The Neighborhood Catfather

We have an asshole neighborhood cat whose asshole owner allows to roam freely so he can come to our door and spray it with his "I own this" pheromone stink.

He has been doing this since we moved in.

It took me awhile to figure out why my indoor cats would sit for hours staring at the front door as if waiting for the appearance of The Virgin Kitty.

I have recently been trying to figure out ways to stop this feline delinquent from causing my stoop to smell like an uncleaned litter box. Soaking the screen door with different fragrances and enzymes to discourage him seems to have started a mob war.

Yesterday morning as we were leaving for school, there on the front walk was a decapitated pigeon. The cat equivalent of a horse head. A warning of what might happen to me and my loved ones if I didn't stop trying to infringe on his weekly ritual of ownership.

I have yet to clean it up because frankly, I don't want to go near it. No one else in the house wants to go near it either.

Maybe if I ignore it, some other cat will come and take it away and we can pretend it never happened. 

In the meantime I have to decide between wanting a clean fresh smelling entrance, or worrying about my families safety.

I thought decisions like these were only found in literature and movies. 

No wonder I'm tired

4 AM
Brain: Hey... psssst.... Hey YOU..... you gotta pee.
Me: No I don't
Brain: No, you do. And you know you can't just lay here all comfortable when you gotta pee.
Me: Don't you keep up with current events, I JUST peed 15 minutes ago, remember? We tripped over the cat on the way to the bathroom?
Brain: Yeah, but you still gotta go. Can't you tell?
Me: I can feel my own bladder. I know I don't have to pee anymore, now shut up, leave me alone and go to sleep.
Brain: Bubbling brooks. Waterfalls. Rushing rivers. Showers with the warm water streaming down your face, over your body, hitting the tub floor and flowing down the drain. Rain, falling from the...
Me: ALRIGHT ALRIGHT, if it'll shut you up.
2 minutes later
Me: SEE? I told you I didn't have to pee!
Brain: Well at least now you know and you don't have to lay there and wonder. You should thank me.

Cool? Nope, Not me

Just when you think you may be one of those "cool" moms,
you know the ones that the kids aren't embarrassed by, I hear this:
"Hey mom, um, when you stop the car and we get out and the doors are open..... can you, um, turn down the music until the doors are closed?"
My answer was to turn up the music until the car was rocking on it's wheels.
"MOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMM!" Both of them looking desperately around to see which of their friends might be witnessing this.
I turned it back down to normal and suddenly it didn't seem quite as bad when they opened the doors and dashed for their class.
Do not mess with me children, I am old for a reason.

You can tell by the way I walk.....

So Jeff and Katherine are having a "Who can take more steps during the day" contest. (They both have step counters on their phones). 

The two most competitive people I know and I get to live with them. 

So all day for the past few days I've got 2 pacing, going for walks, and schlepping up and down the stairs bodies in the house. 

Today it has escalated to the point that I heard Katherine yelling from the other room "DAD would you just go sit down!!!!"

To which his answer was to walk outside saying "Just as soon as I take a quick stroll around the block".

I have never seen Katherine move so fast to find her shoes so he wouldn't get too far ahead of her step count which for the both of them at this point is somewhere over 7000. 

No telling what it will be when they finally decide to give it up and come back inside.

Lessons Learned

So yesterday my (10 year old) computer got tired of running. It wouldn't load webpages and kept telling me things were crashing. I tried to restart which resulted in it telling me it had fatal errors that could not be fixed after it ran a restore program twice at start up. It ended up just sitting there like giant rock, not turning on, not making noise and me panicking that I had not listened to myself over the past few weeks and uploaded all my pictures that I have nowhere else but this hard drive onto a back up device or cloud account. I called Alex (who has been studying computers at college) in a desperate attempt to get a magic bullet to fix the problem.

HMMMMmmmmmmm, he said, Sounds like your hard drive is dying.
NOOOOOOOOOO, I can't lose my pictures. I knew I could probably get them back AT SOME in the future by paying someone to retrieve them, but it wasn't a guarantee.

After I stared at the giant non working rock for awhile longer, and tried two more times to start it with the same result, I came over for one last try, explained to the rock that it simply HAD to work, not only for my pictures, but (less importantly in my mind) that it was how I made money, that I couldn't afford to replace it, and if it didn't work I was going to cry. A lot. For a long time.

One last try, one last button push... waiting...waiting...

And low and frickin' behold the damn thing started up without a hitch.

I am now uploading all my pictures to Flickr (one terabyte of free storage) and thanking whatever computer god decided it didn't want to see me bawling my head off.
Lesson learned here.... ALWAYS back up your stuff!!!!

It's Shakin!

So we watched a 2 hour long documentary yesterday about the San Fran quake of 1906..followed by another documentary on mega quakes. "Well" says I, "at least in Arizona we don't have quakes."

Fast forward to last night... BAM!!! house shakes.

"Wow" says I, "After watching those shows first thing I thought was we had an earthquake.. silly me!"

4.1 on the Richter scale. Followed by a 4.0 15 minutes later.

My first thoughts? "Oh great, Katherine and I watched Poltergeist 1 & 2 today... when can I expect one of THOSE to show up?"

 

No Food for the Hungry

Food warm. Drink poured. Settling down to have lunch at my desk. One bite. Two bites....
"MOM..I'm hungry!!!"
"Jeffrey I just sat down, my food is hot, please wait 10 minutes and I will fix you lunch."
"But MOOOOOOOM, I'm starving now." 
I can see you wasting away as we speak.
"Jeffrey I will fix you food in 10 minutes and if you can't wait that long then make yourself something."
Long silence followed by grumbling off into the distance.
OK, back to food.
One bite. Two bites....
"Hey Honey, are you at your desk?"
"Yes......"
"Check weather underground to see if the rain is coming, I have to go out and work".
"OK"... click, click, wait for page to load.... "Yes, storm headed this way, almost on top of us"
Suddenly surrounded by husband and children leaning over my desk, to look at the radar and discuss the impending weather.
"Guys, I'm trying to eat here."
"That's OK, you're not bothering us...." 
Discussion continues.
Finally I am alone.
Food is still moderately warm.
One bite... two bites....
"Hey Honey, where are the wire ties?"
"In the garage, if you can wait 10 minutes I will get one for you".
"No, just tell me where you put them."
(In a very hard to find place that would take me longer to explain than to get up myself and get them).
Start to get up but hear "NO NO, it's ok... I'll find them....".
Sit back down, one bite, second bite pending...
Voice directly behind me from the couch:
"Hi... how are YOU?"
I turn around to see Jeffrey leaning over the back of the couch practically upside down.
"Jeffrey, I'm eating."
"That's not how you are... How ARE you?"
"I'm hungry and TRYING to finish my food before it gets cold."
"But besides hungry, how ARE you?"
"JEFFREY, I am HUNGRY, I am trying to EAT, my food is now COLD and all I want is 5 minutes in peace to finish it. Can I have 5 minutes PLEASE?"
"GEEZ mom you don't have to get so upset... I'm just trying to be friendly. I'll just go sit over here, alone... and hungry."
I need a vacation.