Tag-Archive for ◊ cats ◊

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• Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

We’re supposed to get a late season Nor’Easter tomorrow evening through Friday.  I’m really hoping that this does not become a repeat of the April Fools Day Storm from my senior year of college.  I doubt it will, but hell – you never know.  Especially after this winter that refuses to end.  We didn’t think we’d get two feet from THAT storm, either – especially after the gorgeous weather that had been in Boston for Easter Sunday only one day before.

My poor toy daffodils are going to snuff it, I’m afraid.  (“toy” because they’re determined to bloom when they’re only about two inches tall.)  Le sigh…

So in honor of this never-ending winter, here’s my Thursday Thirteen for the week:

 

Thirteen Things I’m Convinced Will Never Arrive in New England Again In My Lifetime.

1.  Warmth.  Normally we’re in the 50s this time of year.  Know where we are?  Mid 30s.  Right now, 40 degrees is balmy.  I’m convinced that I’m going to be wearing gloves in July at this point.

2.  Green Grass.  Not that my yard has a lot of quality grass in it anyway – we have that “well, at least it’s green” type of yard.  But it’s brown thatch right now.  No signs of perking up.

3. The ability to open up all of the storm windows.  We attempted to open two of them when we had a strange stretch of… wait for it… mid 40s weather (yes – THAT felt warm enough to open the house… it’s been that cold!).  We were promptly rewarded with an inch of snow the next day.  Now the windows are kept closed out of fear of reprisal.  Confession:  I did open my office window due to dust on Sunday night as I did some tidying.  So… this impending storm may be my fault.

4. The URI Spring Fair – if it stays this farking cold, I can’t buy my veggies for my garden, can I?  They’ll just all die off from freezing.

5.  The MBTA is running on time.” That doesn’t matter, regardless of season.  It just won’t happen.  I shoujld know better than to dream about that.  For the record, I’ve already given up… and starting in April, I’m back to an actual subway-only pass for the MBTA instead of my $250 per month commuter rail pass, because I just can’t deal with the train unreliability anymore.

6. Lines outside Iggys.  The window won’t open until it’s warm enough.  So on our rambles to Iggys, we’ll have to stand inside with the winter crowd instead of enjoying the beach as we wait.  Bah.

7. Cats passed out in morning sunbeams.  They’re not lasting long enough, and they’re not warm enough because we still have to keep the radiators going – detracting the cats from said sunbeams.

8. Coatless mornings. Seriously, I hate having to wear a coat everywhere.  I hate the extra weight.  I hate having to deal with it sliding off my shoulders.  It’s just still too cold to even pull off the sweater over a shirt trick.

9. Sunday morning coffee with a breeze. This may go under the aforementioned storm window opening – but there’s really nothing more soothing than that weekend morning with coffee, smelling fresh cut grass as neighbors mow, and enjoying a sunny, cheery morning that didn’t involve an alarm clock.

10.  Patio dining.  I really want a sunny lunch somewhere outside.  I’m craving eating outside.

11.  Grilling parties - we held a few nice ones last year with great weather, great friends, and great food.  Half of our friends can’t go into our house due to the cats, though – so until the weather improves, we can’t have a lot of people over for meals.

12.  A really clean kitchen floor. Like many New Englanders, I’m in that hovering “I’ll scrub it once the weather improves” phase.  I thought I would have been there by now.  But yeah, we’re still dealing with winter sand and salt, so I’ve only been doing the minimum to keep it from being disgusting.

13.  Spring.  TWO WEEKS IN – I WANT SPRING!

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• Thursday, December 03rd, 2009

This is not one of my cats. If it were, I don’t think I could survive the cuteness onslaught.

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• Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

Dragons that need clicks. :) (I guess the Dragon Cave is somewhat back up… I dunno)

Adopt one today! Adopt one today!

what I’ve been up to recently…

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• Wednesday, December 03rd, 2008

Dear fellow MBTA travelers who were trapped on the 7:35 Providence train:

I realize that when we get in an hour late due to yet another engine breakdown, I totally understand the attitude of “screw it, I’m already late” and you decide to take your dear sweet time.

HOWEVER… morning trains generally involve this glorious invention called coffee to get the body moving. And when the train has been forced to sit dead on the tracks for an hour, that coffee generally has had time to work through the human system, and the bladder goes into distress whilst waiting to get to a place guaranteed to have an accessible bathroom – which sadly is NOT Back Bay station, even though it’s the first stop past the breakdown. As you all know – there may or may not be a bathroom on the morning train. AND, even if there is one – it’s impossible to know which car it’s in, nor if you will even be able to access it due to people having to stand in the aisles because the train is so full.

