Barb's Place

In which Stripes is annoyed with us

2023-09-01T03:42:30Z

So Stripes is this stray that we're feeding (we haven't made him an indoor cat because one of our existing indoor cats hates him, and even after we got him neutered, he still sprays) and recently he turned up with a weird bald spot. We took him in to the vet and it turned out to be ringworm. So we have meds we have to give him for several weeks, and shampoo we have to apply twice a week, which he does not care for, oh no precious.

The problem is, you're supposed to lather up the shampoo, let it sit for five or ten minutes, and then rinse it off. I'm using a wet rag for the rinse process, rather than trying to actually bathe him, but he is still not happy with the process.

We do have a big cat cage we could put him in for the duration, but I don't want to bring him inside right now, to avoid exposing the other cats. And it's still hella hot here, so I don't want to confine him on the back porch, where he can't get to the various cool spots he hides during the middle of the day. So I guess we're just going to have to lure him with treats so we can shampoo him periodically. Maybe we can just keep him in one of the small cages while the shampoo sits, or something.

comments

Too hot, baby

2023-07-29T22:34:15Z

So we're going on our 30th day in a row of 110F+. I messed up my back a few weeks ago and this is the first weekend I've felt I could use the lawnmower without collapsing in agony. (It was starting to get better, but I made the mistake of trying to pick up and fold that quilt I'm making up by myself, and it is HEAVY AS FUCK and I set my recovery back by a week or so.) But anyway I got up at 5:30 AM when it was a mere 94F according to the back porch thermometer, and managed to get both front and back yard mowed before 7. Yay me. Maybe tomorrow I can do the edge trimming.

comments

quilt progress

2023-07-09T17:42:51Z

I still have to make the backing and binding, get batting, and put the whole thing together. Also add the rest of the buttons from the coats I cut up to make it.

comments

Thank you so much, Stripes

2023-07-03T18:44:25Z

Got up this morning, opened the front door, and there was a present on the front porch. It did not actually have a note attached reading "Thanks for all the cat food. Please accept this dead rat as a token of my gratitude," but I am pretty certain that was the implication.

It's hot and dry. We will not be going to any Fourth of July festivities for that reason, but also because given recent Supreme Court decisions, we aren't feeling excessively celebratory at the moment.

The quilt project is going along -- the top is about 70% finished, I think.

comments

Sigh

2023-06-14T04:13:56Z

A conservative relative on Facebook whose politics I have been assiduously ignoring posted a pro-Trump rant the other day, and I finally got fed up and defriended them. They sent me a private message saying that they were leaving Facebook because it was "too divisive," and I could phone them if I wanted to talk to them. It's not Facebook that's divisive, for crying out loud. And if you honestly believe the stuff you just posted, then we live in two entirely different universes, and absolutely nothing I could say will ever penetrate your little Fox News conspiracy-theory bubble.

I should have expected it, really. Back in 2020 when they were still capable of admitting, however grudgingly,
that Trump was not great, my brother and I were talking to them about the presidential debates. They were absolutely desperate to convince us that even though Trump was acting like a deranged toddler on speed, Biden was "just as incoherent." Even then they were incapable of admitting that any Democrat might be better than any Republican, no matter how awful the Republican was.

The truly irritating thing is that they really, truly seem to have no idea why (even aside from Trump being the most incompetent and corrupt president in... ever) I should have a problem with them supporting a political party which is systematically demonizing queer people. I sent them a condensed and very slightly more polite (cause family) version of the "I am not your pet dyke" speech I gave conservative Buffy fans back in the day, though as they've left FB I'm not sure they'll ever see it. Whatever. I have zero desire to call them and engage in a fruitless argument in person.

comments

Lots of little squares

2023-05-25T03:27:36Z

I'm cutting squares to make a quilt, and I calculate that the ones I've cut so far are enough to make approximately one seventh of the quilt I am envisioning. This is going to take awhile.

comments

RIP Little Bit

2023-05-06T02:01:46Z

We said goodbye to Little Bit yesterday. Considering her age (she turned twenty this year), she's been in good health, but last weekend she lost her appetite, and began exhibiting behavior similar to her mother's, just before her mother died. She's had cataracts for years, but now she seemed to be completely blind, stumbling around and stepping in her food dish, bumping into the walls and falling off ledges in her cat condo. She couldn't get into her litterbox. Her hind legs were noticeably weaker and often went out from under her, and she cried constantly.

