Hair-brained ideas

I got it in my head tonight that I wanted to install a script to manage my photos for the 365 Project and after configuring the PHP file and uploading everything to my webspace I found that I ... uhhh .. have a Windows hosting plan, which won't support PHP. So I had to request that my plan be switched to Linux, but I'm not entirely sure how long the account change will take. Up to 72 hours, I guess. The only thing the switchover seems to be affecting right now is my image directory.

I can still post a

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

to Tom's dad today. I think I'm just barely making it in under the wire at 11:50 EST, but it still counts! Normally I'd post a picture of some sort, but since my images are down right now it wouldn't make much sense.

In honor of the release of the new Indiana Jones LEGO sets, we're watching Temple of Doom tonight with Nicholas. Tom and I both remember this movie as being very cutting edge back when we were kids. When we watch it now it's lost a bit of its magic, but now Nicholas finally knows why we think we're so funny when he asks what's for supper and we both say "Chilled Monkey Brains".

Our family shrank by 4 feet last night

This morning my mother called to let us know that their dog, Ike, passed away during the night. Ike was, as they put it, "90 years old in dog years" and had been experiencing some health problems for a while. The death of an old dog who has led a very long, happy life is less tragic than when a young dog passes before his time - but it's no less traumatic for my mom and her husband who have been greeted by Ike's big old snarfing face and wagging tail every day when they arrive home. (Although the "snarfing" was a more recent characteristic, part of the respiratory difficulties he seemed to be experiencing in his advancing age.) He's been my stepfather's hunting companion for over a decade, one of the nicest and most finely trained dogs I've known, and his demeanor made it easy for him to endear himself to anyone.




The funniest part of this next picture is the "Warning: Guard Dog" sign on the gate. Ike was about as fierce as an Easter Peep™. Nicholas will be sad the first time he doesn't get to see Ike running up to the gate when we pull into the driveway. He always likes to stick a hand in there to say his hellos to both of the dogs, but Ike's older age made him considerably more mellow and Nicholas could often be found whispering "You're my favorite" to Ike much like he whispers it to our gray cat when the orange one isn't listening. We take care of feeding the dogs a lot when my mom and her husband are traveling, and Nicholas was already aware that Ike was experiencing some health problems and was much older than he is. So while it won't necessarily seem like news that came out of the blue, it will still be sad for him to hear.





My mom and her husband still have an English Setter named Raleigh. He's a young dog, coming into his own as a hunting companion. He would probably best fall into the category of "whippersnapper" - a wily creature with personality to spare. Recently my stepfather dyed his fur brunette for duck hunting season and we all crack up every time we arrive at the house because he looks as though he's been rolling in a mud pit. Apparently it's not easy to make a dog wait the 20 minutes for their hair color to set. Here's Nicholas serenading Raleigh in the summer of 2006, back when he was still a platinum blonde.





Even when they're the furry kind, it's always hard to lose a member of your family. But we'll always have the memories of his big snarfing face.

Why you should never put me on speakerphone in a public place

"Wait! You're in a store right now?"

"Yes"

"And you have me on speaker phone?"

"Yes"

"So .... this entire time I was talking to you, I was on speaker phone?"

"Yes. So don't say any swear words."

"Hey, did that rash ever clear up?"

"Don't talk about rashes while I'm trying on clothes!"

"When is your court date for those shoplifting charges?"

"You're so funny."

"Do you still have that 'peeing in clothes you don't own' fetish?"

Their Royal Highnesses

I posted back at the end of July about one of our cats (Mo) who was going in to be declawed at the ripe age of 2 (and the ripe weight of 12 pounds). I won't go over my mixed emotions all over again because it's moot now, the claws are gone and he's back to acting like royalty around the house again. As a matter of fact we've renamed both the cats in the past week - Mo is now "Princess" and Chivus is "Duchess" - because the two of them have been laying about the house as though they're on direct orders from the Queen Mother.

The veterinarian kept Mo for two days because with him weighing as much as he does they wanted to keep him off his feet as long as possible. I laughed hard when I hung up the phone because anyone who knows Mo would know that keeping him off his feet isn't exactly a problem. Getting him ON his feet is more of problem. Neither of the cats is much for this thing they call "exercise". Every once in a while one of them will get up and walk to the other side of the room, but then the physical exertion required to walk across the room dictates that they take a minimum 2 hour nap before moving again. But they kept him until Sunday evening and then I was allowed to bring him home - and I had him on pain meds, which he was surprisingly willing to take. (When I got him from a shelter in Indianapolis as a kitten he had an exceptionally vicious upper respiratory infection that required he take antibiotics a couple times a day and I almost lost both of my arms and possibly an eye in the battle).