So really – get off the phone, stop walking at the same speed the train-pushing-a-train crawled along the tracks for 40 minutes from Hyde Park, and MOVE YOUR ASS into the station, so the horde of women driven to madness due to needing to pee can get past you to go to the scary bathroom they’d otherwise never want to use. Short urethras and all that make for some desperation when you’ve thought about nothing but having to pee and how to prevent yourself from having an accident for over an hour.

Thank you.

(why no… um… I have no personal experience with this issue this morning… why do you ask?)

——

Writing update:

Draft for hearts_in_time – done. Although if I have time, I may further tinker with it. Needs beta work.

Draft for oh_she_knows – mostly done… although smut bunnies decided to make a housecall. So currently, the Doctor is having a glorious time kissing Rose. My posting window’s the 11-15th, so I’m in good shape there. Needs beta work.

Support Stacie auction – waiting my instructions from wiggiemomsi *waves since she’s now on my friends list). :) I’m plotting with wendymr regarding our joint win for dameruth. And I think I’ve decided what I’d like to request from clevermonikerr. Maybe, hopefully… *strokes chin thoughtfully*

And I have so many weird broken draft attempts for the first two that I just couldn’t get moving in the timeframe I had available. Hmm….

Overall, I do feel good right now. Scary – when do I ever feel good in regards to writing deadlines?

—–

It’s quite cold out there today, and the sea is the prettiest shade of bright blue right now. Not a cloud in the sky. Absolutely lovely.

—–

It’s clearly winter because I’m waking up with somewhere between 2-4 cats on the bed every morning.

—–

Apparently Erich managed to finally get Hoodsie to purr last night. Given that I have yet to hear this personally, I still disbelieve. But it’ll be a wonderful breakthrough if this cat purrs. We do get chuffs from him, and he does breathe very heavy at times when you pet him, so he’s been *close* to purring… but not quite.

We’ll see.

Traumatized cat with major abandonment issues may be headed for a big breakthrough sign of being domesticated again. :)

—–

OK… need to work now.

- Mel.

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• Thursday, October 02nd, 2008

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• Thursday, June 12th, 2008

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• Tuesday, June 10th, 2008

I stand astounded at how those of you living in the Southern U.S. (both east and west) and other nations with said hot, muggy weather do it. A couple days of it here in New England, and I’m just a puddle. ;P It would probably help if Erich and I had air conditioning on the second floor of our house. But ugh. Ick.

Slowly but surely getting better with the nerve pinch. It still hurts, mostly in the afternoon after I’ve put in a full day of work. Thankfully it’s nowhere near what it was a couple weeks ago. Even when it hurts, it’s more of a pinch than a radiating pain like it was. I’m able to do the walk from South Station to my office in the morning without a stop, although if I do feel it starting to get tight, I stop anyway. Better to take this slow.

Oddly, wearing my Chucks does help my ability to walk quite a bit. I suppose the rubber soles are just that extra spring and cushion I need. So I’m slightly breaking company policy today.

I finally have all of my current cross-stitch projects together. All thread replaced, all kits together. So I’m ready for the summer. :) On tap to start will be this rotation, 10 hours each:

Slot 1: New Start (Astrology Sampler)
Slot 2: Teresa Wentzler piece (Floral Bellpull – currently at approx 65%)
Slot 3: Sampler (Apache Wedding Blessing – currently at approx 45%)
Slot 4: Small Piece (Home is Where the Cat Is – currently at approx 85%)
Slot 5: Backstitching Slot (Apache)

Stuff in the wings to be added into these slots: Spirit Dragon (Dragon Dreams Elementals – Small Piece), Noah’s Ark or Millennium (Teresa Wentzler), Why I Love New England (Sampler).

I also have a little giftie piece I’m thinking of doing for a friend. It’s a surprise though. :)

Finishing up my fanfic pinch hit for hearts_in_time tonight and tomorrow. I love it when I finally get an idea that’s nearly fully formed pop into my head. Makes things so much easier. :)

Erich bought a blacklight this weekend so we could scour the house for cat issues. Hoodsie has been spraying due to stress, and we want to do whatever we can to solve the problem rather than getting rid of the cat (we love him – and he is a very good cat in every way but this). Blacklights reveal very scary things, I have to say. But they work wonderfully to find the spots you miss cleaning. :) We also bought one of the Feliway diffusers and plugged it in to the living room, since that’s a room where the cats congregate a lot (while we’re home, since we’re there). So far it actually does seem to be helping a bit. A bit expensive, but hey… if it solves the problem, it’s worth every penny. Allows us to keep both our house safe and the cat safe.

My day lillies next to our driveway have gone absolutely batshit insane. Some of the flower stalks are literally to my shoulder (I’m 5’5″). We have a TON of them, too. When they bloom, I’m going to have to take pictures and post them. It’s going to be a spectacular year for them, thanks to all of the rain.

Still waiting to close on the Norfolk house. *crosses fingers that the town inspector gets off his ass* Erich can’t wait to get that thing off of his plate and use the money to pay off his credit card debt. I can’t blame him.

