and on top of that, it's sunday.

i'm sorry i've been such a bad blog buddy.  really.  it's just some days, i don't know what to blog about.  some days, i think about blogging and then i chase a cat into mom's room and am overwhelmed with her smell.  then i forget what i was going to blog about.  i had SO MANY ideas on the cruise that i wanted to blog about.  stuff about nassau, royal caribbean, the lady that i decided i wanted to adopt as my new grandma, the multitude of scantily clad spring breakers (thank you, who ever invented the bikini).  all the rum i drank, dark rum mixed with ice and fruit juices and other rums with a bit more rum on top.  the amount of money i spent. ergh, no i don't really want to blog about that one lol.  we did spend more than i wanted to on an excursion, but it was really fun and we might do it our own way next time around.  because i really don't think there is much point to nassau.  it's like queens, but with more islanders and less greeks and jews.  and they're much more open about offering you pot or coke.

anyway.

i woke up early today thanks to the fucking cats.  they cannot stop fighting and/or waking me up for no apparent reason.  it's okay though, awesome husband and i had plans today.  of course, plans never go according to plan.  we were supposed to wake up, have breakfast, do some organizing/cleaning/packing, play some video games, have some dinner, and watch some movies. 

breakfast was had.  i made bacon (not nearly as good as my father's bacon).  well, i didn't MAKE it.  i cooked it.  it was okay.  and there were eggs to be had.  then awesome husband was on garage-cleaning duty and i was going to start packing up some of the tchotchkes we have around this house. 


*editor's note: blogger is trying to tell me that 'tchotchkes' is misspelled.  blogger is wrong.  

mom had lots of little, breakable things that i've been saving shoe boxes to pack in.  so i packed up some of her glass paperweights, her little breakable thingamajigs, and some of my belleek.

*editor's note AGAIN.  blogger says 'thingamajigs' is correctly spelled.  fucking blogger.

so i packed up all these teensy things in shoe boxes, then packed the shoe boxes in one bigger box.  and then i made awesome husband help go through some of the totes and boxes he found in the garage.  and then i wanted to go through some of mom's clothes - might as well get rid of what's left.  especially since i listed some of the cooler stuff on ebay TWO TIMES to donate 90% of the proceeds to the american cancer society and only three things sold.  out of like 18.  damn it.  so the rest goes to charity.  and now i'm not sure i should bother listing any of her shoes.  so i'm keeping two pairs that are meaningful until i get to new york so my brother and i can decide what to do with them.

anyway.

and there was a mets game on.  that i was watching while we were packing shit up.  and awesome husband gets all 'i guess i won't be able to play video games' and i got all pissy like WHAT THE FUCK I'M WATCHING A METS GAME NOW IT WILL NOT BE ON ALL FUCKING DAY.  i didn't say that.  i just thought it.  but really, it was like 2pm and we were still pack-clean-organizing and no WAY i'm doing that shit while he plays fucking red dead redemption.  i don't care how excited he is about it.

so finally we're done and we jump in the shower, and the mets game is almost over.  we watch the mets kick the marlin's collective fishy asses and then awesome husband boots up the xbox in the middle of a conversation.

most women in a long-term relationship probably all made the same noise just now.  it's remarkably like an 'nuh UH'.  or 'no way'.  or 'whatthefuckiswrongwithhim'.

we were having a discussion about when he wants to put his notice in at work.  we've settled on june 1st as our goal date to be in new york.  i've gotten some reports from realtors on what the house is worth, we've discussed getting a small storage unit to keep the boxes in, we've discussed what's going and what's not, and we paid some guy named manuel to rip a bush out of the ground on the side of the house.  we're hoping to have a realtor in by friday to get the house listed.  so we're in the middle of 'when can i put my two weeks notice in?' and 'but then we lose medical and i need my pristiq-tarzipan cocktail' and 'are we even going to bother going to new york for easter?' and nothing has been settled.

nothing.

and he turns on the fucking xbox.  so i kind of lost it.

well, i got mopey and all 'whatever, play your game' and awesome husband is like 'you can play yours too' (i got the sims medieval and while i'm excited about it, i still haven't even loaded it on my mac).  and i was all WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A CONVERSATION and he just didn't fucking get it and i got tired, like really tired to my bones.  so i went to lie down for a nap, figuring he'd play his stupid fucking game.

and of course, THAT'S when he decides that the game can wait, after i've already EXHAUSTED myself emotionally by packing up mom's shit and trying to decide my life and arguing with him.  he comes in all apologetic and adorable and carrying the macbook pro like 'let's see if mom's name was removed from the mortgage, at least' because we can't really do ANYTHING until that happens (which it has).  and then he starts making sense and talking like a grown up and instead of being happy that it's getting settled and we're talking about it, i get ANGRIER because why the fuck are you doing this NOW?  what about an hour ago when i was OBVIOUSLY pissed about you playing your game?  instead of wasting that hour of me whining and bitching and trying not to cry and getting headachy while you stare blankly at me, silently enough that i'm not sure you're even fucking listening to me, WHY didn't we have this convo an hour ago?  because now it's even later, and we've still not solved anything, and you're still not playing your stupidfuckinggame.