We brought her in to the vet, and they said that there were a number of things that it might be. Determining which would require a lot of expensive tests, and even if they narrowed it down, none of the possibilities were really treatable at her age and general frailty. Any treatment would just keep her going for a few more months, not really improve her quality of life. So after talking it over, we decided that it was kinder to send her off now, before she deteriorated further.

Little Bit, 2003-ish - 2023

I'll miss her, but as I've said before, I won't miss cleaning up after her. She was one of the sweetest cats I've ever met, but also the most destructive. (She sprayed. We tried EVERYTHING. At least in her last couple of years, while she was living in her private condo so the younger cats couldn't beat her up, we could limit the damage.)

comments

Chasing my tail

2023-03-29T01:50:54Z

I'm working on making a leather coat -- a Very Dramatic full length one. Some while back I was lucky enough to score two half hides at SAS,* one brown and one cream. I found a suitable coat pattern, and by dint of careful pattern placement, I was able to combine them into a sort of Harlequin coat. Since my sewing machine wouldn't handle leather that heavy, I managed to find a refurbished Singer Heavy Duty machine for a reasonable price. I've wanted a machine that can handle leather better for some time -- my Brother does OK with very thin leather, given the correct needle, but for multiple layers it sometimes struggles over seams. I can't justify the expense of an industrial machine for the limited amount of hobby sewing I do, so the Singer seems a reasonable compromise. It just managed this heavier leather; the Brother would have thrown in the towel and died.

I decided that given the weight of the leather, I needed very large, sturdy, rustic buttons. So I ordered some antler burls, figuring I could drill button holes and polish them myself. When they got here, I could see that they weren't sawn off as closely as I wanted them to be. So I need to get a grinder attachment for my drill, so I can grind the backs flat and even, so I can drill and polish them.

But in order to do the drilling and polishing, I really need to set up my bench vise, and the buffer. And to do that properly, I need to attach them to a worktable. And I can't do it with the table I have out there, because A) it's the one my grandfather made, and I don't want to drill mounting holes in it, and B) it's really not sturdy enough, and C) Stripes the Outdoor Cat has one of his cat beds on it, and does not care for me making loud industrial noises in his bedroom.

So I need to get a proper worktable, which I haven't had for years. But to do that, I need someplace to put it. And to get that, I have to move the table saw. To move the table saw, I have to move the pile of tile boxes we're saving in case we can ever expand the living room to the shelf under the miter saw. To do that, I have to clean all the tile-laying supplies out of the shelf and find places for them where they won't get rained on. To do that, I have to clean out the shed and finally admit that we're probably not going to be doing any more tent camping at our advanced age, and get rid of all the old camping supplies, and to do that I have to truck all the old camping supplies to Goodwill. (I know. But there's no place else near us that will take damned near anything.)

And once all that was done, there's still not quite enough room, so I have to finally get the nightstand that Little Bit peed on in 2015 refinished, and bring it back inside. (Hopefully eight years outside and approximately seventeen gallons of anti-cat-pee enzyme solution have rendered it safe to do so.) So I have to take photos of the nightstand and send them to the refinishing place, and then I have to figure out what to do with the Temporary Nightstand I've been using, and...

Oof.

*Normally, SAS has big bins of leather scraps that they sell by the pound. If you are lucky, you can occasionally find largish pieces from the same batch. For some reason during the pandemic, they got in a bunch of whole kidskins, and some larger cow and pig hides. I grabbed as many as I could afford at the time.

comments

Huzzah!

