She. and. her. shaaaaaadow .......

While we're talking about Little Girl, I thought I'd put up these pics I took a few weeks ago, back when the world was still all white.






The snow had finally packed down enough so that the cats could walk on top of it, instead of floundering through.




Little Girl would paw at the snow, and then examine her paw, as if to say, "when is this stuff gonna GO AWAY already?"





I love the way her shadow stretched out behind her.

Today, just a few weeks later, it's rainy, and the tiger lilies and irises (and all the mystery stuff the last owner evidently planted - crocuses and daffodils, so far) poke out of the ground a little further every day. We may still get snow; heck, we've been known to get snow here on Mother's Day, for the love of Pete, but the worst is over.



So I hope.

She's a traveller

Little Girl has been giving me fits lately - she takes off and is gone for hours.


On Saturday, she left the house around ten a.m. and didn't come back until almost 7:30 that night. Yesterday, she was out the door by seven a.m., and I didn't see her again until after dark.

Saturday was especially worrisome, because I was working in the yard for a good chunk of the day, and usually when I do that, the cats come around to supervise. Faithful Runt was glad to oblige, but not Little Girl, even when I called and called and CALLED for her. Only to go inside, truly frightened, at dusk, to discover that she had done an end-run around me via doggy door and was (FINALLY) inside eating her dinner.

Where does she go? Someplace covered, because when she came in last night, it had been raining for a while, but she was fairly dry. I would assume she was double-dipping, i.e., hanging out and eating at two houses, but she wears a collar with my phone number on it, and I would think I'd get a call if someone had an extra cat at their house.

She's been spayed, so she's not out getting frisky. She's not scratched up, so she isn't fighting with other cats.

And I have to say, poor Runt is all out of sorts when she's gone. He paces, and goes in and out, and hops up in the cat tree so he can look out the window, watching for his sister.

Where do you go, Little Girl?






Ask my feral mama, she says. I'm not tellin'.

Last night's American Idol

'
'
Dear Miley Cyrus:

PUT SOME PANTS ON!!


That is all.

Recently Read

Skip it if you wanna.



1. Promise Not To Tell by Jennifer McMahon - Murder mystery. Interesting, and an okay read.

2. Under the Dome by Stephen King - Whew, this one took me a couple of months to get through. Not that it wasn't interesting; it just takes me a while to plow through a thousand pages. It's a novel about a community sealed off from the rest of the country - who did it, and why? I LOVED the big reveal - when you find out, you'll be reminded of an old Twilight Zone episode. It's typical King - Long, with lots of interesting characters, a plot that keeps you turning the pages, and an ending that's an absolute barn-burner. Oh, and there was one passage, just a couple of sentences, actually, that made me cry. It's been a long time since a book did that. One quibble - characters kept saying "clustermug", which may indeed be what they say in that part of the country, but where I come from, it's "clusterfuck", and I kept wondering why he didn't just go ahead and use it. Good book - good read.

3. Lark and Termite by Jayne Phillips - Novel about a young woman and her disabled brother in the fifties. It got good reviews, but I felt distanced from the main character and gave up about halfway through. I might try it again sometime.

4. Making Shit out of Sticks - haha, not really. I DID get a book out of the library called "Making Furniture from Twigs" or some such, because that willow tree out back is shedding like crazy - but I took a look at the diagrams and thought "nope".

5. If The Creek Don't Rise by Rita Williams - Memoir of an African-American woman raised by her grandma out west - interesting.

6. Dogwood by Chris Fabry - I really, really liked his book "Junebug", so I thought I'd like this one, too, but sadly, I just couldn't get interested.


7. Okay, let's do a movie review! (500) Days of Summer is a cute romantic comedy. There's no explicit sex scenes, in case you're looking for something to watch when the folks are visiting. It's bright, and funny, and not a bad way to spend a couple of hours.


So that's what I've been reading and watching lately. "Under the Dome" was the best of the bunch. How about you - read, or watched, anything good lately?

Notes from the weekend

1. When calling your cat who has been missing all day (I was so worried), it's best to call her by her nickname, Gee Gee. Because wandering around the backyard calling out "Little Girl! Little Girl!" is probably going to make the neighbors nervous.



