Happy Birthday, PB!

Today is Ponyboy's (approximate) fourth birthday.  My, how time has flown!  Granted, he came to me as a full-grown cat and not a kitten, so only two-and-a-half of those four years have been with me, but still, it's been an honor to care for him.

Happy birthday, Ponyboy!  and many more.

Crossroads

This afternoon at work, my boss, while speaking to a friend of his within my hearing in the office, referred to a black man as the n-word.  Again.  And I walked out.  Again.

But I can't keep doing this.  I can't keep working for this racist asshole.  I think it's time to go back to school. I'll have to work at the same time, obvs, but I can do that.  Time to get a degree under my belt, time to move on.  I can't work for this dinosaur anymore.  I could keep doing what I'm doing now (office admin), but I've been  wanting to go to college forever, so it might as well be now.

On the bright side, my anger led to some crazy creative stuff this afternoon.  I left the office, and I was so pissed off, and I'm, like, I MUST MAKE SOMETHING PRETTY!  I took a cheap old picture frame and Rockyfied it, and then I pulled a switchplate off the wall and modpodged a page from a bird book onto it, and then I busted out the Jillian and did a workout because I still needed to blow off some steam.

Oh, man.  Time to fish or cut bait.  Career advice welcome.

Oh great. Now I'm never going to sleep again.

I briefly considered going to see The Babadook this past weekend, but decided that given my aversion to all things scary, it would probably be a bad idea.  And then I ended up spending all weekend tie-dying the ceilings anyway.

Which is good, because I ended up scaring myself badly doing laundry* on Saturday, so if I had also gone to see The Babadook, it probably would have pushed me right over the edge.

But then, I was paging through the Sunday paper coupon section, and I came across an ad for ... this:

What. the. actual. F*CK.

It's a monkey doll.  A MONKEY DOLL.

*stifles a scream*

I couldn't help myself.  I had to google this company.  Surely this was a joke, right?  Surely people aren't actually buying ... infant monkey dolls?

*runs into the bedroom and hides under the bed*

I ... really?  Is this really a ... THING?

The company website had FIVE PAGES of monkey dolls.  FIFTY-ONE ENTRIES.

I am hoping that by putting these monstrosities up here, it will act as a kind of aversion therapy, inuring me to the horror that is monkey dolls.  That is my fondest hope at this point - that once having seen monkey dolls, I am now immune to the horror.

Hold me.












*I washed a sports bra in the with rest of the laundry, and somewhere between the bed (where I sort laundry) and the drawer where I keep my bras, it ... disappeared.  Just ... gone.  A GHOST STOLE MY BRA.

So! THAT happened ...

I got my tie-dye on this weekend.  Was fun!  And exhausting.  I did the actual dying on Saturday, and then spend FOUR HOURS yesterday on a ladder with my arms above my head, staple-gunning.  When I finally knocked off around three-thirty, I was EXHAUSTED.  I honestly can't remember the last time I was that tired.  Staple-gunning beats Jillian for exercise, I'll tell you what.

But!  The ceiling looks ... interesting.  Which is to say, *I* really like it, I think it is beautiful, but I can picture somebody else walking in and going "...um...".  Bottom line, it looks a thousand percent better than what it looked like before, so I am happy.  Plus, now that I've got some tie-dying (and overhead-stapling) experience under my belt, I can totally see myself doing other projects like this. Come visit me in my House of Odd!

Sadly, my camera's USB cable has stopped working, so I until I get a new cable, I won't be able to show you the results of my labor.  YOU ARE CRUSHED, I KNOW.

Here, let me console you with a picture of a frozen waterfall, downloaded before the cable died:

Pretty, no?  Prettier than my ceiling, even.

State Park

This past weekend, I went up to State Park.  (I keep falling farther behind with posting my hiking pics; I'll try to get them up more quickly.)

Anyhow, the geese were out in abundance:

 Mist was rising and it gave everything a muffled look:

 You could hardly see the mergansers through the fog:

Every time I see a beaver-hewed tree by the river, I wonder:  Are they trying to dam the entire river?  Because that seems kind of futile.  Maybe they're building a lodge on the riverbank?  Or just filing down their teeth?  Maybe beavers just gotta gnaw, same as ruminants gotta chew.  Hmmm. 

