Category Archives: Cats

How to make chore day fun! (Cats help.)


During this recent deep dive into work related tasks with an aggressive deadline, I relied heavily on the old fashioned To Do lists. Mine looked like this 6 of out 7 days a week (I took Sundays off):

Lease

Other regular work task

Lease

Other regular work task

Lease

Household chore

etc etc etc

It worked beautifully because I not only didn’t fall behind on anything at home, but I even finished extracting leases with a solid week to spare.

So, I kept up with the lists this week only they didn’t have to be so packed. Still, I want to keep Sundays as off days, even from home related chores so today I tackled my entire cleaning and running around list and even managed to squeeze in that hill repeat run today. It was not without some adventure though.

On outing #1 for the day, I brought my mini-post it list of places to visit so that I didn’t forget anything. On stop #3, I had my first unexpected moment of funny.

I was at the vets office picking up some hairball treatment for miss Amber who has been barfing multicolored piles for the last week and a half. I think the worst of it is over (at least I hope so because that last one was GINORMOUS) but finally I appealed to the vet for help and picked up some sort of goo that I was able to sneak into her tuna tonight and which they say works perfectly for their equally long haired office cat.

Speaking of the office cat…while I was talking to the one vet assistant and paying for the goo and some of Chip’s bladder friendly food, the other assistant was up to no good. I saw her fussing around with the cat and then the next thing I know she is giggling helplessly as the cat gets away and hops onto the counter where I am standing. He turns his head and gives me the classic cat version of “LOOK at what she DID to me!”

And there he sat with a label on his forehead that read “Spicoli” – his name of course. Yup, she had printed off a label and properly marked the office cat. I couldn’t stop giggling at the sight either and frankly I am not sure how we finished running the payment transaction properly of how I managed to not leave anything behind as I walked out. He just sat there, trying to maintain some dignity and failing miserably.

Stop #4 was lunch at Rubios. I allowed myself some time to sit there and eat and read twitter on my phone which turned out to ALMOST be a huge mistake. You see, when I was done eating I got up to refill my drink and then walked right out the door – and left my phone sitting on the table! Years of having a phone and I’ve never done anything like that. And? I didn’t notice until I had been home for 15-20 minutes!!

Then I had the longest, slowest drive ever back to Rubios of course – people cutting me off, driving super slow, clearly confused about their own routes..pedestrians at EVERY intersection making the waits super long. All along I am imagining who stole my just waiting to be snatched phone and what in the hell I was going to do about it.

Luckily, the employees saw me get up. They thought I went to the bathroom so they waited a bit but kept an eye on it. When enough time had passed that it was clear I was gone, they put it in a cash register up front. PHEW!

My heart was racing and I immediately took that as a sign that it was time to go for my run and shut down the chores for a bit!

After the run I dove right into cleaning. Again, thanks to Amber’s little hairball issue, the carpets were kinda messed up. I swept the downstairs and then busted out the vacuum. Now, I don’t do this lightly. Chip the cat is frighted to holy hell by the vacuum. So, I warn him by bringing it out in stages. First it comes out of the closet. That usually wakes him up from the deepest possible sleep right there. Then, if he is on the floor level where I will start working, I shoo him to the other one. In this case I chased him upstairs so he could hide while I did the bottom floor first. (Amber stays a respectable distance away, but also watches every move)

Unfortunately for Chip, I also had to vacuum the stairs themselves. Now, my plan was to get up to the top landing, turn off the vacuum and then shoo him downstairs.

He didn’t want to wait.

As rounded the corner at the second mid-level landing and started up the last few steps to reach the top, I see him dart out from under the bed to my right. He seems the vacuum – startles and reverses course. I figure now he’s back under the bed for good, right?

Nope, as I keep making my way up, he darts out AGAIN only this time he thinks he can run across the bridge into 16′s room.

Except – the door is closed. Now he has to dart BACK running perilously near to the running vacuum yet AGAIN to get back under the bed. In between, he has to hurdle the litter box on the landing just outside my open bedroom doors. He didn’t QUITE make the hurdle….his hind legs snagged on the scooper I keep next to the litter box causing him to bounce into the litter, scramble…flinging litter all over…then finally back out of the box and under the bed again!

