watching

Sometimes, I'll be at my computer, doing computery things, and I'll get up to leave the room, and I'll see Moppet sitting on top of the armoire directly behind me. Watching.

She looks sweet, doesn't she?

I'm always surprised to see her there because I never hear her get up there (I never hear her go anywhere, really, which is in stark contrast to Mowgli and his Thundering Hooves). So, you know, I act all surprised, and she just looks at me like "Yes, I am the Queen of Stealth, and you will never know what hit you on the day that I finally decide to sneak up behind you and render you unconscious with a rag soaked in chloroform and then slit your throat with my finely honed talons. Which I have been sharpening on your couch, by the way".

I'm pretty sure that's what she's thinking.

what's been going on lately

I've been pretty busy lately, but I'm proud to say that I finally got all my photos organized, and put a bunch of new old ones on Flickr.


There's Cape Henlopen, from August (which I didn't tell you about because I was a very lazy person-with-a-blog in August).



I also added some long overdue photos to the Kitties! album.




And I finally uploaded my Disney pictures from back in April.




Then there's the set from the family trip to the Outer Banks last summer.




And last but not least, I uploaded pics from the trip to West Virginia for Lil Sis' 16th birthday almost 2 years ago.



I'm also really happy to report that UJ installed our new microwave oven with built in fan above our oven! Over Labor Day weekend! Three weeks ago!

Also, check out our cute new tea kettle!

It was an ordeal that included fishing new wires from the basement circuit breaker box up through the walls into the attic, and then down from the attic to right above the oven, where a new outlet/receptacle was installed. Also, installing a wooden shelf very securely in between the cabinets to attach the microwave to (most are attached to the cabinets above them, but we didn't have said cabinets because that space was filled with an upper oven that stopped working 15 years ago).

Check out the Story of the Day!

Operation Houseplant Rescue

I have had a lot of houseplants. These days, I'm calling them my balconyplants. I moved them outside because Mowgli would leap into the pots, squashing them, and pretend he was Mowgli-of-the-Jungle, using them as cover and waiting for the perfect moment to attack Moppet, who was generally minding her own business.

Then, to make matters worse, Moppet discovered my peace lily, and it was love at first bite, and she did not care if she ever saw another nugget of Science Diet in her life thankyouverymuch.

So that was the last straw. I don't know if my plants are toxic to cats, so I decided I needed to not only rescue my plants from my cats, but I also needed to rescue my cats from my cats.


The plants are doing pretty well out there. They're recovering so well, in fact, that I thought I'd let them have some visitors. Moppet tried to act casual at first:

Moppet with the peace lily, the love of her life.

But alas, she gave in to her temptations:


Mowgli got in on the snack-action too:


And then Moppet decided to see what else was on the menu:

Mmm, looks tasty.

The only one of my plants that doesn't seem to have benefited from the reprieve on the balcony is this cactus I've had since about 2001:



Too much rain I guess. Still, its utter deadness (and thorniness) didn't dissuade Mowgli from considering its snack-worthiness:


I'm not really sure what I'm going to do in winter. Perhaps lock them all up in dining room (the plants, not the cats) and hope I don't forget to water them.

baby Pop

I guess my dad would have been around 1 year old in this picture. I remember the first time I saw this picture. I was pretty little, visiting my Granna, and when she showed it to me, I thought - That's not my dad! Look at that hair! Only girls have hair like that!

I'm not sure why I thought that, or why I was so surprised by this picture... maybe because at the time, my dad was sort of burly and he had a full beard? Maybe I thought he should have also been burly and bearded as an infant.

another cat post

Today is neuter-day! Yaaaay!

(I'm less excited about this than I'm pretending to be).

(I'm pretending to be excited because neutering is very important and I really am very glad that I have never been acquainted with a cat that goes around marking territory or yowling and bleeding everywhere because, gross).

(But really, I'm nervous because my little kitten is having surgery, and he is wondering what's happening to him, and wondering where we are and why we left him there).

In honor of the neutering, I thought I would do another post about cats. Not my cats, specifically, but cats-in-general. Kittens-in-general. See below:

Do you like butterflies? Of course you do! Butterflies are pretty, and fluttery, and they help pollinate and propagate flowers, which you also like! Also, they help school children everywhere learn about the life cycle of bugs, which is crucial information.


And, do you like kittens? Of course you do (whether you say so or not)! They are cute, and funny, and cuddly, and fuzzy, and purry. So, naturally, since we all like butterflies, and we all like kittens, we think that kittens chasing butterflies is the cutest thing evar. So we (and by "we" I mean I have no idea who) make art and jewelry and figurines and cartoons depicting kittens chasing butterflies.


