Conversations you can NEVER unhear.

Last week was our anniversary, so we went out with a dozen or so friends to a local eatery and had quite a fun time.

I spend most of my time in groups listening to other conversations and am usually thoroughly entertained in this manner for hours.  Other times, I feel a bit on the mentally violated side.

This night offered several opportunities for the latter option and because I'm who I am, I volunteered for more.  How could I possibly pass up this much fodder for an otherwise neglected and forlorn blog??

Here is just a tiny sample of topics discussed at the meal.

"Butt Calling a Booty Call"
This is a prime example of why someone should clear their contacts out of their phone and start over once they get married.  Especially if said someone is prone to drinking more than he should while out with buddies.
It cuts down on the early morning rude awakenings by angry boyfriends when you're far too hungover to remember a one-night stand from years ago you didn't realize you'd dialed up and treated to the muffled sounds of drunken karaoke at 3am.

This is also a prime example of a conversation one does NOT want one's spouse made aware of.  Especially when it's the spouse who answers the door after that rude awakening.

"You're Pretty."
Granted, this particular conversation was short in and of itself.  The reactions, on the other hand, were loud and highly entertaining.

Guy #1: "Why do you wear your makeup like that?"
Girl #1: "You're just not used to seeing this much beauty in one place."
Guy #1: "People only say you're pretty cuz they wanna get into your bed."
Girl #1: *pause to consider response*
Guys #2,3,4,5....: *almost in unison* "You're pretty."

"I Can Be Manly.  In a Girly Way."
This is cringeworthy enough when it's a woman speaking.  When it's a pack of men discussing how to make this apply...

No amount of "we were just giving her advice about how this is done!" could salvage the image damage done here.  Especially not once it was discovered just how naturally the lisping came to these guys...

...and they started lisping at the servers.

We may never be allowed back into that eatery again.  Ever.

Flattery will get you nowhere. Violent threats, however...

Seriously.  That's why I'm blogging again.  My friends are getting a smidgen on the we-know-where-you-live-we-know-how-to-torture-you-we-know-how-to-get-rid-of-a-body-and-we-will-alibi-each-other-til-Doomsday side.

I can take a hint.  Especially hints as subtle as 20 pound sledgehammers.

Who is actually surprised that it's been 6 months since my last post here?  Anyone?

What have I been doing that's keeping me away from my blog?

*fidget*

Well...

We went to Guatemala and helped build a Bottle School.  That was mildly AMAZING!
We stayed at the Venetian-Palazzo in Las Vegas for a week.  That was pretty mind blowing, too.
We met up with and played with a few thousand friends just outside of Atlanta for a weekend.
I hung out with a pack of absolutely BATTY friends for a long weekend in Dallas.
I took over the volunteer end of the FUEL program at the church I attend.
I've been working with my husband to build a business we both love and believe in.
I agreed to let my two youngest children join Girl Scouts and Tiger Scouts.
I agreed to let my older daughter add "a few" extracurricular activities to her schedule. *twitch*
I stitched a few things.
I read a book or two.
I managed to not strangle any of my offspring.
I managed to not strangle any of my furbabies.
I managed to avoid being strangled by my husband.

What time has been left over has either been obliterated on Facebook games or spent diving headfirst into the world of Supernatural and Criminal Minds courtesy of Netflix.

Oh, don't get me wrong! I have all sorts of delusions of accomplishment in the near future!!

I'm working on learning some semblance of the Spanish language for our next trip to Guatemala.
I'm working on ambushing some poor soul to teach me how to write code for a virtual scrapbook that can be loaded onto a CD or DVD and installed onto another computer with functional links to this image or that page, etc etc.
I'm working on getting my house to look like a home instead of the aftermath of a tornado ravaging a Goodwill warehouse.
I'm working on making my flowerbed flood proof and making my weedbed extinct.
I'm working on convincing my scale and my reflection that I really-honestly-truly-swear-to-God weigh 105 pounds and wear size 3 clothes.
I'm working on convincing my body that the daily exercise is not in violation of any of the Geneva Convention and will continue until my scale and reflection believe that I do, in fact, weigh 105 pounds and wear size 3 clothes.  (Yes, I do realize I'll be exercising until the day I keel over and drown in my own sweat. Thank you for pointing this out.  Again.)

So you see, I've been keeping myself occupied pretty steadily in hopes of keeping myself out of trouble.

Well, at least out of trouble that could land me on the 6:00 news.

Here's the thing...

You know that person you can just look at and immediately tell that spending any time at all with them is going to result in a whole bunch of the above mentioned trouble?

That person that every normal member of society shakes their collective heads at and often wonders which mental institution they escaped from and just how many different kinds of happy pills they're supposed to be taking?

Yeah.  That person.

Well, I surround myself with as many of them as I can find.

For several reasons:

~They're fun.
~They can laugh at themselves because they understand that everyone gets laughed at and they might as well get some enjoyment out of the mockery too!
~They can't be bothered with being Politically Correct because, honestly, who has the energy to be offended by every syllable uttered by every other living creature in the cosmos??
~They find humor in just about any situation because no matter how serious you take life you're not getting out of it alive, anyway.
~They're nearly impossible to offend in any way, shape, or form.
~They make me seem minutely normal.  Sorta.  Once in awhile.

But mostly I surround myself with these people because no one else will let me hang out with them!

My baby is gonna be six tomorrow!

Wow.  Six years old.  Hunter. My youngest child.

I'm getting old.

*sigh*

I'm told I should be mourning how fast he is growing and how brief his baby and toddler years were.

I'm supposed to be sad that he's past the stage of infancy where every time someone took a step near him to coo and gush over how adorable he was I went into Maniacal Ninja Guard Mom mode and sized each person up to see how fast I could break every bone I could reach if my baby so much as whimpered.

I should be missing those weeks of never getting a full night's sleep because he woke up squalling for food every four hours or, if he didn't wake up squalling for food every four hours, I panicked and woke him up to see what dire medical emergency was ensuring he slept soundly for a few more hours.

It should be breaking my heart that he is beyond the point of giving me repeated mini-strokes each time he stumbled, tripped, stubbed an adorable little toe, face-planted, or DEAR GAWD HE'S BLEEDING!!!! in his quest for personal evolution and bipedal status.

I should be missing the days... weeks... MONTHS! when the only words he pronounced clearly were "Why?" and "NO!"

I'm supposed to be melancholy and mopey that he has developed past the period in his life where he was perfecting his artistic techniques and leaving poo murals and crop circles all over the house in our misguided attempts to potty train him.

I should get teary-eyed and runny-nosed when I reminisce about dropping him off for his first day of school and watching him bolt toward those big double doors with so much excitement about finally being a big boy before I went home to an empty house and had my first HOT meal in 5 years and I didn't have to share it!!

I should be thinking back and getting depressed that all those experiences are behind me and I can never get them back no matter how many times or how tightly I hug my little boy while he squirms and whines about not being able to breath.

I can't bring myself to do that. I have never been that kind of mom and often joke that I'm missing a Mommy Gene somewhere.

Instead I find myself anxiously looking forward to watching him over the next few years as his interests and passions take real form. I'm fascinated by how quickly he becomes enamored with movie heroes and how well he mimics them.  It's particularly entertaining to see him destroy a perfectly clean playroom in a matter of minutes when he's unable to choose if he's going to be Thor with the mighty hammer, Hawkeye with the "AWESOME!" bow, Captain America with the "totally cool" shield, or just go mean and green and "HULK SMASH!"... so he grabs the whole shooting match and tosses on Superman's cape for good measure and transforms into my own personal Sharknado of chaos.
Now that he's seen Kellan's Lutz's "Hercules" and his "new best movie!!" "Godzilla", things are bound to get REALLY interesting!