At this point I cannot contain myself and I just bust out laughing as I turn off the vacuum. He hears that the coast is clear, slinks…and I mean SLINKS out from under the bed and FLIES down the stairs to the safety of the furthest corner of the living room behind a chair.

Amber watches the whole thing from her perch on the top of the sofa and then looks up at me and meows “WTF?” (essentially anyway).

WTF indeed.

Miraculously the rest of the day of cleaning and grocery shopping unfolded without a hitch…or..a cat clowning around :-)

Tomorrow, I rest! After running around a bit on a trail of course!

My kick ass trainer


The other night while watching The Biggest Loser for inspiration, I launched into my first planned home workout routine.

I was doing great – blew past the targeted 15 minutes and was on the back end of a 40 minute routine.

Wanting to work on my leg strength, I was doing chair sits against the wall. I could still see/hear the TV which took my mind a bit off of the oncoming muscle shakes and pain as I kept myself at the proper 90 degree squat position.

And then….Amber sauntered around the corner.

She paused…gave me a quick “meow!” and….walked right under my chair squatting self, and raised herself up to head butt me! Yes, she head butted my butt!

Do NOT ask me how I did not fall over at that moment – I started laughing so hard that I actually couldn’t really move out of the spot! She just continued to saunter on by with another “meow!” I counted out the remaining 25 seconds I had intended to hold the position with my continuing giggles and then I thanked her for upping the challenge for the night.

Cats!

Amber

More random ramblings of a cold addled mind


The photo above is my first attempt at using the panorama photo function on the iPhone. This was taken Thanksgiving morning. Go ahead and hate me because yes, I live in paradise, I know!

The girls and I went for a run at Torrey Pines. Ok, actually, the text I received went like this:

“Up for an easy run at TP?”

And I immediately thought “With that hill, there is NO SUCH THING as an EASY run at TP!”

Eh, I went and yeah it was a struggle as usual, but I just kept chugging along and made it up the hill and it was so beautiful along the beach that it didn’t matter. The waves were spectacular. And? It made us feel not SO guilty about pigging out later on for what was Thanksgiving meal #1 for me.

The family meal was Friday since 27 had to work (yay!!) Damn good reason to put it off a day.

So, random thoughts….

You gotta love cats. When I got home from Thanksgiving #2 today I went straight into decorating mode. I was thankful that the whole termite discovery set me off a couple of weeks ago into the deeper cleaning I usually have to do before putting the tree up. So missing a day due to the dual meals was not a problem.

Still, you gotta move stuff around. Bring in boxes. Generally disturb the space that the felines are used to. Of course, as long as you are not running a vacuum, they are so incredibly curious that they usually end being involved in the process whether you want their “help” or not.

The best thing though, is when you move something from one spot to another. I’m thinking “Well, maybe I should just put this cat condo in the garage because I don’t think I’ve seen either of them in it or on it in months.” The condo was in the corner where the tree will go so it had to move. I ended up moving it from the north corner of the room to the south in the dining area. Just 20 feet or so away on the other end of the back wall. They wont care, they never use it, right?

Right – move something and suddenly it is BRAND NEW!!

“What’s THIS THING? Over HERE?! Look! We can scratch the side and trim our claws! OMG! There’s a cubby hole! And…a perch! I can lay down up here and see EVERYTHING!”

I swear the two of them were scrambling around that thing for at least 30 mins tonight and I just had to laugh at their obvious joy at re-discovering the condo.

Crazy animals.

Another observation I made this week is that for some reason, as soon as the Thanksgiving weekend starts, I also re-discover something. HGTV.

It’s not JUST that the regular shows are off – many of the shows on our DVR schedule still had fresh episodes. For some reason though, rather than being content to have sports or news on in the background, I suddenly crave House Hunters and Home Strange Home, and Extreme Homes and…yeah…just about whatever happens to be on .

Right on cue I turned it on last night when I got to my room at bedtime. I’ll get tired of it and/or have cycled through all the episodes by the new year and forget about it again. But for now – “Oooh! Look! There’s a picky couple dissing every property they see and I swear if they say ‘man cave’ ONE MORE TIME..but damn that’s a gorgeous floor and hey, I like the way they used that space there I wonder if I could pull that off….!”

