Ain't got no time to mess around

I have a neighbor, Brian, who lives across the park from me.  I often see him when he's walking his dogs, and sometimes we stop and chat.  He's real friendly and likes to shoot the breeze.

In an odd twist, he also works in a building that is right across the street from my office building.  We wave to each other from our respective parking lots, and sometimes cross over the street to talk. 

I noticed this morning that his pickup hadn't been in his building's parking lot for a couple of days.  Hmm, I thought, that's odd.  Maybe he and his wife are on vacation.

I was paging through the paper while I had my morning office coffee and I noticed his name.

In the obits.

He died.  Last Saturday.  Unexpectedly.  At the age of 55.

Coincidentally, that was the same day I turned 52.

Don't know how to say this without sounding trite, but if you've got something you want to do, DO IT.  If you've got someplace you want to go, go there.  If you've got toxic people in your life, kick 'em out, and bring the people you love closer to you.

Ain't got no time to mess around.

And in OTHER momentous news* ... NOW WITH UPDATES

I found out last night that the dude who hit-and-runned me did indeed have car insurance, which is accepting 100% liability and will pay the entire claim, including my deductible.  A total of $3,791.00.  Holy crap.

It's a Christmas miracle!  Ha.

I also got a copy of the police report, and turns out the dude was drunk.  At eleven o'clock in the morning. Yikes.

And now, for MORE momentous news* ... drum roll please ... Callie let me touch her.

Yes, this girl:

This feral foster girl, who has been in my house for a year and a half, and has resisted all efforts to be tamed, actually let me touch her last night.

Oh, there was a little subterfuge involved.  I put down her food bowl in front of her and she stayed (she usually runs away as soon as I put the bowl down and only comes back when I leave the room), and I reached my hand down and she stayed, and I touched her and she stayed.

The angels sang, I am telling you right now.

Of course, it'll prolly be another year and a half before she lets me do it again, but it counts.  It TOTALLY counts.  I touched her.

Another Christmas miracle.  They're everywhere, I'm tellin' ya.



UPDATED TO ADD:  Dudes, it just happened again - she let me touch her paw.  Now I'm freaked out because I think this cat is haunted.  There could be no other reason.


*you may or may not consider this news momentous. 

You can't fire me, I quit!

I am no longer volunteering for the rescue I've been with for the past couple of years.

Long story short, the woman who runs it was rapidly veering from "rescuer" to "hoarder".  She still hadn't filed for her 501(c)(3) (the thing that makes you an official non-profit), she was taking on more and more cats, and she wasn't caring for them properly.  The cats were all spayed or neutered and they were well fed, but they were not being kept up to date on their vaccinations, and they were not flea- and worm-treated. None were leukemia tested, which is a recipe for disaster when there are a lot of cats in one house. Sick cats were not being seen by a vet in a timely manner (unless I took them and paid for them out-of-pocket, as I did with Talon).  She stopped responding to calls from people who wanted to adopt cats, which is suicide for a rescue.

Any time I would question her on what was going on, she would either try to shrug it off, or she would take GREAT UMBRAGE that I would have the NERVE to question her methods, and things finally came to a head a couple of weeks ago.  She wasn't willing to discuss my concerns and she wasn't willing to see that things were out of control (she has over sixty cats in her home right now; I mean, COME ON), and so we parted ways.  I'm still not sure if I was fired or if I quit*, but regardless, I'm out.

And then things got nasty, with one of her (grown) daughters posting a bunch of crap on Facebook about how "until you've walked a mile in someone else's shoes you can't judge them" blahblahblah and no, I have not walked a mile in this person's shoes.  I do not know what personal struggles she may have.  All I know is that she was dropping the ball, badly, when it counted, and when rescued cats were counting on HER.  She was not reaching out for help; she was not seeking additional resources for her situation; she was doubling down and attacking one of the people who could have helped her, had she handled things differently, so no.  I'm not walking in her shoes; that is not my responsibility.  I'm getting out.

As soon as the word got out, another rescue contacted me and asked me to volunteer for them.  They are an official 501(c)(3), they are very well run, and all of their cats are properly vetted. 

