Archive | Home Life RSS feed for this section

My Head is a Cat Toy

14 Jul

The cat and I were cuddling, nose to nose if you’d like a visual, and I ended up using a catnip toy as a cushion. It wasn’t planned, it just sorta happened. I stretched, it was there, I was barely conscious so didn’t think through the decision. You know how these things go.

The result is Striker has decided my head is needing all of his attention and now I worry for the safety of my scalp, and my hair.

He already drew a little blood from my knee when he threw a ball at my leg then followed it with a poorly aimed pounce. Well, poorly aimed if he was wanting the ball. Perfectly aimed if he was wanting my knee. I’m choosing to believe he wanted the ball and missed – there’s something to be said for ignorance.

Now he watches me, from his Santa’s Workshop house that he refuses to let me put away even though it’s July and waits for his next chance to get near my head. This must be what a mouse feels like once a cat has decided it’s interested.

In my defence he uses the toy as a cushion also…

Tags: , ,

My New Year’s Superstition

31 Dec

I am not a person who believes in superstitions. I don’t rub a lucky coin or toss salt over my shoulder and if I see a black cat I’m more likely to try to pet it than stop it from crossing my path. If superstitions are your thing that’s fine, they just aren’t mine.

Until yesterday.

I saw a TikTok that said there is an old superstition (why are superstitions always old?) that you should not clean laundry on New Years Eve or New Years Day. Now, she broke it down to a slightly different reason for each but, and I’m paraphrasing here, to do so would be removing all the good fortune / luck / vibes from the current year and you want to bring those with you, not wash them away, into the new year.

The opposite could just as easily be a superstition, do allllll the cleaning before New Years otherwise you bring bad luck / fortune / vibes with you from the old year to the new but I don’t like this one as much, so let’s go back to the one that says no laundry.

Do I believe it? Absolutely not. Will I follow it because it gives me a reason to not do that one specific little bit of housework? 100% yes.

Enjoy your New Years Eve and New Years Day and consider yourself officially granted two days off of laundry duty!

Tags: , , ,

A Very Motivated Mosquito

19 Aug

Mosquitos usually leave me alone, I joke that it’s because I don’t taste good but sometimes I wonder if there is something to that.

I tend to run cold, even when outside on a hot summer’s day and I tend to wear layers throughout the year. I don’t know how mosquitos pick their targets but surely when deciding between me, the person who has a lower body temp and has almost no exposed skin and a person in shorts and a tank top who is so hot they are sweating they find one human more appealing than the other. If only to avoid getting a headache from drinking something cooler than their preference and risking bending their stabby nose getting through layers of fabric.

Yesterday evening I realized I had been bitten, it has been so long since I’ve had a mosquito bite it took me a couple minutes to figure out why my arm was so itchy. Now many areas on my arms are itchy and I am cursing those little demons.

I’ve counted about ten bites, and because I scratched them in my sleep…and if I’m being honest also when awake, they have grown quite large, and more itchy. What’s with that?

I tried putting lotion on them after my shower, that didn’t help and I think the shower made them worse. Something I was not expecting. I have nothing to treat mosquito bites, why would I when they leave me alone? So I’m stuck trying to not scratch; screw dieting, this is the ultimate test of willpower.

When trying to puzzle out when I got attacked I figured it had to be when I was out with a friend on Saturday and was a little offended they went for me and not her. But then this evening when in the shower I found a fat, probably because it’s full of my blood, mosquito on the shower curtain. It should not come as a surprise the mosquito is no longer with us, it has moved on to the next plane of existence while I am still firmly sitting in the plane of itchiness.

I can’t even be surprised that one mosquito did so much damage, I remember there was a quote on a body shop t-shirt in the 90’s, now, I’m paraphrasing here and will get it wrong but it was along the lines of if you think you can’t change the world see what one mosquito in a closed tent can do…I mean, that isn’t near the quote, but you get the feeling right?

