Timely and Amusing

Neither timely nor amusing, but we all have to have our schtick. Right? I guess three months is a sufficient amount of time to sulk in depression and stress.

Update:

Doing the Atkins thing again, I think this is the third or fourth time I have decided to subject myself to this torture. 8 pounds, that’s all. If I can loose 8 pounds and keep it off, I’ll be okay with my weight.

Echo the cat is morbidly obese. I’m making him diet. He’s gaining weight instead of losing. I think he is weighing in at 21 pounds right now. I need to post a photo of him so you can be as disgusted as I am at his size. Any day I’m expecting to come home and find him dead.

Longhorns defeating the Trojans. I think that win brought me more joy than the Tigers beating the Hurricanes.

The luteyland includes for the links and archived posts are not pulling into site pages. I don’t see any obvious reason for the break. Tarnation!

Brave Little Puddin’ Britches

So we went to my parent’s house this weekend to celebrate three family birthdays.

My Dad and most of the men folk were hanging out on the back porch, grilling, drinking beer, telling manly-men tales.

I was farther out in the backyard with the three-year-old, Puddin’. She wanted to swing. Then, she wanted to climb in the tree house. While she was climbing up the ladder to the tree house, I noticed a bumble bee floating around the door of the house. I pointed this out to her. She decided she did not want to play in the tree house, she’d rather swing.

While the climbing and not climbing were taking place, my five-year-old neice, LoMay, wandered out to the playset and firmly planted herself in the “big girl swing.” The only other swing is one of those molded-plastic, infant swings. Puddin’ is still small enough that I think we could probably squeeze her into it if she really wants to swing. She says “yes.” So, I wedge her in and start pushing.

I notice a large, flying insect out of the corner of my eye. My initial thought is, “that damn bumble-bee followed us over here.” Then, I notice two, three, four buzzing things. And I take a closer look. WASPS!!!!!

Don’t panic, don’t panic.

Puddin’, Mommy has to stop the swing. Don’t move, stay very still, DON’T MOVE! I manage to stop the swing without anyone getting stung. But it seems more wasps are circling, so I take a couple steps back. I say as calmly and as firmly as I can, “Don’t move.”

LoMay asks, “Can I move?” I answer, “No, I think you need to stay still, too.”

The wasps finally disappear. In my panic, I don’t think to look to see where they fly away to. I tell Puddin’ that I’m going to take her out of the swing. I explain to both girls that we need to move away from the swing set until someone figures out where the wasps are coming from. As I’m trying to dislodge Puddin’ from the swing, the wasps start swarming again.

Fear strikes the heart of me. I know where the wasps are coming from…the plastic rim of the swing.

I let go of Puddin’ again and take a few steps back. She’s still trying to wiggle out. I tell her she has to sit very, very still.

My sister, MayLay, has walked onto the back porch. She’s looking in our direction. I can tell by the tilt of her head that her mommy-radar as gone off. She knows something odd is happening over at the playset. I wave her over.

Once she’s close enough I tell her my wasp nest theory. We decide that she will hold the swing as still as possible while I lift Puddin out.

We encounter problems. Puddin is wedged in and the slightest movement sets the wasps in motion.

MayLay and I both step away, again screaming the mantra, “stay still, stay still.”

I try to control my fear. How the hell am I going to get my child out of this situation without getting her stung? I look little Puddin Britches in the eye. I’m amazed she isn’t crying at this point. I’m even more shocked by the expression I find on her face. There is no fear, no look of doom. Just an expectant, almost curious expression. She simply has no clue. I’m scared shitless. Remarkably, I’m managing to NOT frighten my little one.

So, as the wasps settle down again, MayLay and I decide we need another person to help hold the swing still. MayLay uses her banshee-wail-of-death to summon her husband to us.

We decide MayLay will hold the swing still, my brother-in-law will lift Puddin out, and I will guide her legs through the plastic holes.

Success! RUN!

In Memoriam

Fondest Herb memories:

Snuggles. When Herb was a young lad, he would snuggle around my head at night. The husband always hated this because Herb invariably had his butt aimed at the husband’s head. When Herb finally grew into his full-fledged twenty pound self, the bed snuggling came to an end. The husband just couldn’t handle that much butt.

Lettuce. Herb loved to eat lettuce. Ergo his name, Herb, which is short for Herbivore. When he was a kitten, we discovered this by accident. For some reason the fridge door was ajar or open. Herb somehow zereod in on the lettuce sitting on the bottom shelf and he climbed on in to score some Butter Bread green leaf. He occassionaly went through phases where he’d hang out by the fridge in the hopes of snagging a leaf or two.

Catnip. Herb loved to eat catnip. He didn’t just roll in it. He would eat it while salivating profusely, we’re talking puddles of drool would form. Upon getting himself into a good catnip stupor, he’d frolic. A frolicking 20-pound feline is ludicrous beyond words.

Food. Herb loved to eat…and often. He expected a minimum of three squares a day. He was not shy about asking for seconds.

Hockey nights. Whitey always picked me up for home hockey games. Herb would pull himself out of his most comfortable snuggle spots to run and get love from Whitey. He’d yell at her in his little kitty voice to give him good lovin’. She always did.

Farts. Can you say “silent but deadly”? Herb could clear a room. You never heard them, sometimes you could see them, you always smelled them. As disgusting as it sounds, we always found it hilarious.

Unrealistic body image. Herb never knew he was a 20-pounder. In his little, kitty mind he thought he maxed out at about eight pounds. How do I know this? He liked to “hide” and attack. Yet he never realized he needed to conceal the last two-thirds of his body in order to mount a successful attack. He also liked to sit in empty shoe boxes. He either never noticed or never cared that sitting in them caused them to tear apart at the seams.

