He looks innocent enough and he’s a very loving cat and I’ve never met one person who doesn’t immediately fall in love with this cat. He LOVES people. And if you pet him and let him sit on your lap? You’ll be his friend forever.

I, on the other hand, am not his favorite. Yes, I feed him and pet him and give him treats, but I hate having him on my lap. Because he doesn’t sit on your lap, he has to lay on your whole person. And well, it’s annoying.

So he retaliates. In cat-like fashion. He pukes on my pillow or in my shoe. Or most recently, on my library book. He scratches the shit out of things. He drags is poopy ass on the carpet. He gives me the evil eye.

And now? Now he’s trying to kill me.

In the morning right before I’m getting ready to leave, I sit on the edge of the bed and put my commuting shoes on. Usually it’s my tennis shoes, since we haven’t had much of a winter and I wore my new snow boots twice.

It’s become part of our routine where I tie the shoes and fling the laces and he chases them and then attacks my shoes.

Usually I’m too quick on the draw and tie them before he can really play. But apparently one day, I wasn’t paying enough attention and he thought he’d show me who was boss.

After our little game, I got my stuff and got set to leave the house. As far as I knew, since I had just put them on, my shoes were tied tight. They were set to make my daily commute to the office.

So I put on my coat, locked the front door and headed down the stairs in the building to the outside. As I was jogging down the stairs, since I was late for the bus as per usual, I tripped and almost tumbled down the whole flight. Thank you, railing, for allowing me to catch myself and not land on my face.

(I know I’m clumsy, but I can usually make it down two flights of stairs in the morning without any mishaps.)

I looked down at my shoe – UNTIED! The damn cat put his claw into the lace and loosened it just enough so that I would trip down the stairs. This is no way to treat the human that feeds you!

It’s a good thing he’s cute.

But regardless, our warm temps from just last week are long gone and it’s only going to get colder. To me, this is one of the worst parts of the year. It’s such a shock to the system and there is nothing you can do about it. No amount of extra clothing, scarves, jackets and socks seem to help. It’s just COLD. But as I pointed out on Twitter this morning, in two months, this weather will seem balmy.

I realized last night that the weather has permanently shifted because of my cats.

See, I let them sleep with me. It’s hard to forbid them to do anything in my house when they have the run of it all day long while I’m at work. They may humor me when I’m home and get off the table/counter/stove when I yell, but they know that once I leave, they can go anywhere they want. Neener, neener, neener.

I don’t mind sleeping with them, for the most part. I have a queen-sized bed and there is room for the three of us. If I even think about closing my bedroom door and locking them out, they just scratch and whine until I let them in. They have realized I have no power over them. They rule the roost. I bet I have the best reputation at the school playground as being the coolest mom ever!

Anyway, in the summer, they don’t sleep very close to me. It’s more of a “well, since you’re sleeping and not going to pet me, I suppose I will sleep too. And I’ll stay in your vicinity so you can not think I’m dead. Meow.”

It’s like this:

Now Simba, he’s just naturally up in your personal space at ALL TIMES. He doesn’t just sit on your lap, he climbs up your chest so that he is lying on you, with his face near yours.

If he just sat like a normal cat, I’d let him on my lap more. That and he likes to lick you, and it’s no wonder why I shove him out of the way so often. And it’s no wonder why he pukes on my carpet.

So no matter the season, he’s sleeping close to me. He also likes to have a paw touching me, which would be cute if it wasn’t so annoying.

But come fall/winter, they realize I keep the heat on low in the house, especially at night, and that the lovely hardwood floors aren’t going to provide them any amount of warmth. I’m it. So my bed then looks like this:

The biggest problem with this is that I am used to my bed and sleeping alone. I sleep right down the middle. I use the whole bed for myself. Because it is my bed. So there are a lot of sprawled out sleeping positions. Positions that get hindered when cats are sleeping, literally, under my nose. Especially when I go to roll over and squash a cat.

I realize this isn’t an issue since they are cats and I pay the rent and I can kick them out. But this requires giving up precious sleep. So I just deal with it.