One, whether it’s a mosquito or a human or a cat or a whatever can create a lot of change in the world if they are motivated enough. That mosquito was definitely motivated…maybe I should take notes…

Tags: , , ,

An Almost Smell

2 Aug

Last December I lost the ability to smell and taste…bet you can guess how! 😉

Every now and then I get a faint whiff of a smell, a mere hint of something, that lasts for just the length of time it takes to inhale a regular breath. As soon as I realize I can maybe smell something I take a deeper breath, I try so hard to get a second chance to smell, but it never comes. Whatever smell breakthrough I had in that one inhalation is gone, and usually not repeated again for quite a while.

The weird thing, as if that isn’t weird enough on it’s own, is things almost never smell like what they should. I thought I smelled gasoline at work one day, it was someone’s lunch warming up in the microwave. I thought I smelled something a bit sweet, it was the cat’s litter box. It’s confusing and makes it hard to pin point at times what I might have smelled unless someone is there I can ask.

Last night I was on the water at dragon boat practice. Usually in summer the water we practice on gets a definite odour. It’s polluted, there’s power boats all around us, and as the temps rise the E.coli numbers also go up, so ya know, that probably is contributing to the smell. I have been spared smelling the water this year, a small silver lining.

However, at last night’s practice as we were taking a rest and gliding through the water I smelled a smell, it was gross, it made my nose wrinkle in full ick mode, and I thought of course. Of course I get a breakthrough scent from this water. Of course I get a chance to smell for a second and what I smell is wide spread pollution and general grossness. Then the person behind me took a deep breath in and said something along the lines of “Oh that smells great!”

Turns out the scent was someone bbq’ing, it’s a common enough smell when we’re on the water. People on their large power boats, mini yachts I guess, or maybe not “mini”, I don’t know what size you have to be for the yacht designation. Boat size isn’t really the point of this story though so let me get back on track. Someone was cooking meat, I don’t know what it was, but they were bbq’ing meat.

I love the smell of bbq! I’m a meat eater, I enjoy a tasty bbq’d burger, hot dog, steak if someone else is buying it lol The point I’m trying to make is I enjoy eating meat and I also enjoy the smell of it cooking on a bbq. But last night to me it smelled disgusting.

Of all the things for my non-working sniffer to mix-up. sigh. Here’s hoping one day I get my full sense of smell back and bbq once again smells like bbq!

Tags: , , , , ,

Grief

18 Nov

Grief is an odd thing, we will all at some point experience it and yet, no two people will go through it the same way.

Some crush it down refusing to acknowledge it is there. Others become so wrapped up in it they never function the same way again. Most I think muddle through, alternating between days where they can fake things well enough to appear to be ok and other days they drown under the waves of emotion that bombard them, until they find a new normal. A slightly calmer ebb and flow of grief, one they can handle while still functioning in society. An odd tear at a random moment, a brief hitch of breath when a stab of pain finds their heart, but those come farther and farther apart until you can almost pretend the pain was never there. It isn’t under the newly formed scar, it isn’t something you’ve learned to live with, you just pretend it’s gone, never was, and that all is fine again.

Grief isn’t a bump we trip over while going through life, it’s a hole we fall into and have to crawl our way out of. Grief is a tsunami crashing over us that if we don’t hold our breath well enough, and swim strongly enough, we’ll never escape.

Grief comes to us because we have experienced a loss so painful we can’t brush it off, can’t look the other way, can’t eat a bit of ice cream and move on. It comes to us when our heart breaks, when our soul feels ripped in two, when the world no longer makes sense and we are left scrambling to find our footing.

Maybe at first you don’t try to find your footing maybe you let yourself stay afloat, unmoored, not tethered to anything, because the pain is so overwhelming you don’t even know how to reach out to someone so they can help anchor you.

When your feet finally find the ground again the pain doesn’t go away, it intensifies because now you’re forced to feel it all. There is no buffer, no cloudy mind to help hide the truth of what has happened. Now it’s just you and the pain facing off.

Does the pain win? Do you win? Can there be a winner or just a vague truce made between the two?

Eventually, if you live long enough and if you’ve let yourself become close enough to others that you feel love, you will feel grief. There’s a quote, something about the more you hurt the stronger you loved. I don’t know if that sentiment is right, but I do know that right now my heart is destroyed, I am broken, the pain of loss has beat me and I don’t care if I ever come back from it because I don’t want a world where this person who is vital for my happiness isn’t here. But that isn’t how life works. We lose people, it’s inevitable, and the world keeps going on about its business while those like me are left stumbling, off rhythm from everyone else, because they are no longer whole and don’t care enough to try to fake being ok.