Even in January, there's color to be found:

This mallard is showing off his pretty wings - can you spot him?:

The days are starting to get longer.  Spring will be here RIGHT QUICK.

Well, look what I just came across

I was sorting through old photo files today and found this:

Awwwww.  A girl and her horse.  Good ol' Trigger.

Calling all hippies

I think I've talked before about the ceilings in my house.  They are awful, old acoustical tile.

I don't want to spend the amount of money it would cost to have them replaced, and they're impossible to paint.  So I got thinking ... maybe I could cover them some way.  Kind of like the top on a canopy bed, maybe I could drape material across the ceilings, to make them look pretty.


I decided to experiment.  I got out the ol' staple gun and half-assedly fastened a bedsheet to one corner to the living room ceiling.  (No, the ceiling is not actually yellow.  It's just the camera.)

The sheet held!  But that plain old sheet is awfully boring.  I wanted it to look like clouds, like the sky, like a pattern of air on the ceiling.  So I bought a bunch of plain white sheets, and some bottles of aquamarine Rit dye.

You see where this is going, right?  I am going to tie-dye the sheets in (hopefully) pretty patterns, white and aquamarine.  I've done some research and I'm pretty sure I've got the "dye" part down, now I just have to figure out the "tie" part, to get the look I want.  A marbled look.

Okay, all you old hippies.  Tell me your tie-dye techniques!

Tonight in Catlandia: Parts I, II, and Sodapop

Oh, Soda. *sigh*

Whitney Point Reservoir

A couple of weekends ago I had a chance to head up to the reservoir to do a little exploring.

That water just looks cold to me.  But there's something about an island ...

There must have been some good bugs in this tree:

It can get rather ... desolate around here this time of year:

I just love a big old barn - it's sad to see so many of them around here in disrepair.

Someday I'll buy a big old barn and renovate it and live there.  Me and the cats.  Ha.

Freaky Friday: Not even the bathroom is immune

I saw some sea-themed Christmas ornaments at Kohl's a while back, and decided that they were too pretty to be relegated to once-a-year-on-the-tree status.  Nope, these beauties were going to be year-round.

I still have a few more yet to hang.  I think they look very serene, swimming through the air.

Oh Christmas tree

I thought I'd end the year with some pics of the Christmas tree.  Happy New Year, everyone!  I know I'll be at home tonight curled up with a Whiskey Sour and the Twilight Zone marathon on TV.  Hope you all have plans for a great night. 

Recently Read

As usual, skip this if you wanna.  I feel like a lot of my posts are getting skipped, lately, so I figured I might's well throw this one in here.  Ha.

1.  Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess.  Memoir.  If you read her blog (and who doesn't?), you're familiar with her writing style, and this book is a series of blog-post-like vignettes.  Entertaining.

2.  A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams.  Novel set in the thirties about a woman, her best friend, and their romantic entanglements with the same man.  Eh, they all acted like a bunch of dipsh*ts, but it was a fairly entertaining read.

3.  One Step at a Time by Elena J. Hanuse - Oh, I am a sucker for walk-across-America books.  But this lady had her hubs follow her in an RV, so she could sleep in a bed every night.  Totally understandable, but not quite in the spirit of the genre.

4.  Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King - It's unusual to read a King book with no scary woo-woo stuff in it.  This is basically a police procedural novel.  I usually like the characters' back-stories as much as, or more than, the main plot in his books, and sadly, this book was lacking in that regard.  At "only" 400 pages, short for him, I got the feeling that maybe an editor took a good chunk out of this one.  Still a good read, if not one of his best.  Looking forward to reading his next one, Revival.

5.  Good-Bye, Boise ... Hello, Alaska by Cora Holmes.  Nonfiction account of a family living on a remote Alaskan island.  Very interesting.

6.  Movie Time!  Dallas Buyers Club is about a dude with AIDS in Texas in the early eighties who goes up against the FDA to provide drugs to fellow AIDS patients.  I really, really do not care for Matthew McConaughey, and that car commercial was just bizarre, but man, he is a good actor.  And Jared Leto was just astonishing as Rayon.

7.  Home to Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani - This author is quite popular, so I thought I'd give it a try.  This book is evidently one in a series, and not the first one.  I couldn't get into it and didn't finish it.

8.  Movie time again!  I saw Into the Woods on Christmas day, the first showing of the morning, and that theater was sold out.  Usually when I go to the movies on  Christmas it's a ghost town, but not this time.  See review here.

