Feelin' Catty

Cats. They are EVERYWHERE. Or at least it seems so to me in the last 36 hours.

First, it was Tal over at Renovation Therapy. JeanMartha regularly reports on Tal’s exploits which always seem to center – or be right in the center – of whatever she’s doing. We love Tal!

Then there’s Buddy and Finn, the stars of Satan’s Fur Puppets. Buddy seems to forever be hangin’ around his mistress’ keyboard. He and his brother are adorable.

Of course, Gene at DIY Insanity, can give you some great tips on building special places for your constant cat companion(s).

And last night, I nearly choked reading a post of Jayne’s over at The Kelly House. Maybe it’s because a friend of her son’s gave a description of her resident feline with issues, Marie Antoinette, that struck way too close to home for me: "That cat is a demon who wants me dead."

The description reminded me ever so much of our mentally unhinged Toby the Cat. But he’s just so damned cute, isn’t he? If we aren't playing peekabo, during which his eyes get as big as silver dollars, he always seems to have this disdainful scowl pasted on his face.

Here, he's using his brother's loofa toy as a footrest ...

Hmmm ... I wonder what bit of orneriness I can cause today ...
He did, of course, wake me up at 4 a.m. -- after I'd gone back to sleep from the gazillion mile an hour winds that woke me up an hour earlier. (Yeah it's a whopping 10 degrees this morning.)

He's cute, to be sure. Don’t be deceived though. He really IS a little demon.

Merry, Merry Madness

Once, several years ago, the mother sent me to a local mall on Christmas Eve for a last-minute gift. It took me three times as long to get in the mall lot, find a parking space, and then get off the mall parking lot as it did to dash in and get the solo gift, I vowed never to do it again.

I’ve kept my word. In fact, in the week or so before the holiday, I still don’t go near a mall. I try to not go in any stores at all during those final, frazzled days. So it was with much dismay that I realized a shopping trip was inevitable. Not at the mall, thank God, but worse still, the grocery store and Wal-Mart. The mother has been eating and drinking cleaning supplies, so I had to get more as we start to approach the home stretch. The groceries? I needed to get ingredients for the mock soufflé for Christmas with the family – away, that my pure genius forgot about Thursday night. And, I got some more things for post-Christmas with family friends – home, the visit that has touched off this mad bout of cleaning.

I also had to pick up more Christmas cards at Walgreens which I’d ordered online. I thought I’d have enough, but apparently Ozzie is a more popular dude on YorkieTalk.com than I gave him credit for. (He continues to get all kinds of cards from all over the country – even the world – daily. Three more came yesterday.) I’ll apologize now for the tardiness of this last batch which includes some of my local, real-life pals. I figured those would only need a day or so at most to arrive so I saved some of those for last.

Wal-Mart was the insane asylum one would expect it to be with less than two days left for shopping. I was glad to escape it. The soundtrack of screaming children put my teeth on edge. I stopped off at Walgreens to get my cards but they weren’t ready yet. The machine had broken down so I was about sixth in the queue. Great.

I went grocery shopping. Almost as maddening as Wal-Mart, but not quite. The most frustrating thing? Some of the key things I went for couldn’t be found. So, off to the grocery at the other end of the street. Things were only a little better there, but at least it wasn’t as busy.

I grabbed some fast food (pot pies at KFC) and back to Walgreens. Success! The cards were done. It was buzzing in there, too, so I was glad to make a relatively quick exit. Once in the car, I opened the box. Thank God I did. This wasn’t the design I had used before. And wait. Who ARE these people? My card doesn’t even have people. It’s a pic of Ozzie and Toby. Sh*t!

I looked at the box. Wasn’t even MY name on the box. I dashed back inside where the girl in photo apologized profusely. She’d just grabbed the wrong box. (They only had about 30 of them on the counter. Clearly, I wasn’t the only last-minute card purchaser. And, of course, they now have 10-cent prints going on. You know I’ll be all over that this week.)

The moral of this little adventure is this: It’s NOT a pretty sight out there. Get what you have to get – and only what you have to get – NOW. I suspect it’s going to get a whole lot crazier really fast.

If I Had a Hammer

Well, I no longer have to say “if I had one.” Yesterday, my Fuller 600-8016 Pro Wavex 16-Ounce Shock-Absorbing Claw Hammer arrived from Amazon.com. (And you thought I just loved power tools!)

I noted in a previous post that I’ve been using an over 30-year-old Stanley hammer. It has seen better days. A “back-up” model is even older, the head being loosely held in place with a screw. And I use a hammer quite a lot on all kinds of jobs. (Like smashing the edges of the foundation on the porch flat.)

I did get a hammer as part of the kit that came with the cordless drill I got for my birthday, but it’s pretty lightweight. I mean, it will be great for some things, but completely incapable of holding up to others. That’s why I got this new one. The mother says that it’s “awful heavy.” Uh, mom, it weighs a pound!

Even so, it’s a pretty sturdy little devil. It has a really nice cushioned handle grip – no wood to splinter or slip from a wet palm. One thing I am anxious to try out: it has a nail-starter built into the head. So, you lay the nail in the groove and just swing the hammer – no chance that you’ll bust your thumb or index finger while holding the nail to get it started!

I think I got a good deal at just over $8, especially considering that today, the same hammer is now priced at $10.07.

It arrived in one of those flat, rectangular boxes, about 10x14 size. That in itself was a bonus. Immediate cat toy. Toby, who has never shown a penchant for bags or boxes, actually got in it! Mom threw some mice and bell balls inside it and he was occupied for the next hour or so. You can’t beat that!

The "Evening" Post

The evening post got a little delayed due to last night's extended light show. So much for my bright, sunny day. The latter half of the evening became the classic novel line, “It was a dark and stormy night.” I was violently awakened at about 2 by thunder that rolled on and on for at least a minute, rattling things all over my room.

But hey, I got two consecutive dry days in, so ask me if I cared!

I did not finish the porch. Yeah, I know. This is becoming a running theme with me, isn’t it? But I worked on it a very long time today. Yesterday’s snags had really slowed me down. So this is as much as I was able to get done. I only pray that everything was sufficiently dry and that my plastic will be enough to protect it from the downpour. You can see my "mudpit" in the pictures. (And, if you look carefully, you’ll see Toby in one picture and Ozzie in the other. They were both in the door at one point, but Toby disappeared before I could snap the two of them.)

I can tell you this: Laying bricks upright takes infinitely longer and is unbelievably more complex than just laying them flat. It also requires a great deal of patience, so you can imagine how frazzled I am, me, the queen of Impatience. I am doing three rows on the face of the porch. The first row is structural. It will be masked by the layers of gravel and sand that will precede the actual bricks of the walkway. Not all of the bricks are the same distance from the base, thanks to the jagged foundation, but they’re all level. I have nearly finished the second row. It will intersect at some point with the walkway bricks. The third row will connect the face of the porch with its floor.

I decided to do a running bond pattern on the face. It will be stronger structurally and it will be a good transition to the walkway which will have the same pattern. The mother came out to inspect my progress as I was wrapping up. Except for me, she’s my harshest critic and she said it looks great, so I guess it does.

I’m just hoping that when I am able to go back to it again and I pull away the plastic I don’t find a heap of bricks that used to be the porch face!