I feel sorry for the cats at the first rescue; they are the ones who will suffer because the woman who runs the rescue is in waaaaaaay over her head.  But I was no longer willing to enable her by keeping quiet, and so at some point the local Humane Society will likely step in and take her cats, which is NOT a happy ending by any means, but sweet Jesus, SIXTY CATS IN ONE HOUSE.

Callie and Bindi, the feral fosters, are still with me.  The woman who runs the rescue has made no efforts to come and get them, and frankly, I do not want them to go back to her unless and until she gets her sh*t together.  (See:  60 CATS.)    They are safe and sound with me, until a new home is found for them, and the new rescue will be assisting me with that.  Because they are still feral, the odds of finding them a new place are not real great, but that's okay, too.  I am not going to begrudge them a safe place to live just because they're not pettable. 

GOD. CRAZY CAT LADIES.  SHEESH.



* From email:  Her:  "Well you certainly made me feel like I may have offended you my godess of catdom. Thank you for putting me in-line. How about if you are going to be snotty, don't bother (volunteering)".  Me:  "Awesome. Come get your (foster) cats."

Now I want to get a t-shirt printed up that says Godess (sic) of Catdom. Ha.

Sunday in the Park with Rocky

Yesterday I had nine billion things to do, but the weather was warm (in the forties!  Holla!) so I headed for State Park.

Yeah, I was fairly confident that the beach would be closed:

and the lifeguard chairs have been stowed away:

and there may have been ice on the lakes:

But it was still a pretty day for a walk.

The cross-country skiers have taken over the golf course:

This oak tree wasn't ready to drop its leaves:

 A lot of the park pavilions were built by WPA workers in the thirties:

Check out this old fireplace - I think those picnic tables date from the thirties, too :)

 Save the ash trees!

 Well, look who's here:

 

She watched me for a while, then flipped her tail and left:

Watching from a safe distance:

Sunday in the park.  Not a bad day at all.

Just go ahead and shoot me now

Customer service: ur doin it rong

Okay, so, first of all, we are supposed to get four to eight inches of snow here today (UPDATE:  At ten a.m., they upped it to six-to-ten), and all I have to say about THAT is this:

A acquaintance of mine posted this on Facebook:

"So, Jeff had an issue today - the people down the street are using JKS Home Improvement to do work on their house and the workers had blocked enough of the road that he couldn't get through. He used my FB account to complain. (Rocky here:  I saw the note he wrote.  It was polite, if exasperated that a contractor was blocking the road.) A project manager just responded (and I quote):

"Your are very rude your a big baby"
- and -
"cry baby"

Needless to say, I do not recommend this contractor. Especially since they did shoddy work for us before and did not respond to our concerns. At all.

And now this moron is arguing with me on FB. Don't have this crazy person work on your house!

 Now there's a second one commenting! Case study on how not to run a business?

JKS Home Improvement update: the owner deleted the dumbass comments and asked Jeff to call him. He was very embarrassed and apologized. He's actually in Buffalo right now helping with the snow cleanup. He doesn't even use Facebook really, but another customer saw the nonsense on their page and called him." 




hahahaha gotta love Facebook.  Exposing the morons, left and right.  

What's YOUR worst customer-service experience?  and/or your funniest experience with somebody you know posting something idiotic on Facebook?  Enquiring minds want to know.

Cats welcoming soldiers home

Okay, so, I have an appointment to take my car in for an estimate this afternoon, and thankfully, my insurance policy will cover a rental, so I'm good to go.  Whew.

Now!  Courtesy of The Toast and Imgur, here are some heartwarming gifs of cats welcoming soldiers home.

hahahahahaaaaaa.  THIS is why I love cats.   This right here.

Hit and run

So! I was sitting at a four-way intersection at a stop sign this morning, waiting my turn in traffic, MINDING MY OWN DAMN BUSINESS, groceries in the back of the car, when a dude in a pickup truck came flying up the intersecting road.  He had to be going sixty, easy.  He flipped on his turn signal and started to turn onto the road where I was waiting, his tires screaming.  "He's going way too fast to make this corner," I thought.  "I hope I don't get hurt too bad."