I can't wait to watch him excel in the math he seems to love so much and try to dodge the reading he thinks he isn't any good at, despite him still being able to read faster and better than his peers, especially if the book in front of him is something he's interested in.  I have to admit I'm a little apprehensive about future science projects.  He is his father's son after all.  SOMETHING is going to explode at some point.  Likely intentionally.  Highly entertaining but most assuredly messy...

He wants to play baseball, soccer, football, and hockey.

He wants to run track, rollerskate, skateboard, ice skate.  He hasn't even mentioned riding a bike yet but since he's getting one tomorrow we'll see how long it takes him to decide he's going to win the Tour de France someday.  I can't wait to see which sport he'll decide he wants to play most or if he'll just play them all.

I can't wait to watch his personality really take shape and reveal whether or not he's going to be a straight-laced, what you see is what you get young man.  Or maybe he's going to be the class clown who never runs out of pranks and surprises to keep everyone hopping and laughing.

There's so much to look forward to, so many achievements waiting for him, so many doors he still gets to open and so many paths he has yet to run down.

I can't be sad and miss the days when he was a baby.
Because, honestly, every time I hug him and hold him tight...

He's my baby all over again.

Another month gone by...

...and I'm just now blogging again.  Figures, right?  Hey, at least I'm still sneaking in at the once a month pace!

I have no idea what to blog about.  Steve says to write about the Easter egg hunt we did last week, or Hunter's announcement that he is definitely allergic to direct sunlight, or Sarah's bizarre costume she wore to a cosplay convention in Nashville, or some idiocy my cats have gotten up to, or the new flowers that finally got put into the flower bed, or my latest race to the death with a stitching deadline I'm pretending doesn't exist.

All decent ideas.  Nothing coming to mind about how to word any of that to be even remotely entertaining to anyone else.

Zippy is sitting in my lap demanding attention.  It'd be cute as all get out if I didn't think she was secretly plotting how to sink her teeth into my jugular in retaliation for yet another vet visit.  She's been having urination issues the last month or so.  The issue being that she's urinating on our bed which is waaaay out of character for one of the most well-behaved cats I've ever known.

Took her to the vet to get her checked for what I was sure was a UTI, but they couldn't get a sample out of her no matter what they tried.  They were completely in love with her about twenty seconds after taking her out of my arms though.  See, Zippy hugs.  Tightly.  Especially when she's frightened.  So the doctor thought it was just adorable that he peeled her off of my neck only to have her flip around, wrap both front legs around his neck, and press her head up under his chin.

Then she started squeezing.
And pushing her head harder.
And squeezing some more.
And nuzzling.

And the doc's eyes got wide.
And his face got red.
And his mouth opened slightly.
And his face got purple.

And the tech and I had to remove the growth from him.

Zippy is the sweetest, cutest, furriest boa constrictor you'll ever meet.

But after they were forced to resort to using a needle to get a urine sample directly out of her bladder and then cram the first of many pills down her throat to combat the massive bacterial infection she has, I'm a little concerned about my wellbeing for the next couple of days.  Well, that and I keep checking to see if she's piddled on my pillow in revenge yet.

"Wow, Kiri!  Your shampoo has a ... unique ... scent to it.  What brand are you using?"
"I believe it's called Salon de Take-me-to-the-vet-again-and-I'll-eat-your-eyes-while-you-sleep."

*sigh*

Sleep is totally overrated anyhow, right?

I should write a book?

This was pointed out to me by someone last night while I was babbling about something or other.  She was immediately agreed with by at least two other people.

I shut up.  Obviously, I'd been running my mouth far too much again.

Books are written by creative people who are capable of keeping their thoughts on the same train and sometimes even in the same passenger car.  My thoughts are the ones running alongside the train banging on the windows and begging the driver not to leave them behind.

Oh, I come up with some awesome ideas for stories!  Generally based on a story written by someone else that was so good I went straight back to the first page and started over trying to imagine it being told from the point of view of a different character.  I'm sure I'd be an amazingly famous published writer living in the lap of luxury off of the royalties I was raking in... if it wasn't for all this malarky about plagiarism or some nonsense about stealing someone else's ideas.  Pfffft.

I mean.  errrmmm....

*cough*

"But you write a blog, don't you?"

Yeah.  Once in a blue moon.  Unreliably.  Badly.

And it's about my kids and my cats.

Riveting stuff.

Books are supposed to be written by people who can draw on their own life experiences for inspiration.

I just don't have that exciting a life.  Oh there's drama alright.  I have a teenage daughter.  Drama moved in and took over several years ago.  And isn't paying its fair share of the bills, either.

But even the drama isn't really MY drama.  I grew up being surrounded by other people's drama.  Somehow I always seemed to be a spectator to the most unbelievable situations.  A few times I played a minor role while trying to get away from whatever was going on.  But almost every unbelievable event I can recall swirled around somebody else I just happened to be standing near.

There was the time I was walking home from school with a couple of classmates when I was maybe 11 years old.  We came around a patch of trees and could see the huge field we'd be crossing to get to the apartment complex I lived in.  I ran ahead of my two friends and slowed down when I saw my mother and little sister coming across that field to meet us.  Then I saw my sister cover her face, my mother's face turn ghost white and she tried to run (Mom had ankle issues that made running a physical impossibility for her) toward me, and I heard my friends behind me screaming my name frantically.  There was this really strong breeze that blew past me suddenly and when I turned to see what all the ruckus was about, a wannabe yacht of an ugly yellow old car was entering the gas station parking lot across the street from us... via the curb and sidewalk.

According to everyone else, the driver had turned his car so he was aiming directly at me and then at the last second swerved away which is what caused that gust of air I remember.  I don't remember hearing any squealing tires at all, but there must have been something because people were pouring out of the stores and running toward us to make sure I was alright.

Honestly, I was just wondering what the fuss was all about.

Which has been a pretty consistent theme throughout my life.

The details I remember out of these events are strange too.

~I remember the color of that car perfectly and can recreate it fairly easily with a dirty yellow crayola marker and a splash of weak coffee.

~I remember how, when I was about 12, an apartment complex pool went from sounding like a library while a neighbor's 3 year old was drowning in front of everyone to sounding like a bomb had gone off when I tapped her mother on the leg and pointed to the little girl.

~I remember thinking, at the supposedly mature age of 33, how I was "never going to get that smell out of my carpet" when my neighbor's 2 year old daughter's body relaxed and emptied on my dining room floor after she'd left the child alone in a bathtub for what she said was "only thirty minutes".

~I remember being angry at Steve for a few moments when it happened because he'd just deployed two days earlier and this stuff NEVER happens when he's around.

~I remember the sound of happy birds nearby, the color and smell of the hair, and the Easter pink business jacket and skirt of the woman who tried to take my then 5 month old son out of my car at a fast food drive-thru.

~I remember the click of a traffic signal changing colors followed by the sounds of car doors in every direction flying open when a driver fell asleep at the wheel, careened headlong into a large generator box at a major intersection, and I joined a dozen or more other people racing toward his car to see if he was okay.

