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Birthday Hijinks and Poor Kitty

Annie's 12th birthday was Thursday, and unlike last year when I did a glowing blog dedication, this year I'm late in even putting up photos. That's an ice cream cake there, chocolate layers with vanilla filling. My favorite part about making these things is I get to ice them with Cool Whip, a very forgiving medium.

The pile o' loot, including the Husky webkin she got from her friend. She's going to make it into the "Wolf Link" from the Twilight Princess game, something that involves making it a toilet paper roll shackle or something.

She was excited to get her "Manga for Dummies" kit, even though she later found she didn't dig the brush markers that much. Oh well.

Al had to do an egg drop thingy, I think for Physics class. (That would make sense, right?) This first one wasn't that sucessful, because her friend Ray was playing with it and messed up some of her straws or something. She reglued it though, and Benedict II survived unscathed, and she got 5 extra points.

Poor Itty got fixed yesterday. She wouldn't quit with the licking of the incision, so now she must wear the Cone of Shame. She is not happy with this development, but she otherwise seems to have forgiven us. Ghost is acting downright squirelly though, I guess he thought she had gone the way of Six, and now he thinks she's a zombie after his brains or some such.

Wake Me Up When December Ends

Sure, she was old, but this month already blew bad enough without expiring pets jumping on the bandwagon. At least she has a sense of irony--I had finally convinced Terry that it was time to take her in because she looked miserable, so he made an appointment for Friday. Then she started looking even worse, so he called back, and I swear the dang cat quit breathing before they even picked up the phone, so it was kind of a moot point by then. We wrapped her in a towel and buried her behind the shed (shh, don't tell anybody, we're not supposed to do that in the township), and Annie picked out this rock and I scribbled on it. Oh well, I guess it will be less fur clogging up my Dyson.

Holy Giant Gobbler, Batman!

This is what a 30 pound turkey looks like. That's not a munchkin oven or anything, it's a regular ole human sized one. Looks sort of like an ostrich, no? Normally I feel all bad about eating something that I've seen run around and such, but dang, dude was TASTY. I haven't had "real" turkey that hasn't been injected with that "15% solution of whatever salty crap to enhance freshness and add a bunch of weight so we can charge you more for a smaller bird" in probably, oh, 30 years or so. It was too much for Annie's dead tastebuds though, she liked the turkey dinner at school for a change, so she was all excited. She took one bite, and said, "Whoa, that is just too much in your face TURKEY taste for me," and just ate her rolls and corn instead. Philistine.

Patti likes to take pictures, lots and lots of pictures, of kids in various poses, to show how much they have grown each year. Well, this year she had an actual purpose for taking the pictures, which can't be divulged but thank goodness some grandparents are deaf because Al was hollering it all over the place. I don't think this one will be used though. Patrick is giving an editorial comment on the whole process, I believe.

These cats were making a cute salt and pepper fuzzy heart until we tried to take a picture, at which point Ghost was possessed with the urge to start licking Itty on the head, but that's still cute too. They have taken to laying on the back of the loveseat together, right by the door, so I can yell "Salt n' peppa, Spice Cats!" and hug them and squish them together when I get home from work. I guess it's good that I don't work EVERY day, I'm thinking they would tire of that rather quickly.

Itty is a star diva cat, and don't you forget it. Either that or she was just trolling around in the basement like she does and accidentally got a glow in the dark star sticker stuck to her tail.

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Mine was okay, kinda meh what with the missing of the Dad and getting ill with the Squanto's revenge or whatever. Yeah, yeah, it probably wasn't Squanto at the Thanksgiving feast, I'm too lazy to google right now. I am still coughing and now am sporting my own cotton ball stuffed ear like Annie did at Halloween. Stay healthy, peeps.

Halloween and stuff

Um, yeah, okay, that whole creepy countdown kinda turned into a bust. Started feeling like a job y'all, and I already have one of those. Or two if you count cleaning up after my horde. So you will just have to wait for some other time to see my zombie snail and the Bride doll my mom had when she was young.

Al's pumpking this year. I actually bought not one, but two four packs of this overpriced crap, but the second one was kind of by accident because the HBO online store SUCKS and I totally thought my first order hadn't gone through, and then I didn't know how to cancel the second one. It's a "lightly carbonated blood orange soda," but I just wanted the dang bottles, they look cool.