so then he started playing his game.  and i started this blog post.  and he was like 'why don't i set a time on how long i can play, so i don't play too long and we can watch a movie together' and i'm thinking, 'gosh, that's thoughtful, he's not so bad after all' and he says, yeah, i'll only play for AN HOUR AND A HALF. 

yeah, that's not too long at all.

then awesome husband got all squirrely like 'why don't you load the sims on your mac and play?' because he just can't understand how i'm not like ZOMGIHAVEANEWGAMEIHAVETOPLAYITRIGHTAWAYFORHOURSONEND. like he is.

anyway.  so i spent the day smelling my dead mom while going through her shit and being pissed at awesome husband.  and all i have to show for it is three boxes, a raging headache, and this blog post.

sorry for being a downer, guys.  hey, at least you have house selling blogs to look forward to!  hopefully i end up with lots of interesting people looking at the house that i can make fun of with you.

i love you, BUT...

i love my cats. they're all so different and special and wonderful. MOST OF THE TIME. piglet is just weird, with her aversions to food and cuddling. and samantha... well, we didn't call her 'little baby retard' for nothing. the whole not-being-able-to-smell thing makes life interesting. and taylor is basically my fur brother. he's been around for half of my life, and i love him to bits.

BUT.

now that he's older, mostly deaf, and in kidney failure, he seems to have developed some old man habits. like the yowling. i feel like i've written this blog already.

oh wait - i have. he does this almost every. fucking. night.

let's go through taylor's day.

6am ish: the sun is just barely starting to lighten the sky. mom troops out of her bedroom to shove taylor outside. he stalks around the perimeter of the patio, surveying the landscape, and shouts a bit at the cats across they way if they are out. by the time i wake up and open the blinds around 8ish, he's curled up on one of 'his' chairs, soaking up the sun (in the 83 degree heat. i don't know how he does it).

9am: the other cats may want to go out. usually samantha. if taylor is over by the table, she'll stop to say hi. they may swat at each other a couple of times, then go to sleep. taylor may or may not have moved over to lie on top of our patio table. it has a glass top and appears to be cooler. *shrug* or something. he may clean at this time.

10:15am: taylor wants a snack. he does cat stretching and then sits on the very edge of the table, and peers through the patio door waiting for someone to look at him. the second you do, he meows with his rumbly, purry meow. and does it over and over again until you get him.

NOT until you open the door. but until you actually go outside and CARRY him into the house. i'm not fucking kidding. then you have to walk WITH him down the hallway to the kitchen, where his food dish is. he may at this time go to the litter box like a good boy. then he wants to go back out.

he'll either lie on the ceramic tiles or on the fucking table until 4pm ish. he may require another trip to the litter box around 3pm, but this is not a normal occurrence. but 4pm ish is when all three cats decide it's close enough to dinner time to start making a nuisance of themselves. they yowl, they fight, they pick at the upholstery. samantha will sit in front of mom's bedroom door while mom's working and give these pitiful, LOUD yowly cries. nice.

5pm ish: this is generally when they eat. if you feed taylor inside, he will immediately vomit his dinner up. so we feed him outside, where for some reason, he only vomits up his dinner about 15% of the time. then he goes back to his cycle of cleaning and sleeping.

6pm-8:30pm: he does sleep most of this time. but he will also go back to sitting on the edge of the table, peering in at us. he can see the couch, and that's where awesome husband and i sit most of the night. the second we make eye contact, he starts shouting at us. if you open the door, he looks at you like you have six heads. very rarely, he will jump down to meet you, and either will just say hi and rub on you, or come in for another snack or surprise trip to the litter box.

10:45pm ish: we bring taylor in. he has a snack. he sits on a bed for like four minutes, and then goes and yowls by the door to be let back out. we bring him back to bed. you must lie down with him until his ass hits the bed and he starts cleaning before you can trust him to stay there.

11:50pm-12:15am: this is when he will make his first nightly bid for freedom. taylor will go push his head through the closed vertical blinds, shouting and yelling to go out. i usually grab him and either shove him in mom's room, or bring him to our bed.

2am ish: escape attempt two. this lasts much longer, since we're all usually deeply asleep by now. either myself or mom will be slowly roused from sleep by the incessant, throaty, loud, annoying yowl of taylor as he shuffles the vertical blinds around. whoever gets up first will bring him to bed.

