Place yer bets
After years of searching, Husband Mike finally found a St. Michael the Archangel statue -- with devil-stompin' action! -- that he likes, which we happily brought home earlier this evening:
So, how long d'ya think it'll take for
somebody ...
... to damage it,
à la Mary?
Labels: cats, the b
Merry Christmas!
Just a quick post wishing y'all a Blessed and Merry Christmas! And no, I'm not late in doing so -- the
Christmas Season proper only just kicked off yesterday and lasts through the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord (this coming year on 11 January).
So,
Merry Christmas!
Labels: cats, random, the b
Why we can't have anything nice, Part 2
This is a couch.
This is a couch decimated by The B.
Any questions?
Updated: Oops, figgered it'd help if I included a link to
Part 1. :-P
Labels: cats, the b
Happy Fun Work Stuff. Only, not.
:::gasp!::: An actual blog post!
To answer the question the 1.5 readers of this blog may be asking ... No, I haven't fallen off the face o' the Earth, I've just been Insanely Busy with work for the past few weeks and've therefore been unable to post here (it's not gonna get any better in the foreseeable future).
In a nutshell: Due to upper management at my company being totally unrealistic and inflexible about us making a Completely Arbitrary ship date for our software, we've all been "asked" (read: "ordered") to work 60-hour weeks until July (or longer). And 'cause we drones are all salaried exempt employees, we don't get overtime.
Yeah.
I
do have some post ideas rattling around in my noggin' that I would
like to share here (my motto: "Just Doing My Civic Duty To Waste Pixels, Bandwidth, And Your Time"), but by the end o' the workday, my brain is fried and I've no energy left over to form coherent thoughts, much less string 'em together in pixel-wasting format here.
Because of all this Happy Fun Work Stuff, I've been trying to unwind by alternating between playing silly casual games online, and reading the
Navarre Bible's "Matthew". (How's that for polar opposites?) So far, it's kinda' sorta' worked, though I've sorely neglected playing with The B (he ain't happy). And poor Husband Mike's had to deal with the quality of our conversations tanking and my increased mood swings.
Well, at least we've got Easter to look forward to in a few days. :-) Since chances are slim that I'll post again for awhile, I'll take the time now to wish ya a Happy and Blessed Easter!
Labels: random, the b
Curse you, NaBloPoMo!
Gah! It's about 30 minutes until midnight, and I can't think of anything to write about for today's
NaBloPoMo-induced post. Well, actually, I have a few ideas on what to write about, but those ideas would involve some Actual Writing Time and I'm feelin' lazy.
:::sigh:::So, instead of thinking ... here's a picture of The B from his first Christmas with us, which was
the last appearance of our Christmas Tree.
Let's play "Find-The-B-In-The-Christmas-Tree-Skirt"! Can you find him?Lame post? Heck yeah. But, it's a post. So there you go.
Labels: cats, nablopomo, random, the b
Happy Thanksgiving!
Because I'm addlepated after eating a large dinner full of delicious turkey, turkey gravy (my dad-in-law makes The Bestest Gravy Ever), and all the trimmin's, I don't have enough brainpower to write up a post today.
So, instead, The B and I wish you a
Happy Thanksgiving!
Labels: cats, random, the b
Deck The B
The following is something I originally wrote in November 2004 on my old blog. Because I'm lazy, and because the same situation still exists (sigh), I've copied it below with minor updates.With Thanksgiving fast approaching here in the U.S. (22 November), people's thoughts are starting to turn towards Christmas, which includes all the decorations that go with it. And
that usually means Christmas trees.
Sadly for us, though, Christmas trees haven't been part of our holiday festivities since 2001, and things are lookin' bleak for this year. Why? Take a guess.
OK, here's a hint:
Back when we adopted our lil' sparkplug in April 2001, he was near death due to starvation, so he didn't move around much. After visiting the vet and getting proper medical treatment and good food, he bounced back ... with a vengeance. Hoo-boy, once he had enough energy, he started zooming and playing and prancing and tormenting his siblings, and hasn't quieted down since.
Now, any other cat we've ever had over the years has turned into a couch potato around their first birthday. Since we estimated The B's age at 8 months when we rescued 'im, we were fairly hopeful that he'd be Well Into Potatohood come that Christmas.
So, in August, we started watching. The months ticked by ... September, October, November ... and still no signs of spuddom from The B. Rather, it seemed like he was just getting started! Husband Mike and I were worried. How could we risk putting up the fake tree with that nutball zooming about?
Finally, we couldn't take it anymore and decided to put up the thing ... three days before Christmas. There was much rejoicing among the furkids, because as any cat lover knows, a Christmas tree is
The Bestest Cat Toy Ever. While normal cats are content to bat at the ornaments and sit under the branches, our fears were confirmed when The B immediately climbed the tree the instant we finished decorating it.
