lisaviolet's diary

Why I don’t blog as often as I used to.

I think one of the things is we’ve got more cats (up to thirty-seven from around ten when I started blogging (before it was called blogging) back in 1997). They take more of my time. And because we’ve got more cats, there’s more cleaning. And somewhere along the line, I became more sensitive to the smell of cat urine. Like when I walk in to the house from being outside and take a deep breath and about get knocked over, well, it’s time. I’ve been trying to keep up with the cleaning so that doesn’t happen anymore. I like walking in the house from shopping and not being overwhelmed by the smell in the house. Even when the doors and windows have been closed up because of the weather. I buy Nature’s Miracle by the gallon now. I’ve tried other stuff, but I come back to NM because I really like the scent. I’ve got a bucket and lots of shop towels that I use on a daily basis.

I was mildly surprised earlier this year when I pulled the cleaning towels out of the laundry (there are four baskets in the laundry room, one for towels used for cleaning of cars and floors and counters, one for linens and towels we use for us, one for jeans and sweatpants and one for the other laundry) and realized that I was washing more towels that I used to clean up cat pee than Brian used to wash vehicles. The house is better for it.

I don’t think Brian realized how much laundry I do until I started writing the daily loads on a calendar in the laundry room. He never said anything about it. One of the reasons I started doing that was he’d say he was out of something and I’d think “I just washed those four days ago!” When in reality, I hadn’t, it had been a week. It’s a reminder for me more than anything, but when you see how much laundry I’m doing on a daily basis….

Anyway, he said this past weekend that when we get new machines, we’re going to get stackables and I’ll have two washers and two dryers. And he was serious. How funny is that?

I use my little Electrolux sweeper about every other day to clean up cat hair and litter and bits of kibble. And I haul out the big vacuum at least once every two weeks to do a more thorough job of vacuuming, including the cat trees.

And, of course, there are the litter boxes. I get good with those, then I start backsliding into old habits of not doing them every day. And then I get the horrible reminder that they need to be cleaned or else some cat will crap on the futon a couple of times a day, resulting in more laundry. More cost and time effective to just clean the damned boxes out every morning. I just wish I could stay in the habit. We’d all be happier for it in the long run.

And then there are the special needs kitties. Not really as special needs as we’ve had in the past, but we’ve got Miss Elizabeth, one of the cats we inherited from my mom, who had problems with the food I was putting out (it went right through her) and I found that Fancy Feast grilled Tuna Feast was the only thing she was keeping down and excreting properly. But the thing is, I have to feed her seperately. She gets to eat in the bathroom with the door shut. Same with Kirby. He gets 9Lives canned in there, but once again, the other cats don’t. That takes more time out of my day. A lot of little time eaters and that adds up.

So, more of my time is taken up with cat and cleaning chores.

Then, there’s the fact that Brian’s work still hasn’t picked up to the point that he’s gone on a regular basis. It shouldn’t matter, but for some reason, I fell out of the blogging habit with him around. I thought it was because my mom died, that’s about when my posting went to hell, but that’s also when Brian’s work slowed waaaaay down. That might be a double whammy.

It’s not that there’s nothing to talk about, hell, there was a hit television show that lasted for years about nothing. Remember “Seinfeld”? [yes]

And then there’s that Fish Wrangler game on FaceBook that I started back in April. Didn’t really start fishing until May but right now, my point rank is 1583. My trip rank is 1947. I don’t know exactly how many play Fish Wrangler, but one ezine article says over 385,000. And my rank is 1583? I don’t know whether I should be proud or ashamed of that little tidbit. [rotfl]

Right now, I’ve got the litter bucket behind me. I’ve done the garage boxes, have more in the house to do, some cat has loose stools in the box in the laundry room and that cat’s butt was hanging outside of the box, this will be fun.

Anyway, cleaning calls and, of course, there’s always the fishing that needs to be done.

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Wednesday, December 09, 2009