Insomnia

This is pretty much how I feel this morning. I have been awake since 2:30 a.m. I got up at 3:00 and started on the computer. Mostly work stuff. I had Thursday and Friday off. Thursday there were a few filter issues and I am responding to them today. Get out of my way.

I added some links to our Tech web page for the new filter and I am raring to go. Except for this cough. I have discovered that holding my stomach while coughing helps me a bit. At least the headaches seem to be gone for now.

My daughter has run the gamut on this one before. She said "You have this now? Okay, this stage is next." And she is spot on. Now comes the drainage. As if the dry hacking cough didn't do enough to rip out my throat and break my ribs, now the coughing and sputtering.

At least I can go into the office today with very few people working. Most have the day off. I will probably take my Clorox wipes with me and wipe down the phone, door knobs, the mouse, the keyboard, the microwave handle - all things I touch today.

I slept most of the day away yesterday. It was beautiful outside. I did manage to get a chair and let the sun beat down on me for about 15 minutes and get some fresh air into my lungs. It was quite heavenly. I had let the inside house temperature soar to 74º Fahrenheit. I immediately opened windows and doors and turned the fans on to cool it down and get the stale air out.

I am very short of breath with this cough. It is the kind where you start a slow panic when you can't get your breath. I would hate to suffocate. When I get short of breath I have to sit down and have a fan blowing directly into my face or I begin to get light headed and my limbs begin to turn to jell-o.

I don't know if you know what I mean by that feeling, but it is very unnerving. It makes me start to panic and I have to give myself a mental shake and remind myself to breath. Just breath. I can only imagine this is what it must feel like to be asthmatic.

There. I have regained some of my useless babble for the blog. Nonsensical stuff that gives me the chance to purge. Now that it is time to feed the critters and get into the shower, NOW is the time I would like to go back to sleep.

Ouch. One of my cats just nailed me a good one. She is impatient. She knows it is her feeding time and she stretched up and clawed my leg a good one. It hurt and I brushed her off. She got pissed and ran over under the table hissing at me. Hissing! I turned my chair around and glared at her. She glared back. Oh, she is a stinker that one.

Now, she has jumped up on my computer tower under my desk and I reach down to pet her and we are fine again. She licks my hand as if saying "Sorry."  I re-assure her and say "I know, I will feed you soon." I pet her some more and she is soft and furry and ...OUCH!! The damn thing bit me.

Wake me when it's over

Or when it's dinner time. Whichever comes first.  My cat seems to be  hiding from the cold spell. I would too, but duty calls. Yes, a lot of schools closed but most of them in my area released early on Monday, closed Tuesday and are starting late today.

We have a balmy 8º Fahrenheit this morning. That is outside. Hell, I remember when the kitchen in my house was a balmy 8º.  Not a lie. I was using the refrigerator thermometer on the kitchen counter. January 1983, I believe.

I have been reading books I received for Christmas and was shocked to find that I have not read my blog list in days! Yikes. So many are writing such thought-provoking posts, too. I don't have time to go over all of them this morning and I want to research what they are saying and reply but time has run out.

Even though the schools are on a delay this morning, I need to get into the office a.s.a.p. I have  a tech set up to call me at exactly 10 o'clock (our time).

One tech came to work on equipment at 2:30 Monday afternoon and did not leave until 6 p.m. That was the day the temperature dropped all day and it was 13º outside. I wanted to go home and stay there. I don't know what took him so long (he didn't say). Usually they only take an hour to do this job. Ugh!

Teton in a drawer

Leave any drawer open and Teton finds her way inside.

One time I was shopping at wallet-mart and my daughter's beau called to tell me he found her inside the bathroom drawer. I guess I had accidentally shut her up in there (she must have crawled to the back) and when he used the bathroom heard her inside the drawer. Oops.

Stress level high

I went to a garden card party.

It is important that I keep doing my regularly scheduled activities whilst going through this maddening time in my life. I had already paid for and planned an evening after work (with some of my co-workers) to make cards. One co-worker goes to church with a lady who has been doing this card making for over 15 years. It sort of reminds me of scrap booking.

Note: the ladies I do things with in this circumstance are not my "real" co-workers. I am housed at a building 60 miles away from my home office. They are all in education, too - they are secretaries, payroll clerks and Early childhood development workers etc.. They are the ones I see on a daily basis and I love and get along with them all well. We go to dinner together every month. There can be anywhere from four of us to fifteen.

