Posts Tagged ‘cats’

Not quite seeing eye to eye

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

So my husband and I were having a disagreement about something the other day, and were lying on the floor on these big pillows we have while we talked it through to try and resolve it (don’t ask me why we lie on the floor to negotiate, but it seems to happen often), when in the middle of our mini-fight, this

stepped between our heads, filled our field of view, and promptly sat down for a while, just hanging out.  We wait.  She wanders away.

Our reaction:

“Hang on – there seems to be a communication barrier…”

“Everything seemed grey for a minute there.”

“There were a few hairy moments.”

The fact that our primary concern was getting in another pun is probably a good indicator of why our relationship is so strong.

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Posted in Real Life, Things That Amuse Me, cats | 3 Comments »

Substance

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

I received my first ever blog award badge thingy!  …Or the first that I know of, I guess.  It is possible that somewhere out there a vast grouping of Russian cat-loving stick people have been waiting for my acceptance speech, but I haven’t yet caught on to it.  много спасибо для значка, Russian people.  At any rate, many thanks to the lovely IfByYes for the acknowledgment.  It is sincerely appreciated (and if you’re not reading her yet, get over there already!  She is eloquent, and open, and has an uncanny habit of sometimes reading my mind.  And the courtesy not to tell everyone about all the zombie stuff in there).

And, she happens to think this is…

I will admit to feeling somewhat inclined to fill this post with photos of various unidentified substances.  …But I imagine that would somewhat detract from my worthiness to keep the badge.

So my badge comes with rules:

1) Thank the blogger who awarded it to you.

Really?  Are there truly people out there who wouldn’t already have done that by this point?  Clearly the substance in that blog is rather dense.  Anyway, IfByYes, I extend to you a formal thank you, in compliance with rule number one of subsection two of the substance-related-badges act.  Thank you, IfByYes.  Thank you.

2) Sum up your blogging philosophy, motivation, and experience using five words.

Um… “Try not to misspell stuff?”

This seems to be asking an awful lot out of five words.  It’s kind of like “sum up your existence with one haiku.”  I will try, though.  I suppose a more comprehensive answer might be:

Transparency

Reflection

Connection

Perseverance

Holy Crap People are Commenting on This Stuff Sometimes

3) Pass it on to 10 other blogs which you feel have real substance.

I freely acknowledge that the whole point of these things is to give a shout-out to people you think are worthy.  Part of me hates having to do this kind of thing, though, because I’m always afraid of having a brain slip and leaving somebody out, or that person number eleven will be secretly crushed they didn’t make it.  Plus, “real substance”?  Rough.  Okay, here goes…

Blogs with Substance:

1.  http://www.spokeit.com/spoke/

Spokeit is often reflecting on and refining her goals, moods, and approach to life, which gives her substance in my book.  And her dog is just about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.  I’m going to call that substance too.  He is substantially cute.

2.  http://annenahm.com/

This is mostly a very humourous mommy blog.  …But every now and then she gets a little bit serious and shares something more personal too.  Substance!

3.   http://itwaddle.blogspot.com/

In amongst the amusing bits, Susan is introspective and reflective, and has a habit of sharing insights into her life that are disturbingly familiar.  She’s also a mom, and has been recently faced with a newly-labeled case of depression.  In addition, she left the second-ever comment here, and it involved coffee in her nasal passages.  Girl’s got style.

4.  http://sonyasworld.com/

This was definitely a blog with substance.  A very candid look at a journey through one woman’s mental illness from her husband’s point of view.  He was always very open about things.  Fortunately, at last account, his wife was doing better and he was spending his time with her rather than blogging for others.

5.http://www.findingoptimism.com/blog/reviews/is-depression-the-new-black/

Do blogs that aren’t really personal-type blogs count for this kind of thing?  There are a lot of observations here about what’s going on when it comes to depression, and resources for people fighting their way through it.  And stuff like this that I found amusing.  …I mean, substantial!

