Saturday, November 15, 2008

terribly early in the morning

Happy Billionth Anniversary, Mom & Dad…and (11th) us

I have no idea when this picture was taken - sometime in the 80’s, I presume.  I wanted to use a recent picture, but generally my dad is the one taking the pictures, so I have plenty of solo shots of my mom, but not too many with the two of them together...and I think I’ve used the Las Vegas snowball picture before.

I wanted a small, barely discernible picture of me up.  I believe I’m threatening Leigh-Ann with an Orleans hotel buffet knife, demanding complete love and devotion for at least five more years after the picture is taken, which was June ‘03.  Okay, truth be told, I wanted a picture of me when I was thinner and richer...and it’s my blog, so I get to choose the picture.

I also wanted to write something clever and witty, but it’s 4:16am, and I’m sadly all out of clever & witty.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

late at night

I have a headache

This is my post.  Here, read something good by Paula Poundstone.

Get Our Help While You Can, Obama
by Paula Poundstone

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Morning Edition, November 12, 2008 · People still seem full of hope after the historic election of Barack Obama. This is America, though, it can’t last. Pleased and proud as we are, Obama hasn’t been on American Idol, so we’re bound to lose interest soon.

That’s why President-elect Obama needs to waste no time in harnessing this feeling and ask something of us. We’ll spend. We’ll save. We’ll do laps. We’ll wear sweaters.

My parents are a part of the “Greatest Generation.” They pulled our nation through the Depression and World War II, and when they heard the call, they collected rubber.

My generation rode out the Beanie Baby crash, ran up both credit card debt and the nation’s weight, and brought us reality TV and the SUV, but it’s not all we can do. We’ve grown up collecting box tops and shoes. We’ve earned free doughnuts by getting our cards punched with every dozen purchased. We’re the “a-thon” generation. We’ve jogged, walked and pedaled thousands of miles because someone said it would cure cancer.

It’s our turn now. Just ask us. We’ve adopted freeways and been up all night with night feedings. We’ll bring an unwrapped gift. We’ll bring canned goods. We’ll collect flip-tops. Yes, we will.

What do you need us to do, President-elect Obama? We could form a bucket brigade to bail out the banks. We could collect Band-Aids, not the useless little ones, for the health care system. We could take shifts forming human pyramids to hold up our crumbling bridges.

The entire country could hold a progressive dinner party to feed the homeless. We could all commit to wearing the same clothes two days in a row to save water, energy and time. I’ll go three, because I care more than the others. We can carry road-mending materials in our cars and fill pot holes during traffic jams. We can put a wishing well on Wall Street.

Our leadership has told us that we have a long, hard climb before us, which I would welcome, because I love the outdoors, and I could use the weight loss, but I have a bad feeling it has nothing to do with climbing.

I’m waiting. I’m punching my glove. It’s oiled and ready. Pitch it in here, sir.

Commentator and comedian Paula Poundstone is a regular on NPR’s game show Wait Wait Don’t ... Tell Me!

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And more from the celebrity world, although unrelated.  I know you’ve all been waiting for David Archuleta’s album debut, admit it.  Okay, don’t.  I liked him for the first few weeks of AI, and then after that, every time I heard him sing or even just looked at him, I saw a dude struggling for breath.  Don’t you just want to shake him to make him breathe properly?  Oh, just me?

Saturday, November 01, 2008

early morning

Happy 1st Day of National Blog Posting Month (and belated day o’ ghouls)

We met this one in line at the Centennial Hills Target (I’m being extra descriptive, just in case she’s trying to do a search for herself) - she was headless at the time, so we followed her to her truck, and asked her to put her head on.  Then, trying to stay true to herself, as a biker chick troll, she flipped me off.  Leigh-Ann took another picture using the troll’s phone, and then off we went on our separate ways, never to meet again...probably.  Oh, and I think, but am not positive, that she thought we were checking out her ass.  Neither one of us completely understood what she said, but we were already on our way back to our car by then, so we just “UH UH, no wayed” and went to Taco Bell to try the new volcano taco.  Meh, the regular tacos with hot sauce are better.  The new triple berries & creme drink, however, was delicious.  A delicious dinner (with a leftover burrito yet) for under eight bucks.  Halloween sure is exciting around here.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