~I remember the sound of metal collapsing in on itself and the rough, angry tremble in Steve's voice coming across his cellphone when his little hatchback was unlucky enough to be in the path of a large buck... for the second time in a month.

~I remember hearing a car radio struggling to play music that sounded like it was underwater when a woman called into the center after being in an accident and nearly five minutes of hysterical sobbing later was finally able to make us understand she was trapped in her seat, under the windshield, with the corpse of the full grown deer she'd collided with laying on top of her.


~~~~~~~~

See... this is the stuff I remember.  This is the sort of thing I can catch myself babbling about incessantly if I'm not careful.  Not the sort of thing people typically want to read about.  And I want to laugh anyway.  I need to find humor in everything, perhaps because of the above situations.

So I focus my attention and my blog on the fairly regular, but small, bits of lunacy my cats and children can produce.  That's never enough to write a full book about, though.

Which is good.

Somehow having a full length catalog of all the ways I can blackmail my children when they start dating doesn't seem the best way to win Mother of the Year.

And it doesn't help that my cats seem hellbent on proving they are all completely insane and gonna take me down with them.

I think they may succeed.

Something just crashed downstairs.

Zippy looks like she has a bottle brush stuck to her butt.

Lea looks irritated and bored at the same time.

Flicker looks sleepy.

Jack looks innocent.

Bullpuckey.

Bingo Blitz is going to get someone killed.

Yep.  I said "bingo".  As in sitting at a table with half a dozen people in a room crammed with 13 or 14 more tables crowded with dozens of other people who have also given up on finding anything even remotely dignified to do with their evening.  At least the whole "blue hair" thing is optional.

You can usually tell which tables are the "happening" tables by the people who appear to be suffering from a bad case of abnormally large, rainbow hued measles after failing to dodge repeated "daub & run" attacks perpetrated by their companions.

I'll admit it.  I could probably fit into this crowd fairly easily even at my age.  (First person who asks me what it was like to ride a T-rex is gonna get fed to him.) But since I'm not one for gambling real money, bingo tends to get monotonous in a hurry.  The total reliance on sheer luck drives me batty as well.

Short drive.  Yeah, I know.  I've had that particular personality trait pointed out to me on many occasions.

Well, it turns out that someone got the idea to "spice up" the game of bingo and introduced the Facebook world to Bingo Blitz. The classic game has been all gussied up with pretty graphics, computer generated callers sporting hideous accents, and even a way to strategize and improve your chances of getting bingos using these doohickies called Power Ups.
If you get bored with the bingo side of things, you can also go muck around with their slots rooms.  Nothing different about the slots stuff; standard, run of the mill, no concentration needed, spin yourself into a computer coma, slots.

To keep things from getting dull and stagnant, you play the bingo and slots in an effort to win collection items in each of the rooms.  These items can come from treasure chest squares or from what are universally referred to as "shadow cards" because they have a silhouette of one of the collection items.  If you bingo on that card, Voila!, you just won the item.

I'm borderline OCD.  Oh yeah.  I must have every item.  Now.  Sleep and food are inconsequential.  Smaller versions of myself can learn to fend for themselves.  Let the dust bunnies clean the house.  I'm busy!

And I'm not the only one!

The desire to get these collection items has to led to some fairly basic strategies that usually require dragging the individual rounds out as long as possible for more opportunity to daub treasure squares or to get a bingo on the shadow card.

You have to "buy" your game cards with the virtual currency of the game known as credits which are earned by winning bingos and through the daily "Yay! You checked back in today! You love us and still have no life!" allowances. Obviously you want to bingo 1st, 2nd, or 3rd for the larger credit prizes. If not in the top three, you still want to bingo at some point so you get at least some sort of credit prize to recoup what you spent on the round.

Now there is a small element of cooperation between players when it comes to the collection items, because trading most of the items is allowed.  This is a lovely aspect of the Bingo Blitz world intended to bring us together and foster harmony and love.

As with anything even remotely competitive in the universe, you have people who want to play one way, and other people who want to play in a different style.

And as with anything in the universe even remotely involving humans, you have drama.

Now that the basic set up has been laid out, lemme pull you in a smidge farther.  You know that first group I described?  The ones focused on getting collections completed?  That camp is generally called the "Holders".  They hold their bingos as long as they possibly can before clicking that "BINGO!" button just before the last bingo is called. Some holders don't call their bingos at all if they think they're helping other players and these folks can get downright homicidal if you call a bingo while they're holding for a specific person.

Then you have the group that just want to play bingo and aren't necessarily concerned with strategy or completing the collections.  They want to win and they want to get back some of the credits they paid to get into the game.  This group of players really doesn't have a collective name at this time, but they can also get downright homicidal if anyone challenges their right to claim their hard earned currency.

These two groups of players generally despise each other. In a Skittles vs M&Ms sort of way. In a dog lover vs cat lover sort of way.  In a Star Trek vs Star Wars sort of way.

I tend to think the "holder" term gets used a little too much.  But then, I like to believe that logic and I have a pretty decent relationship.

For example, in every online bingo game out there the bingos trickle in slowly at the start and then begin to speed up as more people get their bingos, usually ending in a chaotic crashing wave effect of players trying to claim a win before either time runs out or the allotted number of wins allowed is used up.  (Bingo Blitz uses the allotted wins based on the number of cards purchased method.)
The chaos at the end of the game is often immediately followed by "Ugh!  Holders!!"
Now, there's a very good possibility that this is due to the holders watching the number of bingos remaining and gauging how much longer they can try to accumulate treasure chests or coins before grabbing their spot on the winners list.

But I really wonder if anyone ever takes into consideration that there are often times more than 100 cards in play in any given bingo room.  Now, last time I checked there are only 75 numbers in the bingo pool.  Call the first number, and now there are 74.  Call another number, only 73 left.  You get the idea.  If each of the people in the room is paying attention and daubing off their numbers as they're called, doesn't it stand to reason that the remaining numbers on their cards
~might
~match
~the remaining numbers
~on someone else's
~cards?

And as more numbers are called and the pool of numbers that hasn't been called is shrinking, wouldn't it also stand to reason that more and more players
~might
~possibly
~need
~the same number
~to win
~at the same time?

Yeah, I know.  That's deep stuff.  I'll wait while folks get their muck boots on.

Like I said, the rivalry between the above camps is there but for the most part, up to now,  they have simply been more irritating to each other than malicious.

A few months ago BB changed the collections just slightly.  Before, everything was able to be traded to whomever you wanted to trade with.  Now, there are items that are "not giftable" and thus have to be won by you if you wish to complete the set.  Since some collection items are only available out of the treasure chests, you can see why it's getting more and more popular to join what used to be a fairly small holder camp and try to collect as many chests as possible before claiming that bingo you have sitting and waiting on your card.

The reason this irritates people who don't hold is easy to illustrate. You're sitting there waiting for the caller to call another number with the remaining bingo tally sitting at 15 or 20.  If no one is holding, in order for another bingo to be won another number must be called, right?  Well, holders are viewed kind of like used car salesmen ready to pounce on the first victim to cross into the line of vision. All it takes is one person clicking bingo in the lull between numbers and setting off the sound effect indicating that the bingos are almost all claimed, and then all the holders click at once.
