Snow

It's snowing, y'all!!!! The ground is barely covered right now, but we have high hopes for the rest of the weekend. The boys have made a proto-snowfigure and piled a bunch of snow on the trampoline so they could jump around in it.

And, of course, there is plenty of indoor fun to be had:

Veteran's Day

Happy Veteran's Day! I actually think our veterans would be much better served with adequate pay, benefits and support than with a day of celebration in November. I guess it's a nice gesture. That makes lots of money for corporate America, no doubt. Sort of like Mother's Day and Father's Day. Tons of cashola for retail giants but no family friendly policies anywhere in sight. So that's business as usual. Have a nice day, veterans! Sorry about that TBI; you know how it is. We found a corporation that had to pay a few bucks in taxes, so we have to remedy that instead of fixing your head that we damaged in the first place. Among other issues, veterans are much more likely to be unemployed than non-veterans, and non-veterans aren't doing all that well, employment-wise, these days. Lots of families don't have enough food- it's a great time to donate to Northwest Harvest or a food bank near you. You can probably donate right at the cash register the next time you go grocery shopping.

Anyway, moving on, because that is super depressing, I got a new pair of boots today! The guilt-inducing ones I ordered last week came today. They are quite fabulous, and Shane turned the box into a WALL-E type contraption and wore it around the house all day with nothing else on except his teeny-tiny tighty whities- SUPER CUTE! Also, I discovered what Lloyd and the boys do all day. I strapped Shane in his seat this afternoon to hit the grocery store, and he said, "I would like to go to Starbucks for a hot chocolate and a blueberry scone, please."

Sorry I didn't post all week- I MEANT to, but there was this giant hurricane-ish storm in the Bering Sea so I had to work from 0'dark thirty to a million o' clock all week. Lloyd was gone, too, requiring painful, expensive and exhausting child care machinations. Thank God I get a celebratory day in May! I'm not sure about this standard time thing, either. It seems like it shouldn't be THAT big of a deal but I have not been sleeping properly ever since we fell back. It's such a stupid idea, anyway: it's not as if we REALLY get any more daylight. I have an idea! Let's donate Mother's Day, and bust it up into 24 one hour chunks, which we can then spread out for an actual extra hour on 24 different days! Brilliant, right?

And call me crazy, but I am getting some new-to-me cats tomorrow. I found them on Craigslist, and one of them looks exactly like Henry! We have been easing into the idea for a while, but the Fur Real cat Weston got at the Goodwill last week was the final straw for Lloyd. He said if we're going to have that creepy hideous thing around here, we might as well have real cats, as long as they're free. Lloyd has a real aversion to paying good money for used cats, especially if that money could be used for hot chocolates and blueberry scones. I'll keep you posted.

Have a good weekend!

Rats

If you are my friend on Facebook, you probably already know all about the rat wars at my house. If you're not my Facebook friend, you totally should be, because I have a lot of really important stuff to say on there, as you can well imagine.

Now that the weather has warmed up a smidge and the compost is getting good and rotty, we have had a rat invasion in the back yard. They come through the fence from the sheep farm and burrow under the compost to plan their assault. Then they swarm over the back porch to eat the copious seeds that have fallen from the bird feeder. When Henry was alive, he probably kept them at bay, but now, sadly, we have to battle them without his assistance. Lloyd started sniping them with his pellet gun, but it was a little slow for his liking, and they don't make an automatic assault version. I told him I thought I could convert it with directions from the internet but he didn't like that idea for some reason and went with traps and poison. It's like he fancies himself some big gun expert or something and thinks I have no idea what I'm talking about. You can see one of his ginormous traps in the picture; this particular one set right in the path where their trail from the farm comes under our fence. I could get some stunning dead rat pictures, but I'll spare you. I'm tenderhearted that way, plus I'm getting a little afraid of those crazy PETA people after the whole hamster thing.

Naturally, success in rat-killing leads to a quandary: what to do with the carcasses? They are big, fat, glossy, generously-whiskered creatures and surely would be useful for many things. Seriously, they are the picture of robust, glowing health, except for being dead. One certainly doesn't want to just toss them in the trash; that would be VERY wasteful. But we have to get to them quickly, or the other rats will carry them away. I'm not even kidding. They disappear if you leave them out there; I bet there is a cadre of mortuary rats that pack the dead soldiers away on their shoulders to some kind of ghoulish body shop where they hack their bodies up to make paleolithic body armor and weapons out of bone, skin, sinew and tails.

They're smart, you know, and they learn from their mistakes. If Lloyd had any sense at all, he would let me do the conversion on that pellet gun so he can just mow them down and be done with it. This slow attrition method is risky, like tying Batman to a slowly submerging platform into a shark tank, then walking away, totally sure you've vanquished your enemy. We all know how that ends up, don't we?

