Tag: the kat box

Leaves suck

Today, I spent a few hours raking leaves and dragging them to the curb so the city can ignore them and the leaves can blow down the street into someone else’s yard.  Even with several hours spent on raking leaves, there are so many on the ground and still so many more to yet to fall, you can’t even really tell I did anything at all out there.

The big project was to get the leaves off the back porch.  Every time I opened the back door this week to let the dogs in and out, giant piles of leaves would blow into the house.  I took that as a sign that I needed to do something and hauled 5 trash cans full of leaves off the back porch today.

I worked some on the mountain of leaves in the back yard with the help of our youngest dog, who is also our largest dog.  He is a beagle-dinosaur mix, huge and still growing.  He helped me out a lot by carrying the rake away every time I would put it down to carry leaves to the curb.  While I was raking, he would throw himself on top of the rake and chew at the handle.  He also assisted by gnawing a couple tines off the rake while I was bagging up random bits of trash from around the back yard, and when I was done bagging trash, he helped me out by tearing the bag of trash to shreds and scattering it everywhere.  He wanted to make the work more exciting, I guess; no sense in being bored out there!

After I’d had enough of the magic of leaf removal for one day, I thought I’d drag myself back in the house and watch cartoons.  Given that I’d been in the areas of the yard frequented by our three dogs, it was important to inspect the bottoms of my shoes for anything fun that I shouldn’t track into the house.  Inspection of the right foot was cool, but you know what?  Thanks to the glory of my recently sprained ankle, I couldn’t tilt my left foot up to look at the bottom of my shoe!  Too weak, won’t go that way at all.  To think all this time I’ve taken for granted the ability to inspect my shoes for poop…ah, when I get that ability back, I’ll be ever so grateful.  No worries, though; Minime was thrilled (and by thrilled, I mean horrified) to be asked to inspect my left shoe.

I’m sure there’s more fun to be had as the leaves continue to fall…but if I had any money to spare, I’d pay someone else to have all the fun of removing those leaves.  That’s some fun I’m willing to pass up.

Hanging My Head Out the Car Window

Generally speaking, I can drink vast, huge, ridiculous amounts of alcohol without getting sick or hungover.  This is not bragging, it just is one of those things.  Consider what I drank for my birthday this year for example–wasn’t sick the next day, was up and at ’em quite bright and early in fact.  Was chatting with someone today and the subject of drinking copious amounts came up…and I said I seldom get sick or anything like that…but that reminded me of hanging my head out Chiquita’s car window!!!

Travel back in time with me to that fateful night!  You know what, Chiquita?  It’s been more than TEN years!  REALLY! Because I was getting my computer programming degree and Minime was just a speck, so like TEN WHOLE FREAKIN YEARS!  Anyhoooooooo, so Chiquita and I were out and about doing what we do with the Ninja and Some Guy, and someone decides (probably me, I have been known to be a total dumbass) that we should be drinking Everclear and Tang.  I believe the venue we were frequenting called that little number an OrangaTang. 

Tang is probably super if you’re in outer space.  I really don’t want to encourage anyone to mix their alcoholic drinks with it, even if they are orbiting our planet and are fresh out of sensible mixers.

Anyhoo, I drank this concoction in quantity quickly; my companions gave up on it (smart, smart people!).  And then, here’s the part that made the world go blurry, we decide to all start swapping drinks.  Drink, swap, drink, swap, the four of us sliding drinks around and around the table until they were all empty.  That was a very, very bad idea on top of the Tang and Everclear.

But I distinctly recall being absolutely 100% fine…until I stood up and really there was no solid floor under my feet, I was walking an imaginary tightrope, all wobbly and out of my mind.  Fast forward to the part where we need to leave because I’m convinced death is eminent.  My stomach was agitating like a Maytag, my head was swirling.

You ever felt so sick to your stomach, whether from drinking or stomach flu or whatever, that you find yourself praying you’ll throw up soon?  Because you know if you can get the evil out of your body, you will feel better.  I was in that zone.  I wanted the vile mix of I-don’t-even-know-what-everyone-else-was-drinking and Tang out of me and anywhere else.  I got hot, so freakin’ hot, and swimmy.  Chiquita was driving me home, and I was so hot I thought I was going to melt courtesy of the bubbling cauldron in my gut, so the only thing that made sense to do was hang my head out the car window most of the way home.  It made sense at the time.  I don’t think I barfed, but I remember that I wanted to very much, and the only thing holding me together was hanging my head out that car window like a dog…a drunk on Tang and who know’s what the hell else dog.