POOF!
The bingos are gone.
To add insult to injury, the poor confused computer generated caller with his or her hideous accent, often still tosses out one last number that does no good whatsoever for the people who needed it to win.

If the poor callers were real people, there'd be a witness protection program for them.

So you'd think the battle lines would be pretty clear, right?  Easy to see who is on which side?

Trust BB to throw a monkey wrench into things.

There are seasonal collections!  Rooms that open for maybe a month at a time and are usually unbelievably expensive to play.  And of course, they include items that cannot be traded.  BB has also gotten almost obsessively fond of tiered rooms requiring players to complete what boils down to 3 individual collections for each room.

Limited time to play: holding seems the best strategy in order to maximize chances of getting the bloody collection items before the room closes.
Unbelievably expensive: not holding seems the best strategy in order to win back some of your credits so you can afford to keep attempting to get the bloody collection items before the room closes.
Tiered rooms: up the stress level because you can't collect anything from higher tiers if you can't complete the tier you're on, making it that much more important that your chosen strategy not be completely derailed by someone in the other camp!

Oh it gets UGLY when someone is one number away from getting that coveted hard to get shadow and the call to "HOLD YOUR BINGOS!!!" goes out, then that poor soul who has just enough credits to play one more game IF he wins this round claims said bingo and opens the gate releasing all the holders at once before another number can be called.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Picture this:

Team Hold on one side of the room, brutal weapons of choice in hand. Frothing at the mouth and daring ANYONE to click a bingo before all the prizes on every one of the cards have been claimed.

Team Don't Hold on other side of the room, brutal weapons of choice in hand. Eyes glazing and nostrils flaring preparing to defend the right to not throw away credits that could be collected and used toward more rounds.

Forget negotiations.  Forget forgiveness.  This is it.  The ultimate rivalry.  Neither group could hate anyone else more than the other team.  Step between them and get trampled without even being seen.

Is there anything in the cosmos that could ever make these two factions agree to not kill each other?


"Hey guys!  I just started this room a minute ago and I don't have anything.  I need someone to give me stuff!"




(If you enjoyed this post, please consider popping over to my other BB post Bingo Blitz: Better than Reality TV.)

It's bedtime. Things are supposed to be calm now.

Yeah.  Right.

*sigh* Only my children... only my children.

We got home from church just about an hour ago.  Bedtime for the littles and quiet time for us. Woohoo!

Assuming we can actually get them into bed.

Steve: "Hunter, get your shoes off like you were told."
Me: "Heather, I told you to get changed into pajamas."
Me: "No, Hunter, you may NOT have any cake."
Me: "Not a princess dress; your PAJAMAS, Heather!"
Steve: "Sarah, is your homework done yet??"
Me: "Someone feed the cats. They're convinced they're on the brink of starvation again."
Me: "Why don't I hear anyone brushing their teeth?"
Hunter: "Can't we play some more? We're not tired!"
Heather: "Mom! Jack's stealing Snow White again!!"
Steve: "Whose coat is this flung into my recliner??"
Hunter: "I don't want to wear a shirt!"
Sarah: "Mom! What was the public reaction when Truman fired MacArthur?"
Me: *flustered and not really listening* "Who's Truman and what's a MacArthur?"
Sarah: "MacArthur's that guy that went rogue and dropped an A-bomb on Korea."
Steve: "Say that again? What history book are they teaching you out of??"
Heather: "I don't want to take my medicine!"
Hunter: "I'll take it!"

Eventually we got them into bed. Finally, peace and quiet.

Or not.

I heard the ~CRACK~ from the other end of the house.

In the 5 seconds or so it took me to get to them, Hunter had blood running down his face and through his fingers from a wound I couldn't see through the dark spot pooling and matting the hair at his hairline. Heather was sitting on her bed screaming at the top of her lungs that it was an accident, but wouldn't stop declaring her innocence long enough to explain just WHAT had happened.

I knew my panic-free thinking was about to run out and screamed bloody murder for Steve to come take over Hunter's care while I ran downstairs for wet towels, buckets of water, bandages, dry towels, peroxide, cotton balls, medical tape, surgical thread, needles, staple gun... you get the idea.

By the time I got back upstairs, Steve had gotten Hunter's head cleaned up enough to determine that he would not be needing reconstructive surgery despite my preparations.  They were busy trying to clean the blood off of his face, arm, chest, and hands so I inspected the small hole that looked remarkably like someone had stabbed my son in the head with a ballpoint pen.

Heather had stopped yowling and I asked her what had happened.  She informed us that she was trying to get Hunter's light up pillow pet back onto his bed and didn't mean to hit him with it.

Wait.  Did she say a pillow pet?? One of those soft, huggable, plush toys that get folded up into pillows because they're so cuddly??
How in the blazes could she do that much damage with fluff??
Oh right;  these pillow pets light up.

Battery compartment.

Which, upon further investigation, we discovered had been broken over our son's head.  Literally.

We have to buy another pillow pet.

Now MY head hurts.

D@%$#$^&@!!@#!T, Jack!!

*growl*

...

Just... *growl*

I love my cats.  I really truly do.  I will, however, likely be forced to kill one of them. And it will be a clear cut case of self defense.

Let me explain:

~Head down to my room last night to watch some DVRed Olympics and maybe stitch.
~Turn the corner at the edge of my bed.
~Trip over cat.
~Smack head into window and drop everything in a loud and somewhat musical crash.

"D@%$#$^&@!!@#!T, Jack!!"

Jack: *musical chirrup* (Translation: Notice me.)


~Get out of bed this morning to tend to needs of small humans with misguided belief that I'm responsible for their feeding and care.
~Open door and step out into hallway.
~Trip over cat.
~Slam shoulder into doorjam and forehead into wall.

"D@%$#$^&@!!@#!T, Jack!!"

Jack: *musical chirrup* (Translation: I'm hungry too.)


~Finish feeding children and cats.
~Make beeline for bathroom.
~Pull bathroom door closed behind me as I step inside.
~Step forward toward necessary accoutrements.
~Trip over cat.
~Slip sideways and land unceremoniously in a heap inside the bathtub.

"D@%$#$^&@!!@#!T, Jack!!"

Jack: *musical chirrup* (Translation: I want to play in the water.)


~Get dressed after showering and move toward livingroom in search of other family members.
~See cat coming and sidestep into kitchen feeling proud of myself for not acquiring yet another bruise.
~Retrieve water bottle from fridge and prepare to go upstairs.
~Turn corner into livingroom.
~Trip over cat.
~Stumble two or three steps before collapsing over arm of recliner that had to have been part of the ambush.
~Fail to catch my balance and roll off of the front of the recliner, successfully twisting wrist upon landing on floor while pointedly ignoring gales of laughter coming from one of the small humans who had been watching TV.

"D@%$#$^&@!!@#!T, Jack!!"

Jack: *musical chirrup* (Translation: Here's my stick toy. Play with me.)


~Wrap up morning routine of wasting hour or two on Facebook and YouTube.
~Stand up and turn away from computer desk.
~Trip over cat.
~Bounce in a most undignified manner off of guest bed while pointedly ignoring long-suffering sigh of spouse that screams "Two years of this and you still haven't learned?"

"D@%$#$^&@!!@#!T, Jack!!"

Jack: *musical chirrup* (Translation: My belly needs to be rubbed.)


~Notice cat water dish needs to be cleaned out.. again.
~Pick up heavy stonewear dish half full of water.
~Turn around.
~Trip over cat.
~Pour water down front of clothing in futile attempt to avoid recreating Clarksville's "Great Flood of 2010" in kitchen.

"D@%$#$^&@!!@#!T, Jack!!"

Jack: *musical chirrup* (Translation: That's my water.)


~Finish cleaning up not-so-natural disaster.
~Step out into hallway.
~Trip over cat.

"D@%$#$^&@!!@#!T, Ja -- oh.   Lea, there's gotta be safer places to sleep."

Lea: "Mreowr". (Translation: Bite me.)


~Take step.
~Trip over cat.

"D@%$#$^&@!!@#!T, Jack!!"

Global warming my frigid blue patookus!

Yeah. I said it.  I even stuttered while I was at it, but I place the blame for that squarely on my chattering teeth.