Annie's pumpkin, it's supposed to be sort of a smiley face vampire thingy. We were kinda going with a fanged up theme this year. At least there's no Twilight claptrap going on, it could have been worse.

My out of focus pumpkin, I really need to start checking behind Terry. It's the logo of the Vampire bar on True Blood. And I had to use toothpicks and stuff to get the middle of some of the letters, it was all high tech, lemme tell you. And it's actually the only pumpkin survivor on the porch right now, evidently a murder of crows attacked the other two the next morning. Stupid peckers. It's usually the squirrels, but I guess they are too busy burying big ass nuts in our front yard and making it looks like some sorta squirrel war zone, complete with foxholes. Or squirrel holes, whatever, they are digging big huge trenches in our yard, and I do not find them cute anymore.

Annie rocking the geisha look, you can't see her poor ear stuffed full of cotton, she was diagnosed with a big fat ear infection just the day before. and yeah, we were kinda lazy on the makeup, and her head is bigger than I thought, I should have gotten an adult size wig instead of the kiddy one. It was an extremely breezy and cold night anyway, so she ended up rocking the Arctic Geisha look with her winter coat on before the night was through. And I think the whole braces thing made for a lackluster Halloween too, Terry said she would go up to some house and come back with a bunch of chewy candy she can't have, and she would be all "Guhreat, that was a bust!"

Yes, Miss T, I didn't wait for Christmas! And furthermore, you little minx, you must have anticipated my non waitingness, because who gives somebody jack o' lantern candles for Christmas? We enjoyed watching these little guys burn down while we checked out some old school horror movies and introduced the girls to a guy named Freddy Krueger.

My Sunday afternoon view. I got home from work and took a nap and these guys piled on me. At least I was warm.

15

Surprise! guest blog!!!!! i'm Annie and i am here to inform you about this Demon cat on the loose! I got this when i was 5 at Meijer but i don't think i remember it looking like this! *i stick it in your face,you swear you say its eyes glow red with evilness for a sec.* but as we were in the car on the ride home,i looked at it and then my stomach started to ache......BUM BUM BAAAAAA! I treated it like royalty for a while and then tossed it in my closet and forgot about it for a couple of years. Then almost 2 weeks ago i came across it as I was looking in there.(i often put toys in there and then a year or two later i find it and it seems like new.) i think it was not too happy about being forgotten in the a dark closet. So i set it down and then started drawing Inuyasha fan art (Inuyasha rocks!^^ but i can't draw fluffyAKA Sesshomaru AKA Inuyasha's brother.) and i got an chill i looked up and it was staring at me.....with its cold black eye, and if you notice how the fur just so happens to fall on the eyes to make it look like it is scowling at you. I threw many objects at it to make it fall over ( it was on good old nonpossessed not a demon Scooby doo.) it didn't move an inch. later i took it downstairs, as you all must know Ghost is white, so whenever you look at it,for a split sec you think its Ghost *it's eyes flash red* Oh BTW it's name is Snowball i renamed it Snowball The demon cat. and I believe that It will some day come out at night and eat our livers.......*and evil cat laugh echoes in the room* I'm scared now.......Well!^^ I guess i should go! remember watch out for Snowball the demon cat and Inuyasha ROCKS!!!! Lots of Love!!!!!!!!!!<3

P.S. I corrected the spelling, but not the punctuation. Before I got to it, you would have thought you had stumbled across some foreign website. The child writes a whole different language.

16

Alyson and her college application, that's one of the creepiest damn things I've seen in a long time. And now I'm going to go watch some creepy stuff. It's family movie night and we've decided due to a lull in the acquiring of family friendly movies, we're going to spend October family movie nights watching old Halloween episodes of Buffy. I can hear the popcorn popping, so that's my cue to go.

17

This book is a creepfest, and I love it. I think I read it every summer for like, four or five years straight. It's all armageddony and if course a bunch of weird stuff happens, and it's a really good story. I think it may have been made into a graphic novel at some point. Hmmm, I should check on that.

18

I was trying to push the whole guest blogger concept, but my family is full of fail. Evidently this itty escape hatch into the attic creeps Terry out. There are many dead fly carcasses up there, and evidently it makes your butt sweat if you have to go up there for something in the summer.

