US $18.000,000!

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Greetings!

I  receive your name from my government of (country I have never been to, and ususally haven't heard of). Recently your relative (name not even remotely similar to me or my family ancestory) died/was killed in unfortunate accident/was lost in natural disastor. S/he placed a large amount of money, US $18.000,000 (what number is this even? Why are there periods and commas in it?) in my bank and listed you in her/his will. To collect your money, all I need from you is your name, address and phone number (but.. if I was really listed in their will, wouldn't you have AT LEAST my name???).

I look forward to work with you!

(Totally gibberish looking foreign name with no contact information)
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I am so unlucky.... This month alone, I have lost a "relative" to the Japanese tsunami, old age, old age again, and possibly kidnapping. But on the upside, apparently I will be receiving millions of (US!) dollars because I was in their will/no one was specified as benificiary.

I wonder what I should buy first?? Maybe a yaht? Ohh, how about a vacation home, or three? Private jet? I just don't even know how to start spending these millions!

I'm sure handing out my social security number, bank account number, routing number, and sending them a check for "transaction costs" is totally legit. What could possibly go wrong???

Cheers,
Red

Fantastic Ugtastic: Rewind Edition

As gorgeous as our lovely kitties are, sometimes... they're not.

We'll be featuring a "Fantastic Ugtastic" photo post featuring our beautiful boys in abnormally ugly poses. Sadly, these photos will not be retouched, edited, or posed in anyway....

Keep reading to see our buddies in all their natural hideous glory!

Baby Kelly: Gremlin piglet edition

Baby Jess: Poop on it! Technically he was jumping from one chair arm to another, but the photo is pretty ugly...

Young Skip: The creepy old Chinese man

Stay tuned for furure "Fantastic Ugtastic" posts! Get excited, we have some really ugly sleepers in our house!

Cheers!
Red

Dissaproving Jame-o dissaproves.

Mousebreath, ooh-ha-ha!

I received a gift the other day. A gift in the form of a small, convulsing mouse carcass. Which, of course, as a good mama-kitty I had to "eat". Yumm...

I was having a boring/indecisive day yesterday. I looked at my credit card statement for this month. We bought some furniture so my statement is twice, almost three times, the size it normally is and that makes me nervous. So I determined that this is not a good month for me to go and pick up random stuff from the fabric store (cue sad face). That decided, my main plan of the day (running errands) was out of the picture and I had nothing to do.

I did some house chores and sat down on the couch in the living room to read a book. Kelly came to visit me a couple of times, hopping into my lap, shedding, and drooling happily all over the couch. Having fulfilled his "touch me now" quota of the day, he left the couch and sprawled across the floor.

I was absorbed in my book when I heard a small chirp/click/mew noise. When I looked at Kelly, he was staring sleepily across the living room. I folded down the footrest on the couch to see... Daniel.

He was standing in the middle of the room with something in his mouth. A toy, but not one I had seen before. No, not a toy, a frog? How did a frog get in my house? Wait... Frogs don't have tails....

As I started to stand, he dropped the thing in his mouth onto the floor. I realized the "in his mouth thing" was not a toy or a frog but a probably traumatized, definitely injured, probably dead field mouse.

Like the good cat mother I am, I cooed and thanked Daniel for his lovely gift, all the while screaming
"OMG EWEWEWEWEW" in my head. I scurried to the laundry room in search of a paper towel to clean up the used-to-be mouse. I moved as fast as I could since I wasn't sure if the mouse was or was not going to reincarnate itself in the middle of my living room and take up residence within my couch cushions.

I removed the thing from the carpet and, still cooing thanks to Daniel, I took it out to the trash. When I came back inside both Kelly and Daniel were intently studying a small area of carpet. Of course this made me slightly nervous, but since I couldn't see anything there I slowly went back to reading my book.

Our darling Daniel apparently has some secret skills.

The proud hunter, Mousebreath

Mousebreath, ooh-ha-ha!

Cheers,
Red

GOOD MORNING!!

I don't normally wake up when AV gets up to go to work, but I did this morning. I think he was making more noise than usual.