He plowed into my front end.  It's actually probably a good thing he did, because if he hadn't, he might've taken out the old man who was in the church parking lot next to the road.

He rolled down his window.  I rolled down my window.

"I'm so so sorry," he said.  "Are you all right?"

"I think I'm okay," I said.  "Let me see if I can get the car off the road.  Let's pull into this parking lot here and exhange insurance information.  We're going to need a police report, too."

"I'm so sorry!  I'm really sorry," he said.  "I'm just going to turn around, and follow you into the parking lot."

and that's the last I saw of the dude in the pickup truck.  I limped the car into the parking lot.

"I saw the whole thing!," said the old man.  "I've got a description of the truck!"

Other people started coming out of the church.  "Are you all right?  Can we help?"

"I don't have my cell," I said, because OF COURSE.  "Could someone please call the police?  There's going to need to be a report.  And I might need a tow truck."

The old dude waited by the road, so he could "flag down the police."  I don't think they would've missed the pile of debris in the road, but it was a nice thought.   I took a closer look at the damage, pulling some of the shattered parts away from the wheel and checking underneath the car to make sure nothing was leaking out.

About half an hour later, a policeman came.  "Are you all right?," he asked.

"I'm okay," I said. 

"I saw the whole thing!," said the old man.

"Sorry it took so long to get here," the policeman said.  "After the guy hit you, he hit a whoooole bunch of other stuff.  Mailboxes, you name it. He was pretty easy to find.  We've got him down at the station right now.  Thankfully, nobody was hurt."

Holy SHIT, I thought.

 My poor car.  I'm sorry, little Hyundai.  If I had had any idea that we were about to be part of a crime spree this morning, I would've just stayed home.

Feeding Time at the Zoo

... and this is only four of them!  Callie declined to make an appearance.

and no, the stuffed green mouse is not their dinner - they'd never fall for that.  They were waiting for the good stuff - canned Friskies, manna of the Gods.  I love how Soda's got his eyes narrowed, all, "Hurry it up, lady.  OR ELSE."

Timing, Part II

Over the past weekend, I noticed that a family who lives one street over from me has put up their outside Christmas decorations.

It looks like the inflatable decoration section of Home Depot exploded there.

There's an inflatable carousel!  with inflatable cartoon characters riding it!  There's reindeer and Santa and his sleigh!  There's Mickey and Minnie and elves and snowmen and f*ck-all else (including Spiderman, because what Christmas scene would be complete without an inflatable Spiderman, I ask you?), all over their front yard.

I don't know when it all went up, as I don't drive down that street all that often.  It could have gone up before Halloween, for all I know.

Part of me is all, ick.  So soon?  Part of me is all, hell, if I dropped a couple grand on ridiculous bullsh*t for my front yard, I'D want to put it up early as well.

Now that I think about it, if I remember correctly, this same house still had all their inflatable crap up well into March this year.

Eh.  I'm an atheist,  so obviously I'm not going to go down the whole, "The reason for Christmas is CHRIST!" road.  I just think that inflatable stuff is tacky to begin with, but then again, I'm the one who has a zebra in their front garden, so who am I to judge?  If you wanna have an inflatable Spiderman in your front yard, more power to ya.  I usually manage to string some lights out front sometime between mid-December and Christmas, and there'll be a wreath on my door as well.  It's just not inflatable, is all.  And I usually put up a tree, because pretty. 

I was out in the yard on Sunday, and I kept hearing Christmas music ... I wonder if they've added sound to the display.  In which case, I'm glad I live one street over and not next door, because that could grow old right quick.

Inflatable Christmas.  Now with tunes.  I wonder what's next?

I fixed the copier; gimme seventy-five bucks, now with updates

My boss, the racist*, asked me to call the copier repair place earlier today.  He said that another employee had complained that the copier wasn't working correctly.

I went to the employee and asked him what, exactly, was wrong with the copier.  He said that the margins were out of whack; the copies were printing off-center. 

I went back to the copier, and checked the paper tray for the size he was trying to copy.  Someone had loosened up the guides to load the paper and hadn't re-tightened the guides.  The paper had shifted.  I re-tightened the guides, and ran a couple of test copies.  Voila!  Problem solved.

