Posts Tagged Life

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So, anyone who is a regular reader knows that I have four indoor cats.

The oldest of these, Pippin, has just gone on a diet.  You see, Pippin is a Dog-Sized Cat, even without his now verging on bowling-ball-sized belly.  Even when he was young and spry and in good shape, the only collars I could get to fit him were dog collars, and I had to buy dog beds because he was too big for cat beds. His paws are enormous. His claws are so long and he is so strong that he has been known to maim me completely by accident, simply by walking across my foot.  This is a Big Cat. And in recent years, as playfulness gave way to laziness, he has become a Big Fat Cat.

I have another cat who requires a special diet as well – Sistermew, who has to have medicine mixed into her breakfast because of recurring UTIs.  At this point we are well accustomed to her having a separate breakfast, to the point that she runs into the bathroom when the alarm goes off and waits for me to shut her in.

But now having two cats who need to be fed separately can make for some complicated mornings.  It goes like this:

• Wake up. Give all my surrounding kitties a good snuggle and try to convince them to let me out of the bed. This doesn’t always work. Wiggle enough to dislodge the cat that is on top of me (usually Evilmew).
• Shut Sistermew in master bath, with her can of special food and medicine.  Turn on trickle of water in tub so that she’ll actually bloody drink something.
• Shut Pippin in other bathroom with his carefully measured low-fat morning munchies.
• Feed Outdoor Cats.
• Feed Brothermew and Evilmew in kitchen together. Since they get along fairly well, Evilmew doesn’t get bullied away from the food bowl. This is good, because Evilmew is far too skinny, and I often wonder if that is why she sold her fluff to the Basement Cat.
• Scoop Boxes.
• Eat Breakfast. Get Dressed.
• Go around house to let cats out of their respective breakfast prisons. If the other cats haven’t finished their meals, take them up, because Pippin Will Eat It All.

It’s been a week since Pippin’s been on his diet. So far, Pippin is grumpy, and the other cats are very confused as to why there’s not always food in the bowl in the kitchen, and as to why Pippin is treating them like they have severely offended him.

I have gathered up anything that could at all possibly be shredded and put it up out of his way. Paperbacks, cookbooks, magazines, cardboard boxes given to the cats as toys, etc., since Pippin’s favorite way to express anxiety and/or annoyance with me is to shred something and scatter the bits all over the house…

Unfortunately, I forgot the toilet paper.

Related articles

• Crushable’s Cat Lady: And A Happy New Year’s Kitten To You! (crushable.com)
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I’ve gotten moved over to my own domain and gotten all of my posts imported, now all that needs doing is a little customization of my theme and to get all of my articles, stories, poems, and papers linked up for my writing portfolio page. For my faithful subscribers, thanks for hanging in there while I got everything moved and set up. You’ll be able to find me a little easier now!  For the new folks, welcome! Let me give you a bit of an introduction. I’m a writer, a gamer, and pretty much an all-around geek. I’m also a girl. Go figure.

You can follow the little link above for my writing portfolio (still in progress), if you’re interested in reading some of my fiction or articles.

You won’t find me claiming to be any sort of expert in anything. I’m still learning. Hopefully I always will be, and I’ll be able to take you on that trip with me as I do so.  What you will find here are my thoughts on things I come across in life, my opinions on the world around me and, of course, my favorite forms of entertainment. I try to be an objective critic, but when it comes to some things, I have the tendency to go completely rabid fangirl…

Especially if it involves Joss Whedon. You have been warned.

Thanks for coming, and if you like what you read, thanks for staying long enough to do so!

Image by confusedvision via Flickr

I have a happy.

Don’t really know why. Nothing’s different, nothing’s drastically changed. I did lose five pounds virtually overnight (*yay* even though I know it was mostly water…)

Last couple of days I’ve just been feeling really up and optimistic and awake.

I got the moleskines I ordered, and as usual, the nice, pristine blank pages always fill me with ideas of things to fill them up with. I don’t write terribly well in a notebook. I tend to find that my thoughts come too fast to keep up with my penmanship, so I prefer a computer when I get down to the actual writing. I do, however, love them for taking notes, and drawing, and just generally musing on things.

I’ve been writing a great deal lately, though nothing I’m ready to show anyone. Q10 is the most marvelous thing for keeping me focused on what I’m writing, even when I’m having a decidedly non-focusy day.

And the lists that go with it. Here goes:

Resolutions (ie. The things I need to Start Doing):

1. Update each of my blogs once a week. Even if it’s to say I don’t have anything to say.
2. Write at least 1000 words of fiction every day.
3. Do something involving physical activity at least three times a week. I’ve succeeded at the goal of changing how I eat. Now it’s time for the really hard part.
4. Learn to actually play my guitar instead of using it as a decorative household accessory.
5. Snuggle the cats and the BF more. Snuggle the keyboard and mouse less.

Un-Resolutions (ie. The things I need to Stop Doing):

1. No. More. Cats. Unless they’re outside. You’re bordering on crazy-cat-lady territory already, and can you really afford to buy more 20lb. bags of cat food and cat litter every week?
2. No more procrastination. True, it can wait until tomorrow…but it probably shouldn’t.
3. No more avoiding the hard stuff because it’s easier to just not do it at all.

Things I’m glad I did in 2008:

1. NaNoWriMo. I actually finished this year, and while it’ll take a lot of work to get it to a publishable form beyond the express 50,000 words, my idea seems original and actually marketable.
2. Putting up Yule decorations instead of being all scroogy and grrr during the holidays.
3. Learning to draw. I’m having a lot of fun with it, and getting better with each picture, and it feels like something worthwhile.
4. Discovering just how much I actually love cooking.
5. Going as green as is possible for someone living in a not-terribly-well-insulated house an hour’s drive from anywhere. It didn’t turn out to cost as much as I feared, and even ended up saving me some money in some places.
6. Finally, for the first time in my life, being able to look in the mirror and think “I am beautiful” and genuinely believe it.

I’ve been to Atlanta twice in one month…that’s got to be a record for me. I’m a pretty devoted homebody and country girl. Both trips were pretty exhausting, but fun. First DragonCon, then a friend’s wedding this last weekend.

The wedding was at the Inn at Serenbe, a green community outside Atlanta. The community itself is very neat, and I’m all for encouraging environmentalism. The restaurants have a sort of from-field-to-table philosophy, taking local produce grown organically on Serenbe farms, and as a result, the food is some of the most delicious I’ve ever had, and the simplest. When you’ve got good ingredients going in, they don’t require a lot of extra work to make them taste good.

It was a little funny, though, coming from the family farm to a development that was clearly built to look old and rustic. Makes you wonder at what odd things city people will pay for, when we’ve got the exact same thing down here without any effort at all.

But maybe I’m being a bit too practical about the whole thing. It was one of the most beautiful weddings I’ve ever been to, and we had a lot of fun touring the Serenbe community and just generally relaxing. It would be nice to go up again sometime, on a weekend where it’s not going to be so busy, and hike the nature trails and just sit and be lazy.

The funniest thing that happened all weekend, though, was being followed to Atlanta by a giant fiberglass triceratops. Haven’t got the picture uploaded yet, but we kept seeing this fellow pulling a triceratops all the way up to Atlanta. Not really something you see going down the interstate on your average day.