House Keeping

I suppose most of these could be Twitter posts, but I'll round it up anyway, it's faster this way.

Cats
I know you’re all waiting w/baited breath to get the cat/bedspread update. So far, so good. No more defecating on the bed, even w/DaddySpeak back in town. I'm sure I just jinxed it right now.

DD1
Woke up w/a super, bad cold today, of course she did, we’re going skiing this weekend. This way we'll all be sick by Friday. Bah! In fact, it might even be pink eye; if she’s still all “goopy” by noon I’ll be calling the dr office.

DD2
Not to be left out she indicates w/grunts & finger pointing that she too has whatever Big Sis has. She doesn’t (I hope) but she is not going to be left out of anything. It’s kind of cute right now, you'll need to remind me of that in a year when it’s become annoying. She is also tall enough to reach the kitchen counters now. Bah, these damn kids w/their growing! I know this because she swiped my keys this weekend (w/out me knowing) and put them in one of her play purses. I went NUTS looking for them! Luckily, I finally thought to ask DD1 if she knew where they were (true desperation) and she did! Otherwise, I’d probably still be looking for them.

Mommy
I think I’m in the early stages of a Fibro flare up. I really, really hope not, as I mentioned earlier we’re going skiing this weekend and it would really suck to feel like this when it’s so very, very cold. (Temperature can affect the symptoms.) Plus, skiing! I haven’t gotten to ski in over 2 years; last year I had a herniated disk in my back (it’s still not in great shape, but we're not going to talk about it), and the year before that I was pregnant. Last year I got new skis and bindings, so I’m dying to use them! Have I mentioned that I ski? I used to ski A LOT! No, ok blog fodder for later, but hey, I ski! No, really, it's like the one sport I will actually tell you I do well. (That should tell you something, cause I SUCK at most sports.)

At work last week, a group of us started a friendly “biggest loser” game. Everyone put in $10 and who ever loses the highest percentage of body weight wins the pot. There’s over $200 in there right now. There's one person who tracks everyone on a spreadsheet. We had to indicate our goal & he calculated our goal percentage. My goal is to lose 9%, which means I want to lose 13 lbs. (But wouldn't it be awesome if I lose more??? Ok, focus on those first 13 MS.) I lost 3 lbs this week! Wahoo! What’s really awesome is that because I was feeling so bad this weekend, I wasn’t very good about my diet. I got better on Saturday and Sunday, but Thursday and Friday were the worst I’ve eaten since July. A couple guys in here lost 6 lbs each and one guy lost 11 lbs! It’ll be interesting to see how it goes over the whole 90 days, it's not a sprint, it's a marathon.

More on FUN Monday in a little while.

Bedspread Update

Well w/Daddyspeak out of town the cat did not defile the bedspread.

I'm at a loss of how to get the damn cat to stop. We'll see what happens tonight, Daddyspeak got home about half an hour ago.

Damn Cat!

You know what I mean......

The Cat Came Back….

Remember in my last post how I mentioned that sometimes the kitties don’t always get along so well?
Yes, well that’s been going on a bit the last couple nights. Nothing obvious has really seemed to trigger it. The first time it started Mama walked into the family room and Monkey jumped off my lap so she could hiss, spit and growl in her general direction. Mama just looked at her like she was insane (which apparently she may be) and jumped onto Daddy’s lap. Every so often Monkey would walk by them & pull out her Diva act (maybe she‘s protesting the new golden globes format by bringing forth her best cat fight drama? She could win with this performance.) We finally locked her in the bathroom for few hours so she could cool off. I let her out for about an hour when I was the only one up and when I went to bed Mama was already crashed on the foot of our bed. Monkey seemed to fine, acting like nothing had happened, they curled up together were buddies again.

