Tuesday, October 14, 2003 Only forty-eight hours until we leave for Disneyland. Brian finished the dining room Sunday. The house is ready for the petsitter. I still have a small amount of laundry to do and I’ll change the bedding Thursday morning before we leave.
The dining room looks really good, much better than it did. Brian also framed in his bathroom window, so now, all the windows in the completed rooms are framed in like he had originally planned. Sunday, he took the ‘kitty entertainment centers’ outback and pressure washed them. I washed all of the bedding in the cat beds and baskets we keep in the ‘entertainment center’ and the cats are pleased with their clean stuff.
I’ve got some touch up stuff to do, like dusting and vacuuming, but that shouldn’t take too long. And I want to run the Floormate one more time before we go.
Becky, our sitter, quit her job at the vet’s office a week ago. Damn, we’ve got bad luck with our sitters doing that. Remember our first pet sitter from the vet’s office? She was fired when the vet found out she had applied for a job at animal control (which she got). This time, the vet’s ex-wife gave our sitter a bunch of crap on the phone, was cussing her out and Becky figured she’d had enough of that abuse and told the vet she was out of there and his reaction was “whatever”. Nice, huh?
Anyway, I figure she’ll be able to spend more time here with the animules. Unfortunately, I was unable to find all the games we used to have in the dining room when the bookcases were in there, so I figured I’d thrown them out. Saturday, I went to Wal-Mart and got new ones. We’re really close to broke right now, but I easily justified the purchase. Figure the sitter will be here about four days this time and over a week in November. I want her kids to not be bored. I got Scrabble, Clue, Mousetrap, Life, Yahtzee and a Disney Monopoly game. The Monopoly game was more than I wanted to spend, but it was way cool. (Deliver me from way cool, it costs too much!) Anyway, when I tried to open the board, it had apparantly been folded with the paper wet and the paper pulled off of the board. Well, Sunday, Toys R Us had a coupon in the paper, a buy one get one free coupon and I took the Monopoly game back to Wal-Mart, got a refund and went over to Toys R Us. I got an electronic Battleship game which was more than the Monopoly game, so the Monopoly game was free.
I had straightened out the hallway closet and put the games on the top where they would be safe from cat pee. Now, Brian and I will have something to keep our minds active as we get older. We have been talking about doing something besides watching television every night. Now, we’ve got something that we can do together.
I still have to do some grocery shopping. We need dry cat food for our cats, insulin for Junior and we need stuff to take with us to the Disneyland Resort. I’ll get catfood and do the CostCo run this afternoon and tomorrow morning, my mom and I will go to the local grocery store. Neither of us wants to go alone right now because of the strike. The yelling picketers won’t bother us so much if there are two of us. It would really bug me if I was by myself.
She’s going to come over here and bring me my birthday present then we’ll go to the store. Heh heh heh….she doesn’t know that I got her something, too! I’m making her a shirt with my birthday and a baby picture on the front and on the back it will say “If my kid is an old fart, what does that make me?” I printed up the transfer last night, I’ll make the shirt later today.
And the weather has been absolutely gorgeous the past few days. Nice enough for me to lay out by the pool. I’ve even been going swimming. The water is on the cool side (75? when I got in yesterday, 77? when I came in the house), but it was over 90? in the shade, hotter in the sun so the water felt pretty darned refreshing. This will be the last time this year I lay out, so I’m taking advantage of it. If it’s warm, I don’t want to look stupid wearing shorts up at Disneyland.
Brian has been a little concerned that we don’t have extra money. I finally told him last weekend that I’ve been saving all year long. I didn’t tell him how much I’ve saved, he didn’t want to know, but I’m sure he’ll be pleasantly surprised. I told him that at times it was difficult to not say anything because he really could have used the money. But that’s the point of saving, right? So you’ll have it when you want it. Our trip will pretty much be paid for with what I’ve saved. He said I could tell him how much I’ve saved when I hand it over to him on Thursday morning (he’s the keeper of the cash). I did tell him, I want whatever is leftover back.
The raccoons are back. I know this because they leave a big mess in the entry way by the fountain. They love getting in the water. This morning, I was up early as usual and put out extra soft food for our dwindling feral colony, down to four now. I looked out a while after I’d put out the food (the possoms eat much of the soft stuff at night) and what do I see, but a raccoon. There were actually two of them and they ran out through the gate. Which was really amusing because they’re getting kind of big to fit through the openings. One almost got stuck. I grabbed the flashlight and watched them waddle down the street, curious where they live. I saw them go about two houses down, then lost sight of them. I came in and got more soft food (they’d finished what I’d put out) and shortly after, KittyMeeze, SpotTee, Little Bit and Repete showed up for breakfast. With the weather being cooler, after their morning meal, it’s not uncommon to see a couple of these guys curled up in the entry way. KittyMeeze and Little Bit like to sleep together on one of the blankets that’s up off the ground. It’s heartwarming to see. I sure miss OC. I tell Lonee and Red that I wish we’d been able to get OC to live with us, but he just didn’t want to. He’d rather have been free and on his own.
My mom finally was able to trap that kitten that had been hanging around her place. One morning he went missing and turned up at the house where Mama has taken up residence (Mama is Lisa Violet’s and her half sister Miss E’s mother). It took almost a week and mom ended up using one of our traps to catch the little guy. Turns out it was a little boy and he’s been vetted and neutered. And mom just loves the heck out of him. He plays fetch and is very affectionate. And her resident cat, Miss E has obviously resigned herself to the fact that she’s not an only cat any longer. But mom says Baby (that’s what she was calling him when she thought he was a female and she’s just used to the name, as is he) is a wonderful addition to her life. She sounded so tickled on the phone this morning when he kept bringing his ball back to her to throw.
Oh, we went to Henry’s Market the other day, a place where you can get herbal stuff. Brian bought some green tea capsules and when he left, he handed me the receipt. I looked at it and burst out laughing. I handed it back to him. “Look at it” I ordered. He looked at it, couldn’t see the joke. I told him to read it line by line. He finally saw it. He got a 10% discount. A SENIOR discount. Our first SENIOR discount. Ha hahahahahahaha!!! Looking for pictures yesterday to print on my mom’s shirt, I found some from our first Christmas together and boy, does Brian look young. His hair is blonde, his beard is brown and his face is thin. Wow. Pictures can be scary things…..
Well, my lawnchair is no longer in the shade and there’s dog poop that needs to be cleaned up. Gotta go!
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