Coming out of her shell

Name:
Location: Heartland, United States

Monday, October 31, 2005

The other pets protest

Our other furbabies accuse me of loving The Puma the best, so in the interest of fairness (in order of age):

Greta

Marvin

Lauren

Gracie (pumpkin eater)

Happy Halloween

No trick-or-treaters means more candy for me. And I have plenty. I bought peanut butter cups, inside-out peanut butter cups, Kit-Kats, Snickers and Hershey’s with almonds. True, our office had a Halloween party for kids, but I still only had about eight trick-or-treaters past my desk. I let them have as much candy as they wanted. That was fun. Little kids are sneaky. Even when the parents told them to take just one, they would say trick or treat again when their mom or dad wasn’t looking.

Our black cat is acting all spooky for Halloween. He is being more ornery than normal, climbing on stuff and knocking things over in rooms that we are not in.

I carved a jack-o-lantern for Halloween. We bought one of those carving kits, and I decided to do a bat. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a little too hard for me (it was rated moderate). It is supposed to look like this. But it did not go that easily for me. First, I ripped through one of the small delicate pieces. I fixed that with straight pins. Then when I was trying to cut out the background, I knocked the bat completely out of the bat cave. I reattached it with a bunch more pins. I got it back in, even though it was hanging by a thin shred of pumpkin guts. Finally, I was done. Then, when no one was looking, our dog calmly walked over and bit most of the right wing off. And swallowed it. I think I will stick to carving pumpkins here.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Sunday, October 30, 2005

My notes on NY

Dear Husband and I were in NY last week to visit his brother and sister-in-law. We stayed in the apartment of DH's sister-in-law's sister's partner on Staten Island. The owner of the apartment only stayed there a few nights a week because she mostly lived somewhere else and graciously volunteered the use of her apartment during our visit.

Here I am in the apartment. One thing we learned about NYC is that everything is smaller (and more expensive). Notice the tiny refrigerator. We liked the ad on the front of it, too. It says "Cooking's more fun in a gay kitchen." Also notice my straight hair. My sister-in-law (who works in a salon, as does brother-in-law) blow dried it for me. It stayed that stick-straight for days (until I had to wash it). SiL and BiL are buying a house, so a lot of their stuff is already packed. They did not have a spray bottle, so she dampened my hair with water from a glass before she dried it straight for me.

Here is the view of the NY skyline from Staten Island.


You also can see a few buildings in Jersey, but no one knows what they are because they are in Jersey.

It was cold and rainy when we were in New York ... except for the day we left. The first full day we were there, we went to the Bronx Zoo.

I wanted to see the black leopards. DH wanted to see the penguins. We got to the zoo four hours before it closed, and it is a big zoo, so it was getting close to the time the zoo closed, and we still hadn't see the penguins. We went in one bird house and felt hopeful as the air inside started to get cooler as we walked past some tropical aquatic birds. Then we came to the puffins ... then the exit. No penguins. But then we saw another bird house. Finally penguins. We've seen better penguins, as BiL commented. But it was a nice zoo. DH attracted butterflies in the butterfly house, and we rode the bug carousel.

On our last day in NY, we walked around the World Trade Center site and walked down Wall Street. We also went inside Trinity Church/St. Paul's Chapel. There were grave stones in its little cemetery from the Revolutionary War. Alexander Hamilton was buried there. Many of the stones were so weathered that their names no longer could be read. It was quiet and peaceful in the church, quite a contrast from the noise just outside the doors. We got a hot dog from a vender for $1 on Wall Street.

This was taken across the street from the World Trade Center site. You can see the gap where there should be buildings.



Here is the World Trade Center site. It looks like two square holes. It is kind of hard to take a picture of. There is not much there. There are construction workers getting it ready for the new tower and memorial.





This sculpture was in the courtyard of the church.

Here we are on Wall Street.

Here is DH looking sad because he does not compare favorably to, um, the bull. But we took some regular tourist photos, too.

Here I am in the subway station looking a little apprehensive, first, because I am standing next to severed fingers; second, because DH doesn't really know how to use my camera; and third, I was a little worried he would back right off the platform onto the tracks. (See how straight my hair still is!)

We didn't buy very many souvenirs while we were in NY. DH complained about being cold while we were there, so he bought a new coat in a department store. We got some magnets and postcards. We also bought the CD soundtrack to "Avenue Q." My sister-in-law also got cold while we were walking around, so we went into Century 21 (which, I confess, I did not know was a department store) so she could buy a hat. I bought these slippers (notice how one foot is the cat head and the other is the cat butt) and some slipper socks with fuzzy gray cats on them. Our dog tried to bite the cats off the first time she saw them.