Maybe I’m more like the cats than I care to admit :->

Monday Cat Blogging


I warned you I would have cat pictures from the weekend :)

First, the two blind kitties I took care of while their mamas were out of town. The Punks as they are known, can be seen more here with an explanation of why they are without eyes.

Miracle (Miss Moo) contemplating a sofa leap

Since she is the friendliest cat I’ve ever met, she quickly came up for some love.

Tulip (Miss Tu) is the opposite of Moo – she’s much more likely to hiss and bite than want to be close.

However, she can get very flirty and give you head butts and rub up against your leg and then flop to the floor and roll

She stretches to her full, slim length and flits her tail back and forth and tilts her head up at you challenging you to pet her – Don’t Do It!

Meanwhile, back at my house and Chip was feeling very photogenic and more active/curious than usual:

Getting love from his human. I kinda like the double devil eye thing going on here.

On Saturday I was cleaning out the cabinets in the kitchen and went to take out some trash leaving a chair in an odd place…

I was quite surprised to see Mr Cautious checking things out….

Guess he wanted to make sure I used the correct cleaning products…

“Ok mama, it all looks good, you can get me down now!”

Meanwhile, Amber wonders why all those cats were working so hard. “Don’t they know we are supposed to sleep all day?!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Short Stories from Casa Crazy


Some time ago as joke I created a Facebook location for our house and called it Casa Crazy. I did it because I’d had dinner with some friends who had all commented on how LAME Facebook check ins are, especially when people are checking in from home and calling their home some cutesy name. So, ha ha ha, I ran home and created the location and checked in with some trite statement like “chillin’ on the patio at Casa Crazy with Amber and Chip” or some such nonsense. Yes, I cracked us up, I tell ya!

So here are some more riotous tales from Casa Crazy!

(Hah, I originally typed that Casa Cray and realize now I *should* have called it Casa Cray Cray…might need to update that!)

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This weekend at the San Diego International Triathlon Eve and I were at the finish line watching racers come in and keeping an eye out for Renee. One guy was running in, drifted off to the side where spectators were, got his toddler aged daughter in his arms and carried her the final 30 yards or so to the finish line. Adorable. And a bit dangerous when you consider that other racers were sprinting in all around him and he was lucky he wasn’t run down as he drifted in and out. Of course, at least he did carry her and clearly he had no podium aspirations (or he knew he was so far ahead that he could slow down to get her and not lose a spot). So we stuck with thinking it was sweet overall.

Then we spotted Renee coming in on the next to last turn. She was motoring along pretty well and was mostly in a group of men also coming in but there was one woman ahead of her. As they hit the final turn, the woman in the front did The Drift to the side! And yep, she snagged a kid! She was a little further back than the previous guy had been and this time she was pulling in a 5-6 year old boy into the chute. And she wasn’t carrying him. I see this all unfolding right in front of Renee and my first was concern was that she not crash into them because she had quite the head full of steam. (Alternately my competitive side was thinking ” Just push him outta the way girl!!”) She did have to alter her path a bit to avoid him, but then she took off and finished ahead of mom and son.

By .02 seconds. Not 2 seconds. .02 seconds. How do we know? Because that was the difference between 2nd and 3rd place in their age group. Thanks to mom pulling her kid along with her, she lost her #2 spot. Hah!

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15 will kill me later, but this was too funny not to share. He was making himself some chicken noodle soup while telling me a story of some sort (in the right mood he pretty much never shuts up). He opens the can, dumps the contents in the bowl, throws the can away, picks up the bowl in one hand and opens the refrigerator with the other yapping all the way. Now, I suspected he was going to grab the juice container for whatever reason but…well..you can probably guess what he did right?

Yup, bowl of soup, right into the refrigerator! I just stood there looking at him as the realization comes over him and then he looks and sees me grinning. Completely unable to cover that up, he had no choice but to burst out laughing as I did the same. “When did you move the microwave?!” he managed to blurt out through giggles. Yeah, nice try son.

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If you have cats, then you know this scenario. No matter where I settle down to either read/watch TV/work(futz) around on the computer, they will be RIGHT THERE! I always laugh when I am seated at the dining room table working at my laptop and I will have one cat on the left, and another on the right. The three of us, basically crammed into a little 2×3 foot spot of carpet in an 1800 sft house! And of course, I have no way of getting up from my chair without stepping on one of them. Sigh………………..