In fact, now that I think about it, I'm getting a little concerned. Ever since I read 'Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh', I have been suspicious that rats are more than they appear to be. I bet they could climb right up on this keyboard and start blogging away. You'll know it's them when they start raising money for PETA and pushing for a revolution.

It sucks having a dead cat

I am very sad to report that Henry, the world's most magnificent cat, is dead. He went out one evening and didn't come home. The next morning, a nearby vet's office called to tell us that one of the staff there found him on the road on her way to work. He was chipped, so they were able to find us. We picked him up and buried him in the backyard. I really don't have anything else to say, except for it sucks having a dead cat.

Cat Therapy

You guys all know my cat, Henry, right? If you need to, you can refresh your memory by clicking here. He's sort of an unusual cat- he has the most magnificent tail, and he drinks out of the toilet, just to name a few of his finer qualities.

We got him at a shelter, and Lloyd was pretty cross about paying $130 for a used cat. We looked hard for a free cat, but they were surprisingly hard to find. They all have a 'rehoming' fee: what a scam. It's outrageous, I tell you! We would have held out in protest but we had promised Weston he could have a cat as soon as we moved into our new house so we trotted right down to the local cat adoption center. There were at least a zillion cats there, but Weston walked straight up to Henry's cage and wanted to take him home then and there. I made him look around at all the others but he kept going back to Henry, so we knew he was meant to be our cat.

But now, I'm a little concerned about him. I think he might need therapy, because he can't seem to set appropriate boundaries. Take a look at the pictures; you'll see what I mean. They're probably not in the right order- that would take a million monkeys working in blogger for a hundred years, but I'm sure you can put it together. The boys invented a new game, called 'Garbage Truck', and here's how it works:

1. Put Henry in a laundry basket (aka 'the garbage truck')

2. Dump a bunch of toys and books on top of him to simulate additional garbage

3. Drive the 'garbage truck' to the 'garbage dump'

4. Dump the load onto the floor

You would think that Henry wouldn't care for this, but in fact he just sits there and lets them do it. And not just once. They do it over, and over, and over. That's not the only questionable game they play with him, either, and so far they've only discovered one activity he won't tolerate. He doesn't mind being pushed around in a bin, as long as it's upright. But apparently, if they turn it upside down with him inside and THEN push it around, he makes his displeasure known.

I'm pretty sure this is not normal cat behavior. I've had a lot of cats, you know. You can read about all of them in this little essay called 'My Life in Cats'. My point here is that I'm not some kind of cat ROOKIE or something, and never before have I had a cat that needed mental health care. I thought this might require a professional, so I found him a good therapist: Carole Wilbourn. She even does Reiki, but unfortunately Lloyd refuses to pony up the cash to fly Henry to New York to see her, the stingewad.

But don't worry: I have a plan B. I figure the cure for my mental health issues should work fine for Henry, too, so I'm going to dump wine into the toilet tanks! Genius, right? Well, that's it for now. If you need me I'll be in the bathroom with a straw.

Catsheep

You've heard of sheepdogs, right? Or even sheeppigs, like Babe? But I bet you haven't seen a cat-herding sheep yet. Henry, our new cat with the magnificent tail, is pretty interested in the sheep farm behind our house. I took this video of him having a close encounter of the sheepish kind last night.

Calamity

I despise clams. They are disgusting, stinky, gelatinous blobs of evil. I don't care what part of them you use or what you do with them: fry them, steam them, or ruin a fabulous potato soup or a perfectly good bloody mary; they are always gross and I wouldn't eat one even if the only other source of calories on earth was light beer. Yes, they are that vile. Also, I like to live and let live and no clam has ever hurt, scared, annoyed or offended me, at least that I can remember.

So you can imagine my surprise when Shane and I found ourselves at the beach with oddly shaped shovels, attempting to scoop their

sharp-shelled sliminess out of wet, cold sand. On the bright side, it was a beautiful breezy day at the coast, and the afternoon light was absolutely fantastic for pictures. Too bad I got only this single one before my camera battery went dead. Overall, it was a semi-successful trip, if you define 'success' as 'keeping Shane from throwing himself into the frigid Pacific and coming home with minimal bivalves', which I DO. We had a nice time with Grandpa, then stayed over for a breakfast of blueberry pancakes.

When we got home, Henry had climbed up on the kitchen counter, opened the cabinet with his food in it, and knocked the bag out on the floor. He DID have food in his bowl, in case you were wondering. Oh, wait. Have I not told you about our new cat, Henry? Look at him, isn't he FANTASTIC?! We LOVE him, even if he is a bit too clever for his own good sometimes.

I think I will stop typing now. I could write a lot more- I have rodents in my car (sure to be an entertaining tale!) and Lloyd and Weston are stuck in Montana with a truck, a boat, a dog, beehives and several relatives, but to keep on would really just be boastful, don't you think? Besides, it's getting on to wine'o'clock. Smell ya later, friends.