Meanwhile, at Dad's house,

 I'm not feeling very chatty. Yet. I think I might try to blather later today (I know, shock), but until then here's what's gone on in the basement this morning:

Bob finds a cubby hole

Bob finds another cubby hole

Tom contemplates swimming in the wash drain water

That kind of sums up their personalities, actually. As I said, then, possibility of an actual blather this afternoon (for the first time in how long?) if I don't just decide to doodle instead. Until that happens, I believe that I may be hearing a grilled ham and cheese calling my name. Is that you, lunch?...

False start

Work blah blah blah short post blah. But first, two things.

Thing one: This is Tom deciding that a staple is a toy. I changed his mind shortly after taking the picutre.

Thing two: I hate HATE remote car starters. And did I mention hate? When I went out to clear my car off of a slight bit of snow and go to work this morning, there were three cars running. Three. And not a person in sight, of course. As I finished with the snow, one of them stopped. It had been running so long that the auto-stop kicked in. And as I pulled away, it was started again. The kicker? It was -10C. That doesn't even count as cold here in February. Minus ten, a slight dust of snow, yet stupid people have to waste gas and pollute the parking lot just so that their noses don't get a chill?

Gah.

For those new to the program, I'm literally (and yes, the proper use of literally rather than the internet use of literally) allergic to the cold. If I get cold I get hives. In extreme cases my blood pressure goes down from all the fluid in my tissues and I feel like crap. In really extreme cases it's possible to have an anaphylactic reaction, but I've never had one (thank goodness). And yet, with all of that, as long as it's not too cold for me to be outside at all I bundle the hell up, start my car, clean it off, AND DRIVE AWAY.

Remote car starter not needed.



Suck it up, princesses.





Going back to work now. LLAP, Mr. Nimoy.

Pointless photo of the day:

Well, obviously if you leave a sleeping bag on an upright freezer beside a breaker box it's going to sprout cats. Everybody knows that.

Everybody knows the next thing, too. Say it with me now:



Back to work for me.

Pink

I thought about writing this post in pink (does this look close enough?) and then I remembered how much I hate unreadable posts on other blogs.

I wanted to wear pink today, but one look at my wardrobe showed just how much I'm not a Barbie Girl. I am, however, wearing a faded-red (not old; bought in that colour) shirt that might pass for pink in the right light. Yep, instead of my uniform. It was important.

For those who haven't caught on or maybe just didn't know, it's Pink Shirt Day to raise awareness of, and hopefully in some cases stop, bullying. Briefly, it started as a student movement in Nova Scotia at a school where a boy was being bullied for having worn a pink shirt. Other students bought and handed out pink shirts in support, and the thing took off.

Was I bullied in school?

I was a short, round, misfit science nerd in a small-town school that favoured athletics over academics. What do you think?

'Nuff said about me, anyway. I wouldn't be a teen today for love or money, given all the new bullying avenues that social media has opened up. It's got to be so damned hard.

Anyway, and as I so often say after anyway, I need to get back to work. I'm not even going to end with any admonishment, homily, or words of wisdom about bullying. All I'm going to say is: think.



Too bad that's so difficult for some people.

Pointless it's been busy photo of the day:

It's been busy. Still is busy, in fact.

And also kind of sucky, since my neck's out and it's causing me an annoying amount of shoulder pain.

Anyway, no real time to blather so here's a picture of a bad cat. No, he's not supposed to be up there.

And Tom's not supposed to be in the clothes dryer, which apparently he's now attempted for both me and my dad. You're headed for some serious business there, stupid Turkey.

Incidentally, Bob's face markings and laid back demeanour has fooled a lot of people into thinking that he's a Sweet rather than a Turkey. Don't you believe it for a minute. He's as much a Turkey as his brother. He's just quiet about it, that's all.

And that's it for me. I'll try -- really I will -- to find some time to properly blather at some point. I mean, you haven't even heard my Oscars spiel, and now I'm not going to bother because the moment is gone. I will say, though, thank Whomever for the bow ties this year, boys. All this nonsense about long ties with evening dress was getting out of hand...

Plus ça change...