19

Cheesecake made in five minutes, what is this world coming too? While I was stocking my friend the cheesewall yesterday afternoon, I happened upon this wondrous product called ready made cheesecake filling, and since the salmon we were having for dinner was on the meager side, I decided to justify dessert. One readymade Oreo crust, readymade filling, strawberries we already had (what? a fresh ingredient? Creepy) and some Hershey's syrup, there it was.

Less than 24 hours later. Now I just need to never buy this stuff again. Oh processed gobbledygook, how I love thee. And no! I wasn't the only one eating the pie! And yes, I know this is not technically creepy in a scary sense, but at this point I've mostly run out of ideas and I'm just trying to make myself post every day.

20

A beloved children's icon hanging out on top of our wet bar with our old beer and liquor bottles and a cheesy drippy candle thing we made out of an old whiskey bottle is kinda creepy, right? Okay, okay, maybe not so much, but at least it's a little strange. That Bugs Bunny thing has been up there for so long I hardly notice it anymore. But what is kinda creepy, or at least coincidental, is an internet friend also used a Bugs Bunny pic today, and I took mine and decided that's what I was going to use today before I even saw hers. What is NOT creepy is that I have the next three days off. Maybe now I can clean my house. No wait, I always use October as an excuse to not clean much and say I'm going for "atmosphere." I bet haunted houses aren't dust free with clean toilets!

21

Our cats have fleas! They bite their knees! Fleas. Fleas are creepy little hoppy buggers that live on blood. And they have infested our felines, because of the whole Ghost going outside thing, which he doesn't do anymore because he lost his nice collar I had JUST bought him, and that had his license on it, and he's a roamer, and well, the whole flea thing was as good of an excuse as any to stop letting him go outside. He's pretty butthurt about it and spends a chunk of time every now and then tapdancing on the glass in the door to communicate that he would, in fact, like to go outside and chase some leaves, but too bad collar loser. Al is the main flea comber, she is quick and can squish the little bastards before they hop. It still gives me the heebie jeebies though, even if (to my knowledge) I haven't been bitten.

22

I got this itty guy tonight after work, I saw the display as I was taking the cash bags down to the cashey place after a four hour chicken shift that kicked my ass, hard. So I was feeling sorry for myself, and when I saw this table of Halloween themed thingys with air plants, I knew that one had to come home with me. I like this guy's jaunty top hat and bowtie. Plus, the nostalgia factor of the air plant. I haven't had one of those since I got one as a souvenir from Myrtle Beach. Also, we used to make fun of my mom because her thumb is so brown, she killed an air plant. Not that I have much faith that I will be better. I'm sure he will have a name at some point, my kids are like that, big with the naming of inanimate objects.

23

Terry took forty leven pictures and they were allll blurry, this was the best of the lot. This cat is creepy because she can't see anymore (we surmise, by highly scientific methods like waving something in front of her face) but she still manages to make her way about the house. She spends most of her time in Terry's room, staring at the walls and apparently waiting for the sweet release of death. Or maybe she's communicating telepathically with the creepy dolls in the corner. Let's face it, Terry's room is a creepfest.

24

These dolls are in a corner in Terry's room, shoved in a corner next to a dresser. I'm not even sure why I put them there in the first place, let alone when a dressed up rabbit crashed the party. Both dolls are very old, because they were mine when I was little. The ceramic one was made by my Nanny (my grandmother, I didn't have an actual like, Richie Rich nanny when I was young, although my parents probably could have used a break), and I have to admit that though I love it, it's kinda always creeped me out a little bit, thanks to all those "dolls suddenly coming alive and trying to kill you" things that were on tv in the 70's. I think the cloth one was made by my Nanny's sister, who we called Nannie Sue, and the doll really isn't all that creepy, she even has itty shoes made out of hmm, some sort of stuff that isn't really leather but isn't fabric either, maybe Nannie Sue butchered a naugahyde couch or something. And the rabbit, I just. don't. know. I think maybe Annie put it there last time she cleaned her room, and we're all just too lazy to put it back, or maybe, maybe it came alive one night and decided to hop in there all by itself. Now that would be creepy. Also, Terry did the whole sepia tint to add to the creep factor, because frankly, people, we aren't nearly as creepy as we thought we were, we are running out of stuff.