6.www.apparentlyIreadmuchmoreforhumourthanIdoforseriouscontent.com

Um…By “Substance” You Meant “Humorous Stick People” Right?

7.http://steammeupkid.blogspot.com/2010/07/why-i-will-only-draw-your-portrait-if.html

8.  http://www.lefthandedtoons.com/34/

9.  http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/

10.  http://xkcd.com/773/

I thought so.

Okay, so this damned list took me hours of agonizing because I like all of you so much but didn’t feel that “substantial” was quite the right word to sum some of you up, and then in the end I just ended up listing people so famous they have no need for my quaint little website badge.  Because they have larger website badges, I presume.  Badges so large they do not even fit on their site.

Also, for all of you that I’ve apparently arbitrarily decided are completely ethereal, I offer the following badges, which I feel apply to many people likely to read these words.  Let me know if you would like to be considered for one, and I will engage in a long deliberation process and then gift it to you.

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Posted in cats, website | 7 Comments »

You know, The Scream. Like that expressionist painting, except with more fur.

Monday, July 5th, 2010

My cats amuse me.  Both kitties are very attached to us, and delight in following my husband and I from place to place. …Except when it comes to the office.  You see, the office contains many delightfully tasty wires to gnaw on, and as such, is locked behind closed doors unless we’re in there.  And of course, the fact that it’s sometimes off limits makes it ever so enticing the rest of the time.  The boy-cat has picked up enough English to understand exactly when it’s time to leave the room, and consequently makes a break for the farthest corner under my desk at the earliest opportunity.  Then once I crawl under there to manhandle him out, he very consistently resorts to what we like to call the flop defense (this may be trademarked, although I haven’t actually seen him file the paperwork yet).  This is that mode in which wherever he is and whatever he’s doing, the slightest touch drops him to the floor in a floppy mass of purr.  And floppy masses of purr are infinitely endearing, but also infinitely difficult to pick up and/or manoeuvre.  He is aware of both of these things, which makes it the perfect action when he’s somewhere he wants to stay and doesn’t want to give us the option of being annoyed with him for it.  LOVES being removed from the office in an arduous and precarious manner.  Strange tastes, that cat.

Of course, he also has a habit of rolling our doormat over himself like it’s made of money.  Or tuna fish.  Or whatever it is a cat would most want to roll in.  He looks absolutely euphoric there, rubbing it all over his body.  We haven’t yet figured this one out.

The girl-cat is less interested in being in there than she is in making sure she’s living life on her own terms, I think.  She protests loudly when she’s moved somewhere that wasn’t her idea, even when it’s somewhere she’s happy to be.  This afternoon I was ready to move out of the office, so I tried to pick her up out of my husband’s office chair where she’d curled up, and she gave me the indignant saucer eyes and a repeated Silent Yell.  If you have not experienced the Silent Yell, let me just say that it looks much like a Normal Yell, except the sound emitted is in potentially too high of a register to be perceived by the human ear.   All I could get was a kind of light clicking sound.  Like when she’s tracking an insect.  Or swallowed an alien. It was like she was so shocked and appalled that I could be contemplating moving her that she was rendered speechless.  At any rate, today I randomly decided to just roll her into the hall instead.  Where she sat for the next hour or so, looking like she wasn’t quite certain whether she should be incensed or triumphant at this development.

Today was a fairly productive day for me, in which I did many productive things for productive reasons.  I wanted no part of the highest priority items on my to-do list, but I decided for once to just skip them and get some other stuff done rather than run away screaming.

Silent screaming, mind you.

Like somebody was trying to move me off a comfy office chair.

I am definitely not yet quite balanced out, but life continues to be much better in the absence of the Luvox.  It’s sort of like at the moment I’m living in a car with no brakes.  So as long as I’m cruising along the highway in the right direction and nothing unfortunate happens, I’m just as fine as all the other cars.  …But the moment something derails me, or pushes me off course, I’m in a crap load of trouble.  That’s pretty much my life right now.  Fine, fine, fine, BLARGH!!!!!!, fine, fine, fine.  At least there are more fines than blarghs these days.