3:15am ish: attempt three. i usually get up for this one. i bring him to bed with me, where he will not settle down but runs off to the patio doors again, yowling. so i grab him, snuggle him up next to awesome husband, and awesome husband will initiate cuddling with taylor *without waking up*. i go back to sleep.

4am: attempt four. mom or awesome husband usually gets this one. whoever gets him brings him back to bed.

5-5:30 am: attempt five. taylor will yowl especially loud at this time, perhaps because he realizes it is close to the time when mom will lose her fucking rag and finally shove him outside. i generally take this one, and force-cuddle him while watching home movies on adult swim.

6am ish: taylor runs off for the sixth and final attempt, which is not so much an 'attempt' as it is 'annoy the living fuck out of mom so she stumbles out of bed in her nighty and opens the patio door, cursing quietly the entire way'. this escape has been known to rouse awesome husband, which pisses him off since he usually wakes up around 7am, and you know how hard it is to get back to sleep during that last hour of sleepytime.

taylor was at it all. night. long last night. i must have gotten up five times to drag him back to bed and try to settle him off to boboland. i cursed him all night long, every time i woke up and grabbed him. i kept explaining to him that you can't go outside in the middle of the fucking night, because people might try to steal him (i know, i know. i live in perpetual fear of someone catnapping my kittehs). or because we can't let him in and out to use the box.

taylor just doesn't listen. i wonder if there are sleeping pills for cats? or if we keep waking him up all day long, if he'll sleep more through the night?

this is why i don't have kids: i have kittehs.

the cat's in the cradle. or caught in the vertical blinds.

i was reading annah's blog at http://whenredmeansgo.blogspot.com/ and she made mention (with included photos :x) of her dogs'... surprises when she comes home at night. her goggies are babies, so they should grow out of it.

but it made me think about taylor, aka papacat, genghis cat, or hot rod depending on who you ask. he's 15 now, which is like 76 years old in human years. older for him, since he was an outdoor cat and his life expectancy was about 11 years. so he's a senior. like a super senior by cat standards.

he does what he likes. he is in early stages of kidney failure (well, he was this time last year. he may be further along now) and has apparently gone deaf. he tends to pee where he wants: the kitchen floor, the patio outside (which at least the daily rains wash into the gutter), and in the pot where i was trying to grow basil.

there is nothing growing there now.

aside from his free-form urination, the suspected deafness causes issues. he yowls. i have read some stuff online where other cat owners with deaf or senile cats say their cats yowl or yell a lot. but i don't think he's senile - he seems very aware and remembers where we put the cat food, things like that. but he fucking yowls.

like he stands in front of our patio doors and YOWLS. loud enough and often enough in a short period of time to wake you from a sound sleep at midnight. and 2am. and 4am. and 5:15am. and again around 6am when mom finally pops out of bed and agrees to let him out since the sun is *just* starting to come up.

last night for instance. mom got up and grabbed him around 2am because he was all shouty. she brought him to bed with her and settled him in for a cuddle.

within 15 minutes, he was off and running again. and i finally woke up around 4am, and grabbed him for a cuddle in bed. he refused to sit with me, and ran away. i grabbed him again, and he sort of settled down...

... until piglet decided to get jealous and jump up on the bed, too, and give taylor nasty looks and sniff at his stumpy tail (which he really hates). so they both jumped off the bed. about 30 minutes later, he started yowling AGAIN and awesome husband got up this time to grab him and cuddle. taylor seems to prefer cuddling with awesome husband. he settled down for a nap, but then samantha AND piglet decided it was time for early morning cat olympics and were all over the bed and scrambling around and i had to get shouty. :/

AND THEN awesome husband threw taylor out of the bed, claiming he couldn't get back to sleep with taylor cuddled there.

so after almost 4 hours of waking up, shouting at one cat or another, catching and cuddling cats, and being angry, we were back where we started.

and with the suspected deafness, no matter HOW loud or HOW much you tell him nicely but firmly to shut the fuck up, he just DOESN'T HEAR YOU.

around 5:45am he started up again. mom wandered out and shoved his cat ass outside. and finally, we all sank into a sound sleep.

for an hour, at least.

and people wonder why i don't have children. this is why: i have three special cats. i mean, special NEEDS cats. hahaha. it's all i can do sometimes to take care of them. don't get me wrong - i love all my kittehs and can't imagine how empty my life would be without them, and taylor especially - we've had him since i was 15, he's like a second brother to me (albeit quite a bit furrier than my actual brother).

taylor cat, and yes - that is the pot where the basil was being grown.

oh, joy. he just woke up, stretched, looked up at me, and meowed. he's super cute and very handsome, especially when he's all purry. he sounds like a tank and bumps his head into yours, because he loves you. and i love him.

ps - i was about to post the blog, just finished spellchecking - and now he's snoring on the edge of the bed. very cute.