The crafty will always find a way to support their habit...

Hence my one fat cat at the automatic cat feeder -- IN BETWEEN feedings!

Love the little critters

I love animals... And NOT with BBQ sauce on them! That's why this slideshow makes me happy. HSUS is no PETA, they might actually be making a difference! Yay!

See: Celebrating Animals

Cat Alarm

Rose sent me a link to this video - How cat owners wake up.

Funny.

Now I know why I have bags under my eyes in the morning! (See: Rude Awakenings).

Songwriter? Check.

I wrote a song this morning. It's called "My Little Monkey." I sang it to my cats.

After all, it was written for them.

I dunno, but early reaction would indicate that it's a hit.

Working at home

Yesterday I was working at home. This may seem like an ideal situation, but it's wrought with challenges for my weakling little self. Some of these are as follows:

- Sedentation. Lack of movement causes stiffness and soreness and I didn't even DO anything! What the? This one isn't so good for an expanding butt either.

- Boredom. Usually when I'm bored of working on spreadsheets at home, there's the fridge. But I'm trying real hard not to snack lately. At one point the banana on the counter by my desk and I had a pretty good stare-down. It's amazing how good that banana looks when you can't have it.

- Random thoughts. Working at home makes you vulnerable to a wandering mind. Thinking about how badly I wanted that banana made me ponder the phenomenon I call unrequited proximity infatuation. That is... Someone is around a lot. You can't have them. Suddenly they become the most delectable thing on the planet. Ugh. Damn you banana! Tease.

- Spontaneous ADD. Anything, and I mean anything can be distracting when trying to work at home. I mentioned the fridge. Phone calls to catch up on. There's laundry to do. (Especially washing things that haven't been washed in 15 years. Hey, Garfield had fun!) ... I finally cut my toenails (I'm sure you really wanted to know that). Emailed some people several times. I read blogs and commented on blogs (and proceeded to make typos which made the comment mean the opposite of what I'd meant to write!!! Sheesh!) Incidentally, this blog post --Spotting Trends-- totally cracked me up... Then there was my cat giving me her irresistable you know you wanna come over here and give me hugs and kisses look. Oh, and I took photos of snowflakes. What??? C'mon, they were HUGE!



Now before you call me a total slacker, you should know that I did get some work done! Ah whatever, you're going to call me names anyways. Sticks and stones... You're rubber I'm glue... No, YOU'RE weak!

Lunch break is officially OVER. Bye.

I'm Okay!!!

Just thought I'd let you know that I'm okay. I wasn't incarcerated or held for a psych evaluation or anything since my last post.

I'm workin' on some material... however things have been too busy lately for me to focus and finish any... so in the meantime, I will leave you with another of the cartoons I've been enjoying from that Mark Parisi guy. Topic for discussion: How many times can a product be "new and improved" anyways? And how bad was the original product in the first place? If I was an inventor, should I purposely put out the worst product first so that I can put out 'improved' versions later? And who tastes pet foods? Animals must be used, but they can't tell the R&D people what's wrong with the product. Like, does it need more salt or does it taste like bad fish? Geez, I'd hate to be on the sensory evaluation panel for that one!

Discuss amongst yourselves.

The Stench/Affection Trade-Off

My cats always run into the washroom while I'm doing my 'business'. They know they have me captive within petting distance, with not much else to do at that moment but reach down and give them a scratch. I don't read on the can because I'm never in there long enough. Plus if I'm reading something good, it encourages me to stay in there overtime and my legs start to get numb. I hate that.

Anyways, it must be worth it for the cats to run in and get their few seconds of scratches. I can't help but wonder though... Is enduring the stench a good trade for such fleeting affection? Maybe they forgot how bad it got the last time. Maybe they're gamblers, hastily taking their chances, keeping their toes crossed that refried beans weren't on the menu recently. Perhaps they think it would be rude or too late to bail. Or it may happen that by the time the stink hits their nose, the scratchin' is so good that they don't even notice how thick the air is anymore.

Perhaps this is analogous to relationships. We race in, hoping to have the guarantee that someone is there to pet us. Occasionally, there's a bit of a stink. Maybe turning on the fan or spraying some flowery-smelling stuff helps. Perhaps we adapt. Sometimes we find ourselves taking a step back to evaluate the tenuous trade-off of stench for affection. And there may be moments, usually as we foresee the likelihood of our impending death by suffocation, that we high-tail it the hell outta there as fast as possible!

Rude Awakenings

Most awakenings are rather rude, because who wouldn’t rather sleep most days than have to get up? It gets even ruder when you look in the mirror. At least that’s the case with me, since Puff Daddy has abandoned that name for P. Diddy (or is it only Shawn Combs now?) I’m going to claim the name Puffy or Puff Mama. Some days I stumble into the washroom and look in the mirror and almost fall over. You’d think that doing it every day would reduce my shock but it doesn’t. Someone must rough me up while I’m sleeping, and I don’t mean in a good way.

Then there are the rude awakenings that not only wake you up prematurely, but do so in a rude manner. Some examples of these would be having a bad dream, waking up with your face in a hairy armpit, or opening your eyes and seeing a bum or other body part extremely close up (luckily hasn’t happened to me since I was a kid).

My rude awakenings often include some kind of antics by one of my cats. For instance, a fairly common but revolting way to get woken up is by the sound of a cat puking. The other night my cat was right by my head and I heard that prepuking noise and thought she was going to hurl right on my face!!! I flipped out and she ended up running and throwing up on the carpet by the bedroom door. Another time Flo left some chicken bones on the counter, and one of the cats must have found the bones and dragged them into my room and was rabidly chewing and crunching and slurping right beside my bed at 5am. Then there was the time something startled the cat that was sleeping soundly on my belly. She sprung from belly to face, sprung off there and across the night table and into the closet. Ouch. I was startled once again that morning when I looked in the mirror.

I’ve also been woken up by farts. Sometimes you’re sleeping with a new person (boyfriend or friend) and somehow a fart gets out in the night and shocks you into consciousness. This is ultimate humiliation because you lie there wondering if the other person heard it and if they’re pretending to sleep through it to avoid the embarrassing moment. I mean, if it was loud enough to wake you up then it could have woken up the other person, right? What’s worse is when a fart wakes you up… but not the sound of it, the SMELL. I have never experienced this one, thank God. I have heard of it being grounds for divorce though.

Well, I’m going to bed early. I’d like to wake up refreshed, by my alarm, after a solid night’s sleep. Could happen!