armlessbear.com

Christmas Garden Zombies and Yoda

In Dave Barry’s annual Christmas Naughty list this year is a link to a delightful catalog company called Toscano. www.designtoscano.com

The item in question in Mr Barry’s naughty list was the garden zombie.
In a strange way I kind of want. Except that it would only be funny for the few weeks leading up to Halloween and the rest of the year it would be something else to clutter my newly cleaned and organized tool shed.

And now as seasonally festive as I’m feeling with the snow and the delightful lights on our house, I’m already looking forward to next spring and having gardening angst. The stupid garden zombie has awakened my absurd and misplaced gardening angst.

Stoned Kitties

Today at SUPER!! Target we picked up a cat scratching post in a vain attempt to save our furniture.
This is one of those normal cardboard scratching boards with a secret ingredient: Organic Catnip.

whoa, man… meeeeeeew.

They’re already using it to scratch, sniff, and lounge upon.
Extra special bonus: mellow kitties.

Neverending Battle of Home Improvements II

Earlier this year we discovered that we needed to replace our basement windows. Not only would new windows keep out critters, they would also keep out the cold weather. After a few bids and some miscommunication, we finally got our windows installed these last 2 days. We won’t know until the weather drops below 30 again, but it already seems like actual sealed windows are making a difference in the basement.

The next project in this battle is the upstairs bathroom. Worst case scenario, we end up completely ripping out the bathroom to the studs and put in a new shower, toilet and sink.
The main priority is to find and stop whatever is leaking from the tub all the way to the basement.

Silly Quiz

My Liberal Identity:

Update on Spike

We finally got him home around 7pm last night. We went to the pet store and bought a large dog-sized kennel to keep him in while he recovers from pain meds and anesthesia, but still have room to get up and move around.

He spent most of his night in there with Clio coming by to smell and hiss at him. Later, we pulled him out and I let him sleep on my lap for an hour before we put him back in there for bedtime.

He’s gone from wildly thrashing around and flopping to actually moving and has gone both up and down stairs. But after he has a fit and burst of moving he flops down and just sort of lays there. We’re not sure if it’s exhaustion or drugs or a combination of both, but he looks sort of sad when he’s lying there all flopped over…

One Cat, Three Legs....

Sometime this morning Spike will have the entirety of his left front arm removed. We can’t call him stumpy, because they won’t leave a stump. They take everything right through the scapula so that the entire arm mechanism is completely gone.

Now you may be wondering how it has come to pass that we’re taking his entire arm off. This is how:

It isn’t surprising to anyone who has met our cats to hear that they often do their very best to run outside at every opportunity. Usually in the mornings we’re very careful because we’re not equipped to have completely outdoor cats.

Yesterday, however, Spike ran outside and literally ran away. I was running late and decided that a day without the creature comforts of a soft sofa and a dish of food might cure him from running outside.

Autumn Mix

The calendar says summer, but upper Midwestern weather screams FALL! 4 days ago I stopped wearing sandals. It was a depressing decision to wear socks again.

I’ll admit it… I love crisp air and wrapping up in quilts and feeling warm and cozy. I love fresh apples and apple cider at farmers market.
I love crunchy leaves, Halloween, Corn Mazes, Pumpkin patches, Autumn harvest festivals, Oktoberfest, and Thanksgiving.

My life, my brain is full of soundtracks. Pick almost any song in my MP3 collection and I’ll probably be able to remember the first time the song stuck with me. That song is forever cemented in my subconscious and associated with a season, an event, a person, a place, a mood.

Reading Meme

So we’ve been tagged with a reading meme. I choose to tag Ms. No H to pass along this reading meme. the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you started and never finished and underline the ones you had to read for school.
If you want all the details, read Mike’s post below.

All I have to say is I’m terribly embarrassed by the ones I picked up and started, but never read.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice

Reading Meme - Mike

Jon tagged armlessbear, which means both of us I think. She’s doing one too. This is my version.

This is a list of the top 106 books most often marked unread by LibraryThing users. The rules: bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.

• Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
• Anna Karenina
• Crime and Punishment
• Catch-22
• One Hundred Years of Solitude
• Wuthering Heights
• The Silmarillion
• Life of Pi : a novel
• The Name of the Rose
• Don Quixote
• Moby Dick
• Ulysses
• Madame Bovary
• The Odyssey
• Pride and Prejudice
• Jane Eyre
• The Tale of Two Cities
• The Brothers Karamazov

• Guns, Germs, and Steel