Grief is an equalizer, a painful one. By choosing to love we voluntarily sign ourselves up to one day feel this way. A poor bargain is it not? Is the love once felt worth the pain that takes it’s place?

The person I lost, the reason I am drowning right now, I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I hadn’t had them in my life. Their impact on who I became was huge, and the memories I have of them so dear to me I will fight with everything I have to preserve them. I cling to one of their cardigans, I ordered their favourite meal at a restaurant, I’m eating their ice cream, all to try to bring them back to me, to feel them close just for one more second. It’s a stupid game I play, one that will only hurt me in the end because they aren’t coming back and trying to cling to them just makes the pain last longer, cut deeper, overwhelm me even more.

The value I place on every photograph of them, every item they once used or touched, is so high I would make rash decisions and poor choices to keep all these items just as they are. I can’t make their entire house a shrine, and I shouldn’t try, but every time something changes I hurt a bit more because that is a change they won’t see, an update they won’t know about. It is proof life is going on without them and right now, with the pain so strong, I don’t understand how that is possible.

He is dead, and I am lost, but I guess the pain is the price of such a strong love and since I don’t want to know what a life without that love would have been like, who I would have been without it, grief is the price I must pay.

Tags: , ,

Cooking a Duvet

2 Jul

Sooo…can you cook a duvet if it is in the dryer too long? I would say “asking for a friend” but let’s be real, we all know I did it lol.

I got home from a workout / hang out with a friend to find the cat got sick on my duvet. sigh. Usually the duvet has a cover on it, and another blanket on top of the cover to keep it protected from potential cat vomit (you live with a cat long enough you learn tricks like this!) but today is laundry day and the cover was off because I’d washed it and hadn’t had time to put it back on before going out. My bad. I should’ve known the opportunity to get sick directly on the duvet would be too much to resist.

I spot treated the affected area then stuffed the entire thing in the washer. I had some doubts, since it was hard to get it all in the washer but figured once it was wet it would sort of shrink down and be ok. Note to self, that doesn’t happen. The washer started making this sound, this very unhappy sound, during the stage where it should be spinning and sucking water out of the machine. When I checked the duvet was wrapped tightly around that middle post deal that is inside the washing machine (well, if you have an old washing machine it has that post), and it was doing zero spinning. Figuring the best option was to get it out I started pulling the duvet out of the washer only to find that it wasn’t evenly wet, so hadn’t been cleaned all that well, and the bottom of the machine still had a lot of water in it so the part of the duvet nearest the bottom of the machine was soaked. In my effort to squeeze the water out enough to move the duvet to the dryer without getting water everywhere I proceeded to get water everywhere. Soaked my shirt, the floor, the front of the washer. Yup, total highlight of my evening.

Eventually I got the duvet in the dryer, got it running, and figured everything was fine. I Googled to make sure it was safe to put a duvet in the dryer, Google said it was ok and who am I to doubt Google? When I went to go check on it there was a mild concern because as soon as I opened the dryer door there was a smell, like, I dunno, I was cooking my duvet? It wasn’t a great smell, and it sort of made me think of fire. Which is ridiculous, I’m not going to start a fire by drying my duvet in the dryer, that’s crazy.

I pulled the duvet out, shuffled it around because of course the part that got folded into the middle while the machine was spinning was still wet, stuffed the whole thing back in the dryer and once again walked away…thinking of fire…

Eventually I took it out, thought it just had to be done by now and uh, yeah, it wasn’t, technically that should be present tense, it isn’t done, still. Hours later. It is currently spread out over the back of two chairs, turning my living room into one big messy fort, so the patch that is still noticeably wet can air dry. Ya know, air dry in a basement suite where it is chilly enough even in a heat wave it takes pants three days minimum to air dry. I’m resigned to my duvet being stretched out like this for a while…and my being cranky and chilly in bed because I am without it.

But yeah…you don’t think I’ve like, cooked the feathers or something…right?