Neediness. Herb was rarely content to just crush a lap…I mean sit on a lap. He’d get himself into a good snuggle position. However, if you did not immediately start to pet him, he would begin to slap at your face with claws extended. If you started petting him and then stopped, he’d slap at your face with claws extended.

Addendum
Claiming. Landstander has reminded me that Herb enjoyed claiming property. You may ask, “How can a cat claim anything as it’s own?” Simple. Say you set something down on a table, a book perhaps. Herb would lay down beside the book and then place one paw on top of it, as if to say, “This is mine now. It belongs to me.”

Confusion

So, my three-year old was with me yesterday morning when I found Herb’s body. She was right by my side as I wrapped his body in trash bags and then stored him in the outdoor fridge for later burial. I had to continually explain to her that Herb was dead and what dead meant.
In between finding the body and finally getting her to daycare, I was prone to outbursts of crying. My little princess would offer some sympathetic crying. I don’t think she fully grasped the situation. She knew I was upset. To her this meant she should also be upset. If I started to cry, she’d do what I can only describe as “mock sobbing.”

Anyway, when I dropped her off daycare, the three-year-old caregiver wasn’t in yet, so I had to leave her with the one-year-old caregiver. I was going to write a note to the three-year-old caregiver about finding our cat dead, but I decided all I needed to do was tell the one-year-old caregiver. I should have written a note.

At around 10:30 a.m. I get a call from the daycare assistance director. Here’s how it went:

Me: Hello.
AD: Hi, this is “Sarah” from daycare. Sorry to bother you at work.
Me thinking: Crap, she’s going to tell me I have to pick up little princess.
Me saying: No problem. Is something wrong.
AD: Actually, I feel kind of weird asking this, but is everything okay at home?
Me:Well, actually, we found one of our cats dead this morning. And little princess was with me when I found him.
AD: Oh, thank goodness. Not that your cat is dead. But she has been telling everyone that her Daddy is dead. That he’s in heaven with the angels. I kept telling her teacher that she has to be wrong, you wouldn’t have just dropped her off.

So there you have it. In less than a three-hour period, my “grief-stricken” child turned our cat’s death into her father’s death.

Okay, So the Crap Was Endearing

Herb died. I found him this morning by the porch door. Now I feel incredible guilt over my March 29 post. I’m crying now.

Crap, the Real Kind

Herb, our old nasty tabby, lives on the back porch. We make him stay there most of the time because he’s old and nasty. His old, nasty habits include vomiting and crapping outside of the litterbox.

He developed these bad habits last year. He was sick. Lost a lot of weight. The vet couldn’t figure what was wrong with him. We sort of expected him to die. The vet put him on a “chicken should be the main ingredient” diet. It has been a slow process, but Herb has bounced back.

He doesn’t throw up very often any more. For awhile it was once a day. It’s been months since his last vomit.

The crapping whenever and whereever is the bigger issue. He’ll go a couple weeks deligently using his litter box. Then one day, SPLAT! Just for the hell of it, he’s crapped whereever he happened to be standing.

For this reason, he’s only allowed to come into the house on supervised visits.

Lately, he’s been pretty good about using the box. I can’t remember when he had his last “acccident.”

So, this past weekend, we decided it was time to throughly clean the back porch. I’d been cleaning up messes as they happened. But it’s not easy to thoroughly clean Herb’s liqui-poo off the concrete. Stains had built up over the last year. So, Saturday we rented a pressure-washer and de-stained the porch.

I was confident Herb would be thrilled. Clean porch, clean litter box, clean lounging areas. What more could a cat ask for?

Well, the answer to that is “crap.”

Bright and early Easter morning, Herb crapped on the porch. He crapped right next to his clean litter box.

A League to Call Their Own

So, in my dream last night, I’m apparently trying to find a place to live with a bunch of people. I don’t remember who these people are exactly…friends, co-workers, b-grade actors. We’re on the run from some evil force, I’m not really sure what, but we need to find a stronghold.

We find a huge fortress to live in, and we get all moved in and suddenly we realize the place is over run with spiders. Not just any spiders…brown recluse.

So now we have to get out of this place, I guess we’d much rather face the big evil outside the fortress than call an exterminator. Suddenly it’s me and one other adult trying to get a bunch of little kids evacuated from this building. At some point, we must have traveled into the bowels of the building because I’m trying to run all these little kids up flights of stairs. All the while we’re being chased by brown recluse that are becoming larger and larger. To top matters off, the spiders are now being supported by herds of evil cats.

We finally get to the top of the last flight of stairs, and, whoever the other adult is, is helping the little kids get outside and into a space ship that is waiting outside to whisk us away. Considering we’re under attack, the kids are behaving quite calmly. They stand behind me, waiting patiently in a well-formed line while the other adult takes them one at a time to our escape vehicle.

The spider and the cats finally catch up to us. A huge brown recluse is hanging back a little in striking position. It occurs to me that he’s waiting for the cats to overwhelm me before he moves in for the kill. So I have to stand at the top of the stairs and kick cats in the head on exactly the right spot so that they are blasted off into some abyss near the stairs.

Then I wake up. I’m not sure who won.

Apparently, Whitey has the gift of insight into other people’s dreams and has been able to recreate the final scene with terrifying accuracy…except the spider in my dream was a brown recluse…and I wasn’t wearing a do bok…and, quite frankly, some of the cats in this picture don’t look all that evil…