I’m scheduled to see a new therapist tomorrow.  On the plus side, she came highly recommended.  On the down side, she came highly recommended by Dr. Douchepsychiatrist, so I have to take it with a grain of salt.  I love how at the last session, he was confused at why I wasn’t making faster progress this past year, since I seem to be willing and fairly motivated.  And I tried to bite my tongue and politely remind him that the past year has been a haze of unconscious/nauseous/unstable/anxious/suicidal medication hell.  …Which he seemed to brush off, since in his mind it still “wasn’t a significant problem.”  Yargh.  We’ve decided that my husband is going to come along to my appointment this Wednesday.  We figure it’s got to go in one of two extremes.  Either he’ll treat my husband like just as much of a brainless insignificant peon as he treats me, or he’ll be totally ingratiating towards him.  I’m not currently sure which one will make me more irate, but I’m sort of pulling for the second one on the chance that it helps us actually get somewhere with a treatment plan I can live with.  Maybe he’ll be more willing to acknowledge somebody “sane.”

Seriously, I’m making alien clicking sounds as we speak.

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Posted in cats | 6 Comments »

One Year of Kittens: Age 0 – 1

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

The weather today is GORGEOUS!  I plan to soak it up as much as possible.  Here are my cats when they were babies.

Girl Cat 1

Girl Cat 2

Our boy after arriving home

So freaking cute, he was. This little guy was completely fearless too. Just super happy and inquisitive.

Sweet and demure, and will grow up into the sweetest, most demure, most demandypants cat I've ever met.

Our girl at her boldest

He LOVES to be near us at all times. Always has. He is on my desk right this minute.

Both cats are very active. Really. Can't you tell?

I don't know if there's anything cuter than sleeping kittens, but if there is, I haven't found it yet.

It looks like they're content sharing the platform here. This will never happen again.

Beauty Shot

Plotting World Domination

Our cats enjoy technology.

He's like a model, I tell you.

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Posted in cats | 3 Comments »

Formidable

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

Have you ever witnessed two ant colonies warring with each other?  I saw a group of ants going at it on the sidewalk outside our old apartment, and until I looked closely I couldn’t even fathom that the huge black mass of debris filling the sidewalk was actually ants.  One of the coolest things I’ve ever witnessed in person.  It looked something like this, the meticulously chosen (read: first hit on youtube) video that I have found for your edutainment.

When we first moved into our new house, we discovered that it had a bit of an ant problem.  Like, you’d see one on rare occasions, and then it would rain outside and suddenly they would be pouring down the walls.  My cats loved this house.

There was also some kind of black dust coming up from the heating vent in the office that I had to keep vacuuming up.  Except then I realized that it wasn’t dust.  It was ant parts.  Because we have TWO ant problems.  And apparently they don’t get along.

At any rate, it is spring again, so our home is once again filled with the sounds of birds and laughter and swearing at the m$%f&*ing ants on my m$%f&*ing ceiling.  Have you ever considered the logistics of trying to stick an ant trap to your ceiling?  Because I have.  Except the crappy ones we have now seem to just kill the little buggers, and really, would my house be that much better if it was RAINING ANTS?  Can’t seem to find the effective stuff we used to get anywhere.

I also find it interesting that they have so far inhabited the office and the hallway, but show no interest in the kitchen, dining room, living room, or anywhere else that there has ever been food.  Maybe that’s why they couldn’t care less about the traps we’re setting.  I need a Raid with stationary in it.   Ha ha, ants!  Mechanical pencil!  Take that!!

(I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised given where we found the fruit flies.  This place is a veritable den of bug-related confusion.)