So I think I should get the money that the company would have paid to the copier repairman.  I mean, it's only fair, right?  Right.  Laughing, I told my boss that he owed my seventy-five bucks, which is what it would have cost to have the copier repair place send a dude out.

UPDATED TO ADD:  A couple of hours after I wrote this, but before I posted it, my boss dropped a fifty on my desk.  I laughed, saying "oh, naw, it's all part of my job description."  My Job Description:  My own job, plus every other got-dam thing that nobody else in the office wants to deal with.  Amen.

ANYhow, I declined the fifty, and then my boss said, "You lost some time a few weeks ago.  I said something stupid, and you left work early because of what I said, and it cost you some money."  (I'm paid hourly, not salary,  so yeah, if my butt's not in my seat, I'm not making money.)  He continued, "I'm sorry for what I said, and I appreciate what you do, and I can't take back what I said, but just keep the money.  I owe you."

I kept the fifty.  F*ck yeah. I think I'll donate it to the ACLU in my boss's name.   But it doesn't change how he thinks,  or what he said.   And then, tonight, I was scrolling through Facebook and one of my own sisters had "shared" some right-wing rant about how "life as we know it is in danger because Obama blah blah blah", and sometimes I feel like I don't even know anybody anymore. So, *I* shared a Postsecret post, "They tried to bury us.  They didn't know we were seeds." - Mexican Proverb.

I dunno.  The older I get, the more liberal I get, and the more conservative the people around me get. Is it like this for everybody?








* I think this is how I'll refer to him from now on.  "My boss, the racist".  To prevent me from forgetting what a terrible person he is when he thinks nobody's listening..

Timing

My Christmas cactus has decided it's time to bloom.

I bought this plant last December.  I had bought one for my Mom, to take to her in the hospital, and I thought it was so pretty I went back and bought one for myself.

The one I gave my Mom disappeared, somewhere between the hospital and the nursing home and the uproar of the last few days before she died.  But I've still got this one, and now that it's blooming, I think of her when I look at it.

Hard to believe it's been almost a year.

So, while I'm on a buying spree ...

I tend to run hot and cold with shopping.  I'll buy a bunch of stuff all at once, and then not buy anything for a long while.  Well, I mean, I still buy food and stuff ... you know what I mean.

So I bought a dresser a couple of weeks ago, and then I bought a few hats, and then I went on craigslist and saw this:

Huh?  Huh?  Whaddaya think?

The thing is, I really need a new desk.  I had to move stuff around in the spare room while my friend was helping me rip out the carpet, and it was really embarrassing, because the desk that is in there has a leg that falls off every time you lift the desk, and I keep a cinderblock under that side of the desk to stop the whole thing from collapsing, and ... yeah.  It was the desk I had in my bedroom when I was a kid, and I guess forty years is about the most you can expect to get out of a desk that wasn't all that well-built to begin with.  I mean, it's not even real wood, it's, like, that Sauder crap, except I don't even know if Sauder was a company yet when that desk was fabricated, so

have I talked myself into a new desk yet?  Why, yes.  Yes I have.

SO.  I saw the above desk on Craigslist, but I did not act, even though the listing described it as a "waterfall desk", and I do not know what that means (well, I do now, I have since googled it), but if you can resist a waterfall desk you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din, but still I waited, and then, a few days later, I saw that they had dropped the price, and it was now thirty dollars. 

Thirty dollars?!

I have a date to go see the desk tomorrow morning, and unless they have chopped it up into kindling and burned it between now and then, I am pretty sure that desk will be in my house tomorrow afternoon, providing I can con the friend who helped me rip out the carpeting into helping me move it.

Two things:  (1) If this is the last post ever posted here, tell the cops the desk-sellers did it; and (2) Aren't you glad you aren't my friend?

Presented for your opinion

Okay!  We were talking about hats the other day.  Like I said, I do wear hats outdoors in the wintertime.  It's either that or freeze to death.  The one I wear most often looks something like this:

Well, not exactly, but something like that.  Black, and warm, and it comes down around my ears. 