After many extractions of The B, broken ornaments, and crazily dangling garland, we put the tree away just three days after Christmas. Over that short week, the poor tree looked like a complete wreck, but more importantly, we were seriously worried that The B would kill himself on the dang thing somehow. We had nightmares of him getting electrocuted by chomping on the lights, or getting hung in 'em, and
that's the ultimate reason why the tree's in hiding. (An aside: If you value furniture or other
inanimate things over your
living pets, your priorities are
seriously screwed. Seriously. Screwed.)
Maybe he'd calm down once he turned two? Nope, no dice, and no tree, either. The next year came, and we were so desperate that we considered putting up the tree without any decorations or lights. Then we figured it'd look completely depressing, so ... no tree that year.
And now here we are once more, facing Another Year Without A Christmas Tree. It's been so long that we can't even remember what our ornaments look like. (We do remember that we finally had a nice theme going, though.) But, at least we can enjoy The B's crazy antics without worry.
Eh, mebbe we'll just put a collar of jingle bells on 'im and call it a holiday.
Labels: cats, the b
Why we can't have anything nice
Notice anyone missing here?
No, it's not The B.
But, The B
is the reason for the notable absence of a key figure in the first photo, and I'm sure you've figgered out by now that it's Mary.
Where's Mary? Well, earlier this evening, thanks to The B jumping on top of the bookshelf to Get Our Attention (which he does 'bout 30 times every day), poor Mary took a tumble and her right hand got busted up. For the third time in the one year we've had 'er.
Husband Mike and I successfully found the broken hand bits (whew!), and Husband Mike promptly did the restorative work. For the third time.
She's currently recuperating on the kitchen counter.
Yes, that's The B's tail in the background, as he Always Has To Investigate Everything That's Going On, Including The Taking Of This Picture.
:::sigh.:::
This is the reason why we can't have any sort of a decent home altar, or candles, beaded decorative pillows,
a Christmas tree, lacy stuff, or Anything Decorative Or Pretty For Our Home. Because
everything belongs to The B, and
everything is a toy in his eyes.
Good thing the little goober's family.
Labels: cats, the b
Married bliss vignette
Last night, as we were settling in to sleep, The B began
kneading my stomach. Cats often knead as a way of expressing contentment, and The B's preferred spot is my stomach.
Husband Mike, watching The B's paws mooshing said stomach, observed, "It's like you're a gigantic stress ball toy. Only thing missing is your eyes bugging out."
Yeah. You know you're Way Long Past the newlywed stage when yer spouse says stuff like that.
Labels: cats, family, marriage, the b
Cats 'n' prayer
What is it with cats and praying? It's some sort of cat magnet, especially with The B.
For example, whenever I pray the Rosary, he'll appear outta thin air and nose his way Into The Middle Of Things. And it's not like I make any noise. I keep my Rosary under my pillow, and it's a knotted twine one to boot -- no jangly beads.
More often than not, I find myself in the following situation:
Me: "Hail Mary, full of -- B, let go! -- grace, blessed art thou among women, and bl- hey! Stop biting that!"
And since I pray the Rosary just before I fall asleep and am therefore lying down, I usually have to yank the thing out from under The B when he decides to flop on my chest. It can be a bit of a challenge to stay focused at times, but the purring is nice.
Same thing when praying the
Liturgy of the Hours. 'Cause I'm lazy, I always pray the Morning and Evening Office while in bed, just before getting up/going to sleep. So, The B has this whole routine of pawing at the pages, batting at the ribbons, and then settling on top of the whole deal, usually right when I'm mid-page-turn. And those are thin, crinkly pages! Gaaah!
Do I get to count any o' this against time served in Purgatory? :-P
Labels: cats, prayer, the b
An early evening walk
In preparation for this month's
12 of 12 fun, I decided to give our new neato-keen digital camera (thanks again, Melissa!) a spin today while out for a walk. Now, Husband Mike and I have never owned a "real" camera before (having only ever used the point-and-shoot disposable kind), so we're both getting familiar with concepts like "zooming" and "exposure compensation".
Before I headed out, I took some test photos while reading through the owner's manual. The B was a most obliging model:
The B snoozing in his kitty window hammockOnce outside, I encountered the resident Goose Family. (MomGoose and DadGoose started out with six goslings, but sadly, they're down to three now.) Here's a shot of the clan walking towards me:
The Goose Family on the move
Goslings and Parent Goose
Gosling closeupAfter visiting with the geese (goslings make the coolest peeping, cheeping, something-eeping-ish sounds), I continued on and said hello to some of the ducks. These pictures didn't turn out too well -- kinda' grainy -- but hey, I got familiar with pushin' all the camera buttons.
Mallard floating in the water
Duck babies! Duck babies!
More duck babies!I would've taken more pictures, but unfortunately, the batteries ran out. Guess all that fussin' around wasted lotsa' juice, which was frustrating 'cause I really wanted to take some shots of three squirrels playing tag and tackle. Too funny!
Well, that concludes the tour for today. Tune in next time for squirrels and, if I'm lucky, robins!
Labels: fun, geese, the b, wildlife