I've made no secret of the fact that I'm a military brat/wife and have been a dependent since the day I was born.  As such I've lived in a wide variety of climates.

~I've lived in Georgia's muggy weather where it's a good idea to bring a change of clothes to work simply because the walk from your car to the front door of your office requires wringing out the now sticky and nasty garments you're currently wearing.
~I've lived in upstate New York where the autumn trees look suspiciously like a kindergarten classroom was allowed to run amok through nature with a box of crayons.
~I've lived in Guam where the constant ocean breeze makes you forget that the average temperature never drops below 80°F the entire year.
~I've lived in England where it rains for years at a time and a beam of sunshine can send the populace into a panicked frenzy because either a comet is inbound or aliens are attacking.
~I've lived in Minnesota where summer isn't considered over until there's seven feet of snow on the ground and the common rule of thumb is if students can collectively shove the bus through the snowy streets school is in session.
~I've lived in Washington where the temperature stays between 40°F and 70°F pretty much all year round, there is ALWAYS moisture in the air, and mold gets its own page in the population census.
~I've lived in Texas where I had to scrape ice off my windshield one morning to go to work and came home that afternoon wearing shorts and a tank top.

So I've seen my fair share of climates and came to the conclusion that I like warmth and sunshine; which ixnays 90% of the places I've lived so far.  Steve and I settled on Tennessee for a variety of reasons, but for me, it was mostly the weather.  We have four distinct seasons: Rain and tornadoes, August, autumn, and "man, I gotta wear a sweater today".  The most common gripe from women here is that they can't seem to keep their hair from having its own AfroParty! at random moments.  (Usually on Picture Day at school, or an important meeting/presentation, or formal dress party.)

Around here, we get antsy if the temperature threatens to drop below 50°F because we can't remember where we put our heavy coats.  Ask someone what a snow blower is and they'll likely point to a leaf blower saying "ain't that the same thing??"

That's why the folks around here chose here to settle.  Comfortable climate, trees to pretty the place up, rain in plenty when it's crop time, sun in plenty when it's summertime, winter temperatures that make anyone north of Kentucky scoff at us. We like it this way.  We're strange like that.

....

*glares out the window*

I just got back home from an appointment.  My car thermometer says it's 17°F out there. SEVENTEEN!!
I put water outside for the feral cats and watched it start to freeze before I could let go of the bowl!
I scraped the ice off of ONE window on my car and my fingers threatened to fall off in protest.

There's so much static electricity in the air that the cats zap each other just by getting within a few inches.  Of course, seeing two cats casually walking down the hall ignoring each other, hearing a loud KRAZAKLE,
and those same two cats landing several feet away looking like cheerleading pompoms is actually highly entertaining.

Now I'm no expert at science.  I'm probably not even scientifically literate.  And I really don't care what all the climate experts say or what all their charts and evidence says or that it's all probably completely true.

You're going to have a very hard time convincing me that we're suffering from global warming when I passed a herd of snowmen migrating south because they were giving whole new meaning to the term "blue balls".

Little Flicker's Story...

I know.  I'm late again.  But we had some travelling to do this past weekend and it was a BLAST!!  Even Flicker didn't seem to mind the three hour drive each way, or having an entire hotel bed, blankets, and nest of pillows all to herself each day.  The hotel clerk at the front desk fell in love with her and wouldn't let us pay the extra pet fee when we discovered I'd planned poorly and we needed to extend our stay.

So.... Flicker's story.  Y'all do realize how long winded I can get when it's about cats, right??  Alrighty then. Hope you have your popcorn and caffeine pills handy.

I was able to catch Flicker on July 22nd of 2013.  Obviously, she was frightened of absolutely everything and spent the next few days huddled up on a pile of towels shivering in the cat carrier we'd used to trap her. We decided she needed to be kept isolated from the other animals at least until she'd seen a vet, and we honestly didn't have any plans to keep her long term anyway.  (It turned out to be considerably harder to find a home for an animal that is blind than I had thought it would be.) It was going to be a few days to a week longer before I'd have the funds to take yet another cat to the vet, so she got moved into a larger cage in our bedroom and I was the only person who had any real contact with her.  She was always cold, so I kept her bundled up in blankets and held her as often as I could manage.

Three weeks passed before we were able to get Flicker to the vet and by this time I was extremely concerned about her.  She didn't seem to have grown the tiniest bit, and I was beginning to wonder if she'd been separated from her actual mother and we'd just mistaken her as being one of Stain's kittens.  After all, she looked like she was maybe 6 weeks old, while the other kittens outside were obviously 5 to 7 months old.

Finally, we got Flicker an appointment to see the vet.  She did the typical exam, made a couple of comments about how cold Flicker's body felt, discovered that she could shine a light as bright as a supernova into Flicker's eyes without the kitten trying to escape, spent nearly 5 minutes "ooh"ing and "aahh"ing about being able to study the inside of a cat's eye so easily, and eventually determined that there was nothing physically wrong with her eyes and therefore there shouldn't be anything wrong with her sight.  Her theory was that there was some kind of a disconnect between the eyes and the brain, and that it was possible, albeit unlikely, that Flicker could get her vision back as she gets older.

Then she checked Flicker's teeth.

Vet: "How did she lose this tooth?"
Me: "We were wrestling a little bit and it just came out.  She didn't even seem to notice it."
Vet: "Uh huh.  And how big did you say the other kittens you thought were litter mates are?"
Me: "Six or seven months?  They're all about this big." *makes hand motions indicating animals roughly three times the size of Flicker*
Vet: "Yeah. That's sounds about right."
Me: *looks confused* (which, admittedly, is a pretty standard look for me)
Vet: "Flicker's probably 6 months old. She's losing baby teeth and adult teeth are trying to grow in."

I looked at that tiny little kitten and tried to reconcile what Dr. Wicks was telling me.  She did some more exam-type things; poking this, pulling that, mumbling about this, that, and the other.  She called in some other vets who poked this, pulled that, mumbled about this, that, and the other.  They all huddled up around Flicker and debated quietly while continuing to run their hands over what had to be every millimeter of her body.  Then they started to get excited.

I started to get nervous.

They started to get a little more excited.

I started to get this nagging urge to shove past them all and scoop up what suddenly looked like an extremely small and vulnerable bundle of fluff.

Their voices started getting louder.

I interrupted by obeying that urge.  And apparently reminded the whole lot of them that I was still there.

Then it was explained to me that based on everything they could see and feel, it appeared that Flicker has what they called Pituitary Dwarfism.  They told me that typical dwarfism in animals makes for misproportioned bodies; heads that are slightly too small, front legs that are shorter than back legs or vice versa, tails that don't grow as long as they should, etc etc.  Flicker doesn't have this.  Flicker is perfectly proportioned.  She's just not growing.

Eternal kitten!

Then they let the other shoe drop.  This is so rare that they can't tell me much about the condition except that there is a 99.9% chance she won't live anywhere near as long as the average healthy house cat.  They can't even guess at a life expectancy.  All they can tell me is that instead of the normal dwarfism where individual appendages or organs don't get enough growth hormone, Flicker's body is distributing the hormone evenly but not producing enough of it.  They believe that eventually this may lead to organ failure but they can't tell me when to expect this, what symptoms to look for, or even if this will happen at all.  What they CAN tell me is that her immune system is permanently weaker than it should be and she will always be at risk to catch anything another animal she is exposed to may have and not be able to fight it off.