Just for fun, let's do a comparison. Here's last October:

And here's yesterday:

The cat got bigger or the ring got smaller, I'm thinking. Pretty soon he won't fit at all.

Oh, who am I kidding? Cats make themselves fit if they want to.

This will be short, I'm afraid. I did a quick doodle mid-morning and then ended up browsing the Derwent website, which is always a dangerous thing to do. Their stuff is so fun, though. And they have pens now? Oh my budget...

I guess I could add a couple of cat notes before I go have lunch. First, I've had to remove Bob from the computer desk more than once this morning. He likes to watch the cursor, which sounds harmless until I tell you that this is a touch screen computer. Just watch would be fine, but when he decides to catch it a person ends up in internet places that she never knew existed.

Second, as I was posting my doodle (of the cats, ironically) to the other blog, I heard a massive crash from upstairs. I ran up the steps to find that not only had the Turkey Brothers knocked over a metal cookie bin from the kitchen counter (that's why it was so noisy), but that they were currently engaged in eating pork rinds from the bag that my father had left open last night.

That's right. Pork rinds. Garlic pork rinds, no less. And no sense at all that they might be in trouble. I yelled; they looked up, and then went back to eating pork rinds.



Cats. Sheesh.

Lunch time for me now. I might (she says tentatively) have a bit more time to blog this week than I've had for the last few, but there probably won't be a post for holiday Monday tomorrow. We'll see.





Cats. Sheesh.

Turkey Brothers unleashed

Behold the tabby-headed black cat. It's a rarity, really.

Ok, seriously? They were in the middle of a play fight. You'll see a more representative picture below.

The Turkey Brothers have a whole new frontier these days, since the door to the basement is now open to them. Just imagine -- a place where you can get into all sorts of trouble, get up on things without being yelled at (most of the time), and look at ground level through small windows. It's awfully exciting, you know.

Well, it is to them.

The basement was off-limits while they were little, but now that they're big enough to be sans testicles they've also been given the run of the house.

Well, except my room. The allergic one keeps them out for the most part. They don't like that, and the minute the door's open will, of course, make a bee-line for under the bed so that they can hang around for a while.

They're turkeys, all right. And by turkeys I mean shits. And by shits I mean young cats. They tend to be shits by definition.

What you're seeing in the photos is the top part of a cat tree that Dad built around a tension pole for the previous cats. When these ones discovered it they were naturally in cat heaven, so it's getting fairly heavy use. And yes, that cat house is made out of an old ten gallon pail. Waste not want not and all of that stuff.

The boys are getting pretty big by now; I'd imagine that they're reasonably close to full size, but I thought that the last time I was home and they've got bigger since. Bob in particular is pretty freaking solid. You feel it when you pick him up.

Actually, I feel it when I pick up just about anything these days. My neck's been out. Not enough to make me immobile, but it's giving me a very sore shoulder and, occasionally, pins and needles in my arm. I'm obviously pinched, and that's one reason for the lack of blogging this week. The other was that I was busy, in case you wondered. Anyway, I think me and my shoulder are done typing just now, so let's call this a post. It's almost lunch time anyway, so the timing's appropriate.



More cat photos later, most likely. I don't like to take photos of winter, so what else does that leave me?

So then...

The problem with blogging so infrequently these days (laziness, mostly) is that I completely lose my train of thought. I have no idea where I was going with anything here.

So then, what's been going on? Oh, snow, hating winter, hating government bureaucracy, feeling low for a bit, feeling better, reading that a cougar was found in a hay loft in North Kanata (*waves to Kanata*), finding out that sometimes people really really DON'T suck, reading art books, doodling a little, posting almost none of the doodles, working, dealing with a sore shoulder... does that cover it?

Oh, and the Turkey Brothers are a fair bit less manly today. Dad's supposed to pick them up shortly, so I'm sure I'll hear how things went.

Sorry for this mostly non-post, but I really do need to get back to work. Hey, at least I'm still around.

Occasionally.



I'd say I'd try to do better, but realistically I'll probably do about what I'm doing now. Sometimes the blather just ain't the priority.

Catch you whenever.