Friends, kittens chasing butterflies are akin to lions chasing zebras. You know what happens when a lion catches a zebra, don't you? And you wouldn't want to make jewelry out of that now, would you? The blood, the gore, the body parts, the brawling with other members of the pride over the meatiest chunks, the licking of glistening chops.



Allz I'm saying is: Enough with the cutesy life-and-death-struggle paraphernalia, people!

gotta stretch out, y'know?

It starts out mundanely enough:



But then it starts to get a little weird:



Before just getting completely out of control:

This is how he sleeps. Every. Day.

I'm dropping this little psycho off tonight to get neutered tomorrow, and I can't pick him up until Friday morning. I kinda hate it because I can't explain to him that I'm going to come back and get him and he's going to think we abandoned him to these evil people with scalpels and gross food. Also, Moppet won't know where he went. *sniffle*

(Which would be worse: being able to explain to him that he's just there temporarily to get neutered, or letting him think we abandoned him?)

birfday

Last night, the fam and Andrea treated me to a birthday dinner at Clare and Don's Beach Shack, which is one of my favorite restaurants of all time.

Here's probably the best picture of the whole fam evar (is it the only picture of the whole fam evar?)


And here's a cute picture of me and Andrea, looking happy after hushpuppies and seafood!



Also, I got some fun gifts, such as this hilarious t-shirt from Big Sis, and this dude from Lil Sis:


His name is Trunko, and his tag says:

Trunko is over the top. He freaks out over everything and overreacting is his hobby. When the chips are down, he orders a million more chips at wholesale prices. Where there's smoke, there's fire...and there's Trunko using a fire hose to put out his birthday candles.

That's me to a T! Except the part about the million wholesale-priced chips, which is Gmaw to a T.

Oddly enough, my birthday candles did almost set the cake on fire, and that's not even an exaggeration.

Gmaw and I are old ladies together

Soooo, today's my birthday. I'm totally an old lady:

Last weekend, Bear and I went to a vineyard with a bunch of his coworkers and a) I didn't get carded, and b) we were the oldest ones in our group. Also? Last week, I overheard my officemate giving her birth date to someone over the phone, and she was born in 1987, and that seems very recent to me, like maybe my company is violating child labor laws. Also? My little sister is a freaking senior in high school. Also? As of last week, I am officially on cholesterol medication because my doctor was all - "I don't want you to be one of those seemingly healthy persons-in-their-30's who baffle everyone by suddenly dropping dead of a heart attack" (awesome!)

Oddly, I feel like such a little kid. I can't discern any emotional or mental change in myself since high school (except that maybe I'm less smart). I've always thought of people-in-their-30's as really on the ball, and knowing what's up, and being really together and with-it. And hip. (And how are those for archaic old-person coolness-adjectives?) But I've always thought of myself as pretty clueless and hapless and blundering.

Maybe next year I'll be cool?

Speaking of old ladies, here's a blurry picture of Gmaw wearing her husband's jersey:

in the beginning

Well, you know what Friday means - it's my dad's day! I was trying to think of what to post, and then I decided, why don't I just start from the beginning? (not that I'm just starting, since there are already several posts about my dad, but I guess I'm just going to re-start now, if you don't mind).

Here's a slightly smudged birth announcement from when my dad was born:

It's interesting to me for a few reasons:

1. He's known as "Fouts Boy", which was his original last name. Granna's (his mom) first husband (and my dad's biological father) turned out to be not so great in the Husband-and-Father arena (rumor has it that he was maybe not so great in the Decent-Human-Being arena either, but of course I only know secondhand). Anyway, Granna would never talk about him, and when she remarried, her new husband adopted my dad, giving him the last name that he's always been known by.
2. The announcement doesn't show the year, but it was 1945. February 23, 1945 - the same day of that famous flag-raising at Iwo Jima.
3. Those crazy PET people had been around for 60 years already when they so kindly offered their birth-announcing services to my grandmother, and they're still around now, 64 years later.

I'm thinking I'll dig through all the old photos on my dad's website, and in the giant scrapbook Big Sis and I put together for him several years ago, and I'll post them here with the stories I've heard and the memories I have.

Update: This isn't a birth announcement - Melissa emailed me and explained that it's a tag they put on the plastic bassinet in the hospital nursery so people could identify the babies when they looked in the window, and so they rolled it to the correct room at feeding time. That actually makes a lot more sense, because it looks a little cheap for a birth announcement. :)

saving money gives you botulism

During the 50-or-so years that Gmaw lived in this house, one of her favorite pastimes was hoarding non-perishable food items. And also toilet paper and paper towels. In the old days, this stuff was stored on shelves lining the basement walls, but as she got older and stopped venturing up and down stairs, there was nowhere to stockpile them except an entire extra bedroom.