Last evening as I am finishing up some work on the computer (work? yeah right - who am I kidding? I was playing a game to unwind). Anyhoo - my daughter was out for the evening and I knew I was alone in the house. No lie. I was tapped on my right elbow five times. Just like somebody took a finger and tapped me five full times!

In that split second of thought, all I could wrap my head around was that I knew I was alone in the house and who in the hell did that! I knew that I did not sense a being standing beside me - so again - in that split second when your brain races I thought it must be a really small person. It is incredible how many things the brain can think in a nano second, isn't it?

I jerked my head around and something came out of my mouth. I am not sure what. There walked away my smug female cat. She can (at times) stretch herself up and pat me on the arm. She usually does it at feeding time and never five times. Usually once or twice.

I am fairly certain I heard her giggle and mutter something about paybacks.

The little beyotch.

Snug

Here is Moose sleeping snugly in some boxes. Photo from February 2012.

Sugar cat

I decided today to just post a random photo from my collection. My cat Moose is hiding behind a container that is no longer used to hold sugar. I would not let my pets near food!

I had a CD tower of 100 CD's and it fell on the floor and broke. I immediately grabbed the first thing I could find to house the CD's so that they would stay on the spindle. Hence the empty sugar container.

I don't know if Moose is camera shy or cleaning her chin fur or trying to keep her nose warm.

I talk to socks and I pet pillows

Okay. This photo was lifted off the Internets. I "googled" socks and pillows and found this. Not at all related to my post but the picture made me go "What the heck?"  The story behind this picture is about a lady who liked to bury her feet in her pillows to keep them warm. So, she just found a way to put socks into a pillow. Ooooo-kay!

Now, on to my post. I DO talk to socks. I DO pet pillows. Not out of sheer insanity. When you have as many pets as I do and you are a migraine sufferer - you may find yourself doing this too. I do not turn many lights on in the wee hours of the morning because of photo sensitivity. It hurts. It causes headaches. Most of the time I find my way through the house in the dark.

As I pass by a cat sleeping on the arm of a chair, I will reach out and give it a soft pet as I go by. Well, sometimes in the wee hours of the morning (or even in the evening) I will reach out to give a soft pet to....yep. A pillow. Rats!

The other day I left my bedroom door open and as I walked in to do something, I saw (what I thought was) a cat's tail peeking out behind my door, and snapped "Get OUT of my room!"  The black sock did not budge. It just looked up at me and seemed to say "Make me."

Yep. There you have it. A snapshot for you of life in my zoo.

A Moose

Once in a while when I sit in my TV chair to watch a show or a movie, a cat will sit up by my head on the back of the chair. Usually there is one on the right arm of the chair and another on the left arm. 

When Moose sits up on the back of my chair, she smacks me in the head with her tail. Constantly. Besides being a heavy tail and the "whack" feeling, she creates a pretty cold breeze with her fluffy tail.

Not really sure if she is mad, perturbed or just trying to get my goat. One thing is for certain. She makes her presence known.

Do you have any pets that "talk" to you?

What is residing in your living room furniture?

This is my nephew's cat and chair. Not mine. I loved this photo.

The ear ache started yesterday. Advil helps the best. The rain is pouring. I know "You don't have to shovel rain", but I am not sure I would shovel the snow either. I would just walk and drive right over it. Big whoop. It's snow. It's natural. Leave it alone.

I also am getting a sore throat. I woke up at 1:30 a.m. after going to bed at 10:30. WTF?! I am on my second cup of coffee and just about ready to go back to bed. It is 3:40 a.m.

Should I take the antibiotics the dentist prescribed for me? Is an infection of the tooth that is splitting causing the ear ache? Should I wait two days to see if the ear ache goes away on its own? Hah! Then it is Christmas day and I could possibly spend the day in misery.

Decisions, decisions.

On a side note. I work in an office where some of the employees are school psychologists. One guy told me that the way to test to see if you have ADHD is if you do not respond to caffeine. My second cup of coffee and I think I can sleep better than without it. Huh. Who knew?

Really?!

My small circle of the family exchange gifts. We have taken the magic out and just given lists. We have even fine tuned it so that we send pictures and links to show the gift giver exactly what we want. No surprises. Except there is an occasional surprise and always one that brings out a good laugh.