And pretty much succumb to the realization that if I ever date/marry someone, I’ll just need a king-sized bed. Especially in the winter.

#spinstertweets

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Last Sunday Daisy invited me out on a boat. It was an amazing evening to go out for a sail. And I had never been out on a sailboat. And this was the boat that had won the Race to Mackinac. It was a few hours filled with fresh air, fun people and great views of our beautiful city.

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This weekend I had to work. Well, only Friday and Saturday, but that was enough. My company had a booth at a Health & Fitness Expo downtown in one of the hotels for the Chicago Triathlon. I was opening the exhibit hall on Friday afternoon and since it was close to the office, I figured I would just bring all the materials with me in a box. How could that ever go wrong?

I decided to drive instead of take a big, heavy box on public transit. In my head, I didn’t have to carry BIGHEAVYBOX very far. In my head, I was so, so wrong. SO WRONG.

1) I underestimated the weight of the box.

2) I forgot that I was not parking my car on my floor of the building I work in.

3) I forgot that I didn’t get to park my car on the expo hall floor. Which means I had to carry BIGHEAVYBOX for a REALLY LONG WAY.

4) And this is what BIGHEAVYBOX did to me.

So don’t mind me, I’ll be over here in long pants and long sleeves lest someone at work begins to wonder if my cats are beating me.

Anyway, I was convinced, CONVINCED, that I would get pink eye germs on my hands from touching the doors at this gas station/Dunkin Donuts. I would be insane about not touching my eyes after I got my coffee until I got into the office and washed my hands. Any other time, I would touch bird poop and then touch my eyeball and not flinch. But this door? Hell to the no.

That fear has gone by the wayside, thankfully. Mostly because I no longer work at that place. And the Dunkin Donuts I go to now is right next to my building and apparently my brain thinks the door handles are pink-eye-free.

That and I carry around hand sanitizer and have a huge bottle on my desk that I use the minute I get in the office. I mean, I take public transportation. I’m not stupid.

My new irrational fear is lice. And it is all her fault. And his too.

See, before I was going to Toronto, I was chatting with Ali about the weekend and the fun times we were going to be having. At one point some things were up in the air because Ali was possibly going to be without someone to watch her kids. Because there was a lice outbreak amongst some other cousins and obviously Ali wasn’t going to send her three kids to a house where there was a chance those three kids with THICK, THICK hair were going to get lice.

(Are you itchy? Because just talking about it makes me itchy!)

It was all good. Measures were taken and the lice were killed and our lovely BBQHer weekend went on as planned.

But since then? I’m convinced I have lice. So much so, that I’m Googling lice. And scratching my head like a crazy person who wears paper shoes.

I know I don’t have lice. For instance, if I don’t think about it, I can go hours and hours without scratching my head. But once I start thinking about it? Well, let’s just say I’ve typed this post with one hand as the other hand has been scratching my scalp.

It doesn’t help that I take public transportation. And I think about those seats on the train that are covered in fabric and I just think about the amount of bugs in the fabric on those seats and how I’m going to get lice from one of the homeless people who ride the train. I spent a lot of time this past weekend on public transit so of course THIS DID NOT HELP.

And now I’m off to take a shower with bleach to kill these imaginary bugs. Before I scratch the skin on my scalp raw and REALLY have something to complain about.

I figure at worst the cats will see them and can eat them out of my hair, right?

*Also the name of my band’s debut album.

But then I found this beaut of a photo on my phone:

You guys, I don’t remember much of this evening past leaving the bar that kicked us out before 2. I vaguely remember the cab ride and paying the man, and I remember trying to be very quiet with my keys opening my front door, which doesn’t happen when it’s 4 AM and you’ve been drinking since 7. I DEFINITELY don’t remember taking this photo. But I love that I’m always a blogger because you know I was all “I’m so putting this on my blog as proof!” HA!

(Also, please ignore how dusty my oven is.)

