Category: Insects/Critters

Canucks win 3 zip over St Louis. Many horns honk.

I am quite sure all the bars in town breathed a sigh of relief.

Click here for an amazing assortment of zoo pictures from around the world.

Paul stopped by on his way back into town.  His sis and bro-in-law are doing famously – she is starting to do doula work in rural Alberta, which is exciting.  Lois always was one of my fave people.  Their mom Phyllis is also, apparently, well, and my hat’s off to her given what a challenge it is to fly solo when you’re up in your eighties and not so mobile as you once were.

Miss Margot just gave me a demonstration of what Jeff has had to put up with these last few weeks, by climbing up my bare leg with her claws.  I am so proud of myself for not screaming.

Keith is coming over today, and then later we’ll be off to Lexi, Darwin and Rob’s for dinner.  Katie has been contacted and advises she is coming too.

There is a housefilk today (I got the dates wrong) AND a party at Mike’s tonight. Why does all the fun have to pile up in one day?  I wish I could bilocate.  Or trilocate.

CSI has either jumped the shark or is warming it up backstage.  They did a Star Trek knockoff episode, although having Grace Park in the audience was a nice touch. We’ll see if they’re back on the game next week.

ScaryClown liked my word crapstack (which I introduced on this blog a mite ago) and has made it more official sounding by putting ‘metric’ in the front.  Doesn’t a ‘metric crapstack of work’ sound official?  I quite like it.

The laundry list

Woke up at 2.

Eddie crying in my room again, but this time he let me pet him for about half an hour.

Could not for the life of me go back to sleep.

Did not want to go to work.  So…. tired….

Another commute to work in the drear rain, which magically transmuted to snow on the hill, and they are doing construction and thus diverted us onto a pathway that appeared to be clay mixed with greasy snow.  Almost fell four times on the way to work, again, the worst slip causing me to pull muscles.  Being diverted into a muck heap almost wrecked my shoes.  Complained to the site supervisor that where we were being forced to walk was a safety hazard, you bastard, have a nice day.

Got to work and everybody is asking me why I’m limping.  I wish I knew.  The last time I limped this much my back crapped out shortly afterward.  The pain in the top of my foot is worse when I walk and better when I climb or descend stairs, which makes NO SENSE to me. Why would flexing the foot hurt less?  The pain is markedly less when I do not wear footgear, which means I should hie me off and spend more money I don’t have on orthotics.  I used to get depressed when I was presented with yet another physical challenge, now I just set my jaw.

In the afternoon, Jeff got me at work and dropped me off at David Lam campus where – I had learned that morning – I was NOT going to get a contact lens fitting from my son but from a total stranger.  I stopped off in the campus bookstore and got Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell, and a really cool flashcard book about human anatomy, then went to my appointment and then learned that all the grudgy hopeless feelings melted – all Keith had had to do was say I was his mother, and they swapped things around so that I could get the fitting from him.  Got fitted – it was damned thorough – and walked away with saline and two new contact lenses, which fit great and which I wore for about three hours.  My eyes are a bit gummy today, but not significantly more than they are in the mornings anyway.  As we were commuting back home together I read bits of Homage aloud to Keith and the two of us were killing ourselves laughing, because grim as the subject is (Spanish Civil War), parts of it are screamingly funny.

Then Jeff went to a job interview which went well and he can news about it if he wants to, and then on the way home my cell rang and it was ScaryClown, saying OMG new kitty I’m coming over (reMARkable what getting a new animal does for your social life) as ScaryClown is crazy mad insane for cats and then we watched the 1929 ship around the Horn documentary, with ScaryClown occasionally emitting phrases of stunned appreciation, amusement and awe (JUST as I expected).

Then I cooked pierogies and fed them and then we watched some Robot Chicken including one I hadn’t previously seen, and then I went to bed because I keep having insomnia.  Thankfully, not last night.  Miss Margot slept with me voluntarily last night (she got up to explore in the night and then came back to bed) and I slept until just before six.  So I actually feel like a human being this morning, and my son is showing signs of turning into a professional, and a friend stopped by, and tonight I gotta fetch la Margot to the kitty hospital and get her booster shots.

I hope to go swimming with the folks from Planet Bachelor tonight.  I may feel subpar with all these aches and pains, but I still have to exercise and walking is turning out to be problematic.  I mean, bus drivers are stopping between stops to pick me up, how often does THAT happen?

Oh, and I fixed my hat so it sits on my head better.

Oh, and Katie called me voluntarily and without asking for money.  And she asked me for my opinion about her hair, which is like asking Miss Margot for an interpretive dance on the Berlin Air-lift.  I said, “You’re twenty years old and stunningly gorgeous, do your hair however the hell you like!”  Now that’s what I call solid parental advice.

Sometimes governments get it right & more cat interactions

Food in Belo Horizonte

I know that I have taken on a lifelong commitment (hers, not mine) to brush her daily, clean her face daily, bathe her monthly, trim her claws every two weeks as well as shots and the rest of that stuff.  She’s had her daily brushing (mewing piteously but almost silently as I tried to get the willnots off her back end) and Eddie was so concerned that he waited outside the bathroom door until she made her appearance.  Poor guy, he came into my room tonight and cried for a while, then jumped up on the bed and got within a foot of Miss Margot, then casually sauntered away.  But I knew he wasn’t happy, so I picked him up and cuddled him, an activity that usually makes him squirm, but this time he was soaking it up and started purring.  I immediately fed him, but of course the second the feline intake valve known as Miss Margot heard the food hitting the dish, she was in there and Eddie got all pouty and walked away.

Katie’s going to meet her tonight.  I can hardly wait.

I know this is going to sound like I’ve lost my mind, but she is everything I ever wanted in a cat.  She’s going to be high maintenance, but I fell in love with her picture and in real life – snoozing where she drops, negotiating a sticky bit with one of the other cats, falling off a kitchen chair, eviscerating carpets, purring madly while eating oatmeal (oatmeal?), sleeping next to my head, playing quietly for half an hour by herself with one of the cat toys, nibbling on Jeff’s toes in a tentative way, sitting in the empty take-out container, playing noisily by herself with one of the cat toys – she is completely adorable.  While she may not be the Einstein of cats, she’s smart enough to get a sap like me to look after her.  And at 14 weeks she is very, very far away from being the stupidest cat I ever met, so she may have a pedigree like a queen, but she’s not all beauty and no sense.

The single most adorable thing she’s done today is attack a Mac icon on my computer.  When you select a program, the icon bounces up and down a couple of times and this triggered Miss Margot’s I must kill it reflex.

Yesterday I had to get her off the kitchen table half a dozen times. Each time she raced back to the table and continued her explorations, which involved a lot of rustling around in plastic bags that once had meat in them.

This week I get fitted for contact lenses by Keith, yeah! and also Miss Margot gets her boosters, bo0, and I think I need to start paying for cat litter…. we will be going through it faster….