This is a time for us to browse and just pick things that we usually would not buy for ourselves or some items we can never seem to remember to get.

Included in my list, I chose a cell phone charger organizer. At one time or another the family that stays over usually needs to charge their electronics at some point during their stay. Cords and chargers often get left behind as they usually pick an electrical outlet located behind a couch, stand or chair.

I came across the above item. This is definitely a gift you would not want to give cat owners. My cats would either a) try to eat the grass or (worse)  b) pee in it. Probably both.

As I was browsing Amazon for possible selections, I checked the technical details of the one pictured above.  I think they have the wrong product.

Technical Details

• Features -
• Create your Scenes - Use powerful tools with thousands of stickers, brushes, textures, elements, animating objects, and more to create each scene any way you like; dynamic tools bring your scene to life
• Unlock a World of Play - In a game powered by your imagination that rewards you for being creative, unlock new tools, objects, fun challenges, and more
• Experiment with Fun Challenges - Over 100 challenges to spark your imagination; use your creativity in each scene to power-up your play and unlock new hidden areas; experiment with objects and effects to create simple, challenging, or even crazy solutions
• Fun for the Whole Family - A unique experience that's fun and easy for anyone to pick up and play

LOL!

By the way, my fog lifted as soon as I published yesterday's post. Just writing that stuff down seemed to purge it out of me and I was pretty good the rest of the day.

Some minor aches this morning, but nothing like yesterday. Perhaps I can put off seeing the doctor for another month or two.  ;)

Well, the fog lifted until my cats knocked something over just before I started this post and when I turned to see what happened, I spilled my coffee. It is nice to know that if I ever need to, I can use coffee to clean my wood floor. It gives it a nice, shiny sheen. Groan.

Sable's good side

Here is our Sable without the white markings. They are on the other side. You can see a wee bit on her back. Nobody knows what caused the hair loss or white hairs. Stress - mange. No vet could tell me. The white hairs are very wiry. The patches of skin are dark and dry. We have had her for 8 years and she has had those markings the entire time. I am thinking she may have been traumatized when she was a younger dog.

Still no Jasper. I would think the vet would have some kind of answer/solution for me by now. I am beginning to doubt her. The only thing she says/does is put the catheter in - take it out. Jasper does not pee on his own so she puts it back in to empty his bladder. Poor kitty.

Movies - Water for Elephants. Eh. I do not care for R. Pattinson. It is true, I have never watched any of the Twilight series. I do not care for Harry Potter or LOTR, either. Whew. There! I said it. I love Star Wars  - does that count for anything? Then again, only the first three. I never watched the later ones. Sigh. Back to being a square. I did not like C. Waltz. I can barely tolerate Witherspoon.Water for Elephants was rated very high. I doubt that I will ever watch it again. Movies with animal and woman abuse turn me cold.

Sweet Jasper

My cat, Jasper is in the hospital. I came home from work Wed. and saw little bloody cat paw prints all over my kitchen floor. I remember when I got out of the shower that morning he was sitting on the bath mat waiting for me. Our other cat, Mr. Tibbs was about four feet away and I thought they were dueling. Jasper can fight, but he prefers to walk away.

The vet was closing when I called Wed. He was walking around and drinking water so I made the first appointment I could on Thursday morning. The vet said it was his bladder. He was urinating blood. She said she would have to empty the bladder asap. She would leave a catheter in for two days and if he peed on his own the third day I could take him home.

She said it was serious.

Establishing dominance

Sable really had to work to keep her reign as the King of the Hill. Belle really made her work for it.I love how our kitty Moose is hiding in the background.

This is the German Shepherd at maybe eight months? Sable comes in at 105 lbs. This Shepherd still has a lot of growing to do. She is SO long.

This is the best pic I got of her. All other pics came out as a blur.

How much longer?

My boxer, Slade seems to be saying "Mom, when does she go? This monstrosity of a canine - what do you call her - a German Shepherd? When does she go? She is too big, too noisy, too rambunctious and she vies for all  your attention!"

She pushes every other dog away. That's right. I have five dogs in my house this week-end. My old gal (barrel dog) Sable. The boxer, Slade. My two little rescues, Cheech and Chong. And this young pup, Belle. She is maybe 8 months old and she is a small horse. No, horses are sturdy. She is thin and long. More like a deer. Long legs, bounces around and her tail is heavy and huge. She knocks everything over. Water goes everywhere. She does not sulk. She bounces right back if I reprimand her.