2. That patch of ice WILL make you fall. Do NOT try to cross it because you WILL fall. Whoops; too late. Ouch.



3. BONES! I have them:






These aren't the ones from the side of the road. Mom and I were walking down by the creek yesterday when to what should my wondering eyes appear but a deer skull! Woot! Further examination revealed the rest of the bones. I do feel sorry for that poor lady we ran into on the way back who greeted us with, "Hi! What a nice day for a walk ............" and then trailed off as her eyes traveled down to the big ol' bag of bones I was carrying. On a related note, I wonder if someone from the FBI will show up at my door if I google "how to clean bones". Let's try that out.

4. My neighbor T. came over and chatted for a while when I was working on the front garden. Later on, I traded some just-started sunflower plants for a piece of homemade cherry pie from my neighbor L. My neighbors rock. And I definitely got the better deal on that trade.

5. I think I'm going to wear chain mail the next time I have to put new flea collars on the cats. Jesus CHRIST those claws are sharp. It's just new collars, cats; calm down already.

6. The prayer flags are up!

So pretty!

Freaky Friday!

Back around this time last year, when I had been looking at houses for months and hadn't seen much I even wanted to bother to put an offer on, I heard an old wives' tale about how if you wanted to attract a boyfriend, you should hang a mirror over your bed.



Well. I didn't necessarily want a boyfriend, but I did want a house. I got a mirror at the thrift store, and I put some illustrations of houses on it, so the ju-ju gods wouldn't get confused and send me a boyfriend instead. Then I started adding on stuff I picked up on walks, acorns and feathers and stuff, so that my new place would have a nice big yard. I added on stick figures of The Runt and Little Girl and myself, and put Rocky on top to supervise. And as time kept passing, and I kept looking at houses I didn't like, I kept adding to the mirror.






Please ignore the gal with the bedhead.



I don't know if the ju-ju mirror helped or not, but it IS hanging in the kitchen of my new house.

Just call me Jessica

Remember that TV show, the one with Jessica Simpson, and her hubby Nick Lachey (or however you spell his last name), and in that one episode, she's got a can of tuna, only she's all confused, because it's Chicken of the Sea brand, and she's all, "Well, is it tuna? Or is it chicken?"

Yeah.

I am currently pondering the status of Animal Crackers.

Are they crackers? Or are they cookies?

I mean, the bag says they're crackers. Animal Crackers. But they taste like cookies. Kind of shortbread-ish. But then again, there's that Shirley Temple song, "Animal crackers in my soup", which would seem to indicate cracker status, because you're not gonna put cookies in your soup. But then again, I've never heard of ANYBODY putting animal crackers in their soup, outside of that one song, so that would lean toward the cookie side of the debate.

And let's not forget, you can also purchase frosted animal crackers, and who the hell would frost an actual cracker, so maybe cookie it is.

Cookie? Or cracker?

I'm so confused.

Breaking News!

The Bleeding Hearts are up!

They start out as little spears of red fringe poking out of the ground. Two months from now, they'll look like this:



I'm so excited! These are some of the plants I moved from the old place, and because I moved stuff in August, possibly the WORST time of the year to try to move perennials, I had no idea if anything was going to make it. But the Bleeding Hearts are up! Oh, the tiger lilies are coming up, too!

Spring is coming.

People of Walmart

I had to go to Walmart last night. I try to avoid it whenever possible, and I absolutely WILL NOT go to Walmart on the weekend, because the people there fill me with rage, and there are exponentially more of them there on the weekend. Seriously, I can walk into Walmart on a Saturday feeling just fine, and by the time I leave, I'm ready to go do a drive-by shooting.


So! Weeknights at Walmart are decidedly less insane-making, preferably Monday or Tuesday. And last night, as I was shopping in the (relatively) quiet store, I noticed something that's struck me before: The most crowded aisle in the store is always, always the chips-and-snacks aisle. We're talking, you can't even get DOWN that aisle, it's so crowded.


Least crowded aisle? Fresh produce. It's like a ghost town.


