I have come to the conclusion that, no matter how often I dust or vacuum my house, it still remains true that I will find cat hair floating in my coffee at least once daily.

My eldest and I get along damned well, considering what I’ve seen of other moms & their 17-year-olds. So who cares that the most “meaningful” and “in depth” conversations we have are on instant messenger when I’m at my computer, and she’s on Robert’s computer next door. At least we’re talking…and quite often, we’re also communicating!

How sad is it that the CDC actually spends money to advertise to children the joys of playing outside? I saw one of the TV commercials for this program, and I’m kinda creeped out. “Verb now”? What kind of lame-ass name is that? And apparently the program organizers fail to see the irony in encouraging kids to “create a character” so they can have their own little cyber-personality at the site, that can only be accessed indoors on a computer (unless they’re the sort of spoiled brats who have their own laptop with wireless Internet connection). Oh goodie, another asinine example of our taxpayer dollars at work.

It doesn’t appear to matter if you have to work on a given Monday or not; they still suck.

This message brought to you by the letter “Blurg” and the number “alarm went off at 7:45 after 4 hours sleep.”

Not that I should be complaining, since theoretically I could nap sometime later today. That is, if my caffeine levels ever drop down below “crank looks like a relaxing alternative.”

Thanks to Jenn, our whole family got to see The Brothers Grimm last night, a movie which wouldn’t have been so pathetic, had they just seen fit to have Heath Ledger take his shirt off a few dozen times.

Unless you’ve never seen this blog before, you’ll notice that it looks a bit different! This is thanks to my Number One Internet Fanboy, who found this wonderful template and fixed everything up for me!

Not much else going on, except I’ve been doing a fair bit around the house (thanks to some new organizer thingies called StackAbles, into which I’m putting my copious amount of fabric, yarn, & other craft stuff, which has been in cardboard boxes for the last decade). I’ll have to post piccies after I get that all squared away, since I finally found my digital camera’s battery charger!

I also discovered where most of my handtowels disappeared off to, during the move: I’d forgotten that I’d used them to cushion breakables, which I’ve also finally gotten around to unpacking. And I actually heard from my dear old friend Rik for the first time in 2 or 3 years, who has a new job as house-husband and father to his 8-month-old daughter Isabella!

It’s not even Friday night yet, and it’s shaping up to be a fairly busy weekend. But hey, isn’t there a saying about idle hands being the workshop of some evil force or another? *grin*

Part of not having a job or school schedule (which should be relatively temporary) means that, occasionally, you get so caught up in something you’re doing that you forget to go to bed. That happened a few times recently, and so I wound up catching a couple of shows on TV that I never would have seen otherwise. One that really piqued my interest was Backyard Habitat on the Animal Planet channel. (It comes on at 8 am, when there is nothing on every other channel but news, C-SPAN, home shopping channels, and paid programming. Horror of horrors, there’s nothing but infomercials even on the SciFi Channel at that hour!)

So what I learned is that the National Wildlife Federation, an organization of which Geoffrey & I have been longtime supporters, has a wonderful program called the Backyard Wildlife Habitat. You don’t have to even have an actual backyard - any spot will do, from an apartment balcony to a schoolyard to a community garden, as long as you (or your group) are the primary caretaker of that space. I have a medium-sized back patio and a good-sized second-floor balcony. And there’s about a 1/4-acre of side yard that is nominally mine, since I have the end unit furthest from the street in my townhouse complex, and nobody really goes into that side yard but critters anyway.

Getting your habitat organized and certified is easy - all you have to do is ensure that the area has available food, water, cover/shelter, and places to raise young for critters of any kind, and that you practice some kind of sustainable gardening and/or land management that helps protect wildlife (such as eliminating chemical pesticides & fertilizers, using a soaker hose for watering, removing non-native vegetation, and keeping cats indoors), fill out the certification application (online or download the .pdf file & mail it in), and send the $15 fee. Once your application is approved, they send you a Backyard Wildlife Habitat certificate suitable for framing, and you also get a free one-year membership to the National Wildlife Federation including a year of their magazine. Once you’re certified, you’re also eligible to purchase & post a really cool Backyard Wildlife Habitat yard sign.