So I’ve spent the last few minutes standing on my desk and attacking ant trails with a disinfectant wipe while my boy-cat gives me a look caught somewhere between horror that I’m packing away the playground and envy that my arms go all the way up like that (this is the cat who can stare at the ceiling and yowl at it for an hour for being so rude as to be up too high for him to reach it, so I can’t say as it’s an entirely unexpected reaction).  Then, since I was walking around with a mostly-wet disinfectant wipe in my hand, I toured the house cleaning off every door handle we have.  Which on further reflection probably would have been a smart thing to do when we first moved in.  They had a pre-teen boy, after all.  Eeeeew.

So, mission partially accomplished.  Which is good.  I have learned to run with the impulses when they come.  Small projects are safer, though.  If something requires effort in more than one session, I’m usually out of luck.  I purchased the replacement toilet seat.  I took it out of the packaging.  I even partially unscrewed the bolts holding the old one in place.  But then they were resistant, and I determined that it would be much easier with some pliers and another set of hands.  So now we have a loose and shifty toilet seat and a new one on the bed in the guest room (What?  It’s not like it’s used or anything.).  I have grown accustomed to things like this.  They are a minor piece of my current reality.  At some point several months from now I will be inspired about the toilet seat again, and the next spurt of energy will carry it to completion.

Or at least to getting the old one fully off.

Let’s not presume too much.

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Posted in Real Life | 4 Comments »

It’s almost like we’re the same person.

Monday, March 15th, 2010

I’ve been thinking a lot about dreams lately.  Not just because of my relief at finding out where my subconscious has been storing its gay, but just in general.  The more I reflect on it, the more it seems like my dreams are just the amalgamation of every thought that crossed my mind even very briefly during daylight hours, assembled with a loose and often very strange plot line.  I’m not a big believer in dream interpretation in the classic sense (and by “not a big believer” I mean that I think it’s total bs).  I do not believe that the presence of a yak in my dreams portents any special thought into my uniqueness and dependability, or that I talk too much (which, I kid you not is apparently what this is supposed to mean).  It probably means that I like yaks.  Which I kind of do.  Sometimes.

I have found, though, that the emotions experienced in my dreams can say a LOT about what I’m feeling in my real life.  Completely ignoring the circumstances and discarding whatever crazy plot generates them in my dreaming head, the pure emotions themselves seem to be extremely representative of things I’ve felt that day.  Sometimes in a more refined way that makes it easier for me to identify them accurately, and pick out the specific cause.  I try to be aware of my emotions in general, and have been actively trying to pin down every emotion I can since starting my journey of depression recovery.  Every now and then I notice that “ungh” feeling in my stomach, though, and am unable to identify precisely what it is that’s causing it.  Sometimes the dreams can help with that.

This morning in that state between defining myself as formally “awake” and actually regaining consciousness for a long enough period that I could, you know, open my eyes or move about or such, I drifted into a dream in which I realized that all of our financial worries were actually okay, since we could just live off my blog income (which probably involved a lot of creative budgeting, since the income from my personal depression blog is a grand total of ZERO DOLLARS).  What were we ever worried about??

But in my dream state, it was irrelevant that I am nowhere near even three digit hits per day, and that a very large portion of those want to see hugging animals.  I was an internet success, and just like Dooce was now blogging my way to financial security.

So I was thinking.  Maybe I really am like Dooce.  Maybe my subconscious is seeing connections here that I am not.  I mean, I figure that I already have a leg up because I SOMETIMES USE ALL CAPS.  Except MAYBE NOT ALWAYS AS EFFECTIVELY AS HER.

Dooce puts items on her pet’s head.  I could put items on my pet’s head!

Cat With Duck On Head (lets see you search specifically for that one, internet!)

…briefly.

Folding under the pressure of potential fame

Dooce has a gorgeous baby who likes to gnaw on apples.  I have apples!  If I had a baby, she could be chewing on this one as we speak.  Hoo-boy, would my baby be chewing on that but good!

