Mr. Cat

My poor sister's cat is sick, and it's not your average sort of get better in day or two sick, he's dying. Mr. cat is only a young little thing, and her vet says that whatever it is that he has, is probably from the shelter, but this doesn't help when you have to watch as someone you love starts to fade.
He is a sweet cat, and I hope that he makes it through this. My poor sister is worried, and all sorts of bad things keep happening around her. Her coworker was mugged and another was hit by a car. I don't know how she can handle all this. I wish her the best, but I feel rather helpless as she is in NY and I'm stuck here. I can only say I'm sorry and that I love her, but this doesn't feel like enough with everything she's going through.
Here's to mr. cat. May he live to eat, play, and lounge another day!

Hell yeah I love my mower!

I love my awesome little mower. It's electric, perfect for my yard, has no stupid cord, doesn't stink, is oh so much quieter, and it's a bright red orange.
Here's to my mower!

Owning a house. Oh, and the dog and I on the 24th.

As a brand spankin' new house owner I've got to say... well I'm not sure what to say. Something witty and pithy would be nice, but I'm too bloody tired. And no, I'm not tired from the leaky bathroom and the subsequently replaced cold water pipe in the bathroom.

I am tired because the black-and-white faced dog doesn't like fireworks.
Last night was the grand ol' mormon holiday, and every other house in the neighborhood had illicit fireworks. In order to make the festivities last as long as possible, the various firework lighters would wait to make sure everything was still and quiet before lighting a new one. For the b&w faced dog it was a highly refined form of Chinese water torture.
The poor thing wouldn't go pee, and she may or may not have leaked a little bit. I'm giving her the benefit of "may or may not have" because she was laying in the bathroom to hide from the sound, and we did have a major leak there yesterday. It could have been residual water. I don't really think it is, but come on, can you really be upset with this..?

As for the house I thought I'd finally post some pics so people could see what it looks like. This is only so I can postpone inviting anyone over, and thus procrastinate the unpacking even further.
From the front.

From the back.

My garden.

My craptastic greenhouse, which eventually will become a studio.

My newly put in new garage door. Notice how it looks crooked. It's not the door, or even the photo, it's the garage.

And here's my bedroom, completely flipped around from the order and direction I had it originally set up. Fixing that was fun. (Please note the sarcasm, it is incredibly hard to portray in cyberspace.) I was so worn out from rearranging that I couldn't even make my bed today.

And finally here are the results of my trying to pose the cats for your viewing pleasure.
The bad cat, take 1.

Take 2.

Take 3.

Look at that! I got some eye! And with that accomplishment, I shall move on to the pig.

There are a few more of these. Apparently he's worried that the camera is trying to steal his soul, because he waited until I pushed the button before he'd try and leap out of the frame.

The Unpacking

I have now spent two nights here, the cats are settling in, kinda. They came out of the cat cave for the night last night, but have since hidden themselves away yet again.
The cat cave, aka, my laundry room.

The black-and-white faced dog seems to be handling the new sleeping arrangements just fine. I even got a decent nights sleep, and would have woken up fully refreshed if I hadn't had quite so much wine last night at my parents house.
Now comes the daunting task of unpacking, which as you can see I have studiously ignored up until now.





And the pièce de résistance.

I haven't even gone in this room, it is far too scary.
I poked about in the kitchen a bit more this morning, and there is going to be a parade for the children in the neighborhood, this being the grand mormon holiday and all, so I have a bit more of an excuse to procrastinate, but I will be getting something unpacked fully today.
It's a goal.
One that I may or may not accomplish.
It's something that I'm aiming for.
Maybe I'll go hide with the cats in the cat cave.

Well I'm in!

Yesterday I got all my stuff moved over to the house. And man, do I have a lot of stuff. I hired movers to get all the big scary sort of furniturey items. They were great! Very efficient and quick it only took them 2 hours, and considering it's taken me two weeks to get the stuff that goes inside of, on, and around those items, I was duly impressed. Of course I was all angsty about the tip I gave them, but that is what it is now.
I slept (more of fitful tossing and turning than true sleep) here amongst the mess last night, and woke myself up fully this morning by thinking of all the spiders and other weird things I brought in from my grandmothers garage, which is where most of my furniture was being stored.
I originally thought that the cats would keep me up all night, and to be honest they didn't help, but overall they were pretty good. They are both wearing their belled collars and are dingling about the basement. There is an excellent under the stairs spot in which they have both ensconced themselves. They made brief forays from this place of safety last night. One of which was on the part of the bad cat, who woke me up by standing on the bed next to me and staring at me. Oddly, the pig appears to be handling the move better than the bad cat.
The black-and-white faced dog spent the night with me as well. She is doing okay, but I forgot her breakfast and I had to create one from leftover rice and trout skin. Needless to say, she loved it.