25

You know what's creepy? The fact that we took two or more pictures of creepy things like, two hours ago, and they have totally disappeared from the itty card in the camera. Vanished. Vamoosed. No piccy for you guys. Even Terry with his infinite geekdom doesn't know what happened, because they totally showed up on the camera, then nada. Oh well, at least I have two more ideas. Oops, Terry just tried to take another pic and it was all like "change the batteries." This is knowledge that would have been useful to me TWO PICS AGO!!!

26

Now I don't think this little guy is creepy, but Al says differently. I think he may look a bit judgey, what with the crossed arms and all, and maybe he looks a bit eerie when he has a candle in his backside and he's emitting a froggy glow when the lights are out and we're all watching a movie. But I had no better offering for today. And the fact that I totally got to use Patti's employee discount to purchase him definitely wasn't creepy.

27

This is how I felt after work today, hence the late post. OMG cheese for 99 cents, locusts, they are going into overdrive. Also, I've had this here skull since I was like, 12? It starred in a haunted house my parents oversaw back in the way too many years ago. Along with the local preacher type, who played Frankenstein and complained that his "nuts" kept falling off. I think my Dad played a Jekyll/Hyde type, and he had a rubber sword. Well, the sword was kinda old, so there might have been a bit of actual metal sticking out, which one of the more rowdy kids found out, and started yelling "He got a knife! He got a knife!" Oh, and the skull glows in the dark too, bonus.

28

This is a little game that Al started playing this week and now she has Terry sucked into it. It's called Pandemic 2, and basically you try to invent a disease that will kill the enture population of the world. Me, I'll just be mixing up potions and looking for Hogwart's crests in my Harry Potter game on the Playstation.

If you want to play this creepy little game, it can be found at addictinggames.com. But why do you want to go and end the world?

29

The death mask that hangs above my bed, designed by Bob from My Chemical Romance. Not sure what's creepier--that I have a death mask hanging above my bed, or that a forty something suburban mom shelled out the bucks to get The Black Parade is Dead just so she could have a nifty death mask and a wee little coffin to look at while listening to emo teenie music.

30 (I'm going with a countdown thing here)

The crawlspace that's under part of the basement. I always imagine zombies springing up on outta that dirt and clambering over the little wooden pegboard we have up to keep the cats out of it. There's a nifty little cistern pump thing that pipe leads into also that gets filled with skanky water when the monsoons come. I'm not a fan of basements in general. When I was little I was convinced that vampires lived in our furnace. Looking back, they would have had to have been pretty dang short to fit in there, and I probably could have taken them.

31 Days o' Creepy

I have decided I don't update this thing enough, so in an effort to kick myself in the ass, I'm going to try and post a different creepy thing each day in October. First up, Al making like the Insane Clown Posse. It's Spirit Week, so they have to dress up every day, and evidently today was like, I don't know Cat in the Hat day? How this relates to school spirit, I have no clue nor do I want one. And no, she didn't take the knife to school. That's my Cutco knife, it doesn't leave the house. There were a couple of other pics but she didn't look creepy, more like the Cat in the Hat had just stopped by to make you a nice sammich and cut the crusts off just like you like it.

Cornholio

Behold, the great Cornhole boards that Terry crafted with his own two hands. I know the name of the game sounds totally nasty, but it's actually kinda fun. You put these things 27 feet (I asked for the official distance) apart, and take turns throwing bean bags at the holes, or really they are supposed to be full of corn, hence the name. We cheated and got ours at the store, they have little gravely things in them, which puff out dust and kill the grass, as an added bonus. Anyways, you get different points according to whether your bag goes in the hole, or lands on the board, and there's a whole buncha boring rules that I don't really care about and I make Terry keep score, I just wanted to show y'all this:


I mean, there's missing the board, and then there's like, missing the YARD. Annie tossed this baby into the tree! I mean the boards are straight across from each other, there's not too many tricky trajectories involved. You do not get points for hitting the landscaping.

This is her pouting because we are all laughing hysterically and telling her she has to get it out of the tree, unless she can coax her stupid cat up there to retrieve it or something. Luckily, she had this handy stick.

Poke, poke, poke.

Victory. She may not be able to throw a corn bag, but at least she can balance one on the end of a stick. No points for that though.

Hops, ready for harvesting.

