Philosophical Nonsense

I checked the weather forecast for the next couple of days and nearly fell over.

Al Gore?  You can have your freaking global warming back; we don't want it.

Okay, game plan is to hole up in my bedroom all day with the critters, since three of the five are elderly.  Any panting, heat exhaustion type symptoms and they go into a cool shower with me.

Voila, my plans for the weekend.




Note to self:  The next house will have central air.  This is ridiculous. 

Well, that was fun.  /sarcasm

In other news, we're broke again.  Big shock there, I'm sure.  But we have groceries, cat litter, gooshyfoods, and phone service.

WM must have had extra roses left over from Mother's Day, because each of us mother-y types got a dozen as we clocked out...I took them home, put them in a vase, and admired them until pretty pretty Princess decided they were fun to play with and promptly snapped the heads off of half of them.  Brat.  So I had to move my remaining roses to the living room fireplace instead of the kitchen table -- here's hoping that they stay intact for longer than a day.

Other than that, there really isn't too much going on except midterms this week. 

Pretty pretty Princess,
Thank you for allowing me to express my affection for you by demanding pettings at 4:30 in the morning. There really was no point in trying to go back to sleep when the alarm goes off at 5 am, so you also allowed me to express my devotion by providing your gooshyfood a bit early. Tiny pumpkin, Mommy loves you very much, but her circadian rhythms decidedly do not.

Grateful to express my adoration of Your Royal Highness,

Mommy

Posted via m.livejournal.com.

So, y'all know my youngest cat, Pretty Pretty Princess?  (Yeah, she only answers to her name when the Pretty Pretty part is on there, how's THAT for spoiled?)  You know, her:


Yes, her.  It struck me a couple of days ago that Her Royal Highness (she insists, the little sugarplum) is an awful lot like a foster kid.

1.  She came from a crummy background.  Princess was found on the side of a bsy highway at 6 weeks old, skeletal and covered with fleas.  Her Good Samaritan foster mom took Princess home, washed her, fed her, and took good care of her, but couldn't permanently keep her.  That's when we came along.

Foster kids often come from crummy backgrounds.  Their parents often abuse them, neglect them, pimp them out for drugs, abandon them.  They are not removed for being bad kids; they are removed because their parents are bad parents.

2.  Pretty Pretty Princess has Food Issues and has become pretty plump as a result.  She spends most of her day in the kitchen, close to the food bowl.  She gets very protective of the food bowl at times, and demonstrates extremely high anxiety if she can see the bottom of the food bowl.

Foster kids often have Food Issues.  Imagine being in a house where there was no food, or you had to endure acts of torture to get any food.  Imagine growing up in that type of background, then going to a house where there's plenty of food.  But you know that food isn't a guarantee anywhere, so you hoard it, gorge on it, develop food rituals that may no make sense to others.

3.  Pretty Pretty Princess (or as I like to call her, Miss Tiny Britches) is not demonstrably affectionate.  You can pet her at the food bowl while she eats.  That's it.  That's why I've become quite excited when she wakes me up at 4 AM by standing on me and allowing me to pet her and snuggle her.  When Boe and I are asleep, we're not a threat to her, so it's safe to pet her (you know, if we could just get over that "sleep=unconscious" thing...).  She's making progress, but she's been with us for almost 2 years to get to the point where we can pet her as long as we are asleep.  Or asleep-ish.

Foster kids often do not trust any physical display of affection.  If you grow up in a home where your mom says "I love you" and then burns you with cigarettes, or your father says "I love you" and then violently rapes you, why on earth would you trust any sort of affection at all?

More to come as I develop this theme... 

When I got off of work today, every WM in town was out of air conditioners, the same was true for Meijer's, Lowe's, Home Depot, Menard's, Target, Big Lots, and Dollar General (not like I really expected DG to have air conditioners, but I was desperate).

Boe found one -- count 'em, one -- air conditioning unit (and stood guard over it) at our local Do It Best hardware store, where I promptly dispatched myself and my debit card. It seems the unit had been on hold for someone for 5 days, but was never picked up.  As an added bonus, the manager took an extra forty bucks off of the retail price since it was a discontinued model.  Score!