That Sunday night that he first came back home we were watching television and when it came time to go to bed I reached down to pick him up off the floor to bring him to bed with us - because heaven forbid he would have had to walk in there himself - and he was down there chewing on his left paw and a big (for a cat) circle of bright red blood was soaking into the carpet underneath him. Since it was 11pm on a Sunday night we didn't have a whole lot of options available to us, so I crafted a make-shift bandage that consisted of a cut up rag, a 6-inch section from an Ace bandage and two ponytail holders that were tight enough to keep him from getting the whole thing off, but loose enough that he wouldn't need an amputation the next day. I'm the MacGyver of animal-care. We had to keep him in the bathroom that night with a litter box and his food and water dish until I could get him into the vet in the morning. And despite his best efforts, he never did manage to get that bandage chewed all the way off - which turned out to be a good thing, according to the vet, because it allowed it to clot enough that he didn't require stitches.

From what they could tell, and Mo wasn't giving up ANY information, some surgical glue had run down in-between two of the pads on his paw and it was probably bugging him to have those two pads stuck together. Since it was hard to get down in there to chew the glue out he basically just mangled the paw of his foot trying.

BUT - since the surgical glue was still down in there, and since now it was going to be all bothersome because of the injury, they needed to keep him away from the paw so he didn't open it up again and/or give himself a raging infection from messing with it. So he had to rock this look for a week:




It didn't interfere with his couch-laying schedule or his bird-watching schedule, but it sure freaked the other cat out.

And speaking of the other cat, Mo tends to be a camera hog because, in general, he has more personality and is the lead character in more funny stories. In the interest of fairness, though, here's a glamour shot of Chivus (aka "The Duchess") from this past weekend.




Mo is no longer wearing the collar. I actually didn't even keep it on him for the full week because I checked his paw every morning and after about 5 days that surgical glue had finally worked its way out. Plus they can't groom themselves with the big bell collar on, and Chivus basically ran screaming from the room every time Mo entered - so HE wasn't going to help. So after five days in the collar Mo was starting to smell a little ripe. After the collar came off he must have sat and worked on his hygiene for a solid hour, which is more energy than he usually expends in a day.

Every once in a while he'll stand next to the corner of the loveseat, where the tell-tale signs of the good old days still remain, but all-in-all he's no worse for the wear. Neither is our furniture.

Yes, I KNOW I haven't posted since 6/25

Would you believe we ran out of home improvement projects?

No?

Okay.

How about somebody had a birthday?



Tom is somewhat horrified that I'm posting this picture on the Internet because we "surprised" him with dinner & cake after he returned from the gym, and he'd like for everyone to know that he doesn't normally wear a Pac Man shirt. Because NORMALLY he wears a Homestar Runner t-shirt, or a Penny Arcade t-shirt, both of which give him ridiculously large amounts of style cred. I'm only half-joking about that. Tom's t-shirt collection actually plays more of a role in our daily life than you might think. We've had people allow us to go ahead of them in line at a checkout purely because Tom is wearing his Tab t-shirt that day. Our lender also (jokingly) refused to proceed with our home loan because Tom was wearing a KISS t-shirt. Apparently he's not a fan. I'd never heard of Homestar Runner before I met Tom, yet we had a waiter once abruptly stop taking our order midway through because he wanted to let Tom know he's also a huge fan. Okay buddy, that's great, but you know what I'm a huge fan of? Pasta. Nobody ever gives us special treatment because of my Mossimo v-neck t-shirts (in solid colors only) from Target.

But I digress. We made a road trip down to Indianapolis for a few days before Tom's birthday, because I know I always missed being around my family for my birthday when I lived down in Indiana and I exercised my powers of self-projection and decided Tom feels the same (because I'm vain that way). That should explain at least SOME of our absence to you.

No?

Okay, well how about this one: The projects we've been working on aren't as exciting and glamorous as our past projects. Let's face it, once you've taken a Skil saw to your kitchen counter in order to remove a dishwasher encrusted in rat feces, everything else is pretty ho-hum. We've been working on things, but mainly we've been enjoying the summer while it lasts, and I've had respiratory infections that last longer than a Wisconsin summer.