Annie and I making like migrant Hops harvesters and picking all those annoying little things off. I was taking the opportunity to tell Annie how they harvest tea, or at least what I've seen in commercials on tv. Being as it wasn't even that hot the day we were doing this, we decided that being a tea leaf harvester is a job that would suck.

I think we might have actually had more than this in the end. It was quite the bumper crop compared to last year. So Terry dried them, bagged them, and put them in the freezer, and then threw away the ones from last year that were in the freezer that he still hadn't used. He doesn't want to admit it, but he's really just growing hops for fun. I like that they do the climby thing up the house, so it's okay with me.

First day of school pic, they look so enthused, no? Annie is riding the bus for the first time this year, but at least she has her badass sister with her to keep everyone behaving proper.

This is the CatLoaf, or Snarf, or SnarfLoaf, and she hets you all. She has a perpetual cold and loves to choke on her own phlegm and barf at the top of the stairs. Any takers?

End of summer extravaganza, aka these pictures took forever to upload and I'm sorry if you have dial-up

They left the head on the pig this year, that was a bit disconcerting when the opened the big roaster thingy and it was all upside down staring. Evidently it's easier to spit that way, plus maybe it makes the guys feel more manly or something. This was right before they finished unwrapping the poor thing and began hacking at it with their big knives. Barbaric, but tasty. And also, this is the hot Jeremy pic of this year. Sorry Jeremy, you looked kinda goofy in the other one I took, it was not an accurate representation of the hot factor. (But never as hot as my dear husband, no never ever)



Me and Al probably waiting around for the pig to be done, or maybe watching them hack at the beast with their steely knives. Notice the colder weather garb, this was Aug. 22 and I was freezing, not unlike Annie's field day. You can't even see my pig roast shirt -it has a pig drawn on it with X's for eyes and it has a USDA tattoo. You can see the oh so lovely shade of bright pink it is though.

Annie and Terry taking a paddle boat ride. Or is it pedal boat? I mean, the boat has pedals like a bicycle, but the thing on the back that propels it is a big paddley whatsit. So maybe it's a pedal paddle boat, which makes me think of that Fox in Socks book. Sorry it's kinda blurry, but the blazing speed they were churning through the water at made it hard to get a good pic.

I think Terry was starting to run out of steam by the time he went with Al, he made her do most of the work. He looks kinda scared that she's driving, or maybe that look of discomfort is from the fact that he's freezing to death in shorts, and his ass is kinda wet after two boat rides.

My dream house on the other side of the channel. There are a lot of gorgeous houses out there, but this one is my fave.

You know it's getting to the end of summer when these big ole noisy bugs come out of hiding. Al had never seen one up close, I think this one might have jumped her while she was mowing or something. Notice the artfully chipped black nail polish. (On Al, I don't think the bug is wearing any)

The great white hunter chased a squirrel up a tree, and then followed it onto the shed roof as it tried to make its escape. And then he got stuck up on the shed roof, because he's a dweeb like that. He paced back and forth, surveyed his neighborhood kingdom for a bit, made that sound that appoximates a meow...

But scorned any proferred help, I think he is actually waving me away with his paw. He stayed up there about 40 minutes or so and then finally figured out he could ever so carefully ease down the slant of the roof and then jump for it.

Is it wrong that we want to get another little black cat so we can make a furry Oreo?

Creepy statue thingy at the Renaissance Festival Terry and I went to this past weekend. We were mean and ditched the kids and went by ourselves. My favorite part was avoiding using the Kingdom's Privies. You would think with having a big ass permanent installation like they do at this place, they could put in some real facilities, it's not like Port-a-John's aren't anachronistic, for reals. Oh, back to statue--it was really a person, and it would move eeeverrr so slowly, being creepy as all get out.

The Flying Zucchini Brothers, we love these guys. They juggle and joke and generally entertain. We usually go see Ded Bob too, but we didn't this time. I was afraid I would laugh and then you know, have to use the privies. And there were waaaay too many people eating those big turkey legs wandering around for me to want to do that.

I think she likes the smell of his butt, she spends a lot of time like this. And as for the following, that is if there is a video there after you scroll down, at least according to the wacky format I see every time I try to preview, I heartily apologize. This song has been stuck in my head for ummm, going on a week now, and it's all Al's fault. I first heard the ukulele version by Julia Nunes, but then I had to look at the real song and this techno crap got stuck in my head. So being the generous person I am, I thought I would share.