And I was all ready to get all judge-y and shit, but you know what? Fresh produce is expensive. Junk food is cheap. So I get that if you have limited dollars to spend, you're going to spend it on the stuff that will fill you up. I mean, I can totally see why Ramen noodles are so popular with the struggling-college-student crowd. Four for a buck?! Yeah way!


No judging here. Today, at least.

Spongebob Squarecat

Hey, she like right angles - nothin' wrong with that.

Freaky Friday!

I bought a box of deer antlers at a flea market a while back. The best ones I hung in a doorway; I still had a bunch left that I wasn't sure what to do with, until I decided to arrange them in a display. Kind of like flowers. Or not.

Every day I drive past a spot where somebody field-dressed a deer not far from the side of the road, and the entire ribcage is right there. (Holla! I live in the sticks now.) You have no idea how tempted I am to grab those bones; one of these days it just might happen, if coyotes don't beat me to it.

First World Problems

Hahaha - Sorry about that - "First World Problems" - do you dislike that phrase as much as I do? The first time I heard it, it just grated somehow - it just sounds so, I don't know, condescending or something. And now, of course, it's all over bloggyland, so I guess I'll just have to tough it out for awhile.

Oh! And another phrase that drove me crazy from the get-go is "old soul". I do not like "old soul". If you want to call someone wise, go ahead, but unless we're talking about Vishnu or something, you might want to steer away from "old soul". It's been done. and done and done and done. I'm waiting right now for someone to call Corey Haim an "old soul".

Ooooookay, now that I've wandered about as far off track as I can, let's get to the point. I used "First World Problems" {shudder} as the title today because I'm about to talk about money and the lack thereof. And Ex, I am telling you RIGHT NOW, if you're gearing up to chime in about how if we all just got advanced degrees and cushy jobs like you, there'd be no problems, well ...... aw, go for it. It's always nice to hear another view. Here's my story .....


On Monday, my co-workers and I got some bad news of the financial kind.

Nothing earth-shattering, nothing to land me in the poor house, but it's always disheartening to discover that not only are you not getting a raise, you are actually going to be taking home less money.

And again, while this was no way going to ruin my world, it was a blow. And I was worried. Worried about how I was going to make my budget stretch that much farther, and worried that at almost fifty, I wasn't making more money and was actually starting to slide backward - never a direction you want to go.

Oh, and the reason for all this financial woe? MVP, our f*cking health insurance company, who decided to jack premiums 17% this year. Because they can. Meaning it will now cost my employer six grand a year per employee for health insurance. No dental, no vision, big-co-pay health insurance.

If there are any right-wing, tea-party, no-nationalized-health-care wingnuts reading this right now? KISS MY ASS.

Ahem.

So anyway, I spent a couple of uneasy nights re-working the old budget and trying to figure out a way around the problem, and I came up with a solution. I would still be making less money, but it would be coming out of my vacation hours, instead directly out of my weekly income*, and I thought it would work for both my company and I, but I wasn't sure if I should present it to the boss or not. And I kept worrying. And fretting.

So! Yesterday afternoon, the boss could evidently tell something was wrong, and he called me into his office and asked me to spill.

I started to explain, about how this financial loss would be hard for me to fill, and ..... oh f*ck me sideways ...... I started to cry.

I HATE it when I cry at work. The guys don't cry at work, for Pete's sake - why do I have to cry?

In retrospect, I guess some of what caused yesterday's tears is that I spent a long time at the financial edge. Then I finally started making more money, working hard, getting secure, and to start going backward was just ....... no. HELL NO. Waaaaaa.

And when you are the sole breadwinner in your household, when there is no spouse or significant other to help absorb the blow, well, it's up to you to hold off the damn wolf at the door. And that's scary.**

But! Happy ending! As soon as I started to spill, the boss said, "Oh yeah, I meant to call you aside after that meeting ...... it doesn't apply to you."

'{wiping tears away} '{feeling really f*cking stupid}

Yay! No ramen noodles for me.