When we moved into the house our home improvement schedule generally consisted of tackling one big project every other weekend, since my son is with his dad every other weekend. That way we weren't all engrossed in whatever "super fun A+ fantastic" problem we'd run into with the house during the time my son was with us. Because it turns out 6 year olds aren't all that interested in watching you paint the woodwork white or re-wire half the house. Back in MY day, let me tell you, I was perfectly HAPPY to watch paint dry, while sitting in our dirt-floored hut playing with the only two toys I was ever allowed to have - A BOX AND A STICK! And I loved that box and that stick.

Since my son is now out of school for the summer, our project schedule has gone through something of a mandatory slowdown because there are other things to do. Things that are way more fun than...say...sanding a floor. Thing like spending the 4th of July in the pool then watching the fireworks out on the lake in grandma's boat. Then we had to (HAD to) spend a Saturday at the waterpark with my sister and her family. And the FAIR! Oh my God the FAIR! Fried stuff in a little cardboard boat? Don't even get me started on cotton candy. You know how they make it? MAGIC!

We've still managed to get a few things done, though. Tom finished painting the doors in the entry/living room white so they're no longer the huge eyesores of the room. Our 1960's ugly wood door actually looks less ugly painted white. My lawn officially went dormant due to drought, so not much to share on that front. (It's starting to green up again after a few recent rainfalls, but I'm one of those people who thinks if it's too dry to keep the lawn alive, it's probably too dry to be wasting perfectly good drinking water on the lawn.) Tom has also been working on the garage, which thus far has been a large storage area for things whose eventual home had not been cleaned/fumigated/painted and/or destroyed with napalm then rebuilt from the ground up. This morning he was finally able to start putting lawn & garden supplies away in the built-in cabinet in the garage because the black paint took about two weeks to dry sufficiently.

Things are shaping up. We're starting to hang things on the walls here and there. I've met with the interior decorator about Nicholas' room and now have to coordinate with the painter as soon as I figure out a good time to actually have the painting done. THIS, by the way, is like Shangri-La. I mean, a room we don't have to paint? It's too much for my brain to handle.

Today is sort of a somber day for me because this morning I dropped off one of my cats, Mo, at the vet to have him declawed in the front. The practice of declawing a cat is quite controversial and I'm fully aware of it. I didn't have either of my cats declawed because I'd been sufficiently horrified by the procedure. Any future cats I have will be granted the same courtesy and will enjoy their claws for their entire life PROVIDED THEY DON'T DESTROY MY FURNITURE. Which is really what it came down to with Mo. He already destroyed one couch of mine in his first two years of life despite trying all sorts of humane "cures". The only one that worked was those vinyl claw caps (and don't worry, I never put the colored ones on him). The problem was that they were a bitch to get on him, and I generally always walked away from the experience looking like I'd been horrifically attacked by an army of small tigers. Then he'd goose-step around the house like an army general because he hated the way they felt. On top of all that, and this is the only reason why I say they "worked", he'd spend all of his time frantically chewing at them trying to remove them - and he especially loved to do this in the middle of the night, right next to my head. When he had all that on his plate, it's true he didn't find much time to exercise his claws on the couch. I was told that most cats forget about the things after about an hour - the site says a half hour. I gave Mo THREE WEEKS and then we were both so exhausted that I finally took him to the vet to have the last couple removed by having his claws trimmed really short (the others he managed to chew off). My vet had only known one other cat who had so vehemently rejected the claw caps, and that cat had suffered head trauma (!!!!) and as a result had become so violent that he attacked the family's German Shepherd so badly that the dog needed extensive stitches and lost his sight in one eye.

:: pause so you can crap your pants a little ::

That's why they tried the caps on him, btw. So the dog didn't have to sleep with his one good eye open.

Anyway, the vet I chose does the procedure with a laser, which they assure me at least makes it a little more bearable for the cat. Last night before bed I started feeling really horrible about the whole thing then Mo walked into the room and proceeded to maul the corner of my loveseat. Do I value my furniture more than my cats? You damn well better believe it. Our other cat (Chivus, who isn't as photogenic as Mo so he hasn't appeared on the site yet) is four years old and loves to scratch as much as the next cat - however after being presented with every scratching post option available he decided he favors ones that are simply a box filled with strips of corrugated cardboard and he faithfully uses it every time the urge strikes. He tears the hell out of it some days, but that's why it's there. He will, therefore, keep his claws forevermore.