2023-03-13T05:23:31Z

The Arizona Renaissance Fair has been going since February, so Kathy and I have been out there several times -- first by ourselves, then with a friend from our gaming group, and finally with an old friend of ours. Bear in mind we did not drag her there; we told her we were going and asked if she wanted to come, and she said yes. We were a bit trepidatious, due to A) her health issues, and B) her stubborn refusal to make reasonable accommodations for same. She's always had weak ankles, made worse by her habit of, when she sprained them, refusing to put up her feet and let them heal, but just "walking it off." And over the years her knees have gotten just as bad. She's my age, but she totters around like my 95-year-old mother did. She has a walking stick, but it wasn't really much help. She needs a walker, probably. In fact, while we were there, a little old lady with a walker asked her if she needed help.

Seeing the whole fair is a leisurely walk of about a mile and a half. Two miles tops. It's a fairly large one. We did technically see the whole fair with her. We spent at least half the time we were there (and we were only there for four hours, which, considering it's a two-hour round trip commute, is not a lot) sitting on a series of benches so she could rest, and I was seriously worried the whole time that she'd fall and hurt herself.

And even so, I wouldn't have minded it, if it had seemed like she was enjoying herself at all. One of the main reasons Kathy and I like going to the Ren Faire is seeing all the fantastic costumes there, and getting to do costuming ourselves. Over the years we've built up several pretty cool costumes -- totally ahistorical, but cool! It's a Ren Faire, not the SCA. Back in the day, Old Friend used to go to science fiction conventions with us and we'd all do hall costumes -- never anything super elaborate, but getting into the spirit of things. But over the years, she's become adamantly anti-costume, claiming that nothing would fit her or look good on her. Which is untrue; she is on the larger side, but there are plenty of women at these events her size or larger who are dressed up to the nines. And while it's true that you can put serious money into costuming, you don't have to. (Heck, if she wanted, I could make her a decent-looking skirt/blouse/bodice combo. I'm not the world's greatest sewer, but I get by.)

(It's probably worth noting that she's become like this about all clothing, and really, her appearance in general. She used to have to at least do office casual for work, but she's full time work from home now, and we never see her in anything anymore but schlubby oversized t-shirts and worn out sneakers. And she constantly complains that it's pointless for her to dress up because no clothes she likes would ever look good on her. I know it's probably part of her ongoing depression issues, and I try not to let it get to me, but sometimes I really want to thump her and tell her to get over herself. She's not uniquely horrible-looking.)

But costume or no costume, there's a ton of things to see at the fair, and she didn't seem interested in any of them. No window shopping, no interest in seeing any of the shows or musical acts, no turkey legs. If Kathy or I wanted to look at a shop, she stayed outside. Just a beeline (punctuated by many rest stops) to the one shop she wanted to buy something at, and then she wanted to go home. I'm not sorry I took her, because she did say she wanted to go, and she did get the one thing she came for, but I'm very glad we'd gone on our own previously. Next year I think we will wait for her to bring the subject up, and if she does want to go again, insist on some mobility aid that's better than a walking stick. If her knee had gone out all the way, and she'd fallen and seriously hurt herself, I don't know what the heck we would have done.

comments

Spring hath sprung (ish)

2023-02-10T01:35:26Z

After an unusually chill and rainy December and January (which we desperately needed, don't get me wrong) we're having a slightly warmer February. Not above-average warm, though, which is good. I finished the buffelgrass removal, and scattered a wildflower seed mix over the empty patch n the lawn, so we'll see if anything comes of that. If the wildflower seeds all get eaten by birds, then the lippia and bermuda grass will cover it over soon enough.

Work has been, and will continue to be for awhile, insane. We had several large new projects with extremely short deadlines dropped on us at the last minute, along with all the things we normally have to do at this time of year and the large new projects we'd already planned for. So it's been intense, and I feel like I've been rushing too much and making dumb mistakes, but with turnaround times this short... sigh. This too shall pass.

comments

rahirah @ 2023-02-02T20:07:00

2023-02-03T03:19:49Z

Had a dream that I was in some kind of live-action D&D/Minecraft tournament, where teams of people had to develop five simultaneous D&D/Minecraft-ish universes, which were represented by five Totinos frozen pizzas. Each team had their own stack of five pizzas.