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Since my posting has been so sparse, I never got to tell you that I got my hair cut short in August, right before Rhi’s wedding and my trip to Portland. I’m sure you noticed from the photos, but I never got to do a proper “HEY! I got my hairs did!” post. I just got it done again a few weeks ago, it needed some highlights and I needed the bangs trimmed. This is what it looks like now:

Look! I’m learning to use the self-timer on the camera!

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I also bought my first pair of skinny jeans. I still feel a bit weird in them, but I’m learning to love them! Even fat, hippy girls like me can wear skinny jeans!

Although, unless I have a shirt like that covering up my hips, I don’t feel comfortable in them.

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Have you always wondered what I do most evenings, since I clearly must be too busy to post? I do things like this:

And I post to Facebook with the caption “Sent to kitty jail. Her crime? Excessive shedding.”

Then I take more photos and try and get her to give me the perfect “I’m free BITCHES!” face:

This is more of the “do that again, whore, and I’ll ruin your favorite pair of shoes” look.

#spinstertweets

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Oh! In case you didn’t know, I’m also now posting every Tuesday over on Food Lush! Go check out my first post on the most amazing meatballs you’ll ever have!

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone! Or a great Thursday, my Canadian friends! I’m thankful Canada is America’s hat.

See, last week I was talking about this with my friend, as she mentioned she knows EXACTLY what she’ll do if there was an intruder and she needed to protect herself and escape. And it came down to jamming something in front of her ALREADY CLOSED bedroom door. And then I commented that I sleep with the door WIDE OPEN!

I remember hearing on some talk show YEARS ago that sleeping with the door closed was the safest thing to do, especially in the case of a fire. And for some reason, I have filed this away in my head as useful knowledge, but not knowledge I choose to actually use.

See, I have two cats. Two cats that really like to sleep with me. So my door stays open. Sometimes, when they piss me off with their antics at 3 AM, I lock them out. And then I turn on the fan to high so I can’t hear them scratch at the door because they want to be let in.

I would do this every night, see, except I feel bad. I’m never home and if I left them to their own devices in the house all night, I would wake up to chaos. And a lot of puke, I’d imagine.

So the door stays open. In fact, in the spring and fall when the windows are wide open, I even sleep with a door stop in front of the door so the wind doesn’t slam it close in the middle of the night.

This is probably not safe, right? I mean, after talking to my friend, I’m pretty sure I was convinced some person was going to sneak into my house and stab me to death because hey! open door means open invitation, yes?

My old apartment was all wood floors. And they were old wood floors and very creaky. I didn’t worry about anything happening in that place because A) I would hear even one step from a burglar and B) if you wanted to climb up all those stairs, I’m pretty sure I would have an edge on your winded self. My plan then was to just grab the phone and call 911. (Which, not really a good plan.)

I have no plan now. If someone were to break in, the front door is rather close to my bedroom door. I wouldn’t have time to do much of anything. So maybe I should start closing the cats in with me at night? Locking them out? Putting a hammer or crowbar next to my bed?

What say you, blog readers? Want to buy me an alarm system? Or at least a crowbar? Is it time to buy a second thing of pepper spray for my nightstand?

Anyway, I had every intention of keeping up my end of the “posting more” bandwagon. But last week, well, let’s just say that I do not handle time changes well, especially the Fall Back one. Because while it is awesome in the mornings – “Hey, it’s only 7 AM, but it feels like 8 AM and I’m rested and holy shit! I have time to blow dry my hair! This is AMAZEBALLS!” – it is not awesome as the day wears on – “Oh, it must be almost 5 PM, almost time to go home. Thank God, this day felt like it was never going to end (looks at clock) WHAT? IT IS ONLY 2:30? HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE? WHEN DO I GET A NAP?!?”

So that was my excuse part of last week. The other days, well I went out drinking on Tuesday night and got home late. And then Wednesday, well once I get out of the habit, it’s hard to get back in the habit. And then all I would write about would be all “hey! Did you know that this time change really fucks me up?” And basically it would be just like this post and well, the end.

