Friday Cats Blogging

Garden 2016 Update 4

Thursday, before I walked the dog and before I went to the demonstration, I got the rest of my tomatoes in the ground! I ordered some sauce varieties from Burpee and they will go nicely with the fancy varieties I bought in town. I think I'm going to put two more plants where the two sad, dead celery roots were planted - but I think I'm going to replace them with pepper plants.

I have some real neato varieties of peppers, but a couple of just plain green sweet pepper won't hurt a bit.

Now, it is pouring rain and my plants are just splashing around like baby ducks. I just noticed the really odd noise I was hearing was really hard rain. Really hard rain. I'm not hoping that maybe my plants are like baby ducks wearing hard hats.

Its raining very hard and disrupting my show. So not al right! Deep Breaths. Instead of images of frozen satellite images, I need to concentrate on this image

Air Horn Orchestra Week 3

This week we had the added fun of getting to perform for the guests gathered in the yard at the Lt. Governor's home! SOme people had more desire to be arrested then others, although, no one actually was. It did get the police a little agitated and I wasn't interested in that, so I stayed on the safe side of the street. I didn't really want to get my picture taken by the 1% anyway. 

This is a roll of toliet paper printed with HB2, it was going to be delivered to McCrory

Mowed Over

I came home and noticed the vacant house across the street was having its yard mowed. I was being Neighbor Shamed by a vacant house.

I came inside and sulked a bit. I really wanted to  not mow the yard, even though at lunch I had decided that I was going to mow it, a few more hours of work made me change my mind about doing additional labor. Now I had to mow the yard today. Now.

The front yard was first up, its the most visible and if nothing else got accomplished, my front yard was going to get mowed. It wasn't as bad as I had thought and about half the weeds were in pretty good shape. I did learn that my beloved yellow extension cord might be ready for retirement, it kept popping loose from the plug on the machine and I kept having to stop and mess with it and that really did not help my mowing vibe at all, I love that extension cord as much as you can love an extension cord and it makes me sad that it may have come to the end of its working life. It may have become over extended, poor dear. I'll have to shoot it like an old horse

Now back yard looked even more awful by comparison, and that it needed to be done as well. Now. Really should have been done a week ago. I move some things around and got down to it. I'm mowing away and I go to mow a new section, a section I have mowed before this season already with not problem. There is wooden base of a planter that has been laying there for a year I used it as a flat platform for the sprinkler last season and it was fine.

What I did not count on was the addition a baby snake under it. The snakes tiny body raised it just enough to introduce it to my mowers blade ( no snakes were harmed). It was a short but passionate encounter. I immediately flipped the mower over and saw that this had the potential to be a big problem. I also saw that I needed to unplug the machine right now before I did anything more advanced than studying the situation because I really wanted to mess with it, and  any success, could be an even more huge problem.

I  hastily unplugged the mower  and tried  unsuccessfully to pry the piece out, in fact, I  may forced the two objects into a deeper embrace. I thought that I was going o have to get the blade off the machine because banging on the wood and spinning it around was not working or helping the situation. I still liked the banging idea though, it had merit. And was very satisfying.

Onto the basement where I got my mallet and my ratchet set, to remove the blade if it came to that. I took them back upstairs to see how our patients were doing. Still together, how cute. I tried again to shift it, now armed with a better tool and lo and behold, success!

Broke those two up like the  last act of a Shakespeare play! I disposed of the wood, put my tools back and returned to my job. I even mowed the fallow garden, which had fallowed itself into being huge eyesore. Due to my hard work, it is now only a mid-sized eyesore.

It was while I was pulling some tall grass from the fence that tragedy struck : In the overgrown weeds, I found a very dead rat. A very dead, very big rat. At first I thought it was a squirrel, but its tail told the tale. A Very Big Rat.

I went back to the rest of the yard and tried to pretend that it didn't happen. I finished up, put the mower away, distributed the lawn trimmings and went inside the bleach my entire body.

My yards look nice. I'm thinking of getting some bedding plants and filling my hanging baskets from last season. And never, ever going into the fallow garden again without a flamethrower.

Monday

I don't have much to say, except, I took a shower Sunday night with Little Kitty.

Think on the cuteness! I was getting ready to get my shower on and the kitty was in the room., I got ready to close the door and the kitty wouldn't leave. I said "Look kitty, I'm going to take a shower, its going to get very different in here. I'm going to turn on the tap and it will be a whole new world. I don't think you are going to want to experience it."