She seems to love the cats. She tries so hard to be their friends. The older two cats were her friends right away. The other three are curious but keep their distance. She however, wants so badly to smell them and get to know them better.

My boxer has had obedience training. That is obvious when I walk him on a leash. I tried to tell my daughter and her beau to get this Shepherd into training. They have not. She pulls my arm out of my socket when I walk her. I did not take the little terrier mixes in because I can handle them. They are under 40 pounds each. But this shepherd. OMG. She is more than a handful. She should be trained. Maybe I'll pay for the training or take her myself. For my daughter's sake.

Broken

When I purchased my house, I purchased new furniture. I splurged on two blue "cone-shaped" lamps in a beautiful neon blue. I have had those lamps for nine years. I am down by one.

One cat is down one of her nine lives.

Is it too late to ask for my carpet back?

The lamp happened to be on at the time, too. It not only made a big noise but flashed the entire room up like lightning. 

The cat? She high tailed it for the basement and did not show herself for hours. Good thing her self preservation and primal instinct kicked in.

You will need your tissues for this one:  Like Dandelion Dust. Stars B Pepper (ugly as sin but a great actor) and Mira Sorvino. Also with one of my favorites C Hauser and newcomer (to the big screen) K Levering. Seen her before? Yes, in "Drop Dead Diva".  Darn it! I just got P Wilson mixed up with C Hauser. I could have sworn it was C Hauser in "Morning Glory" with R McAdams. Yeesh!

Tacky!

Well, the fellas had moved all the furniture to one side of the room. After stirring (very thick stuff, very hard to mix) the primer, I poured some into the flimsy paint holder I purchased. And to think this was the stronger one! It bent every which way and I thought for sure I was going to have a huge mess. 

I placed the roller in and began to apply the primer. This ain't so bad, I thought. The cats were all still in the basement and the dogs were tied outside. I moved along rather quickly. I painted all one way and got as close to the furniture as I could so that when it dried I didn't have much left to do on the other side.

At exactly 4:55 p.m. it became quite evident to me that one gallon of primer was not going to do it. In a small panic mode I wondered what time that lumber place closed. It was a small local business and was only a few blocks from where I live.

I threw the dogs into the garage - not an easy feat as they remembered what happens when they go in there and I drove off like a mad woman. Whew. I made it in time and purchased another $30 can of primer.

I sat my tools down and waited for the first half to dry. The smell - my God, the smell! I had forgotten how paint fumes bother me. My lungs hurt, my head hurt. One cat had escaped. Teton is the reason for the paw prints above. She was in full panic mode. It was like she came up from the basement and her entire world had changed. She acted like WTF?

She scurried here and there getting paw prints all over the place. I realized it didn't matter what it looked like since the floor was going to go over top of it all, but I wondered about the paint on her paws. By this time the smell was becoming overwhelming. Well, I knew what I had to do. Experience taught me what I had to do. The A/C had to be shut off and doors and windows had to be opened.

Oh, it was hot outside. There was a storm brewing and the humidity was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

For the newer readers, let me take you back a couple of years. Okay, here. It was not hard to find. It was July  16th, 2006. You have to ventilate when you paint (which I knew but 90 degrees is hot, you know?!). We had been re-doing my daughters' bedroom and the polyurethane smell was overwhelming.

Back to my primer. I sat in the back bedroom on the computer and noticed that my chest was hurting. Dammit, I thought. I better not get pleurisy out of this mess. I have had pleurisy several times and it has always involved water - but this sure felt like it. The paint fumes were causing my left lung to hurt. After a while it dissipated.

I began checking the floor after forty minutes. Tacky, tacky, tacky! The weather was very close outside. Sultry (to quote Momma from the train).

I had left an area where I could get to the bathroom and walk to the kitchen. I said "Screw it!" and let the dogs in. I let the cats out of the basement and fed them. I packed my stuff and got in my car and left to meet my daughter and her beau for dinner. My head hurt, my back hurt and I was in a mood. The paint fumes had turned me into a crazy woman like somebody on a  bad drug trip. I snapped at my daughter and I yakked and yakked. I explained to them that I was under the influence (of paint fumes) and not to pay any attention to what came out of my mouth.