And that is the extent of my exciting life and why I haven’t been posting.

I had a list of things I was going to talk about tonight. But then, well I think I ate something rancid from the deli in my office building. I had a salad, and the dressing didn’t taste quite right. I mean, it didn’t taste spoiled, it just wasn’t regular ranch dressing. But since you pay by weight for the salad, it was a $9 salad, so I was going to finish it. That was not the best idea, seeing as an hour later I started to feel like crap. So I took off a little early because I really didn’t want to puke in my trash can. You’re welcome, co-workers.

I’ve been holed up in bed, watching TV since I got home. I choked down some toast and I’m feeling better. I don’t know what the deal was, but I didn’t like it one bit. Especially since I now have an aversion to ranch dressing. Although, on second thought, that’s a good thing for my waistline.

And with that, I shall leave you to go peruse some other, more entertaining blogs. For instance, go read my most recent post on Draft Day Suit. I’m really enjoying writing these college football recaps.

Also, a final note, you should all be excited to know that I recently purchased this:

He should be arriving to his new home shortly. We’re all excited to welcome a new member of the family to the house! Can’t you just FEEL their excitement?

The only way to get them to look at me was to say “Do you want TREEEAAATTTSSSS?” And then I snapped the photo and didn’t give them any treats. This is why they puke on my things.

Also, my blog stats are in the tank with my infrequent posting so it doesn’t really matter. And this way my mom will know how my trip went.

Portland, where do I begin?

This was the first vacation I’ve taken in awhile where I went somewhere I’ve never been before. And since I know a few people there who are big fans of the city, I knew I was going to have a good time!

This is just going to be a bulleted list of highlights with some photos interspersed…

• Portland is a drinking person’s city. Wineries, breweries and drinkers, oh my!
• We started my first morning off in Portland with probably one of the best things I’ve ever eaten – a fried egg sandwich with bacon and pimento cheese on a homemade biscuit. (Washed down with a big mimosa in a pint glass, of course.)

• I would now like to put pimento cheese on everything.
• Before I left for the trip, Rhi asked what I wanted to do on Thursday afternoon – a brewery tour or a winery tour. I told her I was under the impression that 2 days before your wedding, you have time for neither. But being from Portland, Rhi makes time for booze, and we headed to the wineries.

• We hit up Sokol Blosser, where Rhi is a preferred guest at. Also the winery doing the wine for her wedding. And the first woman-owned winery in Oregon. We got our tasting for free! And we enjoyed ourselves! After that we headed to Ponzi, not the actual winery, but their shop. We drank wine and snacked on meats and cheeses and I cursed the fact that I couldn’t get any of this wine home with me.

• In between all our fun, we did get some wedding errands done. And I made sure to help whenever and wherever I could, so the bride could enjoy her company with me. I mean, I am awesome, let’s face it.
• Thursday night I went to dinner with the bride and groom and I sampled some local Oregon beers. And I noticed we were on Flanders St. And I was like “ha! I saw a Terwilliger street today too! Like The Simpsons.” And Rhi is all “um, you know the creator is from here?” No. No, clearly I did not.

• So I did what every other drunk person would have done, I sent a photo of it to my brother in the middle of the night because he’s the biggest Simpsons fan ever.

• After dinner and a stop for one more beer, we headed back to the house and opened the wine. Rhi and I decided to don some some lovely hair bows. And then we decided to get nice and drunk and I decided I needed to cut Rhi’s cat’s nails.
• This is Gelsey, who also answers to Goo and Fat Cat. She had really long nails. They would click-clack on the hardwood floors like she was wearing kitty high heels. She couldn’t sneak up on anything, poor thing.