Now that I got that off my chest, I suppose I can go on with my day.

Since our project list for the summer is filled with more obscure tasks, you'll probably be inundated with more and more nonsense about our day-to-day lives outside the house. Lucky you!

When your central air system came over on the Mayflower...

...you may find yourself migrating towards the great outdoors more than you used to. Our central air exchanger is so old it runs on Flintstone power - we have a little dinosaur in there running on a wheel. For its age the a/c unit performs tremendously ... for the low, low price of a bajillion dollars a month. For this reason we opt to use it somewhat sparingly, and luckily our floor plan is airflow friendly. By throwing the windows open in the dining room, sunroom and living room we are able to take advantage of mother nature (without getting her drunk first, the slut).

"Operation Great Outdoors" started with my desire to whip the lawn into shape. The lawn, never one to back down from a challenge, has slowly and methodically kicked my ass. In the High School of Lawn Care, the lawn has repeatedly plunged my head into a flushing toilet, given me an atomic wedgie and then shoved me into a locker. All that being said, the backyard does manage to serve its purpose as a wildlife habitat, and it seems to resent any effort to develop it into anything more.

Exhibit "A" - Happy Wildlife:







In Nicholas' world swings are not to sit on, they are an apparatus for flight. I did also manage to find him a child-size hammock chair to hang in the Larch tree.




Backyards are for kids! It's not exactly as though we looked at the house and ever said "Boy! I can't wait to run around that backyard!" I can come to terms with the reality of the situation, which is that I shouldn't expect too much from the backyard. (The front yard, however, has some explaining to do).

Still, we have this large fenced in backyard and no neighbors behind us so we simply had to change our expectations. The grass is not going to be lush, green and weed free. I will get over it.

Perhaps sensing our discontent with the outdoor living spaces for those of us over the age of 6, Tom's parents surprised us on their last night in town with these groovy retro chairs for our back patio:



Tom's mother is a wily woman, let me tell you. She made up all kinds of stories trying to get us out into the backyard to discover these chairs (they'd bought and assembled them while we were at work that day). Finally she managed to get us out there under the guise of figuring out whether or not the plant in my backyard that looked like rhubarb was actually rhubarb. (It is, but it needs work.)

The new chairs inspired us to take our patio to the next level by adding Tom's dream grill - a 22" Weber Kettle Grill, because he's a grilling purist and everyone who grills on anything else is dead to him. They can go straight to hell - the 22" Weber kettle grill is where it is at! I was already planning to buy this grill for him for his birthday in July, but watching him drool and whimper every time he walked by one was getting to be a little too much for my heart to take so it became an early birthday present for two very important reasons. ONE: The grilling season is only so long so you have to take advantage. TWO: Stuff cooked on the grill is stuff I don't have to cook.




Now we're talkin'. The backyard is really shaping up at this point.

Over the weekend we went to Menard's because I have these crazy weeds that started as small patches and are slowly taking over large sections of the lawn. Some help from the garden center employee revealed that my problem weed is creeping charlie, which I guess is some pretty scary shit because there was a man standing a few feet away from her when she was looking for a picture of it in the Ortho book, and the man AUDIBLY GASPED when she said "creeping charlie." Geezus, buddy! Is it going to kill me in my sleep? Suddenly still frames from Little Shop of Horrors were running through my head and I felt the money being siphoned out of my wallet. I imagined the remedy for creeping charlie was not going to be inexpensive considering THAT guy, over THERE, visibly grimaced and gasped out loud at the mere mention of it as though he knew a guy who lost his family to creeping charlie.

I already started with a pathetic lawn and somehow managed to raise its rating to "only mildly pathetic" after a few weeks. Now the only way to keep it green is to water it every day because our weather system seems to be stalled out on "dry" and "hot as all get out". To top it all off it turns out I have some sort of creeping, man-eating weed infestation. None of this was bringing us joy-joy feelings about our backyard, you know?

So we decided to implement our own remedy.

Which brings us to one of my favorite mottoes in life: If you can't beat it ... kill it.

And that's just what we did.





Survive THAT, man-eating weed!