Well, flash forward to tonight when I decide to sit outside after dinner and read my book. It’s a clear summer evening and until the sun drops below the roofs of the houses across the way, it will be perfectly toasty, but not hot or cold. I’m out there in the peace & quiet for about 5 minutes tops when I hear Amber howl inside because she knows I am right Out There and she cannot be with me. Suck it up cat. Mama wants a few minutes of space. Then 15 pops through the front door to discuss plans for his trip to the fair tomorrow. Then 26 comes out the side to smoke a cigarette and water the plants. And just like that both boys are talking to me and/or to each other as we are all packed into two squares of sidewalk concrete. Meanwhile the cat is howling inside.

Boys…cats…cats…boys….SIGH!

Goodnight from Casa Cray Cray Crazy.

May 24th – The Storm Begins


You know how I said yesterday that it was the calm before the storm at work?

Yeah well, the storm rolled in today SO here’s what you get before I head out for another dinner meeting on job/career #2:

Yes, I did run. 3 miles! I could have run 4-5 but I had to get ready to go to that darn work thing. Hrmph!

Good thing I ran too because there was a baby shower at work and with cookies n cream ice cream AND warm gooey chocolate chocolate chip cookies. Ahem.

Hush up.

Unexpected Beauty entry – I am currently way too happy to see a certain cat eat wet food. He used to hate it. Now, it’s like instinct has kicked in and he loves it. Phew! Thought I would capture him chowing down and got lucky enough instead to capture a classic kitty move

Sluuuuurp!

May 19th – Hearth and Home


Catchy title eh? Ads a lovely delusion of grandeur to the much more boring reality that I basically stayed put and did chores ;-)

OK, not entirely true.

I did run out to Starbucks to grab breakfast. My cereal box for the week was empty and I didn’t want to make eggs and I have $ on my gold card so – Saturday treat! I enjoyed it while watching Up & Nerdland on the DVR.

THEN the chores started.

Well, sort of because I had planned on getting that water fountain for the cats and also some new everyday shoes for 15 and then meet up with Padres/Adam Lambert buddy David at the mall so he could pay me for the tickets I bought for him. We decided to meet up for lunch there so we could catch up because I realized that while I “see” him on twitter on facebook everyday – and he is constantly updating both – I had not actually TALKED to him In Real Life (IRL) in almost two years!! So strange. I swear I feel so close to many people who I engage with every day via one of the social media sites that I forget how rarely I see them IRL (if at all).

It was a great time and also quite encouraging to talk to him about things like college with 15 there. David is young – younger than 26 – and he and his boyfriend are both just finishing their bachelors (though David started a little late). Sergio graduates in June and David graduates next year. The encouraging part was when 15 told him about wanting to study computer science, David’s eyes lit up and he shared that his brother completed his degree in that at SDSU and went right to work as a programmer with SDG&E (local utility company). That got 15′s eyes to light up and hey – as you all know all too well – ANYTHING we can do to get his motivation and interest perked up is a huge blessing!

Ok, once we got home from THAT we did stay put. Cleaned, did laundry, cleared out the ‘fridge,  setup the fountain and watched the cats. They decided it was interesting but not worthy of drinking from it. Grrrr. Chip stuck his nose in the falling water and promptly jumped back shaking his head. I let it run for awhile since it was supposed to do that to prime the pump and then later I turned it off and sure enough about 10 minutes later they both drank from it. Stinkers!

Spent the rest of the day reading and researching for improving the ebook and also just in general on content writing or simply writing techniques. It was good to see that the system of steps I came up with on my own to do this research seems to be consistent with what other web content folks follow. I’m either brilliant or a lot of this stuff is just common sense ;-) Sometimes though, we need to be reminded of the basics to get them to click more solidly in our pea brains that retain knowledge for a grand total of about 3 minutes!

Now back to Lizz Free or Die which I am absolutely loving.

Peace out!