But he stayed! I looked down and he was hanging out on the edge of the rub between the plastic curtain and the shower curtain and he just wandered back and forth the whole time! So cute! I don't have any pictures of course, because even I don't bring my camera into the shower. Just think: The cutest thing ever.

Monday night instead of writing a real entry I went to Target and Dicks searching for an air horn. I found on at Dicks as well as a life guard whistle. This time I bought a big girl air horn, none of that  cute little air horn business, the  new one has lasting power. Note to self, bring work gloves because the bigger the air horn the more of your hand will end up with frost bite.

 I forgot to go to Party City over the weekend and that was a mistake. An expensive mistake! Party City will sell me a manual air horn that is cheaper and lasts indefinitely. Note to self : PARTY CITY BITCH .

One of my baby celery root plants has already died. It was too young and too wee and I;m not entirely surprised. The rest seem to be okay, so far. Let us pray.

Garden Update 2016 4

Saturday Rocket and I went to the NC State Vets School annual open house and couldn't find anywhere to park in the parking garage and ended up getting more exercise than I had planned on. Rocket was also one of three dogs on site.

We've gone every year for several years and it's been very dog oriented but this year they seemed to have shifted the focus to the large animal side of vet practice. There were a lot more horses and cows there than in years past. If I wanted to shell out the $3, I could have milked a cow - which I would be kind of excited to do but I had Rocket and it wasn't an option. I did get to gawk at the mini-horses and that was very fun. Rocket showed off by easily making a clean jump over a jump they had set up for a demonstration for the horses. My big  dog was better at it than their little horses.

Then we went to Dix and wandered around and had a good time and came home and rested up and ate dinner and then we walked downtown and visited a festival on Fayetteville Street, drunk people are huge admirers of weims and of Rocket in particular. We had a good time and made my Fitbit very happy.

Sunday, I picked up part 1 of my veggies. They are very nice plants, they are also very young, very small plants and that is a little concerning for me as the wee plants get eaten and can't recover. I bought the plants from a  very groovy, very granola couple who raised the plants in in pristine organic environment and I hit them with a heavy duty pesticide about three seconds after I got them in the ground. Welcome home babies!

Celery root

 Celery root planted

 Peppers planted

Canary Bell x1 Corno Di Tora Giallo x1 Etuda Pepper x1 Jimmy Nardello x1 Quadrato D'as ti Ross X1 World Beater Sweet pepper x1 Midnight dreams x1

Peppers and Tomatoes

Tomatoes planted

Amazon Chocolate x1 Cherokee Purple x1 Paul Robeson x2 Italian Heirloom x1

I also planted container corn and probably too much spaghetti squash in between the peppers and tomatoes. Next weekend I'm expecting some paste tomatoes, the other ones are mostly slicing varieties.I'm going to get more run of the mill pepper varieties from Home Depot. Yay for this years harvest!!!

Buddies

Friday Cats Blogging

The disapprove of HB2. They blame Republicans, fearful idiots and squirrels,

Airhorn orchestra Week 2

I joined the airhorn orchestra for its second performance for the Governor.

I think there were a few new faces and new instruments. We have also collectively learned that the airhorns we used last week were lame and gave (some) of us frost bite! We spent the week thinking about what we want to use and many of us learned that most airhorns are kind of a bummer.

They don't last hardly any time at all and that really sucks, its no fun to just blow and go, you want to stand there for a good while and not just  BWEEEP and then go all flacid, its not a good message - you want something that is going to wail for a good while. This week there were a few trumpets, a coronet, a couple of vuvuzelas and many manual airhorns.  I need one. I used the piercing sound app from my phone, but it was unsatisfying. I knew it was  working, but it wasn't making enough sound! I need something like the alarm on my sump pump. It was truly vile and the loudest thing I have ever experienced.

Sadly, it is not mobile and I think I killed it anyway because it was so loud it was going to make me crazy and it was it or me and I am bigger and have access to tools . It needed a car battery to function anyway and I couldn't lug that whole thing around, I'm not that dedicated. So,  I need something else, something smaller and lighter and loud as hell.

I'm thinking a manual air horn, or a vuvuzela or maybe a used trumpet. Trumpets are really loud and worked great. I think they want us to use airhorns though because we are the Airhorn Orchestra after all. I'm going to go to Party City and check out the noise maker selection.