Oodles of posting to make up for!

I know I haven't been keeping up to date with this, but I wanted to get the photos before I said anything, and, well, being me, I procrastinated. I'm very good at procrastinating. Very, very good... So good that I wrote all this a year ago and have only been posting it now.
Okay that last bit wasn't true, but it easily could be, I really am a good procrastinator.
Well, I've been working at the house. With the help of the female parental unit, and her little friend we tackled the painting of the new house.
The previous owners had issues with colors. Those issues being they apparently wore gray tinted glasses in the house which prevented them from seeing how bright colors really are.
(On a side note, as I write this, the bad cat is trying his best to get my attention by leaping onto ledges in the parental unit's house where there are particularly breakable items that the female parental unit will miss if they are broken.)
Back to the house of spectacularly horrible color choices.
The worst of the color choices came in the form of an orange bedroom. This was no ordinary orange bedroom, but a nasty dark burnt sort of orange bedroom, in which they had decided that they loved this color so much that they would waste no space and paint the ceiling as well as the walls the same horrible nasty dark burnt sort of orange.

Not only was it horrible and nasty, it was also evil and really didn't want to let go of it's room.
Well, after much fighting, we conquered the evil orange.


While these photos don't do the color justice, I assure you it is much better than the orange, and is now something that I could sleep in without having nightmares that involve being smeared with burnt pumpkin in an increasingly shrinking room.
Other atrocities to the world of colors include the red and black accent walls in the basement, which when combined with white stairs and a lower ceiling, gave the effect that the basement was eating you.

We simplified and went white. It is a huge relief.

The crazy color family had also decided on a blue kitchen. A very blue kitchen. Which when combined with the yellow living room made for some eye slapping contrasts. (Unfortunately I failed to get an image of these two fighting for dominance.)

We resuscitated this by cutting out half the blue. Much better, if I don't say so myself, which I just did, so you make the call.

There were other little changes, but these three have made the house feel more like something I could live in. I couldn't have done this without the female parental unit or her little friend. After all I'm a procrastinator. If it were up to me, I'd still be sorting through my sweaters before I pack them up.

It's Officially Official

These are the keys to my house!

Now the bad cat has a whole new house to destroy!

How I Spent the 4th Not Looking at Fireworks

This is how we actually spent the fourth. Hiding under our chairs from the hail. There's something about our hiking on Boulder Mountain that means it will rain. The next day the sky was blue and beautiful.

This is actually from the 3rd, when we were hiding out from yet another party down there. I keep thinking of the episode of As Time Goes By when they are in the country and the get caught up in the scene. The County Set.

Happy 4th!

We are down south enjoying life. I've got some great pics to post, but unfortunately I forgot my card reader and camera connection so the only pics I have right now are from my computer, and I can only post those if the internet decides to function.
I spent an amazing night sleeping in the courtyard. The moon didn't rise until midnight and the stars were amazing. You can actually see the milky way down here, and the shooting stars. Normally you can see satellites, but there were so many bright things in the sky that it was overwhelmingly hard to focus on just one area.
While I was sleeping peacefully, my bad cat apparently had a horrible night. He spent it meowing at me all night from inside the house. I couldn't hear him crying but he kept the female parental unit and her sister up all night with his pitiful cries. He's a very bad cat, and now we've got two unsettled females wandering around refusing to take naps.
His previous night was much better, for him. He spent the night racing around the house running into objects and knocking things over. I even tried to keep him awake during the day so he wouldn't be annoying, but he kept going off and hiding in a closet in order to get his power rest.
The pig, on the other hand, views this place as a great sleeping spot. He spends the majority of his days and nights sleeping on my bed or on the chairs in the dining area.
I spend my time down here rejuvenating myself.
My mom has introduced a new word game to play that she got from the New Yorker. You replace the word heart, with the word dick, and vice versa. It's wonderfully juvenile and leads to great laughs. Dick attack. Broken dicked. I wear my dick on my sleeve, and the greatest from the little sister, from my dick to yours. Hah!

Little Red Dot and Toenails

Last night we were playing with the little red dot, which is a whole other post unto itself. (Apparently my cats are both too dumb to figure out that the little red dot doesn't exist.)

When my bad cat attacked the female parental unit's foot. Granted I had encouraged the attack by putting the dot on the foot, but the end result was he needed his toenails clipped.
This is one thing that my bad cat is actually kind of good at. I'm not saying he turns into some sort of passive saint, but both the cats will put up with it if they must.

Last night I only made it through the front toes before he got too wiggly, but I thought I should share that sometimes my bad cat isn't so bad after all.