Tags: , , , , , ,

Cat vs. Ear

29 May

A couple weeks ago, maybe a month now (wow, time really has lost all meaning hasn’t it?), I got my ears pierced. Yes, I know, it is a thing most women have done when they are kids so it is simultaneously weird and strangely interesting to friends that I have done it now. I did get them pierced when I was a kid, I begged and pleaded and harassed my mother until she took me to get them pierced. It was horrible. Everyone said it doesn’t hurt, it did. Not knowing back then getting your ears pierced with a gun is a bad option. The person doing the piercing did not do a good job. The result was blood, pain, the piercings not healing, and lots of scar tissue in my ear lobes.

Why do people do this?

After all that I thought I was someone who couldn’t have pierced ears, since I had such a bad reaction to it. As an adult I googled a couple times to see if there was a way to get them pierced despite the scar tissue in my ear lobes and the results I found said I’d have to have a dermatologist surgically remove the scar tissue, wait for it to heal, then have the dermatologist pierce the ears. All that meant to me was a lot of money to get decorations on my ears, so I again dismissed pierced ears as a thing I couldn’t have.

I started thinking about it during 2020, the pandemic gave me way more thinking time so I looked into it, again. I found a piercer who said they could work around the scar tissue, and that it should be fine. I mean, they said more than that but I highly doubt you want a verbatim recounting of the conversation.

End result, I got them pierced. Experience went really well. It was done properly, with a needle, by a trained professional. Yay, right? Well, yeah, yay, but omg the healing process is a whole thing I was not expecting.

My work peeps said they would take a week to heal, and with all the questions I asked the piercer none of them were “how long is the healing process” so after a week when they weren’t hurting but were uncomfortable I reached out and asked her and she was all “a week? yeah right!” healing time for my ears, as an adult woman, is 4 months. Four months!! That is…commitment.

So there I am, cleaning my piercings three times a day, tending to them as instructed, actively having to ignore all the “advice” friends are giving me because they got their piercings as children and go figure things have changed since then when the cat goes and does something that put me on a whole new path for healing.

I was sleeping on my back, the cat is sleeping all snuggled up next to me, he stretched his front murder mittens out, towards my face, claws slightly extended and while one paw landed on my face the other got my ear and yanked on the piercing. It felt as if one of the claws actually got in the hole. So ya know, woke up to pain, lots of pain. I grabbed the cat’s murder mittens, held them in one hand, while breathing through the pain and telling him what he did is not ok, and do you know what he did? He started purring. Apparently he liked my holding his murder mittens all snugly like that and thought we were cuddling. Yes, this is how I discipline the cat, super effective huh?

That was a Saturday, I remember because I got up, cleaned the now very painful ear, then dealt with the pain all day, grateful I didn’t have to be at work. The next morning when I was cleaning my ears there was blood, the first blood there had been during this whole experience. Me being me I immediately jumped to “I’m gonna lose the piercing” dramatics and started searching things on YouTube and Google to see what to do. FYI, don’t do that, unpleasant things come up.

Since then I have been babying the right ear, trying my best to keep it happy and claw free. It was doing alright when Striker and I were playing and my ear got smashed, again, and when I put my hand to it in reflex I hit the lobe, causing even more pain. Like, wtf, my poor ear!

So here I am, I think a month in to healing, and there is a noticeable difference between my left and right ear. My left ear, which has had no claws, or hands, or anything bashing it, is healing well. The right ear is a constant flux between no pain, to discomfort, to pain. All it takes is a little touch on some days for full on pain, and yet, other days it gets touched and it seems ok, which gets my hopes up that it will eventually heal, and be fine, and I’ll be able to wear something beside these starter hoops that the piercer put in. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate the hoops, I just am hoping for a day I can change my earrings out, without pain and easily, so what I’m wearing can better reflect my mood, or personality, or whatever. I say this knowing that all my friends with pierced ears tend to wear the same earrings every day, every week, every month, every year, so maybe I’ll end up that way also? Let’s just hope the right ear lobe heals well enough for me to find out!

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Taco Cat

18 Apr

Ok, so, last week I wrote about the whole getting beer on the cat incident, for which the cat made me pay dearly. This week I can top that, much to the cat’s dismay.