But!  With your encouragement, I started looking on line at other hats. Oh ebay, I love you so.  I bought this one:

Snazzy!  I'll look like ... a hipster dude contestant on American Idol.  Or a leafy pimp.  STOP LAUGHING.

And this one:

Each for less than three bucks.

Now, after you stop laughing ... what do you think?  I'm still looking for some basic black ones, too, except in a lighter weight, to wear inside.  Yay or nay? 

Random

I am falling further behind, here.  Time to play some catch-up.

I get ebola and e-coli mixed up in my head.  Like, WHICH is the one currently killing people in Africa?  Oh yeah, ebola.  Not the other one. 

Found a dead rat underneath the bed  a while back.  I tried my damnedest to convince myself it was something else (a really, really big mouse?  A ... squirrel with a non-furry tail?  Somebody's escaped pet gerbil?), but no, it was a rat.  Gross, cats.  Keep that sh*t outside.

There was an obit in the paper the other day for a Richard "Dick" Harder.  Now THERE's an unfortunate name.

Getting an apology from one of the family asshats is oddly unsatisfying.  It's, like, you could have just not been an asshat in the first place, and saved me a lot of trouble, but if you want to apologize for it now, well ... meh.  No1curr.  You're STILL off the Christmas card list.

Caroline Hax called an uptight dude "just a picnic in pants" in her column the other day, and now I can't help laughing every time I think of it.

There's nothing like the dastardly plank position to make you realize that you really, really need to vacuum the living room rug more often.  Although now that I've got a DVD player in the spare room, I don't think this is going to be a problem anymore.

But I'm getting ready to blame my complete and utter inability to sustain a plank for more than thirty seconds or do more than a few pushups on my long-ago broken shoulder that never healed properly (because I didn't have health insurance at the time and couldn't afford the operation to have it properly set. *cough*).  It has nothing to do with the fact that I am lazy and have no upper-body strength whatsoever; it's all that damn shoulder's fault.  Yeah.  That's the ticket.

I have fallen in love with the-toast.net.  Although it seems like it's kind of a cool-kids club in the comments, the articles are interesting to read.

Oh!  And for some reason I was lying in bed this morning, postponing actually getting UP, when Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas came to mind.  Anybody else remember that show?  When I got to work I looked it up, and it's available on YouTube!  Good times.  "Look at the birds!  Up in the tree!"  Anybody?

The weekend

So!  The weekend.  Flannel sheets on the bed.  Bindi has given up her residence in the (heated) garage and has started coming inside again, now that Talon has vacated the premises.  I don't know why Bindi was terrified of that teeny-tiny kitten, but she was. 

I tried on the gloves that I bought at the tail end of last winter and discovered that they are now too small, which means ... my hands grew?  Is that even possible?  So, a trip to Burlington Coat Factory was in order to pick up new gloves, and of COURSE I found two pairs of shoes that I could not live without, but that's okay because my birthday's coming up, and the total for BOTH pairs of shoes was only twenty bucks, so whatever.  Although I DID have a little twinge as I swiped the credit card.  And while I was there, I got thinking about hats.

Hats.  Burlington Coat Factory sure has some cute hats.  I wear hats all winter long, while I'm outside.  And I like the idea of wearing a hat indoors, but nobody does that anymore, do they?  Would I be a weirdo if I wore a hat inside?  And does it even matter, now that I am part of the invisible, woman-over-fifty crowd?  Is there a subset of the population for which hats are still a thing?  I wanna wear a haaaaaat.

What else?  I still have not chopped up the fallen tree in the backyard, or raked the fallen leaves onto the gardens.  I did get the battery replaced in one of my favorite watches, but the woman running the kiosk tried to short me ten bucks in change, then got snotty when I called her on it, which ... what?  I caught you, honey, do NOT try to run an attitude on me.  Oh, and I finally got the DVD player hooked up in the spare room, so it's time to get my Jillian back on.

I'm so far behind on chores that I've now got a list that just keeps running from one weekend to the next ... some day it'll all get done.  That's what I keep telling myself, anyway.  Well, except cleaning the gutters.  That's probably not gonna happen.

Talon's first adoption event ...

