How Old Are You?

I wasn't going to post because I really didn't have anything to talk about, but then I was making my after dinner coffee and I noticed that after I put my half and half in it that there were these little floaty white things in it.

First I tried to use a spoon to get them out, but there were too many, then I tried to use a screen to get them out but that didn't work either. I thought about when I seen this happen before and it wasn't a good memory, I thought that maybe the half and half might have gone bad.

I pulled out the container and looked at the date. June 3. It should be okay, and I sniffed it. It smelled okay... and then I poured some into a glass, it looked sufficiently liqued-y . And then I looked at  the date again

June 3 2016.  And I poured the rest of it out. I bought this, maybe a week and a half ago. I haven't been drinking coffee as much as I was over the winter because its warmer now, but I've tried to keep up.  I certainly do not have 2 year old half and half in my refrigerator! No wonder it was clumping up! It was two years old!

I had a second container that I bought to because I was running out, I wasn't, actually, but I did check it and it is from 2018. Yay.

I can't go back to Wally and raise hell about the old half and half because I don't have the receipt and it was well used by the time I noticed, I fear if I do take it back and point out that it was two years old when they sold it to me that they will say 1) its my fault for not checking the sell by date, and 2) Go us! Our Milk was good for two years!

Either way, it doesn't look good for Team Me.

Instagram

I have found the best Instagram site ever. You must go there and spend all your time watching their videos, its called cakess.videos and its videos of cakes being decorated. Just videos of cakes being decorated, and some cookies and the occasional cupcake. Its very restful and somehow, filling.

Instagram, its not just for pictures of my food and my pets! (megjac1968) I mean who knew? I do follow a couple of drag queens and a celebrity or two and some cows, but they also pretty much post pictures of their food and their pets. Draco Malfoy doesn't seem to have any pets but he  does spend a lot time tooling around exotic places on a skateboard made out of residuals.

But back the the cake people. They are artists and I don't think I would feel good about eating any of the creations, there are all so gorgeous. And after watching enough of them, I really don't want to eat any because it feels like I've eaten a lot of cake  after watching video after video after video.

I've also decided after watching all these beautiful confections that I want a pink cake for my birthday, I might not force that on anybody else, it may be just for me. I doubt anyone else wants to eat  a pink cake with pink icing but I really do. There is so much more outside the standard  chocolate or yellow Birthday Cake Box. You watch enough of those videos you  get really over the standard box. Also I want to stomp the patriarchy too, I don't know why dozens of cake decoration videos made me want to do that. but I suspect some sort of subliminal advertising.

I'm also learning about how to frost layer cakes. I've been doing it wrong, well,  the one time I did it, I did it wrong. It turns out, if you want to do a neat and tidy job you need to put the cake on a lazy susan type thing and spin the little fucker, and then you should pipe the frosting on it in coils and then use a big flat thing to smooth it out . So much neater and nicer than I did it, and easier!

And of course, the most important step is the crumb coat, you must always remember the crumb coat!  I was not wasting time watching the Food Network, damn it.

Did you know that Snoop Dog was on Monk? Suddenly hanging around Martha Stewart doesn't seem that far fetched,

Weekend

 I did almost nothing for two days, In my mind it was a very successful weekend. I slept a lot, I watched a lot of TV and I cuddled with the animals.

Sunday I took the dog for a walk, and as we got downtown I began to notice the odd rain drop. I decided to keep going because the last time it started raining I gave up too soon and it stopped almost as soon as it started. I figured that maybe the rain would just stop and we could go on.

It did stop, and we did walk. It was fine, until it started again. And we were far from home. And it just got to raining harder and harder as we plodded home. We hid in the bus station and then under  a tree for a bit, but we couldn't hide indefinitely, when it was not raining as hard we came out from hiding and just started walking.

And walking, and walking and walking.

And it just rained harder. And we got soaked. The dog was not happy. While we were downtown and it was hardly raining at all, he kept poking me with his head,  as to maybe get some part of him out of the wet. Later he just seemed to have let any hope of getting out of the rain go. That was even worse!

So we plodded home.  And it started to rain harder. And we were so far from home! And we just walked on.  We were not happy.

And finally! We were getting closer to the house, the rain stopped and the sun came out! Hosanna! The dog and I were soaked to the bone, dripping wet walking down the sidewalk, in the sunshine. We were getting closer to the house when a woman saw us and she said "Were you walking in the rain?"

I just said "yes" and kept going.

The only good thing about this sudden shower was that Rocket was soaked,and I have needed Rocked soaked for months. Rocket needed a bath and Rocket was going to get a bath. I stashed him in the entry way and turned on the hose. He was initially not very excited about getting even more wet, but  he calmed down! I was floored! He let me wash him and he didn't leave any bruises, I wasn't mentally injured either! I was shocked by this very good dog behavior, so unlike him!  and he is now clean and he smells good too.