So little scenarios like the one I just described have been going on for the last couple (maybe 3 or 4) nights. It’s never turned into an all out cat fight so we haven’t really thought much of it. If Monkey won’t chill we give her an hour or so in another room (usually a bathroom, easier to clean if she did decide to retaliate,) and it all seems to be resolved. We figured it was just Monkey being her quirky self; maybe she’s hormonal or something. You know cats can get hormonal too, maybe Monkey is being PMS-y (yeah it’s totally a word, I just used it that makes it one).
Whatever is up, one of the cats started leaving a surprise on our bed for the last 3 days. (It started right around the same time.) Yup, one of the cats has started to crap on our bed. I agree it is GA-ROSS! The litter box is being used and is clean, so it’s not about doing their business, it’s about sending us a message. I'm pretty sure whomever is doing it, is trying to convey that they aren't happy. You think? My guess is that it's Monkey because she’s the one who’s been acting all weird, but I don’t know for sure. Each time it's happened we pull the comforter & duvet & wash them seperately in HOT w/soap & oxyclean. I have two duvet sets so the it’s happened to both duvets at this point, but the second time it happened was on a different set of linens that had not yet been defiled. AND the cat who is doing it, is doing it in the same place every day, which is how you know they‘re telling us something. It’s been done on Daddyspeak’s side of the bed, near his pillows, but not on them. I told him one of the cats is PISSED off at him (in every sense of the word I guess) and is giving him the equivalent of the horse’s head in his bed. Cats can be so mafia. So I don’t know, weird things are afoot w/the babies at Casa de Speak. DS is traveling to the Southland (LA, LA, LA) for the next couple days so it’ll be interesting to see if the behavior stops while he’s gone. Thank goodness for short, hot cycles on the washer is all I’m saying.

FUN Monday (whee!!!)

Whee! Are you having fun yet? I’m a little delirious about now, this cold is getting to me.
Ok, well I’m actually NOT having fun right now. I was all excited to share my pet photos with you and guess what?! Remember that CPU that got fried from the power outage on Friday? Um yeah. We didn’t lose the photos, we have them backed up in like 4 hard drives, but we don’t have a working CPU to access them right now. Yes, I could hook them up to this laptop, but that would take a while and I’m really don’t have the energy to get that involved in it. So I have some photos they just aren’t as recent as I had hoped and they won’t include our neighbors dog either. You'll have to settle for some old pix for now. Sorry deal with it, you're getting two posts in one day, don' t push it ok? ;-)
So Lisa over at Lisa's Chaos is hosting Fun Monday this week, here's her topic:
Let’s meet your pets. I think most of us have at least one pet and I would like to see your fluffy or scaly pal. If you don’t have a camera you can tell us about him/her/them. If you don’t have a pet tell us about a pet you had or a pet you want. If for some weird reason you hate all animals we want to know why gosh-dang-it.
Ok Lisa, you asked for it:
My mom (and quite possibly my husband) would tell you I bring home every stray in the county, which is totally not true (only the cute ones). I do, however, love my babies. I’ve had a pet of some sort for most of my life, mostly dogs, but after my teen years I started with my kitties too. In college (the dorms) I suddenly didn’t have any pets and boy did I miss them. After college & the dorms, there was a kitty who lived in apartments with me. I had this kitty for 7 years and there was a lot of drama involved with this kitty, A LOT OF DRAMA. But any story involving that kitty is a series of posts and in the not all happy, (he had what they call "behavior issues") so we’re going to focus on happier times and the current babies.