Evidence, circa 2006

Awhile ago, Bossy wrote about her Poverty Party struggles to use her stored-up food instead of continuing to buy more. I would have followed suit, but Gmaw was still in the house at that time, and there was no way I could keep up with her hoarding. I couldn't cook things as fast as she bought them. You see, she had coupons! Things were on sale! When things are on sale, it is mandatory to buy fifteen of them. Hey, I don't make the rules.

But now that she has moved out, I thought it would be a good idea to save some grocery money and start using some of the things she's been saving for the nuclear holocaust. We'd be incinerated instantly, but at least we'd have food to last us for 20 years afterward.

So I started with a can of chili and a can of baked beans. The bean can's expiration date was 2008 (which was brand new in relation to most everything else), but it had this sticky gloppy goo on the lid that reminded me of the botulism my home-ec teacher showed us in 8th grade (do they still teach home-ec?) except the bean botulism was lighter in color. I thought - there is no way this is botulism, that's just silly. So I cooked up the beans, plopped some on my plate, and ate a couple of bites before deciding that I was going to die. Bear didn't eat any because Bear doesn't like baked beans (crazy, I know).

So I looked up botulism on the Internets and found that it causes blurry vision and respiratory failure. I kind of always have those symptoms anyway, so I wasn't sure how I'd know if I had botulism. Maybe I have a chronic case of botulism!! I instructed Bear to call 911 and suggest botulism if I stopped moving and started gasping for breath (or perhaps if I just stopped breathing).

Bear had to work on Saturday. I was mildly panicked. I asked him what would happen if I got botulism and couldn't call 911 because I was paralyzed. Or what if I could call 911, but then was too paralyzed to call him and tell him? With an entirely straight face, he said:

"Well... if I get home from work and your car is here and I can't find you, I'll assume you have botulism and I'll go to the hospital and find you".

Because clearly, the first thing one thinks when one's spouse's car is in the garage, but said spouse is not at home is that they have botulism and have been carted off in an ambulance.

Right?

pretty girl

There's something comforting and good and right about a contented cat sitting on the windowsill.

Miss Moppet
(aka Moppetsauce, aka Moppely Boppely, aka Moppely Monopoly, aka Mops)

i heart festivals

Meana had a booth at the Burk Centre Conservancy Annual Festival this past weekend. I went to visit on Sunday and check out the new display.


It was a perfect day for funnel cake, which clearly is the main reason for going to festivals.


And, Meana won an award for her display!

Isn't she cute?!

And then there was this guy, who I have no explanation for:




P.S. Check out the Story of the Day, which is amaaaaaazing. First watch his torso, then his face, and then his legs. (It's also worth noting that being buff=being completely devoid of body hair and being bright orange). Still! Inspiring!

slacker

That's me, I'm a slacker. I can't believe I only posted once in August.

I think I can't really think of myself as a "blogger", which I wanted to at some point, but life is such that it looks like I'm just going to be "a person with a blog". Which is fine. Less pressure.

Nonetheless, I decided I wanted to start thinking about my blog again, and I was looking through old photos, trying to get them organized, and I found a folder called "Signs of Spring", which I blogged about in February (can I fit any more commas in that sentence?). February was rough. I didn't post all of the pictures in that folder because they didn't really go with the whole "spring" motif, but here are some that sort of brought back the situation for me:

Here's what the kitchen table looked like. It was a mess (so naturally I wanted to document it), and I couldn't clean it up because I just didn't have the time or the inclination. The newspapers are piled up because that was a week when Gmaw was in the hospital - she was the only one that read them, since the rest of us get our news from the Internets.


I was driving my dad's car for him - he hadn't driven it in awhile and the battery had died. I bought him a new battery, registered the car temporarily in my name, got all the inspections taken care of, and drove it once a week to keep it going. This bumper sticker earned me some dirty looks, and a comment about how I didn't match the car, and at the time I thought it was funny. I thought my dad would be coming home, you know? Now, I really wish he could be here to argue with me over public health care options and immigration (although I did always agree with him on the gun issue) (I just would never put a bumper sticker about it on my car).


These are some finches that lived in a big glass cage at the rehabilitation center my dad was staying in. I suppose they were meant to cheer everyone up (I always think birds in cages are sad). They were funny though because they had all these little woven baskets in the cage (maybe 4 or 5), but all of the finches had to be crammed in the same one together. None of them wanted their own basket.



And here is Lil Sis. I remember this day - we went for a walk on a trail I found in my neighborhood last summer, and it was muddy. I took this picture and thought it was cute. And, in my folder called "Signs of Spring", with all the photos of not-quite-flowers-and-greenness, and these photos that remind me of sadness and loss, this one picture makes me so happy. I'm so happy to have this wonderful kid in my life who is so good and sweet and thoughtful.


Lil Sis, thanks for being my friend. I love you so much.