Friday Cat Blogging

TGIF - May the Forth Be With You

Today I decided to continue my theme of taking a new walk every day and I walked though the neighborhood for the first time in forever. Itr has changed! Now, the last time I walked through the 'hood, I thought it had changed and it had, but it has managed to change again.

I understand why the houses aroun where I live get flipped, because they are old and sad and cheap, the definition of "flip house",look it up, my neighborhood will be in the illustration. However, they are flipping houses in the good part of my neighborhood! They are leaving no lot unturned! There are no  new houses all over the damn place! I looked up and saw new houses on a street that I wouldn't to this day drive my car down! No wonder I see so many complaints on Next Door about shots fired! Do these  stupid white people not know where they are? My God! What are you doing there? That isn't a nice neighborhood at all! Get the fuck out of there before they eat you! You just spent 350K to buy a house next door to a crack den!

I wasn't stupid when I came to this place. I knew my limitations, There were streets I did not go down more than once. Creepy streets where I felt people staring at me. I couldn't see them, but I could feel them. Its not a good feeling, I never went back and there were places it was not safe for me and I didn't poke any dogs I found sleeping. I lived next door to an active drug dealer and his scene and we lived peaceable. I didn't call the cops on him, and his clients didn't rob me blind. We had a nodding agreement.

These new white people think they need to poke sleeping dogs, they think drug dealers need to be stopped. I told a guy from Acorn ( this was a looong time ago) who came by a precinct meeting and  told us to be "Understanding of the drug dealers, they are trying to take care of their Mamas", Acorn guy had been down too long and had gone native, I told him "Be understanding of the drug dealer?!", I should go up and introduce myself "Hi! I'm Diana, The Other White Meat!" That didn't go over well. It went over better though then his "Think of their Mamas" speech though. The general mood of the room was "We hate the drug dealers, we want them gone, we have no sympathy for them and if they want to support they Mamas they can go work at Burger King."  Acorn guy thought we should try to live in harmony with them. Acorn guy needed to come back to the office.

Speaking of stupid white people making stupid calls to the police. Today I called the non-emergency number to tattle on a too large group of old people drinking at the corner. I was coming back from walking the dog and met a rave! I was like "Okay. 2-3 is fine, I will MMOB. 8-9? No. Time to break this geriatric booze party up. These senior delinquents need to find a new place to be drunk and disorderly and drinking out of open containers somewhere NIMBY.  Normally, my plumber guy calls the cops on them, because he hates them with ever fiber of his being, but he wasn't around.

These people do not understand. The neighborhood has changed.

Thursday

Yeah. So I accidentally walked the dog four miles and now I'm tired, and instead of  sitting up and writing an entry I lounged and cleaned out my DVR a little instead. Four Miles.. Here is a picture of the dog being really cute.

Warehouses

Think happy thoughts for the cats in your life. My Moms cat was assaulted by  mugger and got stabbed and now she's got PTSD and she won't eat and she's going to go back to the vet again and she's 16 years old! She is too old for this shit.

Two of my Internet Famous cats that I follow online have been sickly, both hospitalized, which gave me Kitty Sickness Flashbacks, one had crystals in his urine just like Tiny and the other may have had that but then ended up heading down Fatty Liver Disease Boulevard, which is what Tex had , twice , it is when a fat kitty stops eating suddenly and the body starts to take up the slack and the liver suffers as a result and the animal can and will die if the animal doesn't start to eat on its own quickly. The first time, Tex started to eat again and lived another five or six years, the second time he didn't and had it and  liver cancer simultaneously and died a few days later.

My fat Internet Famous Kitty , got out of the hospital, and was eating, then stopped, and was worrying her person hugely, but then she noticed he was having a hard time in the litter box and had an idea. She gave him  kitty stool softener and left him alone. And he was healed. That was potentially his problem all along .

Other Internet Famous kitty, has only two legs, is also out of the hospital, and seems to be getting better, like Tiny, but isn't eating as well as they would like. I remember those days too well. Cats either eat too well or not enough.

On other animal news, Rocket and I went further downtown than usual and checked out the new train and bus station, or as much of it as we could. Its not nearly as open and the ribbon cutting would have you believe. We couldn't get near it. We were shocked at the transformation in the warehouse district and how different it is!  The warehouses are gone and now there are condos everywhere ( and two feet off the train tracks, active train tracks! How fun! and How loud!, around the clock.), we used to play down there and it was so picturesque, and I took a lot of pictures of the dog there - it isn't anymore. Its shoulder to shoulder condos. It just looks expensive and not at all photogenic.