Once I purchased my first home (by myself) I got Merit. Merit is 7 now. When I got her I worked at an ad agency which allowed you to bring your dog to work. Quite possibly one of the best places I'll ever work. We dubbed Merit, “Director of Dog Services” and she l became the department mascot. She learned tons of tricks while I worked there. I’d go to a meeting with her sleeping under my desk and come back to a monitor filled with post its notes of all the people who came & got her and took her places. In turn I had a “cookie jar” of dog treats on my desk and on Mondays I would put a post it on the top describing our trick of the week. She wasn’t to get treats unless she earned them. As a result of this Merit knows how to do the following: sit, down, come, shake, high-five, play dead (roll on her side), drop (whatever is in her mouth, including food), wait (when she's eating we make her stop and take food from her, so she won't get food aggression), heel (although she’s pretty rotten about that one if she thinks she can get away with it), bed (get on her bed), find “daddy” (or mommy, or either of our kids), crawl (we call it sneaky-sneaky), and hold, which involves holding a piece of food on her snout until given the command of ok, at which time she’ll flip the food into her mouth. (When we had Mowry we had them trained to do it in tandem). Yeah, I could go on and on about Merit she’s my baby. I choose this pix (taken in Oct) because it reminds me of how much of a part of our family she really is, as usually she's right in the middle of the action.
This is Mama. A few years back I was feeling a bit maternal. Daddyspeak and I had gotten married, purchased our first home together, etc…but I wanted a kitty to snuggle with again. I went to the Humane Society to adopt a kitten. While I was waiting they were asking people to come hold the older cats and someone handed me Mama. What a snugger! She chose me right there and then. When it got to be my turn I found out that the last girl kitten had just been adopted, but I couldn’t help myself I was already in love with Mama. She was 2 at that time, so that makes her about 9 (wow, I just realized how old she is, I haven’t really thought about it in a while!) Mama runs the show. She allows the kids to pet her and generally just moves when she is done with them. She’s still very much a lap kitty.
The last of my brood is Monkey. Yes, I know that’s an odd name for a cat. (My mom has a cat named Mouse, so Monkey suddenly isn’t so weird is it?) After getting Mama I was still feeling maternal & wanting a kitten so we went to the one of the local rescue groups and adopted Monkey. Her original name was Samba, as they named all the kitties in her litter after different dances. Monkey was a teeny, tiny kitty for a very long time. (Part of why Mama kept her name as Mama seeing as she was the bigger of the two.) One day when I got up from sitting on our bed and she launched herself onto my back in play. She was so little it didn’t hurt and it was funny as all get out (I imagine she looked a lot like small backpack) and I called her “Monkey-cat” and it just stuck. She’s much bigger now. I n fact, I just told her the other day I was going to change her name to “Fatty” for obvious reasons. She’s very much my cat & tends to follow me around the house. In fact, she won’t go to bed until I do, so she’s sitting next to me right now. Occasionally, she’ll meow at me cause she wants to go to bed & I’m taking too long. Monkey is surprisingly, also really good with the kids. Monkey’s always been a bit skittish and tends to go hide when new people are around or if someone is just moving too fast; like kids will do. But lately she’s decided she likes the attention and now that DD2 really understands how to scratch her she’ll go looking for her for some lovin’. Mama & Monkey mostly get along, but occasionally get into spats where we’ll have to separate them & reintroduce them to each other. They’re like to old ladies who get sassy with each other once in awhile, but most of the time (even when they supposedly aren’t getting along) we’ll find them sleeping all curled up with each other.
I guess my novel gives you an idea of how much I love my babies. This is inspiring to maybe have a weekly post about my babies or maybe more directly about my family. Hmmm…no promises, but I’m thinking about it.
Alright, I’ve typing for so long now that I’ve missed Fun Monday and this will be posting on Fun Tuesday! Monkey’s meowing at me again so I’m off to bed!

X-mas-y Type Things.

We decorated on Sunday, and at the beginning I had lots of helpers.

(Please note we have given the living room to the kids as a playroom, my whole house is not full of toys, you're pretty much seeing all of it. And yes, we do have way too much, a good portion of which is hand-me- downs.)

Why yes, that is a life size Barbie in the background, you mean you don't have one?

I made a huge deal about putting the star on the top of the tree the first year for DD1 and now I may have created a monster. We let DD1 put it on, but then had to stage a second round for DD2. The annual Staging of the Star!

DS decided the star needed straitening, but DD2 wasn't going to be left out of that either.

This incident should've clued us into the upcoming accident on Tuesday in which she pulled a chair onto her face, but that's another story. (Thankful no permanent damage, just to my ego and her trust I'm sure.) Right now my child and I are so bruised up I'm sure CPS is on their way over.

The kids had to go to bed before we were done, so near the end, not so much on the helpers Even Merit crashed out.
Monkey was providing help of her own kind. I’m sure she’ll do her best to scale the tree in the next week.

And finally the end product! (I kinda like blurry one, it's all artsy...work with me here people!)