• And Rhi was improperly trimming her nails because Rhi is weak and doesn’t like to hear her cat sad or uncomfortable. Whereas my cats are a bunch of whiney bitches so that doesn’t bother me one bit.
• I think Goo was a little traumatized, especially when she later went to use the scratching post and bounced off it because her nails weren’t as long. And then I laughed.
• May I remind you, we were three sheets to the wind when this was all going on. The Goo will thank me some day.
• Or she probably peed in my suitcase.
• Also while the bride-to-be and I were wasted off 100 beers and a lot of wine, we decided to alphabetize the seating cards for the wedding. Which were written in fancy script. And very hard to read when you were seeing double.
• Rhi had to completely re-do them in the morning.
• So much for making less work for the bride.
• Being severely hungover the day before the wedding is not our smartest move. Probably for me more than her, since I seemed to be struggling all day. We did all the last minute things on Friday – picked up the dress, ran to Target, got our nails done, stuffed the wedding confetti into bags and tried to keep Rhi calm. (We succeeded. Mostly. There was a small incident at lunch, but Rhi recovered like a champ and I distracted her with my dancing like a chimp! Or something.)
• And then it was on to the rehearsal! I served as the official photographer for the rehearsal and I think I got some good shots. I tried to capture it all. It was a lovely venue (more on that come wedding day) and it was so nice to meet both Rhi and Bill’s family and friends.

• The dinner was at a lovely Peruvian restaurant and we had a private room and it was a beautiful way to spend the evening, talking to old friends and new, and anticipating the big day for Rhi and Bill on Saturday!

And now I think I’ll leave it at that because this post is long enough! And there is still two whole days left of the trip, including the Wedding of the Century!

I have literally spent the last way too many days, in bed, eating toast, drinking water and shitting my brains out.

It all started Tuesday night when I got home. I wasn’t hungry and ended up only having a bowl of cereal for dinner. Then as I was sitting on the couch, I was FREEZING! It was about 95 degrees out and super humid and yet, I was freezing in my house with the A/C on. Even though it is set to the same temperature every single day.

I was tired and figured I should go to bed early. I was fine until I woke up about 4:30 AM and then spent the next two hours on the toilet. I decided not to go to work, obviously, since 1) I didn’t know if I could drive in without having to stop and 2) I don’t like spending that much time in the bathroom at work. Or any public bathroom, for that matter.

Regan has dubbed ass-splosions “The Kristin Johnsons”, hence the title of the post. And her poor son has been afflicted with The Kristin Johnsons this past week too. But he’s lucky because he wears a diaper and doesn’t have to worry about pooping in a gas station bathroom in the middle of nowhere because he can’t make it home.

I will spare you more poop talk and just tell you that it still hasn’t gone away. I went to work on Friday and attempted to eat something more than toast for lunch. I had soup and a turkey sandwich. You would have thought the soup was laced with Ex-Lax from the reaction I had. I made it until about 4:30 in the office (after several incidents of The Kristin Johnsons at work) and decided I needed to go home. Let’s just say, I barely made it home. It was ROUGH.

So much for no more poop talk, huh? Like calling it The Kristin Johnsons makes the fact I’m talking about loose stool any less gross.

I’M DONE! I SWEAR!

Anyway, the worst part about it? I was supposed to go up to Milwaukee this past weekend to visit Ali and her family. But it’s almost a two-hour drive up there. And I knew it was a big risk, so I stayed home. I was so sad. But I have vowed to kick The Kristin Johnsons to the curb this week and go up there next weekend. Because it has been awhile since I’ve celebrated the Sabbath and I miss my second family.

So that’s what’s been going on with me. And why I have been MIA. And why everyone on Twitter wishes I would just stop talking about poop.

I still have a sneaky suspicion the cats were behind it somehow…

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If you follow me on Twitter, this is not news to you. And I’m still going to talk about it because, well, I feel like whining.

I have spent the last couple of days at my brother’s house. I made it up to my brother’s house on Friday night. I decided to spend the weekend up here for a number of reasons:

1. This is Bella’s house, so she’ll be more comfortable.
2. My cats can stop hiding under the bed.
3. My brother has a pool.
4. There are no sisters or roommates here.
5. Yard. No more poop walks.
6. Huge flat screen TV.
7. POOL.