One day Closer to Friday

Friday seems like a very long time ago now. I think I did something Friday night and now I can't remember what it was?  Jeopardy music playing I  went to Target and bought a new alarm clock! Its very fancy! I  got it on clearance and I used a  $5 coupon I got for spending so much money at the pharmacy.

Its a very nice alarm clock. The only downside is that it doesn't allow me to use the radio as an alarm option - which seems really, really odd to me as even the cheapest clock radio lets you have the choice of useing the radio or the buzzer. The very nice clock radio seems to only allow the buzzer option.

But there are things I do really, really like about it. The clock face can be made less bright! The other clock face was so bright I had to make the whole thing face away from me because it kept me awake, this new one can be adjusted from too bright down to completely dark, it also has two alarms- which I did not think it had as a feature until I opened the box, it also knows that day it is and what the inside temperature is, you know the alarm is successfully set to go off because it displays the time the alarm is going to go off on the screen. Very high end. Won't wake me to the radio, but it knows what the room temperature is.

My parents came to town this weekend and my Dad fixed everything in my house that needed fixing, I can now actually use my downstairs bedroom as a bedroom this summer! Very exciting news! The only job remaining down there is to install my ceiling fan. I need to turn that bedroom back into a bedroom first though and that this is going to be a job. It will be a change to sleep down there, its much cooler downstairs over the summer than it is upstairs

Its a whole lifestyle change to move my life from the upstairs to the downstairs. The dog and the cats have to be moved, I have clothes that have to be switched from one dresser to another... its really quite the undertaking. One for a day that's not today.

Dog Day Afternoon

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Sunday I took Rocket over to Dix for the the Pup Up Dog Park. A good time was had by all. And by "all" I mean hundreds of dogs and people! It was a full house! The field that was being used had been an activity space for the patients at the hospital. It had  playground equipment and a basketball court and baseball field and some work out areas. It was fully fenced and is now crying out to be a dog park. It has trees and seating and easy parking and would be a great dog park.

Rocket played with the dogs but his favorite activity was going up to people and saying "Hi! I'm Rocket! Pet me!" The crowd was packed with professional dog petters  and  so they were happy to do whatever he wanted. And he was such a whore too, he would just trot up to a seated person and say "Hey, why aren't you petting me?"

I missed the memo about bringing  a blanket and chairs and lunch, because the people who did get the memo looked like they were having a blast. I still had a really good time.He did this over and over again. I think he spent more time with people than he did with dogs and he spent a lot of time with other dogs.

Look how big that dane is compared to Rocket!

Friday Cats Blogging

Vindication!

Well, I'm off the hook. It was not my fault. The alarm did not go off, it wasn't me turning it off and going back to sleep. It was set and it did not go off. I feel vindicated. I also feel like I am going to get a new clock.

This morning the damn thing did not go off again and the clock was too far away from me for me to grab it  and turn it off and go back to sleep. I'm also hyper aware of the alarm now and I'm sleeping really lightly now, so that's great! I love barely sleeping.

I had to use Alarm 2 over the weekend and "alarm 2" worked just fine, so that tells me that the clockwork works fine.  I thought it was me that was failing but it wasn't me, it was Alarm 1! It let me take all the blame! It has stopped working and it totally let me feel like I had done something wrong. What an ass.

 Now Alarm 2 is now my default Alarm 1. And now I don't have an Alarm 2. I liked having Alarm1 and Alarm 2.

This time I also wasn't as late either. I did have to forgo the dogs walk but  that wasn't very much of a sacrifice. He didn't seem at all heartbroken about not getting his morning constitutional and I was happy to save the time.

Today was also Administrative Assistant Day. I feel your shock and awe. It is the best day of the year next to Christmas! This year we got a historical explanation of AA day, from its start in 1952 as a way of thanking secretaries all the way up to the present as away of recognizing , us,"The Backbone of The Division". We got pizza and I  found this on my desk this morning.

Yay me.

Today was gross and rainy but I still rain many errands and put the dog in daycare, which is in errand in itself, twice because I had to drop him off and pick him up.

At lunch I went to order more checks - something that could be done online but that would require that I have saved the slip of paper with the needed rows of numbers on it and I did not. I only need to order checks eer eighteen months and slips of paper get lost, so I drove to the bank and did that and while I was there I got money to pay my Sams bill since I had no checks to pay the bill, which I did at the cash machine because it was faster then messing around with the teller, of course I got stuck behind some guy who must have been refinancing his home loan. I then went to McDonalds and got caught behind a couple of guys ordering for the entire construction site. While I waited I daydreamed about what I had to do after work. Pay the Sams bill, should I pick up meds or wait? Probably wait, go get the dog from daycare, drive cross town to pick up dog meds, get something for dinner...