That's a little scary but since all of her tests came back negative for illnesses I wasn't going to worry about it. Just means no more new animals allowed in the house.  (Steve LOVES this new rule!)  We took her home and let her have the run of the house.  (She still doesn't like to leave our bedroom...)  Everything was fun and games for just under a week.

Then she stopped playing.
And eating.
And drinking.
And got very cold to the touch.

And I got nervous.

We went back to the vet and when the staff saw me coming across the parking lot, I saw people start running off in different directions inside. Didn't think too much of it until I got inside and there were two technicians who had obviously just stuffed charts back into the pile in the back and Dr. Wicks waiting for us.  Their "oh she's back! She's so cute!" expressions instantly vanished when they saw my face and we were ushered straight into a room and I had her taken from me.  It was determined that she'd gone from 2.6 pounds to 2.2 in six days and her body temperature was at 95.1 and dropping.  There was a flurry of activity in the room as everyone who worked there seemed to want to be doing something to help and it got a bit overwhelming for Flicker and me.  Dr. Wicks had to shoo everyone out and gave me a crash course on feline body temperature and weight while trying to prepare me for what they were fairly certain was about to happen.

Of course the barrage of tests that no one can realistically afford began and I was just too numb to object or say anything.  I'd had her less than a month and I felt like they were taking one of my arms away when they carried her into the back for overnight observation.  After ruling out low blood sugar, they needed to run blood work but she wasn't stable enough for that, so they had to keep her.  I found out later that half of the staff volunteered to stay with her, but Dr. Wicks is ultimately the one who wouldn't leave her side.  I kept getting calls every two to three hours with updates; the first one saying she'd stabilized enough to allow for the needed tests and then more calls with result after result coming back as negative.  Then her temperature started to tank again, and I was informed that the only test remaining was for a simple infection in hopes of ruling out FiP.  If that test came back with the wrong result, I'd be able to come pick her up and take her home as there was nothing that could be done for her.

The next morning we learned that while they couldn't find a definitive infection, they did find some markers that might indicate there was one they just hadn't located.  It was decided that since it was really their last shot anyway, that they'd go ahead and treat her for an infection and see if that helped at all.  Later that afternoon, I was allowed to come visit her and she looked so frail, I was afraid I was going to break her.

This was supposed to be the point where I'd pick her up and bring her home to be comfortable as they had done just about everything they possibly could.  Instead, Dr. Wicks said she had one last medicine up her sleeve that she wanted to try because Flicker was still obviously fighting to hang on and not just giving up.  "If she isn't giving up, then we aren't giving up on her."  It meant staying another night and most of the next day while they watched her, and they were careful to remind me that this was honestly a losing fight but a losing fight they were determined to stay in until the end.

The next evening we were informed that Flicker was responding to the antibiotics despite them still not being able to find any infection. She was still in danger and could take a turn for the worse at any moment, but they could find no reason that she couldn't come home with me as long as I kept giving her the medication and kept her on a heating pad to maintain her body temperature the best we could.  Even though it was obvious she still felt like complete and utter crap, she was glad to be home and I didn't let her out of my sight for the next two days.  I even took her to work with me!

Three days later, she was released from vet care and we were told she was one bottle of antibiotics away from an almost complete recovery.

I say "almost" because she still can't seem to keep her body temperature up where it should be.  She has a heating pad under her bed that is kept on 24 hours a day unless she's curled up beside me on the bed while I stitch.  She can't be left alone very long because someone needs to be able to turn the heating pad back on every couple of hours, but this is a minor thing and we have all easily adjusted to it.

Flicker has a few oddities that we believe are side effects of her condition.  She doesn't make much noise.  She really has to struggle to get a little squeak out if she wants attention, but I've learned to identify the little cricket sound as her and seem to now be able to hear her from another room if it's quiet in the house.  She can purr like nobody's business though!  That little rattle of hers is NOISY!!

The other strange thing is her fur.  It takes forever to grow back!  At first we were worried it wouldn't grow back at all, but finally, after almost five months, her belly has peach fuzz on it again after her spaying.

Her eyes are also an unknown for us.  Some days she acts as though she can't see anything at all.  Other days she seems able to see large objects moving if the area is particularly bright.  We've discovered recently that she appears to be completely blind in her left eye and never reacts to anything on her left side unless she hears it.  But if we move things on her right side, it's a 50/50 chance that she'll see it and react to it.  This can be all sorts of entertaining when playing with a laser light.  It doesn't hurt that we enjoy setting off her laser eyes for no apparent reason.

February 1st was the date assigned as her birthday by the veterinarians so, despite still being small enough to balance (sorta) in one hand, she'll be a year old in a couple of weeks.

Her first exploration of the second level of the house. 12/28/13

She is the youngest of our fuzzies, but easily the feistiest as well.  She tends to swat and hiss at the other cats when they get too close which leads to tense relations as you can imagine.  Zippy has decided she flat out doesn't like Flicker and it's fairly common to have to break up arguments between the two.  Lea still hasn't quite figured out how to handle this odd little creature that doesn't know SHE'S the one in charge.  Jack tolerates the constant abuse he suffers at Flicker's paws and will occasionally curl up with her and bathe her.  Usually they just try to avoid the inevitable swats and smacks that seem to come out of nowhere when she's in the vicinity.

This means that the target for 90% of her ire defaults to my arm.

But she still finds time to bully the big cats too.

She just thwacked Jack and he's wondering what to do now.

You gotta admit.  This little girl is living up to the nickname our friend Rona inadvertently gave her.  She is definitely "Cuteness Overload".

Introducing the Ferals...

Anyone who has read this collection of babbling for any length of time knows that my cats are an important part of the family. That includes the ferals outside, much to Steve's dismay.  I've been getting requests from people to tell their story since I'm gonna give blogging another shot.  So here goes...

Just remember.  You asked for it.

As seems to be our pattern, when Steve and I buy a house, there always seems to be a resident colony of cats attached.  Our current home was no exception.  At the time of purchase, there was one female that hung around the property and three males that hung around her.  I cannot seem to resist putting food out for the ferals when they come to the door asking for it.  This drives Steve absolutely insane but he lets me do it anyway and contents himself with threatening to thin their population down himself on one of his days off when I'm not looking. (He would never actually do this! I don't think....)

Well eventually the female, a dark tortoiseshell dubbed Spook, produced a litter of kittens that lived long enough to venture out and let themselves be seen. Two tortoiseshells and two blacks. Now I'm a bleeding heart when it comes to cats of all types, but I can run numbers pretty quickly and I know EXACTLY what happens when a colony of cats is allowed to flourish while a human steps in to keep nature's dangers out of the way.  As much as it kills me I do my all out best to avoid interfering with natural selection however, when you live in the suburbs, there isn't a whole lot of natural selection going on.  Lots of roadkill opportunities, but not many predators. This means that a litter of two females and two males is going to explode into a triple digit population within a few years if I don't keep myself in check.  So I keep my contact to a minimum as much as possible.