But here's thing: In this shit-tastic economy, where the banks and the fat cats get bailed out and the rest of us get told to go piss up a rope, this kind of thing is happening to a lot of people who are NOT getting told that it doesn't apply to them. I just happened to be incredibly lucky.


And I am grateful. And worried about what happens next year, when MVP inevitably decides to jack their rates yet again.

And I am glad that I dodged the bullet this time.



*I know that makes no sense, but there is no way in hell I am going to go into any more detail about financial stuff here. Sorry.


**See also: That's being an adult. Suck it up. Jaysus. I annoy myself.

Chapter Six, In which I am a big fat CHICKEN

So! Sunday was sunny and warm (Forty-eight degrees! Heat wave!), and I went for a nice long walk in the hills around my house. I walked holes in my socks. There was still a lot of snow on the ground, so I stuck to the roads. And I picked out one road, which circled around and came back to another road, and started walking up it. And I walked, and walked, and walked, passing fields and woods and occasionally a house, and then I headed down a hill toward a farmhouse.


And I heard a dog barking.


No big deal. Lots of people keep dogs. And dogs bark. I hear dogs barking all the time when I'm walking.


But this dog sounded like a BIG dog. And then he came out from around the side of the farmhouse, and he WAS a big dog. A great big Rottweiler. Big. With huge big muscles and a great big neck that I swear looked bigger around than his head.


And I froze. I was still up the road, about thirty yards away. I could see the dog clearly, but I couldn't see if he was on a chain, or loose. And there was a truck in the farmhouse driveway, but that doesn't mean that somebody is home.


And I really, really wanted to continue down that road, to see what I could see, but I didn't. I could not walk past that dog. I turned around and went back the way I came.


The truth? I am scared of dogs. Barking dogs frighten me in an awful, visceral way that I can barely describe. When I saw that Rottie coming around the corner of the farmhouse, barking his head off, I just wanted to rewind time to back before it happened, because I wanted to die, I was so damn scared.


And here's where somebody says, "Oh, that dog's probably a big old sweetie! You could've walked right up to that cutie-pie and he would've rolled on his back for a tummy rub! Rottweilers are great big babies!"


And maybe that's true.


But it could ALSO be true that the dog in the yard had escaped from his pen and was not friendly AT ALL and was having a BAD DAY and maybe also had rabies like that dog in Cujo and maybe he was going to charge at me and rip my damn throat out and .......


I turned around.

I am scared of barking dogs.



That's my little confession for the day.

Bloggers who drive me crazy

Okay, so I've been waffling on posting this for pretty much ever, because I'm worried that lately I've gotten a little, well .... extra-snarky. There's all kinds of bloggers out there vowing to be kinder and gentler on their blogs and ...... that's not me. So proceed with caution. But be advised that NONE OF YOU are on this list, so rest easy. And I'm specifically calling out peeps who are making good money and a degree of popularity off their blogs, not people doing it for grins and giggles in anonymity, like me. :)

Bloggers who drive me nuts:

1. Bloggers who only post once every couple of months or so, and then only to explain that they're taking a break. Honey, if you never post, you're not "taking a break". You're "no longer a blogger".

2. In similar vein to #1, bloggers who stop blogging, but then sporadically start up again, only to quit once more. You're in or you're out - make up your mind. I'm lookin' at you, Miss D*x*e.

3. Bloggers who get rich from their blog (yes I am jealous - very, very jealous) and then evidently decide that they're "too big to blog", because their post output drops precipitously. Hi, D**ce!

4. In a similar vein to #3, bloggers who exhaustively catalog their book tours/home renovations/major purchases, all of which are made possible by the people who read their blogs, or used to until the bragging got to be too damn grating. (I am jealous, okay? Don't make me read about your swag!)

5. Bloggers who do entire entries composed of nothing but dozens of photos of their basset hound, who hasn't moved an inch since the Bush administration. Holla, Pion**r W*m*n!

6. Bloggers who can't get over a bad experience. Dwelling never did anybody any good.

7. Bloggers who ask for money. I mean, if you have cancer or something, OF COURSE I will try to help you out, but if you're shilling for the two grand to fix Fido's *insert doggie medical condition here* ...... really? You don't have two grand? No offense, honey, but you're living waaaaaaay too close to the financial edge. That, or you don't want to fork over the two grand you were saving for that big-screen TV to instead save your dog's life.