But first, after the already too long work day we settled in for our interminable staff meeting. This week is Secretary's Week, AKA Administrative Professionals Week  , a few weeks ago was "Nurses Week", a week or so before that was "Social Workers Week". Yay me. In years past the managers took all of us out to lunch. The  first several years it was lovely restaurants and anything we wanted, and then for a another few years it was a country club and anything they had on the luncheon buffet, and now tomorrow,: pizza in the breakroom.  It is better than last year, last year we got nothing.

This year I keep all the pads of paper and batteries in my office to keep them from hoarding. If I didn't take control they would just make like chipmunks in little nurse hats and fill their nests with pilfered office supplies. They hate having to ask permission and I'm like "Yes. I know. Life Sucks. Take ONE". Appreciate me damnit.

Bad Me.

I rolled over this morning, casually to check the time, because normally I do this several times and its usually 2:15am, and 4:10am and 4:45am.  Its always before my alarm goes off.

Not today. Today when I casually rolled over to check the clock it was 5:49am! 39 minutes after I am supposed to be out of bed! at 5:49am I am supposed to be reading Fark at the table and eating my breakfast! This was not okay. I overslept. I do not over sleep. I am early. I wake up early, I  wake my alarm up! I do not over sleep. And I overslept . I don't know how this happened and you can be sure that heads will roll. There was no time to kill anyone this morning but there will be meetings in the coming days.

I rushed to get ready and began to shed morning rituals. No walk for the dog, he can use the yard, no breakfast for me, I can take it to work with me, I don't really need to read Face Book or Fark! Check the email and get out the door.

Poor dog! He really needed to go out and go for his walk, he likes his morning walks and all he got was thrown into the yard and told to "take care of business" Quickly. Fortunately he was able to do this because I needed to roll.

I got to work with plenty of time but I hate that loss of control and those moments of panic. My alarm was set, I checked it before I went to bed and when I looked at it this morning, it was still set so I don't know if it went off and I turned it off  and went back to sleep or if the clock is broken.

I think its because I got in the habit of turning off my alarm over the weekend, I had been setting it so that I would not sleep the day away. It didn't work. I would just rurn it off and go back to sleep. The thing is, I've never been able to to turn it off  easily, I have to sit up and deal with it because it is not easy to turn off. It is just a button but its kind of an awkward button and I have the clock turned away from me because the light it too bright and it keeps me awake.

The new plan is I am moving that little bastard out of my reach, and possibly, turning it from not at all alarming sound of classical music to the very alarming sound of the buzzer. I need to be disciplined.

Shopping

So much shopping!  So many trips to and from various stores. I did my shopping and then the animals shopping, and  food shopping for a tree! So much shopping for the animals! The cats food had run short and I forgot to go to the vets, but that's alright because I can go to Petsmart and buy it form them right? Not right, they won't sell it to me because there is no script number on my script!

This is a new wrinkle. I have been buying this cat food from them for months and now they are all picky about numbers? How rude. It did help that as I walked into the Petsmart the clerk all but shrieked at  me : HI WHAT CAN I HELP YOU FIND??

I was looking for cat food and I knew where it was. I didn't need her help or to be screamed at. I found my food and returned to the registered and handed her my script. And she called her manager who told me and my script to go to hell. They didn't even let me negotiate. Absolute dicks. I walked out and went to the grocery to find cat food that might not hurt my cat. I immediately  tweeted a complaint at Petsmart that they haven't responded to yet.

Cats turn into real hipster foodies after you feed them wet food a few meals in a row. They also eat it a lot faster than they do their dry food. They just suck the wet stuff down, the dog runs up there to eat their food and there isn't anything there to eat. He licks their bowls, but I think is out of habit. They clean their plates.

Okay. So, I bought what I thought would feed the cats for two days. Wrong. It fed two cats for a day and a meal. I also noted that the dog was running out of food. Fine, I thought that  would kill two birds with one trip to the store. I know they sell Freshpet at Wally and they sell the dogs food there too. Well, they sell Freshpet for dogs not cats. This was more than a little frustrating. I got the dogs food and we went on to a different, further grocery store to get more food for the cats. I am hoping they don't refuse to eat their kibble when they get reacquainted with it tomorrow when I pick more up from the vet .

I did buy myself toilet paper, go me! at Big Lots and while I was there I found some fairly decent vegan ( I normally take a firm stance againts vegan anything) red sauce with no added sugar and very low carbs and that was a sign I needed to make spaghetti squash and ground meat dinner again. I almost bought a different sauce made from a different squash but I wasn't sure I liked the squash and it was higher in carbs and so I gave it a pass. I might get it the next time I'm in the store and I probably should have picked it it up just because it was interesting.