9.  Another movie review:  Johnny Got His Gun, from 1971.  An anti-war film which I first became aware of thanks to Metallica's song One  many years ago, this movie is about a severely injured WW1 vet.

10.  Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas.  Memoir about coming of age in Harlem in the 30s and 40s.  Good.



So that's what I've been reading/watching lately.  And you?

So, my scroogey, racist boss insisted I come in to work on Friday morning, but by noon, my obligations were fulfilled, and it was a beautiful, sunny day, so I headed for the woods.

Ah, the woods.  Good for what ails ya.

Movie Review: Into the Woods

Saw it yesterday morning.  It was the first showing of the day, and it was sold out. I got one of the last tickets. Woot! It's a Christmas miracle!  There were a few seats in the row ahead of me that had actually been oversold, several times, which led to some interesting usher interactions to watch while the previews were playing.    I've never seen the Broadway show, so it was new to me.  Meryl Streep as the witch is fantastic, of course.  For those of you who might be going to see it because of Johnny Depp, be advised that his part is only about five minutes long.

The story moves right along, and although the complexity of Sondheim's lyrics don't really lead to any big showstoppers, I was singing "Into the woods, la la la la" and "AAAAAAGONY" all afternoon, and the melodies sure do stick with you.

Very entertaining, and a fine way to spend a couple of hours.

Just in time

Yeah, I know I posted this before, but it's so cute I'm doing it again. Merry Christmas!

On the tenth day of Christmas, somebody gave to me ...

 ... ummmm ...

yeah.  I have NO IDEA.  Note the pointy spike on one end.  A zombie-killing weapon?  I'm stumped.  Ideas, anyone?

What am I even supposed to say to that? (Note: Don't worry, this post isn't about cats)

Okay, first off, this post is NOT ABOUT CATS, so be relieved.

So, I was at work this morning, and one of my jobs is receptionist, so my work area is by the front of the office.  Around eleven, a man walked through the front door, file folder in hand.

"Good morning," I said.  "Can I help you?"

"Wow, you look really tired," the man said.  "I'm here for a meeting  with (insert name here)."

Okay.  Um.  I wasn't tired,  not really, but I did look a little tired; I had noticed that myself when I had glanced in the mirror earlier.  I guess it comes with the territory of being older than dirt, and combine that with a Monday morning after a busy, lousy weekend, and yeah.   I looked tired.

"I ... uh ... feel okay," I told the man.  "I'll let (insert name here) know  you're here."

You know what?  I'm not sure that it's really appropriate to tell a total stranger, "you look really tired."  But maybe I'm being oversensitive?  I dunno.  What do you think?

Now maybe I'm wondering if I should have said, "I may look tired, but you sure look ugly."  Ha.

Dear Readers, She Took the Cats

In the end,  I decided I did not want to be involved in a pissing match over ownership of Callie and Bindi.  I knew that while conditions at her home were overcrowded to say the least, that Callie and Bindi would be well fed there and would be warm and out of the cold. They are feral and not particularly interested in human companionship; if they had been, I never would have let them go.

I had always worried about having unvaccinated cats in the house, especially with Ponyboy's immune system issues.  I had worried that if Callie or Bindi had become injured or ill, I would have no way to get them to the vet, outside of live-trapping them.  They had never been leuk-tested or vaccinated against leukemia, something that they could have picked up from one of the neighborhood cats and brought home to my cats.

To put it plainly, I was not sure that I was prepared to care for these two ferals for the next twenty years, or however long they would live.  

She was not willing to sign them over to the new rescue, and I was not willing to keep them  indefinitely in limbo as far as ownership went.  I made a judgement call.

I cannot help but feel that I threw those two ferals under the bus tonight, and feel free to judge me on that.  I just had to weigh the needs of my own cats, and future fosters, against the needs of these two, and in the end, I let them go.

I told  them not to take any crap from anybody.  I told them that they were tough cookies, and would be just fine  in their new home.  I told them that now they would be reunited with their brother and sister, who are living at that home.  I told them to not forget to write.

And  then I cried.

All she had to do was sign a piece of paper

I wrote a little while ago about how I was no longer affiliated with the rescue for which I had been volunteering.  Long story short, the woman running it had gone from "rescue" to "hoarder", and I did not want to be associated with that.