It all started when I decided to get tacos for dinner. There was quite a bit of sauce on the tacos, making them messy to eat. So I’m sitting at home eating my messy taco, sauce on my hands, when the cat starts making the noise he makes when he is about to be sick. He was in the carpeted living room so I sprang into action, I wanted to nab him and move him to the kitchen floor to be sick on the lino, a much easier clean up job for me.

Seeing me coming for him he runs to the bedroom, also a carpeted room, undeterred I follow and scoop him up by grabbing him around his middle and unceremoniously hauling ass to the kitchen.

To make sure he didn’t go for the carpet again I kept my hands around his sides until he was done. Once I knew he wasn’t going to be sick I removed my hands only to discover that there was no longer any taco sauce on them…it was all on the cat’s fur.

Yup, two hand prints of sauce on each side of his body, wrapping around his middle.

I feel I made the choice anyone would in that moment, I washed my hands and went back to my taco, no one likes a cold taco!

The cat, being severely unimpressed sat across from me, with his back to me, sitting straighter than I have ever seen him sit. For the rest of the evening whatever I did he sat in my line of site, back to me, completely upright. Like he was making a point of ignoring me and he wanted to make sure I was aware of it.

It’s possible he picked up on being so dramatic from me…maybe…

Tags: , , ,

Beer Volcano

13 Apr

Picture this, I’m sitting on my comfy living room chair, my knees are bent and the cat is sleeping under my legs on the ottoman, you can’t see him though because there is a blanket draped over my legs creating a tent. On the table next to me is a can of beer, sitting for at least fifteen minutes to ensure it won’t go all foamy when I open it.

I lean over, grab the beer, crack it open, and a beer volcano ensues!

Beer flowing over the edge of the can soaking my sweater and blanket. It is so obviously a lost cause I stay still, letting my Eeyore sweater take the hit, foolishly thinking that will be the worst to happen. But no no, because the beer also flows onto the blanket, only the blanket for some strange reason doesn’t absorb the beer, instead the beer pools on the blanket. The valley of the blanket reaches max capacity and overflow occurs! Now beer is flowing quickly down the side of my body, soaking into my pants but also landing on my leather chair, beer is going everywhere…much like lava from a volcano, only ya know, not as hot. 😉

Realizing the worst is much much worse than I anticipated I try to get up quickly but if you think getting a cat out of a cat tent when he is sleeping is a quick thing, well, trust me when I say it is not.

I start moving the blanket off my lap, using it to cup the beer since the beer still isn’t soaking through. My movements are sending beer flying all over the place while I’m nudging the cat awake. One quick confused glare from the cat and he is jumping off the ottoman and going to the bedroom to pout about his silly human and her weird ways.

After cleaning up the beer from the chair and the floor I go to the bedroom to get undressed because I now smell like someone who spent the night in a bar and am soaked; the cat is sitting on the bed looking disgruntled. Because I am well trained I apologize to him for rousting him so unceremoniously and lean over to give him a quick “I’m sorry” cuddle only to notice that his forehead is wet. No, not just wet, soaked, with beer.

Seems his anger wasn’t just at being woken but also at having beer poured on him! Oops?

I could not stop laughing, he was so funny. He had a little mohawk going on and just looked so hard done by. I just kept laughing and apologizing, which I think he thinks means I’m not sincere, but I promise I was! Then the thought, do I have to wash his fur to get the beer out, or can I just dry his forehead, because washing his fur will be an experience neither of us will enjoy.

Grabbing some tissues I start drying his head, while still laughing and apologizing, and all I can say is thank goodness I have a cat who trusts me and lets me randomly dry beer off his forehead without putting up a struggle.

After he was at more of a damp level I scooped him up for a proper apology cuddle, thinking we were out of the woods, but instead I uttered this question to him:

“Why is your paw wet?”

Yup, that’s right, little patches of beer soaked fur on various parts of him. More tissue, more drying of fur, more laughing by me, more disgruntled looks by him, and eventually he was at a consistent damp fur level in all affected areas, and I was regretting not stopping to take a picture before I dried away his mohawk.

Deciding neither of us needed the trauma of me trying to bathe him I had a shower while he pouted on the bed and later we both cuddled again while I drank the remainder of the beer, from a glass!

FYI, it was a really nice beer, I recommend it…the cat does not…

Tags: , , , , ,

← Older Entries