The contest was held in a 20+ story skyscraper which had been especially built for contests like this. The interior was a labyrinth and there was no furniture. Everything was covered in industrial gray carpeting: the floor, the walls, the ceiling. The carpet was actually some kind of sophisticated computer hologram interface, which could generate treasure, items, and enemies if you hit the correct spots. Every now and then the lights would go out, leaving us all in total darkness.

My team started out on level one, and we found a few items (some kind of nutcracker, and a land-sailer (a sailboat with wheels) but we decided that we should go higher up because there were a limited amount of resources and all the teams were on level one. We realized that we had left four of our pizzas behind, and decided to go back lest another team steal them, which would lose us the rest of our worlds. I got separated from the rest of my team -- they got to the elevator before me, and I was caught in a scrum of other players. When i got to the elevator, I figured they'd gone up to level two or three. But somehow (as is common in my dreams) the elevator controls wouldn't respond for me. I went shooting to the very top of the building. The elevator was glass-fronted, and I was afraid of heights, so I was lying down in the elevator with my eyes closed so I wouldn't have to see the ascent. (I've noticed that when I'm dreaming when I'm close to waking up, my dream-self is often forced into a position that mimics my actual physical position -- lying down on my back.)

When I finally got out on floor twenty-six or whatever it was, it was pitch black outside the elevator, and I realized that I was on a level far too high for my experience. I was immediately attacked by a cougar and a Mexican wolf (the dream was very specific about it being a Mexican wolf, the subspecies native to Arizona) but I managed to shove the cougar at the wolf and get them fighting each other. Just at I was rolling away from them, the lights went on, revealing a very impressive Dali-esque fantasy landscape, and the rest of my team came out of the elevator to save me.

Then I woke up to find the cats fighting on top of me.

comments

rahirah @ 2023-01-12T18:58:00

2023-01-13T02:11:19Z

I'm trying to rid the front yard of buffelgrass, which is A) invasive, ad B) tussocky and therefore really hard to mow. This involves digging each tussock up with a shovel, knocking all the dirt and worms out of the roots, and then trying futilely to even out the ground where the tussock was. I'm doing a few square feet each day, but it's going to rain this weekend, and I'll have to wait till the ground dries out to start again. And once I've done that, I have to wait a week or two to see if any bits I missed grow again, and do it all over.

I feel like this is a great metaphor for something or other.

I think that it is very likely that whatever it was which killed our old honeysuckle vine also got the John F. Kennedy rose bush; it's just taking longer to die. I suspect that what happened was that during the summer, the heat made them vulnerable to some kind of root-eating insect. If it does die, I don't know about replacing it, at least in that location. Since we planted the roses there, a volunteer acacia tree has grown up, and the roses don't get as much sunlight. We wanted to keep the acacia because I fear that eventually, when the inevitable water restrictions kick in, we'll have to take the citrus trees down, and we want something to shade the yard. So we are allowing strategically placed volunteer seedlings of various drought-tolerant kinds to grow around the perimeter of the yard. We have the west side pretty well shaded now, and there are several promising ones on the south side as well. South side saplings are much younger, but these trees tend to grow pretty quickly, so I expect full shade on that side within another ten years.

comments

Walking the Cat

2022-12-22T01:31:45Z

So Stripes the Outdoor Cat has acquired the charming yet nerve-wracking habit of following me when I take Griffin out for his last walk before bed. Or possibly following Griffin; Stripes loves Griffin to death. Griffin is not the power-walker that Bo (our last dog) was. Bo would happily go for miles. Griffin is fine with a walk around the block. Still, one quarter of the block is a moderately well-trafficked street, and while Stripes is a smart and street-savvy beast, you never know when a normally intelligent cat may freeze or run the wrong direction when faced with an Unexpected Car.