... also happened to be Talon's last adoption event.  Yep, Tiny Talon was adopted in the first hour of our event on Saturday.  He is going to a fine home, with a woman who fell head-over-heels for him.  (Who wouldn't - just look at that face!)

Congrats are also in order to older kitties Water; Robin and Swirl Girl (adopted together!); and Shelly, who also found their new homes on Saturday.

And congrats will soon be in order to the daughter of the rescue's founder, who is due with her first child this Wednesday.  (and she STILL worked the event on Saturday!  That, my friends, is dedication.  Or insanity.)

So!  I am back down to five cats.  Three perma-cats, two fosters.   I'm kind of inclined to leave it that way, as the cats will be spending more time inside with the colder weather and my house is small, but who knows?  We'll just have to wait and see.

giferrific

Okay, guys, let's do a little experiment.  I want to find out if gifs will work here in bloglandia.  Here is the Nope Badger:

Did it work?  Can you see it?  Is it moving?  Enquiring minds want to know.

Oh, and if it worked, did you laugh your ass off, like I do everytime I see this gif?

Ginny, this one's for you

Yeah, it's a crap picture, but you get the general idea.  Old, solid wood, tall enough so that when the cats jump up on it (ergo the pet bed and towels on top) they can look out the window.  What more could you ask for, for seventy bucks?

Extreme Cheapskate?

Okay, first off, I do not watch that show (anymore), because frankly, some of those people are flipping disgusting.  I do not want to live in a world in which dental floss is re-used.  *shudder*

Now, there are things that I spend money on, without reservation.  The cats, for one.  I firmly believe that once you take a pet into your home, it is your responsibility to care for that pet, for better and for worse.  (See:  Pony, the five-thousand-dollar cat.)  Also?  Vacations.  When I go on vacation, if I want the lobster, I'm ordering it.  If I want to buy the giant wooden flamingo, I'm doing it.  If I want to go sky-diving (okay, that's never going to happen, but you know what I mean), I'm buying the ticket.
 
But!  I do have some ... cheapskate-ish tendencies.  I'm not proud of it, and sometimes I wonder if I'm a little too thrifty.  I spent many years on the low end of the income scale, and am still not that far from the bottom, so saving money any way I can is second nature to me by now.  But am I too cheap?  You be the judge:

Instead of buying individual bottles of soda, I buy two-liter bottles, and fill up smaller bottles with them. 

Same with snacks for work.  Instead of buying snack-size packs, I buy the big bags and parcel them into baggies.  Oh, and it goes without saying that I brown-bag it.  ALWAYS.

AND I do the "buy the family-pack of meat, portion it out, and freeze it" thing.  Of course.

I can't use up a loaf of bread before it goes moldy, so I freeze it in eight-slice portions and thaw as needed.

I've never had a manicure, or a pedicure, or a massage.  Well, no massage mainly because I don't like being touched by strangers.

The vast majority of my clothes comes from thrift stores.  I also buy furniture at antiques stores; I just picked up an awesome, solid wood, french-provincial style, five-drawer dresser at an antiques store for seventy bucks.  I do have my limits; I will not buy underwear or swimwear (oh, ICK) or upholstered furniture (I do not need bedbugs, thankyouverymuch) used.

Okay, so, the topper has to be garbage service.  My town does not offer municipal garbage collection, so you have to hire an independent hauler, the cheapest of which is twenty bucks a month.  Well, unless I have a ton of fosters, I only put out one bag of garbage a week, which means it would cost FIVE BUCKS A BAG to get rid of my garbage.  I'm sorry, NO.  So!  The city where I work has a pay-as-you-go garbage removal system where you pre-pay for specially marked garbage bags, fill them, and put them out to the curb, as opposed to paying a monthly fee.  The special bags cost seventy-five cents a bag.  Hmmm, do I want to pay five bucks, or seventy-five cents, to get rid of my bag of garbage?  Yep, that's right, I buy the city bags, and my garbage comes to work with me once a week and goes out to the curb at the office.

How about you?  Are you cheap, or are you Dolly Levi?  ("Money, pardon the expression, is like manure. It's not worth a thing unless it's spread around, encouraging young things to grow.")  Enquiring minds want to know.