When Boe had called me to report success on The Quest For Air Conditioning, I was stepping out of a tepid shower with three very angry cats joining me in the bathroom.  See, all three of the cats were panting and had rapid breathing when I came home, which are signs of heat exhaustion.  So I was a bad Mommy for their own good and took one cat at a time into the tepid shower with me, 15 minutes per cat.  Now, you might think that this isa recipe for Disembowelment By Cat Claws, but one thing that I've learned about cats is that they have an innate sense of fairness.  That's why my arms get turned into mincemeat when I try to bathe them, but they don't claw me when I have them in the shower with me, even though there is substantially more flesh to tear into when doing so.  Sure, they struggled a bit, but nothing involving claws or teeth.  I think they think that if they have to get wet, it is only Right and Proper that I get soaked too.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure we managed to buy the last available air conditioner in a three county area.  We've moved the animals into the bedroom, complete with litter box, food, and water, and our bedroom is finally beginning to cool down.  I might actually get to sleep tonight.

Boe got his first paycheck. That was lovely! I even dropped a hundred bucks on groceries to stock up instead of making do with the goods from Mom's latest Cook-a-thon and very little else.

I made a peach pie for Boe in order to celebrate. :-)

On the work front, Boe has recieved calls from school in Lancaster, Virginia, and Pinedale, Wyoming. (I'd prefer Virginia -- Pennsic's only 8 hours away, after all -- but Wyoming starts their teachers out at about $11,000 more.)

My lovely, smart daughter Mel's 22nd birthday is today. She is doing really well in school and will graduate in the summer of 2012 -- sooner than I will!

In costuming news, there is no costuming news. I can't seem to manage any creative stuff while I'm quietly freaking out about our financial situation and am frustrated out the wazoo.

Princess just came thumping down the stairs with a feather duster larger than she is in her mouth. I am totally charmed.

My stepmom is having a booze-laced hen party this evening, so I am going over a bit early to help with hors d'ouevres and whatnot. I also made a cake for the occasion, as they have never seen the work I can do and I kind of wanted to show that off just a little bit. It's chocolate cake with cream cheese icing...yummy!

In lieu of actual content aka positive proof I'm not just blowing smoke about my costuming exploits:
( Under here! )

I have been busy. Crazy busy. A lot of the busy comes from transferring schools and work, the other comes from, well, this:



Meet Princess -- she's about 6 weeks old, and was found nearly dead on the side of a highway by some Good Samaritans 2 weeks ago.  She was skeletal and covered in fleas when they picked her up.  They got rid of the fleas and fostered her, but the female Good Samaritan developed pretty severe allergies to her and so they  found her a home with us.  She is SO TINY, omg.  Bear in mind, I haven't worked with a kitten this young since Odin came into our lives, so close to 10 years.  Odin is now about 15 pounds and Frank is close to 20 pounds, so it's quite surprising how small Princess is in comparison.  She is already very much Boe's cat -- she follows him from room to room, sleeps in his armpit (often moving to his pillow next to his face in the middle of the night), and generally wants to spend her time hanging around him.  It's awesome -- I had hoped for this since Fagan was a daddy's boy and Boe lost his special buddy when Fagan passed away.  She is going to have amber eyes when they finish changing colors, and she is mostly white with tabby splotches and tail.  Princess is also living up to her name -- she is tiny but fierce!  She hisses and growls at the boys when they come a bit too close, but that distance is shrinking day by day.  She gets along well with Maggie, as her foster family has 4 dogs.  Last night, Princess discovered Maggie's tail makes an *excellent* play toy, and Maggie has shown no aggression, simply playfulness.  Princess eats like a preteen boy (put her bowl down in front of her, wait 30 seconds, then fill it up again), but she's growing ridiculously quickly and putting weight on nicely.  It's funny to watch her tummy expand as she snarfs down her crunchies and her wet food...afterwards, she usually gives a large burp and waddles off to the litter box.  Here, have another picture:


Yes, the scale is accurate:  Princess is the size of one of Boe's hands.