(Aside: Stripes is a feral cat who knows where his bread is buttered. We had him neutered, but we cannot make him an Indoor Cat because A) We already have four indoor cats, and Churro hates his guts, and B) despite the neutering, he still sprays, and I just can't deal with another indoor cat who sprays. One is bad enough. So Stripes gets three meals a day and a cushy cat bed in the back yard.)

So I've tried various stratagems to get out of the house and down the block before Stripes notices that we're gone. So far, they have all failed, and three nights out of four, no matter how stealthily we sneak out, or how distracted Stripes is by cat treats, after half a block or so I'll hear an insistent "Mrah! Mrah! MRAH!"* and there he'll be, trotting after us.

So I've pretty much given up evading him. Sometimes he'll let me pick him up and carry him over the dangerous stretch. Other times he'll leap to the top of the six-foot wall and walk up there rather than risk it at street level. Like I said, he's a very smart cat; he actually watches the street for oncoming traffic.

But I still worry about it. (I have to wonder if it's his strategy for getting into the house, spraying or no; that's about the only way I can think of to keep him from following us for certain.)

*"I can't let you people out of my sight for ONE MINUTE!"

comments

Emerges from the depths

2022-11-22T01:01:23Z

So for the last several months I've been living on Twitter, following election stuff in a state of existential dread. But Arizona has finally finished counting its ballots, and the Dems swept the top four state offices, so I can relax and breathe again. Some of the races were extremely close, which is why it took so long -- that, and AZ's election rules, which mean that early/mail-in votes can be dropped off at polling places on election day. Those votes all have to be hand-validated and processed before they can be counted, which takes awhile. (All these rules were put in place by Republicans, by the way, and only became an issue when (horrors) Democrats began winning elections here.)

This does not, but the way, mean that Arizona is a blue state now. It means that with D-leaning independents and a small but vital percentage of Republicans who are willing to hold their noses and vote D when the R candidates are out-and-out Trump-worshipping, election-denying loons, we can =just barely= elect Democrats to statewide positions. Any Republican who is not an outright loon can still be elected to statewide office quite easily here, even if they are hopelessly incompetent or corrupt in other respects (see Tom Horne.) And we are still gerrymandered to heck when it comes to House seats and the state legislature (the 'independent' redistricting committee was pretty shameless in catering to Republicans) so the state legislature is still Republican, and filled with said loons.

Still, it means we have more or less competent, non-evil leadership for the next four years, who can veto the more extreme shenanigans of the legislature, and maybe by 2026 enough Gen Z will have aged into voting reliably that we can flip the state legislature.

With the imminent demise of Twitter as a bearable platform looming, I'm checking out various alternatives, but so far all of them have big Not Ready For Prime Time vibes, alas.

comments

Dog stuff

2022-08-28T04:56:28Z

We're going to visit my mother in law next month, and so we're going to have to board Griffin while we're away. We used to board Bo with our vet, but this last year our vet remodeled their office, and in the process converted most of their non-medical boarding space to other uses. So I've been checking out various boarding options in the area. They're all more expensive than our vet was, alas.

But I did find a place near us that has some advantages: they have staff on premises 24/7, which a surprising number of places don't. And they don't kennel the dogs, but keep them in the main play area to sleep. Since Griffin doesn't like being left alone, and doesn't like small spaces (I think that's behind his dislike of getting in the car -- he also doesn't like staying in a crate if the door is closed. and he won't go into small rooms, like the bathroom or the closet or the examining room at the vet -- without serious coaxing) I thought he might be more comfortable in that kind of environment than one in which he's chucked in a kennel and abandoned overnight.

(Granted, he's gotten SO much more relaxed and confident than he was when we first got him. I can get him in the car with a minimal bribe of cheese now, and he's good with us leaving him alone at home for 5-6 hours -- he's stopped collecting our shoes to comfort him when we leave, at least.)