Demolition has almost finished tearing down the J. Hook buildings next to my office. The rotting fish smell sadly has not gone away. Bleh. I imagine that’s going to hang around for a while.

That’s it. Another hazy, hot and humid day here in Boston. Work to be done.

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• Sunday, May 11th, 2008

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• Wednesday, May 07th, 2008

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• Tuesday, May 06th, 2008

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• Friday, March 21st, 2008

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• Thursday, January 31st, 2008

I do not enjoy spending a good portion of my Thursday night having to give Cat the Eldest a bath because his butt is an explosion of gross.

*shudder*

*flails*

There are times when long haired cats are just the worst animals in the world. And tonight was one of them. *shudders again*

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• Monday, June 04th, 2007

So much swirling around lately… it’s no wonder that I had to deal with insomnia last night. *sigh*

A huge thank you to everyone who has been commenting, emailing, or calling lately… I really do appreciate it. I haven’t been able to wrap my brain around all of my thoughts on the matter, but I’m glad to hear that I’m not overreacting on this. I’m well aware of my tendency to do so… and to be slightly selfish. But in this matter, I want to be, dammit. :)

Erich and I are winding down for the evening – watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for the umpteenth time. He’s teasing me every time David Tennant comes on screen. I think he’s feeling slightly jealous for some reason…

(he really doesn’t have anything to worry about. I don’t think said Scotsman is showing up at my house anytime soon).

Wedding
Haven’t talked to Mom yet. Not looking forward to it. Not feeling much better than last week, but at least I’m no longer numb. I’m just very pissed off and very depressed about the whole thing. But I’m so thankful for the people we chose to be in our wedding party – both our best man (Tone) and our maid of honor (Melinda) spent a lot of time this week trying to console, cheer us up, and do some both sarcastic and not-so-sarcastic suggestions for revenge. It definitely helped. Add to that that the rest of my non-family bridesmaids have been there as well… and yeah, I’m lucky to have them. I really am.

I’m still really trying to find any reason to keep planning this wedding. *sigh* We’ll see – at some point this week, Erich and I need to talk to her. And if we do go forward, I absolutely need the following things to happen this week to feel remotely sane:

- book a photographer
- finalize the guest list
- order my invitations
- make a reservation for my first dress fitting
- figure out what steps we need to take for our officiant to be legal in Rhode Island

We’ll see. But let’s just say… I’m much less willing to be openly sensitive to my family’s religious issues right now. If it didn’t scare me to open my faith up to my family so much (a discussion for another entry…), I would be planning the public handfasting right now.

Hoodsie
We’ve slowly started releasing Hoodsie into the general cat population. After several surprisingly smooth days, we’ve started dealing with the more expected growing pains. The male cats are trying to figure out the new pecking order. It’s been a bit interesting. No complete all out fights, but they’ve come close. The hardest time to deal with him is in the late evening, just because he’s still wanting to go out and roam.

We’re finding that large doses of loose catnip on the floor to drug them all into oblivion is helping tremendously, though. Gus and Hoodsie, despite being rankled at each other all day, are currently sprawled out next to each other covered in the blessed weed, well beyond stoned.

I’m in full support of cat addictions, if it helps soothe the adjustment process. *grin*

Weekend
We had a busy weekend here again, which was fun (and honestly just what I needed to keep myself from brooding too often). Early Saturday, two of my sorority sisters, masquedbunny (who is one of my other aforementioned awesome bridesmaids), and whishastar took the commuter train down from Boston for a “Stitch, Bitch & Who” day. Not so much of the stitching occurred, and bitching was actually fairly light this time, too. But lots of Doctor Who. All of the third series to date in a day. Including the second half of the two-parter I’ve been impatiently waiting for since it was announced months ago. And it did not disappoint. At all.

Later that day, our friend Matt (one of Erich’s kickass groomsmen) came down, also for some of the aforementioned Who. Everyone spent the night. We had coffee & donuts, and then I took the girls back up to Boston.

Matt & Erich stayed home to play World of Warcraft, and then went out to see 28 Weeks Later (on which I passed). We continued playing WoW when they got home until late in the evening. Matt and I stayed up to watch some other Who stuff, and I found myself dealing with a nasty case of insomnia that refused to let me fall asleep until about four or so.

Needless to say, between that, the headcold I had last week, and the stress of last week, I needed a serious mental health day, and took one of my Essential Days today.

I didn’t exactly get the stitching done I needed to, nor the writing, nor the beta reading. But in light of the week… I’m not beating myself up at all about it.

Lots of thoughts swirling. And I need a serious vacation.

Maybe Erich and I will have to reconsider our plans to put off our honeymoon until next year… *sigh*

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• Friday, June 01st, 2007

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• Tuesday, May 29th, 2007

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