Friday, October 28, 2005

Coming soon ... and out now

I have been promising an "Attack of the killer pigs" blog entry for a while, and now I am on deadline. Dear Husband says that if I do not write it, he will. It might be interesting to have dueling blog entries ... So that is coming soon.

And for the out now part, go see "Saw II"! It opens today. I think most of my readers know who I am, but if not, here is a clue for you: My cousin, Darren Lynn Bousman, directed and wrote "Saw II." Make it a great opening weekend for him.

Friday, October 14, 2005

A good deed

I have been banned from looking at petfinder. And for good reason. We don't have room for any more pets ... at least until we move to a bigger house. But I can't resisit. There is a certain animal shelter about 45 minutes away. It is a kill shelter, and it lists on its site the last day the animals have.

A couple of weeks ago, I spent all day fretting about 10 cats that were going to be euthanized. I e-mailed my friends and co-workers and rescues. I even e-mailed a morning DJ who has a pet segment on her show. (She very sweetly wrote me back saying she would ask around -- she was at home sick that day.) There was nothing I could do. As it turned out, a rescue did go in and take the cats. Yay!

But, of course, the cycle starts again. This week, there were four cats and a dog that were to run out of time today. This time DH (dear husband, as they say on the newlywed boards, or perhaps it is "damn husband" ...) called the rescue that took the cats last time. However, it had no room. It did have a lot of kittens, and if the volunteers can get the kittens adopted, that will free up room for more cats. DH and I volunteered to help take care of some of this rescue's cats (it keeps cats at one of the big chain pet stores, which is just minutes from our house). So that is a good deed, but it didn't help the cats in immediate danger at the shelter (though if they could hang in there, maybe with the kitten adoptions, there would be room for them in rescue). I do feel good about helping the rescue kitties -- they are cute. One is no bigger than a kitten herself and is very playful. The other is an outdoor cat that wasn't taken care of and was allowed to have kittens over and over.

I even considered going to the shelter and adopting the cats to try to find homes for them myself. (One of them was a nine-year-old owner turn-in. I'll never understand the logic of taking your senior pet to a kill shelter. Putting it to sleep yourself would be kinder, and even that should be after you have asked all your friends and family to ask all their friends and family to take the cat, and if that fails, at least try to find a no-kill shelter. But I digress.) It would be quite a squeeze in our house, and I didn't know whether the cats would get along.

Thankfully, it didn't come to that. DH found out from a shelter volunteer that the cats and one dog at the shelter were spared ... barely. Other animals got adopted, making room and buying these some time.

The other good deed in this situation was by my sweet friend Kat. I told her about the dog whose time was up (she also was in on the previous panic about the 10 cats), and she contacted people she knew and found someone on a farm who would foster the dog. However, the shelter does not work with foster homes, so Kat is making the 45-minute drive to adopt the animal and take it to the person on the farm. Isn't that sweet? Kudos to Kat! My fingers are still crossed that this solution works out.

I still should be banned from petfinder, though, because I cannot go through this anxiety every week. But for now, everyone at this shelter is safe. I am doing all I can, and that's all I can do.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Lazy

I am a lazy blogger. I haven't put anything new up for days ... and I'm still not! Go here instead. It's mostly about me anyway.

Friday, October 07, 2005

Blame Kat ... or cats

A friend of mine has been suggesting to me that I should start a blog. I resisted, but she was persistent, and a few other friends chimed in, saying how funny my e-mails are, so ... here it is. And if you don't like it, you can blame Kat.

Kat is using an old nickname as her blogger name, so in honor of her, I also am using an old nickname: Shel.

Now why would I also blame cats, as opposed to Kat? Well, I have four of them ... and no children, much to the chagrin of my parents and in-laws. I love them, but they can drive me crazy. Here is the ringleader of the trouble:


He looks very innocent, right? Here he is lying on the new(ish) couch. When we originally bought the couch, no cats were allowed on it. Gradually, the rule was relaxed, and I learned to live with a little hair ... and also to keep one of those sticky lint rollers handy. I used to brag that the cats would NEVER scratch the furniture ... until Puma started scratching it. Puma has no shame and no fear. Our vet once diagnosed his condition as "spoiled rotten." And he is, and he knows it. Thus, whenever he is scolded, he resorts to staring at me in a surprised, innocent fashion and then perhaps does whatever it is he is not supposed to be doing for a few seconds longer.

I will not be outwitted by a cat and learned that cats do not like the texture of aluminim foil. It does not offer a satisfactory scratching surface. So I taped sheets of foil to the furniture. And the Puma promptly crawled into a tight corner behind the couch and proceeded to sharpen his claws back there.

So I added even more foil to the furniture. But at least the aliens cannot read my furniture's thoughts.

More later ... I will not be foiled.

Shel