I already feed the birds & squirrels, and practice several of the items on the land management list, and there’s plenty of cover in my side yard (due to a mini-thicket of small downed trees & bramble bushes), so actually all I need to do to get my yard certified is get a birdbath and tidy up the place (I’ve noticed previous tenants left some minor garbage - a ripped screen door, a broken fan, etc - in the side yard, which I can toss in the dumpster). It’s such a neat program, and a great incentive to not only tidy up the space right outside my home, but do something good for the critters in the process!

My brilliant Number One Internet Fanboy (and techno godling) sent me an email to remind me to post that some stuff here is going to be changing in the near future, with a switch to a better blog thingie. Something about “re-adding the syndication feed after the switch”…uhm, I wouldn’t know a syndication feed if it bit me on the ass, but I’m sure this is important information. To someone.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled ‘Net surfing.

Because I actually finished the Lyse beast’s blanket (woo hoo!), I rewarded myself by popping online to cash in my Boring-ders gift card that one of Geoffrey’s relatives gave me for Xmas. I’m not linking the store since they are an impersonal huge chain store with indifferent customer service - and because I want everyone to shop at Powell’s, an independent bookseller where customers are actually helped & appreciated (not to mention it’s just the best bookstore in creation!).

But I digress. Once my order arrives (whenever that might be), I will finally own a copy of every book by Spider Robinson, the one book I didn’t yet have in the Legacy of the Aldenata series by John Ringo, and a couple of books I’ve been wanting by Suzette Haden Elgin (who is one of the rarest types of authors - both her fiction and non-fiction are phenomenal & enjoyable reads!). Uhm, yes, I did spend a wee bit more than the gift card balance.

Off to fix my new phone (which miraculously did arrive Monday!) up just the way I want it!

Oh, and here’s a piccy of Lyse’s blanket, which shrunk just a smidgen in the wash but is still nearly a queen-size… unfortunately, this was the best shot I could get. Maybe I’ll try taking a photo in daylight, since it’s almost impossible to see the details in the darker squares. *sigh*

It took seriously intensive crocheting, but I finally got the lap blanket done that I’ve been making for Katie, our two-doors-down neighbor. (And when I say intensive crocheting, I really mean it…I’d been doing a couple hours or so a day until last week, when I realized it wouldn’t be done until March at that rate, so I crocheted about 6 hours on Thursday, 8 hours on Friday, 11 hours on Saturday, and 12 hours on Sunday. Oi.)

Of course it didn’t turn out exactly like I expected. See how the edges are sort of wavy? It was supposed to lie flat…but it looks kinda neat anyway, and I’m pretty happy with it. I hope Katie likes it lots!

Of course, Lyse was over all weekend, although she spent most of her time next door at Jenn’s. I have successfully hooked them both on CSI (which Jenn now calls “crackTV”), and since Robert & Jenn got me the fifth season DVD set (yay!), they’ve been catching up on all the episodes they hadn’t seen.

But every time Lyse saw me crocheting, she started yelling about how her blanket isn’t done, although I started it over 3 years ago. And yes, it’s true…but I have been working on it, and it’s almost done! I mean, I have literally less than 30 minutes of crocheting left to do on it - and then probably an hour (or two) of tying off the yarn at the joining spots, and weaving in the joining bits so it looks tidy on the back side as well as the front. But sheesh, I made a lap blanket for Katie with the same pattern on all the squares, in only 2 colors - Lyse’s is a queen-sized afghan with 63 different (complicated!) patterns, in 3 colors!!! I’ll have to post a piccy when it’s done …but today, I’m absolutely sick of crocheting, so it might be a few days. (Or maybe several. *sigh*)

Even after living together for over 6 years now, I still get happy shivers when Geoffrey snuggles in for a hug from behind. I still feel all warm & melty inside when he offers to rub my feet. I still feel my heart leap when he gives me a mushy romantic card for no reason, or brings me a treat I hadn’t expected when he comes back from the grocery store.

So I usually don’t mind that I am sometimes an Evercrack Widow. (Note that I said “usually.”)