Anyway, we took him over there last weekend to do an evaluation half-day, to make sure he got along with other dogs and all that stuff. The family that fostered him had multiple dogs, so I was fairly sure he'd do all right, which he did. On his first visit he was very timid meeting new dogs (which tracks with what we've seen when we meet other dogs on walks) but relaxed more the longer he was there. We took him for another half day today, and he did even better. We'll be taking him over once a week or so to make sure he gets used to the place, and to the idea that we'll come back and get him. And I think it will be good for him and build confidence to be able to play with other dogs now and then.

comments

Unhappy puppy

2022-08-15T03:37:23Z

Griffin's been sick as a dog this weekend. He was wanting to go out and eat grass when we got home Friday night, and then again Saturday morning, and then he started barfing, and barfing, and barfing, to the point that I took him to the vet. The vet couldn't find any proximate cause for the barfing, so she gave him some anti-nausea meds. It wasn't till I got him home from the vet that he finally barfed up a hunk of cat litter. He pretty much slept all of Saturday afternoon and morning, showing no interest in food. He started perking up again Sunday afternoon, and eating and drinking again.

So we're going to be reeeeaaally careful about keeping that door closed from now on.

comments

Pro Tip

2022-07-04T19:33:05Z

Look for wasp's nests BEFORE you stick your hand in the honeysuckle bush.

comments

Well that was exciting

2022-06-25T05:32:42Z

Abortion rights protest this evening at the AZ capital. There are pictures on my FB, for those of you who follow me there. They're pretty crappy, since I was trying to march, hold a sign, and take pictures at the same time.

It was the biggest crowd I've seen since the first Women's March. Lots of people honking in support along the march route, relatively few counterprotesters. Things were fine until around 8:45 when the cops showed up and started tear gassing people. Supposedly some people were trying to break into the AZ Senate building. I sure as heck didn't see anything like that; everything I witnessed was perfectly legal and peaceful. But it was a very big crowd.

I had gone to a volunteer thing for one of the Dem candidates first, and helped make signs, and after that I drove down to the Capital and joined the march. When we got back to Wesley Bolin Plaza, I was pretty close to the center of the crowd, where the people leading the chants were. I heard a couple of loud bangs - I thought someone had set off firecrackers. A minute later a whole fleet of cop cars came screaming up Van Buren with lights blazing, and a minute after that two women came running up yelling that tear gas had been deployed. So I and everyone around me took off. I dropped my sign in the brouhaha, which pisses me off; I hate leaving litter after a protest.

On the way back to my car I ran into a woman my age or older who was having some kind of meltdown -- she said something about someone having a gun, but she was crying and and pretty incoherent, so I took that with a grain of salt. (None of the news articles about the protest mention gunshots, so possibly those bangs were the tear gas going off.) I helped her daughters get her back to their car, and then walked the half mile or so back to my car and went home.

(I'm fine, btw; wherever the tear gas was, it was nowhere near me.)

comments

Itch itch itch!

2022-05-18T02:11:09Z

When I got my second earlobe piercings done a few years ago, I mentioned to Kathy that I wanted to eventually get a helix or conch piercing. So Last Christmas, Kathy gave me a gift certificate at the piercing salon, and last weekend, I finally got off my butt and got it done. I chickened out on the conch piercing, since it's supposed to be one of the most painful and take the longest to heal, and instead I got a double helix piercing:

(It's hard to photograph your own ear.)

I really like the way it turned out, and it's already stopped being sore. In fact, it's healing up and itching like crazy and I'm not supposed to touch it. ARRRRHHHHGGGGHHH.

comments

Dog!

2022-04-20T03:18:18Z

So for those of you who don't follow me on FB or Twitter, we did adopt the dog. His name is Griffin, though he doesn't really know it yet. He's very good with the cats; mostly ignores them completely (except for Little Bit, who fascinates him because she is Behind Glass.*) He is a very sweet, friendly, submissive dog; he's had virtually no training, though, so we have a job cut out for us there. He's kind of house trained, in that if you are careful to let him out on a schedule he'll do his business outside, but he doesn't seem to have any idea how to ask to go out. He's very, very timid in new situations and new places -- first dog I've ever had who's terrified of getting into a car. But he's relaxed noticeably in just the two weeks we've had him, so I have hopes that he'll get over the worst of it in time (and if not, our vet recommended a dog behaviorist.)