I watched Spook teach her kittens to hunt over the summer of 2010 and claim our backyard as her territory. As sometimes happens, she and the male she hadn't chased away by now decided I wasn't all that bad and got more and more comfortable with coming around me and eventually she let me pet her.  This was about the time I realized she was pregnant again... and really unhealthy.  I had no choice but to call Animal Control and they agreed to come pick her up that afternoon.  Not a good day for me. I chose not to inform the officer of the four young cats hiding under my deck when he was there.

The five remaining animals in my backyard earned themselves names. Smoke (the adult male),

I promise Smoke is alive in this picture!

Stain and Splotch (the two tortie female kittens), and Spooky and Boo (the two black male kittens).  Smoke hung around for the next couple of years and I suspect sired a couple more litters while he was at it, but his visits got fewer and farther between. I haven't seen him since spring of 2012.  Splotch was afraid of everything that moved and never became social to anyone that I know of.  She was chased off by Stain within months of reaching adulthood and only came back once every few months or so to beg for food.  I saw her once just this past fall, actually.  Spooky and Boo stayed with us for nearly a year, but never got terribly social to anyone and I believe they went off to find their own territory.  That left Stain.

Stain was a dark tortoiseshell who became very social to me, but not to anyone else here. She was an amazing huntress and I would often find her leftovers on my deck when I went outside to put food out.  Thanks to her, I know what the inside of a squirrel looks like.  And birds.  And chipmunks.  And frogs.

*cough* anyway.....

Stain's first litter arrived sometime in 2011.  The only kittens we ever saw were a black male, a solid gray male, and a diluted tortoiseshell female.  By the time these made it to adulthood, it was only the black "Shadow" and the female "Pandora".  These two wanted nothing to do with people of any kind for a very long time and Pandora is so good at hunting she didn't even come up to get food, but eventually Pandora came around and now comes when she hears me call her.

Pandora feeding that litter she's carrying.

Shadow also appears when he's called, but only if he knows there's food waiting for him.  He's a big coward and gets bullied by other cats on a regular basis. He always runs back to our yard and scrambles to the top of one of our dogwood trees where he yowls in terror until Steve goes out to rescue him by chasing off whatever tomcat is sitting at the base of the tree trying to figure out just what is WRONG with him.  It'd be sad if I wasn't laughing so much.

Pandora is just the opposite.  She's not afraid of anything and is the undisputed queen of our yard, having ousted her mother from that position in the hierarchy.  She's very effective at keeping random ferals from trying to move into the area and when she turned up pregnant, she decided that even Stain needed to find somewhere else to call home.

In April of 2012 she produced a litter of SEVEN kittens, though we suspect she stole two. Four solid grays and a tortie... pretty standard for her family line so far.  Then there was an orange tabby and a lilac point siamese.  Arrurr???  We ended up having to take the kittens away from Pandora because she insisted on trying to keep them right on the deck and my Mother-in-law's dog insisted they were toys. We could only do the guard and fend off thing for a week or so before losing our collective patience with the situation and introducing an indoor cage to house the babies in.

Kitten Caboodle

Fortunately, Pandora was social enough that she came right in with them and as soon as she understood she wasn't getting the kittens back, I got her to the vet and got her spayed.  Woohoo!  No more fertile cats in our yard! (Side note: The litter of kittens we brought in were all adopted out to family members, coworkers, and friends.  Jack and Zippy ended up staying with us.)

In June of 2013 Stain appeared out of the blue wanting food.  Of course, she had four kittens in tow.  A solid gray male I now call Slater, two dark tortoiseshells I refuse to name, and a runty little diluted tortie.  Awesome. Three more females.  I had no intentions of inviting any of them to stay, so I pretty much ignored them when I was putting food out. It was a couple of weeks later that Sarah asked if anyone had seen Stain since she'd brought her kittens to the house.  None of us had, though we'd seen the kittens.  Three of them were always the first into the food dishes and the runt occasionally would be up on the deck nibbling, though she was usually by herself in the grass.

Remember what I said earlier about natural selection?  I refused to get involved beyond making catfood and water available.

A couple of weeks after that, I heard Mom and Sarah talking about something they'd seen in the backyard and it had Sarah really upset.  Apparently Mom's dog, Cloudy, had been out in the yard and of course all the kittens scattered for the fences as usual.  All but the runt.  Mom said she just sat in one spot out in the middle of the yard while Cloudy charged her at an all out run. Now Cloudy never intentionally hurts the cats.  She just wants playmates.  She was expecting the kitten to turn and run and play tag to the fence like her siblings had.  She certainly didn't expect to quite literally bounce off of the kitten, so she was probably as startled as the kitten was.  Mom said the kitten fell over, then got back up, and slowly stumbled away from Cloudy and toward the fence.  She said the kitten was skinny as could be, and tripped over things in her path without attempting to go around or over them.  She must be really sick, and is certainly close to starvation.

Natural selection.  Not getting involved.

Now while I won't do anything to stop Mother Nature from reclaiming a sick animal that would have died anyway under the same circumstances if born in the wild, I'm not fond of the idea of my children stumbling upon the carcass of a species they consider pets. This meant it became my duty to keep an eye out for the poor little thing and go looking for her when the inevitable happened.

And this is what I was doing one bright sunny afternoon when she turned her head toward the window and caught the light in her eyes. No metallic gold, flash of green, or devileye red.  Her eyes reflected an opaque baby blue.

Wait. What?  THAT'S not normal.

So I sat there and watched her.  And watched her.  And watched her.  For about an hour.

She would sit still for extended periods of time staring in the same direction.  Her ears would flick to one side suddenly and her head would turn.  She'd sit there staring in that random direction, still not moving.  Her ears would flick to another side and her head would swivel.  This went on for nearly twenty minutes before she slowly stood up and picked her way clumsily through a patch of ground she'd covered repeatedly over the previous few days.

I decided to go outside and test a theory.  Now I'm no hunter, but I've watched enough wannabe hunting programs and movies to know that when sneaking up on something, you do it downwind.  Took me a while to figure out just which way downwind was.

Ahah! Got it! This way!
*takes a few steps slowly and as quietly as possible*
*wind changes direction*
*mutter*

Lots of trial and error later, it became stupidly obvious that I wasn't gonna outsmart the wind, so I resorted to just trying to be as quiet as possible while sneaking up on the kitten. I got within arms reach before I messed up and she heard me.  She panicked and bolted about ten inches away from me to the edge of the patch of ground she was always on.  Then she changed directions and began following the outline of where I'd seen her moving before and made a beeline for Steve's shed, where she dove under it and stayed hidden for an hour or so.

Mom had been watching this from the deck and when we looked at each other, we blurted out at the same time,

"She's not sick; she's blind!"

This isn't natural selection anymore in my book.  I'm not about to let an animal starve to death in front of me when it's probably otherwise perfectly healthy.

Mom helped me the rest of that evening and the next morning, and by the afternoon we were able to lure her into a cat carrier with a generous amount of meat and clean water.  It wasn't a moment too soon either, because it was beginning to rain and we'd been promised a deluge that threatened to last a few days.

As it turned out, the rain did last... nearly a week. Our backyard, and the debatable shelter under Steve's shed, flooded into a small lake that took almost four days to drain enough to see the ground again.

But that's alright.  The kitten had gotten her ticket onto the ark.

No Pain No Gain. *mutter* Masochist...