I have pictures but for whatever reason they aren't uploading to the cloud like they are supposed to. I'll post them later.

For whatever reason, this didn't post as planned. So, now its going to be for Friday and it has the few pictures I took at the demonstration, plus a couple of others.

And then I went to Wallyworld.  On the way I saw this

And at Wally, I bought these,

Tuesday

I complained to many different places and spoke to an actual person. Its about waiting now. Waiting and stewing.

I dropped Rocket off at daycare this morning for the first time over a month! We both missed those guys, Rocket now knows the building and was so excited to be there. It took him until we got into the parking lot before he began to get barky, but he knew where he was.  When I took him to the other location he would start barking when we were still a few minutes out. I am hoping to take him there more because they are in the planning stages of starting a pick up/ drop off service! This is key for Rocket going more often.

My elbow, despite being drained like a pond, is still fluffy. Its less fluffy than it was, but its filling again, slowly. The thing that is bothering me though, bursitis is supposed to hurt and my elbow and the fluffiness doesn't - it hurts where they hovered around with a knitting needle, but on its own, it doesn't hurt. I also hate all kinds of compression sleeves.

No one ever suggested a SMBD arrangement along the way and thats good because I am not into bondage at all! I'm also not into pain or being ordered around but I think my general non-compliance with the whole keep-the-compression-sleeve-on-all-the-time-except-when-bathing thing speaks to my disinterest in the BD part. I guess its a good thing to know about yourself.

Hillary just won New York! Yay! Suck it Gawker! So in the tank for Sanders! Go Hillary!!!!!

CVS is back on my list- my Bad Customer Service list

Remember when I wrote all those ugly  things about CVS? Well,they are making a come back. Those SOBs are trying to screw me again. When we last met, we had settled in $29- which was totally fine, I was willing to pay that moving forward.

And then I went in to refill  the script again. This time it was $81! This is not okay. How much does it cost? $220, $29 or $81? It can't be a multiple choice question! You can't budget for "it's complicated".

I called my old friends, I left polite yet strongly worded messages on FB and again, I'm  waiting to hear back.  Really disappointed in the sub par customer  service again.

Garden Update 3 2016

At some point I'm going to to take delivery of my garden starters. It was supposed to be this weekend, but then it got cold and so the nursery people decided to hold the baby plants so they can get a little more grown and a little stronger and hopefully, it was also get warmer and the babies won't freeze to death. Burpee had always been shooting for next weekend.

So this weekend I had to get busy with the garden spaces. I had to get them tilled, the drip hoses down, the weed barrier installed and the irrigation figured out. Thats a lot.

The irrigation came together really fast, I'm suspicious, nothing leaked or exploded on contact with water pressure, or was backwards or had a huge hole in it or any of the other adventures with irrigation I've had in the past. Last year I just went with sprinklers to water the plants and it did not work out at all. I think I planted too many too close together and then the sprinklers kept everything wet and the wetness caused the fungus that decimated my harvest .

The drip hoses are really hard to work with and a pain to get set up and  they take hours to get down - however, they do the job really well and I appreciate them a lot more now then I did before my sprinkler experiment. They suck to get them down, they're expensive, they work againts you,  but in the long run, they are so much better for the garden.I'm going to be interested in how the new garden space is going to be and if it will do as well or better than the old garden space. I know it gets much better sun.

So. Gardens are ready to go, and I'm ready I'm just waiting for the plants. I all ready have seeds for my container corn and spaghetti squash .

Friday Cats Blogging

Wrapped up

Today I got my elbow drained. Very sexy.

They were not impressed by the 4ccs of fluid they pulled out, if they had me in to the office a week and a half ago when I called to tell them I needed to come in now, they would have gotten an impressive amount out. That was then.

They gave me a couple of ace wraps and its really, really hard to get them tight enough to be compression-y but not tight enough to cut off my circulation, as it did after they applied it. SO, I'm not sure how compliant I am going to be with this. But at least I have my elbow back and that is a happy thing for me.

Tell me what Democracy sounds like!

This is what Democracy sounds like

This is what Democracy looks like

Sporty

It rained all day and so no walk for Dog and I. Instead I went shopping and Dog got to spend some quality time in parking lots, which is almost as inspiring as a walk for him. It was a fulfilling evening for one and all.