The reason I was over there? They got a new puppy. Puppy is an understatement. This is a female German shepherd. She was (at 8 weeks) almost as big as Cheech and Chong. Her paws are HUGE! I took a couple of pictures and after a while the paint buzz wore off. How do kids sniff glue? This is not fun. This is horrible! My head  hurt a little less and at ten o'clock I headed back home. I had already decided I would paint the rest of the room tonight.

I got home and the primer was still a bit tacky in places. Oh well, I thought. It has to be done. Moving the huge organ was the hardest part. It scraped across the floor and left the long strips where it removed the primer. I didn't give a sh!t by this time. I have no memory of where the cats were and the dogs. That is weird. They had to be in the house with me as at this time of night I would not leave the dogs outside.  Oh, the dogs were laying in the kitchen by the back door and the cats were just scared to come into the room, I guess.

I retired to the back bedroom and the computer again to deal yet again with a hurt lung and the overwhelming fumes. The boxer came in after a while and his paw prints are all over the back bedroom floor. Big white paw prints. Did I care? Not at this time, no. I just wanted it all to be over with. I had taken Advil and just wanted to go to bed. I waited a while to make sure the pets did not go ballilstic and I left all doors and windows open and went to bed.

I awoke early (the guys would be here at nine) and began the prep for them. At 8:30 I again threw the cats into the basement. Now, cats are not all that stupid. They knew what was coming. I never did find Moose. I think she hid in my bedroom (for over 18 hours! Nice.) The others fought me like a banshee. I managed to get very few scratches on my arms. The dogs were tied outside. I took my reading glasses, cell phone and a puzzle book outside. 

Oh, it was beautiful out. They came. The put the floor in. These guys worked from 9:30 to 5:30 with one half hour lunch break. They worked hard. 

This all has a happy ending, folks. For once. No catastrophe this time. Very unusual for me. It just goes to show you that nothing goes smoothly. There is always a speed bump or two and I can sit back and laugh about it (as long as I have Advil).

I am working up quite a thirst for Saturday, though. I can tell  you that.

It should be interesting. The guy my daughter is living with works until 5. The other fellow is coming to the party. All invites were issued before this love triangle developed although as I look back I should have seen it developing over the past few months. I am NOT a fan of Jerry Springer. My sisters will be alerted that should I appear as if I am going to rip somebody's head off (which I have done or attempted to do before - while SOBER!) they are to interfere. 

I like the fireworks to remain in the sky.

Believe it or not!

My couch pooped out a cat. Seriously. It did! I was cleaning before the floor guys arrived and was putting all my cats away (in the basement).  Hmmm. One not accounted for. Moose. Where is Moose? Ah, Moose is always sleeping/hiding in the couch. I lifted the back of the couch straight up and out plopped a cat. So, my couch pooped out a cat.

Well, I could say my couch pooped out a Moose, but nobody would believe that!

This cat....

....is going to hurt me someday. And I don't mean his claws. He has that uncanny knack of sensing and then moving in every direction my feet aim to go. Do you have a cat or cats like this? I swear they are psychic in this area. I go to walk around them or over them or past them and they know just where my foot is going to land and then they make sure they are occupying the same exact spot!

It is a well-known fact in physics that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Is this the Pauli exclusion principle? 

Anyway, my cat is out to kill me. Or at least maim me.

I finished reading my first book.  Are you there Vodka? it's me, Chelsea. She is a bit crude but I like her. I catch her show now and again "Chelsea Lately".

I will be moving on to Carrie Fisher's "Wishful Drinking".

You all know what I am doing, right? I am stalling. As usual before my big party. I need to do a million things and I am (of course) stalling. Sigh. I notice that I am getting more adept at stalling every year. The idea of this post came when I went to refill my coffee cup and Casper nearly caused me to end up on the floor. Well, I did not have any recent photos of him so I had to go back into my photo files and well, you know. I spent at the very least two hours there reminiscing. Sheesh.

What a pair

They came as a pair. Mr. Tibbs on the left and Teton on the right.

Amazing

Even looking at a picture of a yawn can make me yawn. Well, "yawn" this is how boring my week is. How many of you yawned just now? Hell, I'm still yawning. Migraine today but medicine nipped it. Guess I'll retire.