This may be the nicest fruit-related photograph that I have ever taken.

Dooce is fond of special finds of beautiful creative items that people have made.  Behold the handmade laundry statuette that is currently displayed in my bedroom!  We were going to go with the dining area, but I figured I would want it close while I sleep.  Creates that safe and inviting atmosphere.  The kind that says “You can rest easy here.  Throw caution to the wind.  Heck, throw some clothing while you’re at it.”  Not actually purchased on etsy, but I’m a sucker for a handsome one-of-a-kind art piece whatever the source.

Notice how the light plays off its various angles

The list goes on.

Dooce had a crappy Maytag.  I had a crappy Maytag!
Dooce has a website that is read by around 300,000 people per day.  I have a website!
Dooce was raised Mormon through her youth.    I…am aware that religion exists.

Yes, the similarities are endless.

Dooce writes well thought-out and entertaining posts… I wake up and blog my dream state delusions because I don’t feel like being particularly deep today.

What?  I did say that it was important to ignore the context…  Can’t get too picky with details when you’re working with dreams.  We both blog.  That’s all I’m sayin’.

That, and that I need to stop thinking about yaks.

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Posted in Things That Amuse Me, website | No Comments »

They say that shopping really does produce an addictive chemical reaction.

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

Have decided to be brave and/or foolish and try taking about a quarter pill of Luvox for now.  It doesn’t seem to be eliminating the physical yuckiness so far, but it is taking the edge off, and I can deal with that.  I figure it is worth the risk to try it for at least a little while.  …Provided that the physical symptoms don’t worsen, that is.  If I end up feeling back where I was with the Effexor I will be sprinting for that pill bottle.  A quarter pill is still much more than I’ve been taking, but not as much of a setback as a full one would be, if I can get it to work.  If the symptoms don’t fully go away, then I can always try something else.

On the plus side, for some unknown reason I am feeling inexplicably fantastic today (well, except for the nausea, and feeling like my head is being compressed a few inches, but that’s small potatoes these days).  Emotionally, I got out of bed this morning feeling like a worthy and vital person, ready to take on the world.  I did try to take a few minutes when I first woke up to do my visualization stuff (energy going in with the breath, and clearing out some of the built-up crud and blockages as it shot back out.  …Which isn’t exactly the level that the book is getting at, but is a basic thought that seemed helpful at the time).  If that had anything to do with the recharge I will definitely be trying it again.  Maybe it’s the Wellbutrin starting to kick in?  Maybe that I went shopping yesterday before the nausea got really bad (Mmmm.  Shopping high.)?  Maybe just a combination, but whatever it is, I plan to enjoy it fully while it lasts.  …And try not to be too disappointed if it goes away.

Also, my cat is demonic.

Oooo...Look at me...I am so evil...

Oooo....Feed me kibble....Oooo

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Posted in Antidepressants, guided imagery | No Comments »

But think of the fun when I yell at people to get off my lawn…

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

I have a tendency to use intentionally incorrect or mutilated words for things sometimes.  I’m not sure why I do this, except to say that it sometimes seems more interesting than using the same words as everybody else.  Anyway, slightly bizarre word choices are just one of those things I do.  I’m down with abc.  Yeah, you know me.

We had an interesting insight here this morning as I headed toward the cat kibble dishes (which my one cat persists in daintily picking out of the bowl with his paw ONE kibble at a time.  He will not eat from the dish.  He distains the dish.  Peasant cats?  They eat from the dish.) with the dustbuster.

“I’m going to vroom the cat food a bit,” I said.

“You know,” responded my husband, “When you’re old you’re totally not going to know the actual word for anything anymore.”

I’m going to be like those poor old men who have no idea how to use the washing machine.  …Except instead of having perpetually pink clothes two sizes too small, I’ll sound like a mentally-challenged toddler.

He may be right.  He has that kind of insightification sometimes.

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Posted in Real Life | 3 Comments »