I’m older and wiser now, and I steer away from Tang at all costs these days.  Because I stay away from the Tang, I don’t have to stick my head out of a moving vehicle anymore.  So that’s the morale, maybe, I dunno: if you’re going to drink, don’t drink Tang unless you’re an astronaut.  Which I am not.  Amen.

Arg.

I have this ongoing conflict with Mr. Kat 2.0 about his dog (his dog before we were ever married, not a pet we got together), and I guess I just have to suck it up and accept that this is my dog now.

One of the 9012 reasons Mr. Kat 2.0 and I are not together would be that he is not responsible for anything…even if it actually is his responsibility, he will play the victim and lay on the “oh, I guess it’s just one more reason for you to hate me, one more thing I can’t do right.”  Arg.  Whoever you are in my life whether you are friends, family, coworkers, soccer teammates, whatever: take responsibility for yourself, your choices and your actions and you earn my respect, even if I don’t agree with your choices—at least own them and own the fallout that comes with them.  Playing victim makes me wanna puke on you.

When Mr. Kat 2.0 and I parted ways, he moved in with a buddy of his and he couldn’t take his dog right away.  I was understanding of that situation, knowing he needed time to get some funds together and come up with a plan of action, so I kept the dog for him.  He did not pay for dog food or anything else for his pet during this time.  When Mr. Kat 2.0 finally moved into a place of his own after more than a year of being shacked up with his pal, I approached him about taking the dog.  He blew it off with oh not right now, haven’t even got my stuff unpacked, etc.  Ok, still I was understanding, gave him more time.  Asked him again, and again… Stopped asking, started telling him to come get his dog.  When it comes right down to me being ready to drop the dog off on his porch and drive away, I find out he’s living somewhere where he’s not even allowed to have a pet.  He chose to move somewhere that has a no pets policy.  Lovely, lovely fellow, that Mr. Kat 2.0, so responsible!

Called Mr. Kat 2.0 this evening and asked what he was going to do about his living arrangements and his dog.  He starts in on the “oh, well I’m not there anymore to take care of him, wish I was there to help” passive aggressive victim shit that makes me want to scream.  I point out that he deliberately selected a place to live where he couldn’t have his dog, so he should either move or find a family member to take his dog.  His reply is the usual “I guess I can never do anything right, you just find more reasons to hate me, I can never fix this” yadda yadda.  My reply (at a volume so loud that a phone probably wasn’t even necessary at this point) was something to the effect of if he wanted to do something right, he could take responsibility for something as small as his dog, take the full responsibility and burden of that one situation and if he did something like that, then maybe for one second I could stifle the urge to kick his testicles into his tonsils.  This was met with more helpless victim yammering, so I hung up on him.

Arg. Arg. Arg.  I am mad at myself, because I knew before I even picked up the phone that he wasn’t going to be an adult…if he were an adult, he would’ve already driven over here and picked up his dog months ago or at the very least, offered to pay for the dog’s food.  So mostly right this second, I’m frustrated with myself for thinking that someone who always behaves the same (the helpless victim when not busy being the badgering complaining fight picking bully) is going to behave any differently today.  What the hell was I thinking?

I guess I was thinking that I’m tired.  I’m tired.  I’ve wrangled kids, worked all afternoon and the frustration of that senile little old dog trying to bite me for the 745th time today when I’m just trying to put him on a leash for a walk to keep him from pissing in my house again pushed me right over the edge.  And being so damn tired to the bone, I just wanted some help with a problem that shouldn’t even be mine to manage in the first place, so I foolishly called Mr. Kat 2.0 looking for that help and here I am now, even more tired to the core than I was before I called him.  He’s not going to help.  Ever.  Doesn’t matter that the dog was his before we were married.  He left the dog, he won’t take the dog.  I have to accept that the dog is mine now because I won’t send it to the shelter, won’t give it away to some random stranger in the newspaper—–Mr. Kat 2.0 in this instance is certainly taking advantage of my kind heartedness toward animals, and that, too, makes me angry, that he knows I just can’t make the dog disappear, I can’t do that, he’s managing to still use and manipulate me and that pisses me off.  Arg.  Mr. Kat 2.0 is not going to step up and be a man, be a grown up, take responsibility because that’s not who he is.  I can’t expect people to be who they aren’t.