I have started volunteering for a new rescue, a well-run, well-funded rescue, who offered to put Callie and Bindi, the feral fosters, under their umbrella.  I would continue to foster them, and the new rescue would pay for their vetting/food/etc.  The ideal scenario!

The new rescue contacted the old rescue, as the woman running the old rescue needed to sign a release form transferring ownership of the ferals.  A formality which happens all the time between rescues, usually when one rescue becomes overcrowded.

She refused.

Nope, she said.  She wanted them back.

In the year and a half I have been fostering these cats, she never once asked how they were doing.  She never once offered to help pay for their food (I did the math; I have spent well over $500.00 in food alone for these two cats), or to take them to the vet to get their shots updated, or even to pay for their flea treatments.  Not once.


And now she wants them back.  Out of pure spite.

Oh, and then she qualified it.  Well, she said, she guess she'd let me adopt them, as long as I paid her a hundred bucks, and as long as the new rescue agreed to never, ever hold adoption events in the store where she currently holds hers, and as long as nobody ever said anything bad about her ever.  (I'm not even kidding.  She had inserted a requirement in her list of demands about not smack-talking.)

Well.

 










Legally, this is a tricky area.  I have had possession of the cats for over a year, during which I made repeated verbal requests for her to come and get them, which she ignored.  As recently as October, I had asked her to come take the cats, with no reply.  However, her name is on their most recent vet records, from when they were spayed, so technically, she could make a case for ownership.  BUT.  See again:  I have the cats.


Complicating the matter is the fact that these cats are not really adoptable.  They are feral, but honestly I'm not even sure they'd make good barn cats (the fate of some ferals), because they're not real great hunters.  But again, I am prepared to continue to care for these cats.  And I would have no problem with them going to another home, and until recently I would not have had a problem with them going back to her home.  But not now.  Not when there are far, FAR too many cats at her home because she won't stop taking them in.  Her home is currently overrun with cats who are not up to date on their vaccinations, who are not leuk-tested, and who are not taken to the vet when they are ill, because she is overwhelmed and out of control.

But little miss crazypants wants the two ferals back.

 The new rescue and I informed her that her attempts at extortion and coercion were not appreciated.  That we would hold events whenever and wherever we wanted.  We advised her that free speech was still a thing.  That if she wanted the cats back, she would have to come to my home this Saturday and crate them herself.  That if she did not show up on Saturday, she was, basically, sh*t out of luck.

We'll see if she shows.

Crazy cat people.  Holy F*CK.

My car is ready! My car is ready!

I got a call from the body shop this afternoon - my hero car has been repaired and is ready to be picked up.

After two weeks driving around in an Accent, I cannot WAIT to get my brave Elantra back.  I may KISS that car when I see it.

It's a Christmas miracle!


 

Oh my god is this a thing now? Please tell me that this isn't, like, a thing now ...

I was leafing through a Sears flyer this morning and came across this:

And I was all, "A onesie?  Is that model really wearing a onesie?"  But the flyer described it as a "printed jumpsuit".  Oh, okay.  That makes it okay then.  NOT.

And then I thought, well, maybe it's supposed to be pajamas.  Like that weird robe thing that was big a few years ago.  But the model is wearing shoes - why you would you wear shoes with your p.j.s? 

It was time to go online to the Sears site and do a little "jumpsuit" (their word, not mine) investigating.  Which is when I came across this:

Okay, so, she's wearing it outside, so I'm guessing they're not trying to market these as p.j.s?  But my God, that is one hideous ... article of clothing.  If she wasn't anorexic, there would definitely be some camel toe going on, there.  And why is Sears using an anorexic model?  Sears?  What is wrong with you, Sears?  And those sunglasses ... Mary Kate?  is that Mary Kate Olsen?  There is so much I do not understand in that picture.

I kept going.

Oh my God ... this has to be a joke, right?  A prank?

I just ... really?  REALLY?! 

And then I came across the piece de resistance.  I had NO idea there was a market for clothing for double-peg-legged pirates, but - VOILA!:

 Let's just ... ignore the double built-in peg legs for a moment, if we may, and look at the hands.  Look at the hands.  I guess this is a ... rear view?  I DO NOT UNDERSTAND OH PLEASE MAKE IT STOP.

Sears.  *shakes head sadly*  I don't get it.  AT ALL.