Despite his lack of training, Griffin doesn't have too many bad habits. He doesn't jump or bark unduly, and despite being very food motivated he's not a beggar. He chewed a hole in one pillow the first week, but other than that, he's been very good at sticking to the toys and chews he's authorized to have. Either he's a major couch potato, or Bo was WAY more high-energy than I realized. He's perfectly happy to lounge on the couch all day (walks also unnerve him, as you are in a new place every few feet). He happily mouths his stuffed squeaky toys and tosses them around a little, but they remain miraculously undestroyed. We were a bit worried he'd turn out to be a door dasher, but I think the one or two incidents we had were more "OMG DON'T LEAVE MEEEEEE!!!" than "ESCAPE!" as he seems to have stopped it now that he realizes that A) we're coming back, and B) he's staying here.

So, he's a good dog, and I think he'll do fine.

*A couple of weeks ago we decided that Something Had To Be Done about Little Bit. We have never managed to get her to stop spraying, though we did manage to sort of maneuver her into doing it mostly in one spot, which we kept covered in puppy pads. However, as she's gotten older and less able to fend off the hassling of the younger cats, she started expanding her depredations again. She's nineteen, very frail and tottery due to arthritis in her hips -- she broke her hip as a kitten, and she's always had a limp -- and the other cats constantly pounce her and steal her food.

We considered keeping her in the wire cat cage we use for medical quarantines -- Silhouette spent his last year or so in there very happily, after he lost control of his litter training. But with the spraying issue, a wire cage seemed a recipe for disaster, or a really stinky living room. So I hunted around online, and found a very large indoor multi-level cat house made of wood, with glass fronted doors. Because it's wood, I was able to screw cup hooks into the walls of the litter box area, and hang puppy pads on them like tapestries. So if she sprays, I can just change out the pads, and the walls themselves stay clean.

She was quite unhappy about it for a day or so, but she's settled in now, and I think she actually enjoys being able to eat her food in peace. We can let her out to roam around under supervision, but honestly, she spends most of her day asleep anyway.

comments

Yawn

2022-03-26T15:53:50Z

So tired. Went to bed too late, and then cats were dancing on us all night.

We have an appointment to meet a potential dog Monday. He's a two year old yellow Lab/Something Smaller mix, about 40 lbs. He's being fostered in a home with other dogs, multiple cats, and small children, and seems to get along with all of them. His foster owner says he's very calm and sweet, has never been aggressive, and is house trained and crate trained. She suspects from some of his quirks that he may have been abused by previous owners, but he's gotten much more relaxed and confident while he's been with them. I have a dentist's appointment to get a cracked tooth fixed the same day -- the dentist isn't sure if I'll need a crown or if he can do an onlay (hoping for the latter, as it would let me keep the tooth) so I don't know how great I'll be feeling for the Dog Meeting, but such is life.

Stripes is still living in the back yard, and I suspect he may disapprove of this potential dog development. We discovered a day or two after he showed up again that there was a reason for his sudden reappearance: he had a badly infected wound behind one ear, which we found out about when it opened up and started draining. Probably the result of a catfight; getting snipped does not seem to have dimmed his martial spirit much. So for the next week or so we squeezed goop out of it and doused him with antiseptic, and it's healed up cleanly now. (He complained loudly when we did this, but never tried to bite us or get away; he's really a very good cat.) He's been hanging out in the yard ever since. He would like very much to come inside, but Churro still hates his guts, so that's not happening.

My boss has gone out on medical leave for two months, and we are scraping by without her. It's been two weeks since she went out, and it feels like two years.

And weirdly, I started fiddling with an old Elfquest fic I'd never managed to finish to my satisfaction. This is purely for my own amusement; it will never see the light of day, since I could never get the character permissions I'd need to feel right about publishing it. But it's one of those stories where I always knew that there was something wrong with it, but could never figure out what. And now I've figured out what, so it's gonna get fixed, by gum.

comments

Importing PSA

2022-03-14T03:28:26Z

It looks like the importer is working again, for people who may have had trouble importing LJ entries in the past week or two. Just be absolutely sure you're using the correct LJ password.