May 18th – A moment in time


The day started off odd enough. First 15 was up and showering by 6:30 on his own – I can only imagine this was due to him having sort of reset his clock this week in preparation for yesterday’s REALLY early morning for the AP test. So I was in the office by 7:30 and rolling along by 8am when Eve called me. She wanted to see if I knew anything about a post on someone’s Facebook book that seemed to indicate someone we knew had died. But, I was not friends with this person and as we talked I could barely remember the woman she was asking about. I think I had met her maybe three times at race events. The guy on facebook who Eve knew though was someone I knew a little better since he had taken circuit classes with us back in the gym days and we had talked to him more extensively at the races. We both could only remember her first name. Eve said she would call a few others in our racing circle and let me know. Turns out, Melissa was this Melissa from the rather horrific crash on the freeway late Thursday night. In an instant, and what seems to have been without any warning at all since she never slowed down – she was gone. Here one moment, gone the next. Thankfully all alone in her car given that she has two young daughters (safety seats were found in the back of the van). But still. Gone.

Put quite the pallor on the day as you can imagine even though I cannot really specifically remember her.

For whatever reason Eve and I spent just about the rest of the day texting each other – mostly about our website projects. It was a good distraction and since we hadn’t really communicated all week it was much needed. As I mentioned yesterday, our Google rankings hit the site hard and while we are working on drastically improving the quality of the content in the ebook and on the site, we need to think of how far we want to go with this. We know it can run at a profit – not necessarily a huge one, but still a steady one. And it feels like our first baby and is certainly our test case where we are learning a ton about what to do and NOT do.

Anyhow – part way through the afternoon I noticed that I had apparently been unable to properly eat my yogurt this morning and I had a lovely peach colored dribble stain from on my depp purple shirt down to my black pants. Lord. Start the week with my zipper down, end it wearing my yogurt.

Good thing I work in a basement and can easily go several hours without anyone seeing much more than the top of my head in the cubicle farm!!

26 is off to his dad’s for a couple of days visiting and helping him install new floors at his place. Even though it’s been peaceful here all week, it is still a nice break for both of us.

15 decided to fill the gap by bringing a friend over to stay the night. One of his football buddies who he has befriended over the last year. Sweetheart of a guy. Pretty much 15′s physical opposite though! Super tall and skinny. I was very thankful that I had bought the larger sized can of re-fried beans for the planned bean and cheese burrito night. They ate so many that I warned 15 to open his bedroom windows and not create any sparks in that room tonight! It’s going to be quite dangerous in there!!

Kept up my pattern of running on even numbered days in May with a surprisingly strong 2.8 miles down and up two hills and kept it at a 9.50 min mile pace. Surprising given it was Friday and given how badly Wednesday went and that I was really not trying to go fast tonight. You just never know with running, I tell ya.

After dinner I sat on the sofa with the cats & watched TV. I cannot believe how closely I pay attention to their eating/drinking and litter box habits these days. I’m still concered about Chip drinking enough water. He needs encouragement so I am going to get a drinking fountain tomorrow with running water to draw his attention. Had one a couple of years ago and he liked it. He’s always been a “water” kitty in that just the sound of a faucet brings him running. He was super clingy tonight so I thought it was time to share a picture of him since he’s been THE main topic of conversation all month!

And because – well – gotta capture those moments, right?

The look o’love

May 17th – AP test day and a new slow cooker recipe


Amber knows where her food is and she’s keeping a sharp eye on it Just In Case!

One of the new routines thanks to Chip’s bladder issues is that instead of leaving dry food out for them all day, I fill their bowls twice a day. This is not a big deal for Chip, but for Amber it is utter hell. I tried to ease her into it while Chip was at the vet, but she’s still in protest mode over the whole indignity of it. One of the OTHER things I need to do is keep their food seperated because I really don’t want Chip eating hers. And heck, I would ditch hers but that’s a large container of not inexpensive Royal Canan cat food and there is no way I am throwing all that $$ out! So, I moved her food bowl around the corner and away from Chip’s eyes and smell. I put his food down in the old spot and as he chows down I move over to the dining area and scoop some food for Amber. When she’s done, I wash her bowl and put it back in the container.

It took her a grand total of ONE day to figure it all out. When she is hungry – that is what she does. Plops herself down in front of the container an stairs hopefully at the top, just sure that the power of her kitty cat sad eyes will cause the container to gush out food for her poor starving self. Pathetic.

Anyhow, while I am happy with the eating arrangements and Chip is eating more wet food I now see that he is not drinking as much as he used to. So, a water fountain will be purchased this weekend and maybe some clam juice to flavor that water for him. He’s fine. Much calmer and not vocalizing as much and (thankfully) not peeing on the floor voluntarily or not and also NOT fussing with his hind end (sorry).