Plus, my brother and his family get home from vacation on Tuesday, so the dog would be here when they got back and I wouldn’t have to a) watch the dog for a day longer than needed and b) I wouldn’t have to make an extra trip up here to return the dog.

I was so looking forward to a relaxing weekend. I was going to chill by the pool, read, drink beer, watch TV, sleep in. It was going to be my version of a vacation without leaving the state.

It started off all well and good. Saturday morning I got up, made some coffee, put on my suit, lathered on the SPF 100 and headed outside. I was armed with 20 back issues of US Weekly and had not a care in the world! I was out there for about 3 hours (lest I burn my pale, pale skin).

When I came in for the day to shower, I noticed a puddle of dog poop on the living room carpet. It was my fault, I told myself, for leaving the dog inside for an hour while I was outside. I thought nothing of it. I especially thought nothing of it combined with the fact that she had been farting all morning and they were so smelly, it burned the skin off my arms.

Later in the day, as I followed her out to make sure she went potty (since I didn’t want another accident), I noticed she had the liquid squirts. I freaked out. I mean, what do you give to a dog with diarrhea? Can you just keep it outside until it goes away?

I of course got on my computer and Googled it and then asked all the wise dog owners on Twitter. (WHAT DID I EVER DO BEFORE SOCIAL MEDIA? FOR REALS!) The verdict was to give her some rice, maybe some canned pumpkin. I also read online that fasting for at least 12 hours was good. So I locked her in her crate for the night and hoped when we woke up 12 hours later, she would be ass-squirt free!

(HAHAHAHAHAHA!!) (That is the sound of my future self laughing at my past self and her optimism!)

She whined in her crate all night. Mostly because she’s not used to sleeping in the crate. I’d imagine a lot of it was because she didn’t feel well. I didn’t care. Because poop in the crate was better than poop on my brother’s bed.

Around 5 AM, I heard her whining quite a bit. I figured I’d get up and let her out and see what tha damage was.

The damage was two poop soaked blankets and a VERY DIRTY CRATE! I let her out and proceeded to throw the blankets in the wash and clean the crate. She was allowed back in and locked back in the crate sans blankets.

After I woke up for the day on Sunday, I decided I needed to go out to get white rice and some Pepto (another Twitter suggestion). I cooked her some rice (which she will only eat if she’s HUNGRY) and gave her some Pepto. Good thing I’m at my brother’s house, where they have kids, which means they have syringes by which to administer medicine.

Have you ever tried to give a dog Pepto? They like it more than you think. But still, NOT AN EASY TASK!

Sunday we spent the day outside. I actually spent four hours here:

I learned my lesson and if I was outside, so was the dog. She had some more liquid poops, but she seemed to have more energy. She was still only eating rice and drinking water, but it seemed to be working. I put her in the crate again on Sunday night because I couldn’t afford any poop-tastrophes.

Sunday morning, early, I heard her whining, so I let her out to do her business. She was back to her old, hyper self. She was a crazy dog! I was like “YAY! She’s back to normal!” So since it was early and I was going back to bed, I let her in bed with me for a few hours.

When I got up for the day, I noticed some poop puddles throughout the house and on the bed. (THE BED! NEAR WHERE I WAS SLEEPING! OMG! SHE COULD HAVE POOPED ON ME! DOG POOP! GAH! GROSS!!!)

I decided she wasn’t better, so we got some more Pepto and more rice and went on with our day.

I think she is getting better. I just tested her with a small serving of dog food. She’s been really hungry, so I thought maybe her tummy could handle it. She’ll be sleeping in the crate again tonight, so we shall see how this experiment goes. I really hope I am not washing poop blankets at 5 AM.

And just because I was at my wit’s end, she decided to escape this evening and run down the block! I had to chase her and thankfully she came back! Because she wanted to make me lose my shit like she lost hers this weekend!

So thankfully, I’m going back to work in the morning. Tomorrow evening I will be at home with my cats.Not worrying about poop or making food for anyone but myself and being glad my Shrek hand is now back to its normal size.

And I will need a vacation from my vacation!

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