I went to Big Lots and bought some bird seed for Tiny kitty and Ace because they  really like to watch birds and then I got a toy for Rocket because I felt bad about buying bird seed solely for the cats enjoyment and nothing for him. Because he knows and understands.

The next stop of the Tour Du Airhorn  took me to Dicks, where I finally managed to buy an air horn. Wally doesn't sell them or  did but didn't want me to buy one, Big Lots does not not sell them period and it was too late to get one from Amazon - although I could have and had it in two hours for free - I would have  had to spend $35 and that seems a lot for a thing I spent $9 for and got immediately - Three stores and two hours later invested in pursuit of said air horn. At least now I know where to buy one should I not  just buy the next one online, I have a baseline for price now at the very least. And they come in sizes, I didn't know that!  Well, you can buy "big" ones and "little" ones, I didn't see any middle sized ones. All or nothing I guess in the air horn game.

I went to the front and the clerk asked me what sport I was going to and I said I was going to the Governor's mansion to make noise and he said Oh, and then I said , holding up the air horn "This is what Democracy sounds like."  Because I am just that pretentious.

It finally stopped raining and I took Rocket for  a walk in the dark and it was nice.

Annoyed

Dear Wal-Mart Manager,

I was looking for an item. I couldn't find the item. By some miracle I ran across one of your Associates. I asked Your Associate where Item  would be. Your Associate did a game job looking for Item but couldn't find it. So he asked you. You sent me to another part of the store, I went to the other part of  the store and asked another Associate  about Item who told me he had never heard of such a thing. He was an idiot, I'm sure at your store he's a past Employee of the Month.

You could have prevented me running around Robin Hood's barn  and dealing with the Idiot for Item if you had bothered to look up Item. You suck. I ended up not getting everything I needed because I was so annoyed that I didn't want to through your store even more business. I had to go somewhere else and buy more stuff but not the Item. You suck.

No Love,

Me

R and R

I have to say. I appreciate  a weekend when I do a whole lot of nothing almost as much as I do a weekend where I do everything.

This weekend was a weekend where I got a whole lot of nothing done, I mean, I did laundry and dishes and vacuumed and put clothes away and puttered - but I didn't do any Jobs. I had none scheduled and I didn't find any work I thought needed doing.

Saturday it was very windy and cold and the dog was nuts and that was kind of the theme for the day, that was alleviated by my dad being in town and we hung out and had a nice dinner.

I am also up by two mice for the next little bit, they are quite and not bad house guest, thus far. I count them frequently. I have two cats and one dog and all of them love squeaky toys. Little kitty may be more of a hunter than his brothers and so I need to keep an eye on him and continue the mouse counts.

Sunday,  the wind had stopped and I kept up the no-hard-work policy I put into place on Saturday. I made pork tenderloin for dinner and took dog downtown for a lovely after dinner stroll.

I wanted a picture of him standing on the blockades, it turns out his Sit Stay is excellent, his Stand Stay needs work, lots and lots of work,

Friday Cats Blogging

Little Kitty says HB2 is bad for North Carolina!

Everybody Nose HB2 is bad for North Carolina.

Puffy

And its Friday.  At last. My elbow is still puffy. I had to wear gloves and a hat to walk the dog two mornings this week! I am supposed to be getting my garden ready to be planted and I can not be wearing mittens to while I am doing this.

I'm also not sure I should be tilling and gardening with my elbow all puffy, it doesn't hurt, but I blame every twinge on it though. anywhere, if my knee hurts it's the elbows fault, if I get a headache, its certainly the elbow! Bad hair day? ELBOW!!!!

 I'm not even sure what it supposed to feel like if its going down hill, I still have good range of motion and its not in the way all the time. The compression sleeve makes it red from the contact and that makes me think its getting ill,   although, I doubt it, if  it was really inflamed and infected, according to my research: it would be bright red, hot to the touch and hurt like a bitch .I am taking it back to the doctor next week so I can be sure that its going to completely heal up sometime mid week. Which would be welcome, because its hard to feel, um, not like a person with a puffy elbow when you have a puffy elbow.

Wednesday

I picked Wednesday as Go to Target Day. I went to Wally over lunch and that warmed me up for the trip to Target later. Rocket and I didn't get a walk but I did do a lot of wandering around while I was shopping, and Rocket loves hanging out in the car, so I count it as a win. My fitbit can bite me.