So yes – the title – AP test day!! 15 had to be down there at 7am so he was up at 6am and was actually ready to go on time. Even mildly awake! When I picked him up, he seemed pretty upbeat stating that the multiple choice was so easy that it made his teacher’s questions seem like they were from Harvard. 1 essay was easy, 1 was so so and 1 was hard so he had to do a lot of pulling of information out of his ass  - which we know he is good at – hopefully good enough to get a decent score ;-)

I dropped him at school for the last period of the day after getting him a sandwich and then I came home to listen to a webinar and to some more ebook research. I also started a new crock pot recipe that has been getting rave reviews:

Slow Cooker Creamy Ranch Pork Chops and Potatoes 

I don’t have their handy dandy plug in to display recipes, so I took a screen shot – You really need to click on that link and read their post. They are so damn funny!

I cooked it on high since I was home and could start it later. I have to wonder if cooking it on low would have been better? One pork chop was tender and fell apart fabulously, the other one was tough and seemed overcooked. Same uneven results with the potatoes. It’s a pretty new cooker not used all that much and the last time it cooked perfectly but we almost always use low vs high. 15 cleaned his plate (I gave him the the tender chop) and I came to the conclusion that I just don’t like pork chops. I know – as much as I love bacon I am just not terribly thrilled with any other parts other than a truly perfectly cooked tenderloin. I’m not a huge fan of the pork roast or chop. Sigh…..the sauce was damn good and the well cooked potatoes were quite yummy.

Back at some more technical writing. Oh hey – a little it of what I do has risen all the up to the Wall Street Journal this week. They wrote about the recent Google search update that knocked a bunch of folks off their results pages. Ours was one of those :-( Our traffic has tanked since April 24th. And it was at an all time high plus ebooks were selling steadily until then. I find it funny that Google names their algorithm adjustments after animals. I keep saying that I am a “sad panda about Google Penguin” Heh. Because, you know, we survived the Panda updates but couldn’t get past that damn Penguin!! Anyway, I know, your eyes just glossed over if they didn’t already from the never ending cat/bladder talk. Sorry – documenting this for historical purposes and all that.

Cya

May 15th – Nada Mucho


In my quest to learn as much as I can about web marketing and copy writing and those new adventurous things I’m trying to do to help me earn more money for things like, oh, cats and their clogged up bladders (ahem) – I watched part 1 of a video series specifically on copy writing. The first assignment from this lesson? Write. That’s it.

Just write.

The goal is 200 words a day on anything at all. I’m like “yeah, I got this!” – apparently my instinct towards pushing myself to write even about nothing every day was a good one. I have to admit that when I do sit down to compose something either in here or else on the other sites, I have found it much easier to simply get started. That often elusive first sentence tends to be right there waiting for me even on more technical topics. Speaking of which I will probably have to re-write the process documents at work with this new upgrade we launch in two weeks. I used to dread….and I mean DREAD those types of tasks. I would put it off as long as possible and much like essay assignments in school I would rather manually scrub an oven than do that!

Not anymore.

Kinda like running – the more I do it, the less I loathe it and heck, maybe I even like it a little (or, a lot!)

Case in point, I opened this window just after dinner – cooked again by 26 who made my mom’s special chicken teriyaki with veggies recipe – with the intention of writing something before 15 and I got into watching a 2 hour Glee. But, I got into research for improving on the pergola ebook and the next thing I knew it was 8:30 and we needed to start watching it in order to get to bed at the usual time. We finished the show at 10 (still love it!) and just as I went to turn out the lights I remembered by commitment to post every day. Normally, I would have grumbled and uttered some choice words, but instead I thought “no problem” and gave myself 15 minutes to drop some words on a screen.

The day itself was unremarkable which is pretty much the best kind. No drama. No tussling over homework. Chip did pee on the floor, but it seems more to have been mental since he’s otherwise showing no signs of a blockage and the vet did say that the feliway spray takes almost a month of application to fully stop the behavior no matter how it started.

427 – that’s how many words are up there after 10 minutes of typing. I don’t know whether or not I am getting *better* at this writing thing, but I do know it sure is a whole lot easier now.