This is most likely the case as he woke up to find that Daniel had PEED on his pillow which had fallen on the floor.

WTF.

I JUST cleaned out the kitty litter last night. There's nothing abnormal going on to freak him out. Did he get pissed about the cat pee on the library book?

WTF I'm so mad.

Anybody want a slightly-used cat? Going cheap!

Cheers... kinda...
Red

O_o

I got a book from the library the other day. It seemed to have coffee spilled on the corner. No big deal, just some wrinkling and discolored pages.

I had the book sitting on the end table from earlier this afternoon when I brought it in from the car. A little while ago, Daniel became strangely interested in the coffee table. And, since Daniel is the "pee-er", it makes me veeeery nervous when he gets interested in stuff.

I moved him a couple of times, but he kept coming back. He actually hissed and bit AV when he tried to put him on the floor. Finally, I figured out that there was something up with the books on the table. So I moved the top book. He was still acting weird. Something occured to me... I opened the book and smelled it.

It wasn't coffee that was "spilled" on the book. It was cat pee.

Somebody's cat* had taken a leak on the corner of the book. Daniel smelled the unfamiliar pee and started wigging out.

So, like the good cat-mother I am, I took all the library books (pee-book included) and put them in my car. Then I Lysol-ed the end table and the bookshelf where I had put the book before taking it outside.

The LAST thing I need is the cat to pee all over a stack of library books, EVEN THOUGH some OTHER cat had ALREADY done it.

Like I had to tell the kindergarteners, "even if somebody else did it to you first, you're still going to get in trouble if you do it back to them".

Please, please don't pee on my books....

Cheers,
Red

*OMG, IT'S NOT US THIS TIME!!

Nope, Nope!

Quick recap: AV and I went to Grand Rapids to see the fireworks and We the Kings in (free!!) concert for the Fourth of July.

We couldn't actually SEE hardly any of the fireworks though, because whoever was in charge thought that low exploding fireworks would work out a-okay. Sure, those would be superb in a big 'ole field. Too bad they were less than spectacular in the middle of a sea of office buildings. Any-hoo... After the concert there was, as we found out later, a shooting in a nearby parking lot. The streets were clogged with traffic, ambulances, police cars, and pedestrians so we decided to wander around for a bit before attempting to get back to the car.

Grand Rapids isn't all that big of a city and, at close to midnight on the Fourth of July, there wasn't much open. There were a few bars near where we were but AV had to work the next day so we couldn't go for drinks or anything, so we just wandered. I didn't want to go too far from the city center late at night and we ended up at the courthouse. Lights were on in the lobby and AV thought it looked interesting so we headed over.

We peeped in the windows and I pointed out all the illuminated red "Exit" signs at the stairwells. We stood around for a bit at the corner (the courthouse is on an intersection) and, since I was only wearing a tank-top, I complained about being cold. AV stood behind me and started picking on me.

He grabbed me in a backward bear-hug and while I wiggled and squirmed and complained of the cold, he pulled out a ring.

"Will you marry me?"

I snatched up the ring, and, like the difficult child I am, I chirped out "Nope!"



Cheers,
Red

Fourth of July Festivities

AV had some friends up for the Fourth of July. They arrived late Thursday night and were planning to leave around lunch Monday (July 4). We did the normal "visiting Michigan" type of activities, or at least, normal for people we know. We went shopping at the thrift stores, we went to the beach, we had bonfires, and we went kayaking. A pretty solid weekend.

I found out that the town we live in has a Fourth of July parade and I wanted to go. We went to the Christmas parade and it was a pretty fun time, so I figured the Fourth of July parade would be larger. I was correct. The parade lasted about an hour with all the normal parade type things. You know... dogs in costumes, scary clowns, kids on decorated bikes, the Asparagus Queen. It was a good time and there were a bunch of antique automobiles, which I always love.

After AV's friends left, we watched a movie (okay, AV watched, I took a nap) and headed down to Grand Rapids. Grand Rapids was supposed to also have a huge parade and then a series of free concerts leading up to the fireworks and a concert by We the Kings.