My back is still not 100%, but it's much better than it was a week ago. I'm just trying to make sure I don't overdo and send it into spasms again...

comments

Annoying

2022-03-10T23:53:23Z

Work continues insane. My boss will shortly go out on a two month medical leave, leaving us at the mercy of Grandboss. And a day or so after we went to the Ren Faire, my back did that thing where the muscles seize up. I have no idea why. It usually happens a day or two after I do some kind of heavy lifting, but while I did move a few pavers from the back yard to the front yard that weekend, it was only about six of them, and they weren't that heavy. That was irritating, but the spasm eased up over the next few days, and by the following Monday, it was almost back to normal. BUT THEN. That morning I started to get up out of my office chair, did something wrong to make the muscle spasm again, and worse, I somehow managed to actually pull or sprain something.

So for the last week and a half I've been barely able to move. Thank god for work at home. It is getting better -- I can mostly straighten up and walk around the house now -- but this has not been pleasant. And in the general misery I forgot to renew my domain name. Argh.

On the bright side we were told last week that we're not going to be doing the 50/50 home office thing after all -- instead, we'll go in one day per week. (And my boss is hopeful that eventually we'll wrangle full time wfh again, but that's a fight for another day.)

comments

Notice to people reading me on LJ

2022-03-01T02:22:44Z

Many years ago, when Livejournal was bought out by a Russian company, I (and many other people) moved my main journal to Dreamwidth. At the time, there was a lot of huffy anger from people who remained on LJ, because Dreamwidth was evil for some reason they could never adequately explain, and it didn't matter what other groups of people were being oppressed, because it didn't affect them personally. At the time, I was pretty pissed off at the lot of them, but I gritted my teeth and decided to crosspost. I have now decided to turn crossposting off.

This will be my last post here [here being LJ, not DW]. I will not delete this journal, as I don't see any point in that, but at this point, I can no longer justify giving SUP content, meager though my content is these days. I will still be around on Dreamwidth and occasionally on Tumblr.

comments

90% Chance of Nightmares

2022-02-24T03:34:20Z

I had a lot of weird dreams last night. I can't remember half of them, but what I can recall was that we were having some kind of subsidence problem in our yard fixed, which seemed to involve digging huge holes in everything, including drilling through the concrete of the driveway (how this was supposed to help fix subsidence, I don't know.) We went out to dinner somewhere with some friends, and were walking home, and there was a church on the way with Christmas decorations on the lawn. They were huge ceramic gingerbread house kinds of things, and for some reason we started climbing over them. What looked from a distance like snow/icing trim on the house was, up close, a profusion of tiny interlocked white reindeer, and I worried about breaking them as I climbed. I could hear the church choir practicing as we did so, and I was thinking that I missed singing in a choir. But then the church secretary stuck her head out the window and saw us climbing on the gingerbread house, and yelled for the minister to call the police, so we scarpered.

Then I was talking to my mom on the phone, and she cut off mid call. I couldn't get her to pick up again, and so, worried, I went to her house. Or tried; I kept having to climb over or detour around things. At some point during the trip, I told my friends that there was a 90% chance that I was asleep and dreaming right now, because this was exactly the sort of thing that happened to me in dreams; I'd try to do something and obstacles kept springing up in my path. When I got to Mom's house, she called for us to come in, and sounded fine, but when I got to the kitchen, she was only about four feet tall, had a very round face, and a lot of curly hair. She was also acting strangely, and seemed to have some kind of stroke or something as we were talking. I was trying to hold her up, while telling my friend that this was definitely a dream, when I finally woke up.

BUT on the bright side, the promotion that my boss has been trying to push through for me for the past year finally came through, and as of Monday I am officially a ~Senior~ Analyst. I was hoping to get a raise with it, and I did, and it was about 33% higher than I was hoping for in my wildest dreams. Likely I'm going to plow most of it into paying off the mortgage, but maybe we can splurge on something.

comments