8. Any blogger who uses bad clip-art. Blech. Sparkles and animation pretty much guarantee a "delete".

ha, so yeah, one of these days, an angry mob of people I've dissed on here is going to show up at my door with torches and pitchforks. And then I'll be on the local evening news.


How about you? Got any blogs that drive you crazy? (like this one?) Snark away in the comments!

It's real, in the same way that pro wrestling is "real"

Notes from a recent bout of reality-tv watching:


If I was on the current stint of Survivor, I'd be sitting in jail right now for throttling Coach to death. That dude needs to SHUT UP and SIT DOWN.


I really, really want to like Ruby, that gal on the Style network who's trying to lose a bunch of weight. She's pretty, and gracious, and she has a gorgeous smile. But my GOD, the WHINING .... and she just keeps sabotaging herself over and over and over. She's all, "Oh, boo hoo, I had a bad day NOMNOMNOMNOM." Buck up, honey. If you had just stayed on track to begin with, you would have lost the damn weight by now. Oh, but then she wouldn't have a show .....


I can't watch Kitchen Nightmares anymore. I got tired of Ramsay's temper tantrums. Watching people get bitched at and humiliated just gets old after a while. The thing that kills me, though, is that sometimes he tries to humiliate someone and they're just, like, "yeah, right back atcha, tool", which does crack me up some.


Who the hell is that weird dude on LA Ink - the one with the English accent and his own shop and the bad attitude who keeps pushing his glasses up? I can't figure out where he came from - I guess I missed some episodes. And I also somehow missed that ditzy blonde chick getting canned - I would have liked to have seen that.


I used to like Millionaire Matchmaker, but that lady is just .... grating. I have totally weird crushes on both the Dirty Jobs and the American Pickers dudes. Hoarders just gets on my nerves. Throw the shit out, already! And did you see that episode where the lady's husband just ..... disappeared? For, like, thirteen months? If I was her, I would've started to move some of that crap around to see if he was underneath it. I cannot. stop. watching the Duggars, even though I know I shouldn't. The old dude on Pawn Stars creeps me out. I want to take some of those gals on Sixteen and Pregnant and just SHAKE them. He's just not that into you, honey! I think that the American Loggers show is disgusting - there's nothing entertaining about despoiling the earth. And I can't watch Animal Cops since Rocky passed away.



Holy F*CK, I watch too much TV.

Freaky Friday!

I know, I know ...... I said I was going to call it F*cked-up Friday. That just seemed a little crude, so I decided to go with Freaky Friday, in which every Friday (or every Friday that I remember, anyway), I will post a photo of some of the weird shit around my house.

First up:

These are stuffed zombie-things. The one on the left has wings; I call the one on the right Disco Ballerina. (I don't KNOW why, okay?) I like them, although company is inclined to ask, "What the hell are those?"* Truthfully, company could say that about a lot of the shit in my house; hence, Freaky Fridays.

Coming soon: Bones!

Oh! In totally unrelated news, both the plumbing-fixture installer (my niece's boyfriend), who showed up LAST Saturday an hour late and so drunk he could barely walk**, and the furnace repair dude, who was SUPPOSED to be at the house last Saturday and never showed at all, are supposed to be working at the house tomorrow. Want to lay odds on who will actually show up and when? And we could throw in a side bet on drunk v. sober, if you'd like.


*Safest answer: Cat toys. Just about anything is acceptable as long as people think it's a cat toy.

** I sent him home. No drunkenly-installed plumbing fixtures at my house!

American Idol

They re-arranged the ENTIRE SCHEDULE so that ONE GIRL could recover from a mystery illness? Oy. Methinks they're a little worried about the talent pool this year.

And maybe I've just got a sensitive ear, but the same thing was bugging me last night as in years past: About half the gals were off-key. BADLY off-key. As in, "ow, my freaking EARS!"* off-key. The judges can call it "pitchy" all they want: Girls, you are OUT OF TUNE.