The parade was not as big/exciting as the parade where we live, but it did have a few awesome bits. Mainly the "float" from the Public Museum. It was an antique truck with a self playing organ in the bed.

LOVE IT.

After the parade we watched a bit of the free concert in Rosa Park Circle in front of the art museum. The first band was fairly terrible... They were clearly still in, or just out of, high school and it showed. You couldn't hear the vocals, what you could hear was poorly written, and the music was not so subtly "borrowed" from other popular bands. The next band, thankfully!, was much better. Not wanting to get sucked into the third band's performance, we headed to dinner at the Asian restaurant up the street.

We've been to this restaurant before, and while the food is EXCELLENT, the service is TERRIBLE. We're not strangers to this type of behavior though, so at this point we pretty much just accept it. And again, the food itself was wonderful, so I guess I can't complain too much?

We went back to the free concerts where each band got progressively better than the last. We watched the bands as well as what we came to refer to as "Creepy Drug Addict Guy". There was a big black guy dancing around in the "lawn" area of the park. He wasn't dancing in the normal sense... He was dancing... like a creepy drug addict. Every so often he would lean over and appear to begin to pass out. It was pretty terrifying.

There was an additional creepy dude with a giant bubble wand. He was on the other side of the park from us but the bubbles rose up over the crowd and it looked awesome.

Gigantic bubbles!

We also watched someone paint a painting. Again, it was on the other side of the park so we didn't really get to watch, but I saw the end result. He had painted the Statue of Liberty and a sunset sky. That would be pretty awesome on it's own, but it was made more awesome by the fact that he was painting the piece on one of those spinny canvases!

This is just some random guy on YouTube, but this is the type of canvas the painter in the park was using.

The last bit of entertainment we witnessed was a set of siblings who had balloon hats. Earlier in the night a different sibling was playing with one of the hats, attempting to catch the end of the hat as it sat on his head. He looked exactly like a donkey with a carrot on a string. Later his brother (or possibly cousin) decided this activity was worth trying out.

heeheeeheeeeee



Finally it was time for the fireworks! I was wondering if we should go somewhere else but there were gaps between the buildings and we assumed that you would be able to see the fireworks between and over the buildings. Nope. We started walking (along with thousands of other people) towards the river. Somehow the river was much further away than we expected and we seemed to be missing most, if not all, of the fireworks. I didn't want to wander too far from the park though, because We the Kings were supposed to come on right after the fireworks. So we tried a couple of places, all to no avail. We stopped with the rest of the crowds, in the middle of the street, to watch. Too bad you could only see about half of every other firework. It was terribly dissapointing.

Instead of missing out on everything, we headed back to the park to get a good spot to watch We the Kings. I got what I thought was a good spot. As it turns out, the park (which is also used as an iceskating rink in the winter) has no incline in front of the concert shell. So, while I was very close to the band, I couldn't see anything. And, to add insult to injury, some guy who was probably like a hundred feet tall kept trying to push in front of me. But, the music was good.

There was no encore which we thought was strange, but we started heading to the car. We noticed flashing lights and sirens. There were police cars at the park now, and the officers were using the megaphones to tell people to "PLEASE LEAVE THE ROSA PARK AREA". I thought this was really rude, the concert had just ended, there was no way we would be able to get out of the city yet with all those people about, so why couldn't we stick around the park area? But the police were insistant. So we started to wander about.

As it turns out, we were made to leave the area because two people were shot in a fight. I guess that's why there was no encore...

And then... something else happened. But you'll have to wait until tomorrow to read about it!

Cheers,

Red

Officially Official!

We are now officially engaged!

He liked it so he put a ring on it. And I've got the bling to prove it.

Each side has four little diamonds on it, so there's a total of nine stones on the ring. The top of the ring has two Celtic knots, one on either side of the center diamond. AV choose that setting as Celtic knots have no end, they go on "fover". The center stone is an Asscher cut, or Square Emerald cut. This type of cut allows the most light refraction so the diamond is the most "glittery".

I'm so happy/excited/thrilled!

Cheers,
Red