Welp, the day is just about over but I figured it'd been a few days and I should probably put SOMETHING up here.  So I spent the last couple of hours watching a room full of 3 year olds at church and racking my brain for an idea of what to blog about.

I could go all philosophical about why siblings are apparently forbidden to get along for more than 4.9 seconds at a time.
I could try to puzzle out how my teenager can be sleeping and can't hear either parent bellowing at her from five inches away from her ear, but a cellphone on vibrate in another room will have her upright and alert faster than a politician can sidestep a yes or no question.
I could post more pictures of a certain wolf that may or may not be finished yet. *cough*
I could post the promised pictures of Flicker... if they didn't keep sneaking onto Facebook instead of waiting to debut on here.

While I was running the various possibilities through my head, one of the little girls asked me to pick her up and hold her.  She was tiny, so why not?  I reached down and gathered her up into my arms, then straightened up.

...and about died.

I forgot I'd been to physical therapy again this morning.

*whimper*

See, I have been in pretty constant pain for going on three years now and I've seen several doctors about it.  I've gotten a whole slew of diagnoses and what seems to be completely random treatments ranging from "it's stress; quit your job" to "take all of these pills three times a day and if you're the slightest bit functional let me know so we can up your dosage".  One doctor put me on anti-depressants to counteract all the painkillers I was told to take everyday whether I was in pain or not.

Wait... how is this a good idea???

So my latest doctor took a good look at my recent history, all the meds I'm taking, and *gasp* the CT scans and MRIs that were done.  He promptly took me off of every medication except when I feel I need to take the painkillers one at a time ... wait for it ... for pain. (Whoda thunk?)  He then set me up with a physical therapist and sent me on my way.

My physical therapist is awesome.  Her name is Charity and I'm already very fond of her.  She doesn't take guff from anyone and doesn't buy anyone's excuses for why they can't do the exercises she assigns.  The first time I saw her, she sat down and went over my medical chart, asked some questions about where the pain was and what triggered muscle spasms, and then stunned me.
I mentioned that it's believed I have EDS, although it hasn't been officially diagnosed by a geneticist yet.  She asked me to do a couple of basic tests for the condition, watched me do what was requested, and then ripped up the sheet of paper she'd been making exercise notes on and started over.
She knew what Ehler-Danlos Syndrome is.  *faint*

The first day of therapy was a little daunting, I'll admit.  I had no idea what to expect and had heard so many horror stories involving pain, exercises meant to cause agony, pain, forced contortionism, pain, misery, and the occasional twinge of pain that I was ready to bolt for my life within seconds of signing in.  Charity handed me a strip of green rubber and had me doing repetitions of various stretches to test all the muscle groups in my back, neck, and shoulders.  When I'd finished those, she put me in traction for ten or fifteen minutes and then sent me home.

That's it??  That was fun!  I feel great!  Let's do it again!!

Next appointment rolled around and I went to see Charity with a big grin on my face, all set to conquer my pain with another round of stretches.  Finished the exercises I'd been given the first time and let Charity know I was done.

"Great!  How are you feeling?"
"Fine.  What's next?"
"Anything hurting?"
"Nope! Piece of cake!"

Can I just say one thing?  There is nothing quite as disconcerting as seeing a woman you have just entrusted with putting you back together transform from Florence Nightingale to a Spanish Inquisitor right before your eyes.  Apparently, telling a physical therapist that you have completed their exercises and can still move is akin to looking a ticked off Silverback Gorilla in the eye.

I had inadvertently issued a challenge.

And Charity accepted it.

With zeal.

I'm assured that the first set of exercises I'd been given were simply to pinpoint exactly where I needed the physical therapy and what muscle groups were causing the problems.  Now that this has been accomplished, the real exercises have begun.

That's what they call them.  "Exercises".  I call it legalized torture.  The kind that violates the Geneva Convention on every level.

I mentioned this to Charity and she about suffocated from laughing.  When I asked why this was so funny, she pointed out that she was freshly back from deployment.

I am not comforted.  I have to go back on Friday.

And she was rubbing her hands together and cackling to herself when I was leaving this morning....

Stitching appears to be the hobby that stuck.

Of all the oddball ideas I've come up with in my life to keep me occupied for weeks, months, or years at a time, the only one that has actually produced something tangible to show for that time has been my cross stitching.  I suppose one could argue that the kids fall into this category, but since I can't just put that particular "hobby" down and walk away for years at a time claiming I'm in a funk without people with shiny bracelets showing up with extended reservations to their facilities... well, you get the idea.

I have been stitching for more than two decades now (ugh, I'm old!) though I didn't start keeping track of anything I was working on until 2000 when I put together an online journal of sorts on my website SapphireDreams (another "hobby" which is now horribly out of date and neglected).

Remember how I said I suffer from Startitis? Yeah...

Since the last time I posted anything here related to my stitching, I believe I've completed three projects and will hopefully be completing a fourth in the next couple of days.

I managed to finish this screen capture from the movie "It's a Wonderful Life".  The chart was released by a company called Pinoy Stitch and (as of 4 Jan 14) is available here.  This was a gift for our head pastor and I think he liked it.

The next project that was completed was for our other head pastor (who happens to be his wife) and quite honestly scared me to death at first. Specialty threads, beads, treasures... What in the blazes was I getting myself into?? But I must say, I'm fairly proud of the finished product: Mirabilia's Cinderella.  One of my favorite things about this one has to be the custom dyed linen I used. Sassy's Fabbys is my go-to company for fabric and when Lauren found out I was trying to get a particular look out of this, she took the time to experiment with colors until she found a unique dye we both fell in love with. She called the settled upon color "Dark Tropical Rain".

Of course, I couldn't resist stitching up a gag gift of sorts to go with the first two.  Pastor has a tendency to randomly strike a pose and quote Underdog during sermons, so Steve and I tracked down what we thought would be a good picture and had it charted out by a kind stitcher who offered his services. The fabric it is stitched on is actually a bright yellow, despite what the photo claims.

And I whipped these out in about a month each! Cuz I'm just that good!

*dodges an entire lightning storm*

Alright, ALRIGHT!! Uncle, already!

*pats out sizzling hairs*

So it may have taken a couple of years to get those finished.  What's your point? At least I got them done in a shorter period than it's taken to do this blasted wolf.

The infamous wolf that I started stitching September 6, 2009.  I really intended to have it completed by that Christmas.  Then I discovered that it used 3.9 million colors.  Or maybe it was 65 colors.  Close enough for government work. Add in enough confetti stitches to make the Super Bowl victory parade envious and I didn't stand a chance. But I was too stubborn to sit back and consider that I was about to start what most cross stitchers dub a BAP (Big A** Project).  What could possibly go wrong??

So now it's 2014.  More than four years since I started Mystic Stitch's Call of the Wild and I swear there's a light at the end of the tunnel!!

My goal is to have the last stitch put in by Monday.  Today is Saturday.

Anyone else suddenly hear thunderous laughter??

*mutter*

It's not my fault that stitching takes forever around here! I have furry speedbumps that materialize in the middle of my projects every time I sit down.  And if I'm lucky, they just snore and shed all over everything.

But usually, this is what happens...

Now that I truly understand what a time commitment BAPs are, as well as the constant booby traps provided by my cats, I have accepted that there are just some things I cannot expect to accomplish and move on.

My next project...
Night Moves by Heaven and Earth Designs

I'll see y'all in March...

...2028


*twitch*