I didn't do too much wandering around at Target. They got my heart rate going  though,and gave me a scare when I went to the counter. I walked up and gave them Rockets name and waited. The clerk typed, typed, typed. I said I had been there already on  Sunday and there had been a problem and I had to come back... it was left unsaid that this time, I was not coming back again and I would be getting these meds today... I was thisclose to full toddler.

The clerk  sent me away to study the display of diet shakes. She looked at the price and blanched. She went directly to the pharmacist who also, by the look on her face, seemed to remember me, and again I waited, my inner toddler doing vocal warmups and stretching out. I pretended to be very interested in the display of reading glasses. I waited some more. The more  time I had to be interested in things I don't need the longer I had to write the first draft of my complaint letter and settle on word choice and biting analogies and creative ways to express "burning down your store" without actually issuing  what could be mistaken as terroristic threat.

And she called my name and handed me my script. $28! Woo! The pharmacist put it "on a card", question, why don't they just do that? Why stress their clients out?  I put the toddler to bed with her binky and calmed  myself down. The tech told me it had been $171! If I had known that, I would have blown up the store - and the tech knew it. I imagine my file in the computer is red and blinky. Its a touch embaressing, but it gets the service that I, as a customer, deserve. If you don't flatten their tires when they are trying to roll over you, you get rolled over. Be prickly. Don't get rolled over.

Tuesday

I should have gone to Target to get Rockets prozac but I didn't want to. I wanted to not, so I didn't. I was there on Sunday at the appointed time that was issued to me by their phone system and they should have given me the meds then. Instead they gave me some BS excuse about the new CVS computers and issues and blahblahblah. Hate.

I will try to work up the energy to go tomorrow night. But I don't want to! I want to come home and stay there not get back in the car and drive to a store and  walk through the parking lot and into the store and then give them money and then walk back through the store and into the parking lot and get into the car and drive back.

Hopefully Wednesday will be the big day. You know what would be better? If they had given me my script when I was there on Sunday.

You know whats great about having a dog? I came home from work and I really wanted to just lay down on the bed and rest and the dog joined me. He had napped all day and was probably had dreamed about going outside and running around and being all doggy and he still agreed that it was a really good idea to take a quick nap with me. Love him.

Monday

I'm watching Tiny House Hunters. I hate THH. I hate them and I think most of them are either mentally ill or so easily manipulated that they need to be supervised full time. Just buy an RV you idiots! You are not in a Richard Linklater film! You aren't special or different or interesting! You think you are too good to live in a trailer. If you want  a small house that you can travel from place to place in, get an RV. Grow Up.

I spoke with a very mentally ill man today. he called the 800  number eighteen times on Sunday alone. Every message was exactly the same, word for word.

They tortured our toddler, our baby our two year old. They put him under a train so nobody would know. When they get out of jail, we want you to hunt them down and murder them so we don't have to see them at the grocery buying food and supplies.

I looked it up online to see if it was lyrics because his cadence was somewhat sing songy and I thought maybe it was a song, or a portion of a song. I got instead many instances of toddlers being shoved in front of trains. Happy Monday.

He called back later in the morning and I spoke with him. I thought I recognized his voice from prior repetitive calls earlier in the year. He calls over and over again with the same complaint word for word for word and then he hangs up. He has no complaints of the care he is receiving at the mental hospital he lives in however,  he wants to be in a different mental hospital in a different state, he has been in many other mental hospitals in many other states and he would prefer one on the east coast or Hawaii or out in California. He's in his thirties.

This time however, he was upset for a good reason and he was right to call and complain to us. If he was less sick he could have told us what was wrong. He can and will actually talk to you but its hard and he's so ill. He finally spoke to a SW and she found out his actual issues, apart from imaginary toddlers. I hope we can help him.

Weekend work

I said I was going to clean the shed and I did. In the rain.

Then, after it stopped raining, I mowed the front and back yards.

Sunday, before I went to a terrific sale at a designer consignment store, where I saved so-much-money! I was a good girl and I went to church

Later, I took the dog for a nice walk downtown and met a  very tired, very squishy  wee baby rotty boy and he was at the very least, twice as cute as he needed to be. Sadly, he was visiting a bar and he was being held by Drunk Girl and he will be dyed pink by the end of the night. I hope he pees on her,