Oh, and in other news: If you received a really, really odd email from me yesterday, it wasn't me. Somebody hacked into one of my email accounts and started flinging spam around as fast as a monkey slings poo. Hopefully the problem has been fixed. I didn't even know they could do that, to be honest. Lesson learned!



*Gratuitous "Simpsons" reference.

Eleventy

First off, My Inflammatory Writ is celebrating her one-year smoke-free anniversary! Woot! You've been an inspiration to me, Writ.

Now, let's do the numbers:

Number of cigarettes I would have smoked between April 3, 2009 and today, had I not stopped smoking on that date: 9,900.

Amount of money saved: $1,765.50.

Back when I was a smoker, it seemed like NOBODY else smoked. Once I quit, I saw smokers EVERYWHERE. And it seemed to me that a lot more poor people smoked than better-off people.

So I did a little bit of research, and sure enough, it's true: Poor people are more likely to smoke. Something about being socially disenfranchised. I don't know, but it seems like a pretty piss-poor decision to buy a pack of smokes when your kids are dressed in tattered clothes. I mean, COME ON.

Oops, there I go, being all judge-y there. All I know is, that's seventeen hundred bucks that I would not have right now if I hadn't kicked the habit when I did. And no, I'm not going to go back and try and figure out how much I blew on cigarettes over my thirty-year smoking career, 'cause than I'll feel like an even bigger idiot. Kids: DON'T START.

Moving on ......

Stuff you didn't know

Heather over at Welch Happenings has tagged me to reveal ten things you don't know about me. I think I did a similar meme a while back, but I'm too lazy busy to look it up, so I'ma gonna do it again. Some of this stuff you probably do know, at least if you've been reading here for a while, but here goes.

1. I am a Notary Public. If you need something notarized, just send me plane fare, and I'll be on my way. Heh.

2. Back when "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" was insanely popular, I came thisclose to making it on the show. I choked in the final phone interview, though, and blew it. It did not help that I've never seen The Godfather, and did not KNOW the birth order of Fredo's(?) siblings. Sheesh.

3. I don't understand Facebook. Even though I had some good times in high school, there is not a single person from back in the day with whom I care to reconnect.

4. I played drums for a couple of years, but now, if you handed me a pair of sticks and pointed me to a drum set, I wouldn't know what to do. Similarly, I was in all things band and choir in school, but I can no longer read music. Selective forgetting, or something.

5. I had a horse when I was a kid. He was a Palomino named Trigger. We didn't live on a farm, so my folks boarded him at a local riding facility. I rode Western, and thought that the girls who rode English were just way too prissy.

6. I almost joined the Air Force straight out of high school. Talk about a narrow miss. I would have been miserable in the military. (That, or I would have been insanely great at it. Who knows? That plane has flown.)

7. When I was a kid, I was terrified of the song "Seasons in the Sun". I would freak out every time I would hear it.

8. Until I bought my house this past summer, I had never mowed a lawn. Ever.

9. In high school, I was the girl who was rumored to have slept with the band director. (I didn't.)

10. I don't know how to blow my nose. I never learned as a little kid, and now any effort to blow into a tissue turns into a frustrating comedy routine.

Aaaaaand here's a couple of extras:

11. When I'm doing a task I don't enjoy, I sing to pass the time. I'll bet all my neighbors laughed their butts off while I was shoveling snow last weekend. Hey, "King of the Road" is a classic!

12. I can't eat anything mint-flavored, because it just tastes like toothpaste to me.


There ya go! Thanks for inviting me to play, Heather! And if anybody wants to play along on their own blog, consider yourself tagged by me.

Winter

Return from Mount Kilimanjaro:

Little Girl gets up on her haunches and peers around like a meercat to see over the snowbanks.

When they get tired of the snow, they torture the indoor foliage:

The pic above was taken before the recent snowage - you can tell by the bare ground in the yard. The next time we have bare ground, it'll be ...... well, it'll be a long time from now, I'll put it that way. And the palm tree Little Girl is chewing on currently has about two fronds left - they batt them around until they break them.

And you should always match your furniture to your cats, obv.