Then my Number One Internet Fanboy forwarded me this link, which he got from his ex-wife, and I damned near wet myself laughing!!! Please be careful not to be drinking anything while you watch this:

Make You Happy Tonight

Soooo, it’s Friday and I still have crocheting to do on Katie’s blanket. But luckily, not too much to get it finished if I bust my butt. I can do it…just as soon as I get offline (which, actually, will be soon).

FedUp claims my new phone (and Geoffrey’s) will arrive on Monday. We shall see. And yes, I’m still going with Splat…I know how their service & system work, the family plan is too good a deal to pass up (given my family’s needs), and I can add phones in the future if I ever decide to trust a teenager with a non-prepaid phone. (And since Angst will be 18 in 10 months, that really means Anxiety.)

Angst has mostly been well-behaved and has taken the initiative to contribute as a member of the family (by which I mean, she cleans & does laundry without being asked - and without asking for something in return - and only tortures her sister occasionally), so I went ahead and signed permission for her to get another hole in her head. We went down to Straight to the Point (mostly because a friend of Jenn’s is a piercer there, and he’s reportedly hyper about keeping up with the latest sterilization & such), and Angst got a labret piercing. No, I didn’t pay for it. (And yes, Anxiety is counting the days until she can get her first piercing…)

I also told the demonspawn that, if they picked out designs that I like, then when they turn 18 I will pay for them to get their first tattoo and I will get a matching one…but they have to use my tattoo artist, Jennifer Billig, because she exquisitely rocks. (Yes, I’ve been watching Inked …and jonesing for more ink, myself.) But I’m not waiting 10 months to get my next one, that’s for damned sure. I’m just waiting on my income tax refund!

I have nothing more to contribute today, as I’m trying very hard to live the philosophy of, “If you don’t have something nice to say, you shouldn’t say anything at all.” (Of course, I also live the philosophy of, “If you don’t have something nice to say, you should come sit here next to me.” Hey, it is possible to do both.)

I haven’t been blogging regularly because I’ve been busy! Our cute little punk girl neighbor, Katie, is turning 21 on Friday and I’ve been working on a special pressie for her. I’m crocheting her a throw blanket in her favorite colors (which also happen to be 2 of my 3 favorite colors - purple & black!). So I’ve been crocheting at least a couple hours a day for almost 2 weeks now, and some days it’s more like 4 or 5 hours. My best guess is that I’ll just squeak in under the deadline for completion!

Splat Int’l finally came through with my final paycheck, after some last-minute (company-wide) payroll fuq-ups that meant the final check didn’t arrive into my hands until over a week after the original payday. I pity all the employees - including Jenn & Molly - who had to deal with not getting their pay correct & on time. The good news was that my former supervisor was nice enough to pay me an extra week that I didn’t work, so I even got holiday pay for Xmas. Yay!!!

So, considering the largess of the extra pay, this morning my beloved Geoffrey & I went to Target again. We got another couple of curtain panels for the front window, and it looks so much nicer now! Also got the log rack & candleholder that matches the screen we got for the fireplace last time. (I really want the matching candlelabra, but we don’t have a mantle to put it on! Hmm, I wonder if I can bolt a mantle shelf into the brick of the fireplace?)

Also got a 12-cup coffeemaker (no more making a new pot every half-an-hour with my old 4-cup pot, Lyse!), and had to grab a sample package of a coffee that Geoffrey spotted - Jack Daniels Whiskey Flavored Coffee. Now, I’m not a fan of JD, but I’m betting it just might be rather tasty. And Geoffrey - sick boy that he is - said that it’s the coffee he’d serve if he was ever in charge of refreshments at an AA meeting!

I guess we really are meant for each other. On the way to Target, I hadn’t remembered to mention to him where we were going, and the route I took wasn’t entirely suggestive of our destination. He said, “You’re going to drive me out to Gresham with a shovel to find someplace to hide my body, aren’t you?” So I replied, very sweetly, “Of course not, honey - I don’t know Gresham very well. I’d drive you out to Beavercreek, where I know all the back roads & best places to hide a body!”