late at night

Filthy, filthy earworms

I have dirty lyrics of Liz Phair’s cycling through my head.  “Rock...me...all...night” “I am looking good and I’m feeling nice.  Baby, you’re the best magazine advice. (ack!)” Clearly it’s time to rotate out the Liz Phair cd in the car.  It’s kind of funny that when we decided to listen to cds for a while, what got loaded up was the Parents’ Advisory Council’s listening nightmare - P!nk & Liz Phair.  I’m generally not a lyric listener, but both Pink & Liz Phair kind of force you to listen to their lyrics.  Which reminds me, Leigh-Ann found me the new P!nk album being leaked on MTV.  Yay!  I’m sure that the rest of you cool kids already knew about The Leak, but it’s new to me.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

late afternoon

RIP Pinto

Pinto, one of the cats we rescued from the Henderson Animal Shelter last year, died this morning.  His previous owners - hey, people, if you’re searching the internet and you lived in Henderson and dumped your elderly cats named Pinto & Shiner at the Henderson Nevada Animal Shelter in late 2007 - you’re awful people, awful parents, and you didn’t deserve the affection these cats probably had toward you, because you dumped them knowing that no one would want to adopt 14 & 15 year old scroungy looking cats.  You didn’t even take good care of them before you dumped them - they had to be shaved because they were so full of mats.  Your phony tears and crappy excuses of how you couldn’t keep them even one more day, which cost us $200, but “loved them” so much, was just worthless b.s.  Not once did you ever call to see what happened to them.

Here’s what happened to them.  Firstly, we changed Shiner’s name because it was dumb, and the only thing that sounded close enough, that we could think of, was Skyler.  So, from now on, the cats will be called Pinto & Skyler.  Anyway, because the owners were such jerks, we had to spend three hours in rush hour traffic (roundtrip) to save their cats, because they wouldn’t hang onto them one more day, when we would be out in that area.  So, three hours in traffic, $200 to the shelter to get them out, and the trip home in a car smelling of terrified cat pee.  These poor cats went from having a home their whole lives, to be unceremoniously dumped at the noisy shelter, to being picked up by strangers, to going to stay for a couple of days at a strange (ours) vet’s office.  The cats looked so gross that they both had to be shaved.  Skyler was so terrified that he bit the tech who was shaving him.  Then, finally, we took them home to be quarantined in our guest bedroom.  Pinto was sick from being at the shelter (and from the stress, we discovered), so he couldn’t be near any of our other cats.

Finally, after months of meds, good food, and attention, they turned into beautiful cats who groomed themselves and they were happy.  Unfortunately, Pinto still reacted to any sort of stress by getting sick (neon green snot, blech), and a couple of weeks ago when our air conditioner died, he didn’t handle it very well.  It was only a day and a half before my parents helped out and got us a new a/c unit, but Pinto never fully recovered.  The rest of us felt lousy for days after that (it got up to 100 degrees in a couple of rooms in the house), but poor Pinto took it harder.  We were gone for a few days this week, which may have also contributed to the little guy’s (he weighed maybe 6-7 pounds) stress.  He stopped eating & drinking for a day, so we took him to the vet yesterday and got some antibiotics.  Leigh-Ann gave him his pill, some sub-Q fluids and a few bites of food.  Unfortunately, about five hours later (it was late & we went to bed) when she went to check on him, he’d already died.  I’m happy that he had a better life with us, but sad that we could never adopt he and Skyler out to a nice family, so they could live out their lives like regular cats.  But, no one wants an elderly cat that’s going to cover their walls with snot - not even us, but we put up with it.  We’ll scrape and repaint now.  We’ll also try to integrate Skyler with the rest of the cats.  He’s healthy, adorable (he’s tiny, but long-haired) and he doesn’t seem to be afraid of the dogs.  We put in him the master bedroom with Phoenix & Cricket while Leigh-Ann was getting Pinto ready to be dropped off at the vet’s to be cremated, and while he ran from the obnoxious Cricket (she’s annoying with a new cat for about 24 hours, then she either ignores them or wants to play with them), he didn’t seem afraid of her.  Perhaps we can find someone who wants to adopt him, but in the meantime, he’s doing okay.

Man, what an exhausting week.  Oh, and to top it all off, Cricket has diarrhea from some new food.  She doesn’t react too well to change, but I was out of her regular stuff and rather than make some, I thought I’d try some of the new raw food we got.  Phoenix loved the rabbit (poor bunnies), and Cricket seemed to really like it too, but her system said, “No rabbit, chicken.” It’s not too much of a surprise because we can’t give the dogs beef either.  So, chicken it is...and the big dogs score more meat.  Anyway, need to nap...for like a month.

Here are pictures of Pinto and Skyler.  They actually looked much better than this - these were pictures from early on.  We’ll get some new pictures of Skyler up soon.