance plans, and I found one that was actually cheaper than suck-ass MVP for the same coverage. And I signed up with them, while trying to get disentangled from MVP.

Okay, so I know this is getting long and boring, so here we go, to the point, FINALLY:

The other day, I get a letter from our old MVP service rep. And it was, all, "we're sorry that MVP will no longer be an option for your employees" and blahblahblah, and it ended with, "Please feel free to contact me with any questions at - "

And she had whited out her phone number. Where her phone number would have gone, after "contact me with any questions at", there was just a big white space. I shit you not, this girl was SO DESPERATE that people NOT CONTACT HER for ANY REASON WHATSOEVER, which, incidentally, WAS HER JOB, that she whited out her f*cking phone number.

Dear MVP: Suck it. And get yourself some better service reps. Except, you know what? I've got a funny feeling that you train them to act like that.

And Mr. Obama? Bring ON that nationalized health care. It has GOT to be better than what we've got now.

Toop

Today marks the two-year anniversary of the day I quit smoking, which turned out to be a pretty bad day to try to quit, but I made it. Here's what I wrote about it last year, one year in.

Let's run the numbers again just for fun, shall we?

Number of cigarettes I would have smoked between April 3, 2009 and today, had I not stopped smoking on that date: 21,900.

Amount of money saved: $3,905.50. (As in last year's post, a clarification: I smoked cheap cigs I bought on line. I used a dollar figure of $3.56 a pack, since that's what my smokes cost at the time I quit. If I had been buying Marlboros at the corner Seven-Eleven, at today's price of eight bucks a pack (minimum), that number would have been - wait for it - $8,776.40.)

So! Two years in. It doesn't seem weird to be an ex-smoker; it seems weird that I ever did it in the first place. I wish I could take some of the smokers I know, the ones who say they just CAN'T quit, that they've tried and they've tried and they've TRIED and they just can't do it ...

... yeah, you can. I did.

Finder's fee

So! Here I am at the office, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, getting paid time-and-a-half to blog.

Awesome!

Seriously, I've been here two and a half hours now, and I have not done jack shit other than find a file that everyone (my boss and I) in the FREE WORLD (the office) had been looking for. Ha! I work with the most disorganized people ever, so files go missing all the time. And no, I am not going to take over other people's file systems, because I AM NOT THEIR MOTHER. (sore spot)

So! When I managed to find this particular file, which was filed CROSSWISE between two other stacks of files (WTF), it was a bright spot in my stuck-in-the-office Saturday.

What are you doing today? I hope it doesn't involved files in any way, shape, or form, unless you're, like, getting a manicure or something.

That ain't right

Okay, first of all, be sure to scroll down to today's earlier post, where we're chatting about all KINDS of stuff.

Now! I was reading the obituaries this morning, and you know how sometimes there's a photo of the deceased, along with the obit? And sometimes the picture was OBVIOUSLY taken, like, fifty years ago, which is kind of odd, but even WORSE are the more recent pics, with, like, Grandma on her deathbed with oxygen tubes in her nose. People! Nobody wants to see that while they're eating their morning cereal! Come on!

What? Why yes, yes, I DO read the obits while eating breakfast! What of it?

Okay, but the worst pics, in my mind, are the ones where the deceased's head was OBVIOUSLY cropped out of some larger shot. Come on, NOBODY bothered to take a picture of this dude by himself for the last twenty years? Oh, and just recently, there was an obit where they didn't even bother to crop the shot: It was a photo of two women, and you got to GUESS which one had croaked.

So! Let's skip to today, shall we, where I spotted this brand-y new twist on the obit pic:

Click here.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

*gasp*

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

OMFG. In case that link goes kerflooey at some point, it's an obituary where, instead of a photo of the deceased, there's a line drawing of a unicorn's head.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA AWESOME.

Now I've got to figure out what I want to have in place of a pic of me in MY obit. Hmmmm ... maybe I'll use my blog avatar? The one to the left of this post?

Holy shit this is FANTASTIC.

Whew!

Okay, we've got a lot to talk about today, so let's get busy, shall we?

First off, Snowpocalypto Part Kabillion missed us. THANK GOD. I swear, if I have to shovel that driveway ONE MORE TIME I am going to lose my shit. I'm already thinking about subcontracting out the lawnmowing this summer, because that's got to be the SECOND most annoying part of homeownership, right after shoveling snow, but then again, maybe I'd BETTER keep mowing the lawn myself, because

I had to weigh myself last night in order to weigh The Runt, who has some weird ear infection thing going on, and while The Runt's weight is fine, mine? Not so much. I mean, I've only gained, like, eight pounds over the winter, but Jeezus CHRIST I know the kind of effort it takes to lose eight pounds, and I really don't want to have to do that.

But! I won't HAVE to do it, if it will ever stay warm enough to melt the goddamn leftover snow off the hiking trails so I can get some freaking exercise, already. Sheesh. The Shred can only do so much.

Oh! And in other news, one of my co-workers tried to foist one of his made-up-out-of-the-blue, totally bizarre projects on me yesterday, and I told him "no". And then he started to ARGUE with me about it, so I basically shut him down. And after he went to lunch, my OTHER co-worker was all, "Whoa, I didn't know you had it in you!", and I laughed and said, "you have NO IDEA."

Seriously? If the first dude had come to me and said, "Jeez, I'm really swamped right now - could you possibly help me out with this (made-up-out-of-the-blue, totally bizarre) project?" Sure, I'd help him out. Hell, I'd come in on a Saturday and do it if I had to. But when, in the time-honored practice of offices everywhere, he tried to forcefully foist a bunch of bullshit off on "the secretary"? No. Just no. People can only treat you shabbily if you LET them. Word.

And! Was I the only one appalled by that "Mobbed" show last night? Where the guy decides to propose to his girlfriend with the help of a flash mob? WTF! I mean, I really enjoy (some of) the flash mob videos on Youtube, as long as nobody falls off the escalator and sues the shopping mall or whatever, but that whole thing last night was just WRONG. Especially that whole bizarre sub-plot about the jilted ex-girlfriend and just ... yuck. Cruel. Mean. Note to the guys: DO NOT try to throw a surprise proposal-and-wedding-all-in-one for your girlfriend. I will virtually GUARANTEE it will not end as well as last night's little mess eventually did. Jeez, now we can all look forward to failed-flash-mob-proposal videos that are sure to starting popping up.

But! In other entertainment news, did anybody else hear that segment on RadioLab yesterday about the deaf girl who got in a horrible accident and then her boyfriend basically SAVED HER LIFE by remembering something he saw in a movie? THAT was the most inspiring thing I've listened to in a long, long time. Seriously. Goosebumps.

Oh, and I just hit publish on this whole thing, and Blogger is STILL not paragraphing correctly! What's the problem, Blogger?

Well! That's what's up in my world today. What's going on in yours?