Daniel "Obsessive Compulsive" Boone

Daniel Boone is a good little buddy* but he has one super weird habit. He appears to be slightly obsessive compulsive when it comes to being held.

Unlike Jame-o, Dannie CANNOT be held like a baby. If he even starts to think that you're going to turn him upside down he starts getting upset. But the real weirdness comes when you pick him up to hold him. He likes to be held where he can put his front feet on your shoulder. Your LEFT shoulder. If you pick him up pointing to the right, he will push off of you, turn around, and snuggle up to the left side.

I think he might have some localized hip or back problems on the one side so he gets pinched or something when you hold him "wrong".

Or possibly he's just a little OCD kitty.

I'll probably never know since he doesn't speak English and I have yet to figure out what "MRAH!" means.

Cheers,
Red

*except for when he is peeing on the floor, at which point he is an a**hole

Cinderella Kitty Does His Chores: For REALs

Today I mopped the basement. It's awful down there, especially after all the work we've been doing. It's just dusty and there are dirty footprints everywhere. So I scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed. Of course I didn't do this alone.

Kelly is BIG on helping.

He likes to help in the bathroom: "What are you doing on that seat? Is there something IN there? CAN I SEE??"

He likes to help in the kitchen: "What are you doing up there? Can I touch that??"

He likes to help in the bedroom: "Are you asleep? Are you awake now? What are you doing in there? Can I sit there? Play with me?"

He likes to help in the office: "What are you looking at? Can I sit up there? Can I touch that? Can I do what you're doing? Play with me?"

But mostly, Kelly likes to help mop the floors. He likes to chase the mop back and forth and jump on it. But of course it's wet and when he touches it he freaks out and runs and hides. After nursing his "wounds" he likes to come back and watch some more.

Kelly's FAVORITE thing to do is lay on the wet floors after they've been mopped. I HATE that he does this. Not only does it screw up the clean floor, but it also gets cleaning products all over him. I use Lysol or Fabuloso, it's diluted in the water but that doesn't mean that little children should be in it. The problem is in the fact that he has to clean himself after he sprawls out in the dampness. This always makes me nervous because I don't want him to get sick from the chemicals.

If I try to get him out of the way he hides where I can't get him. If I CAN manage to get him out of where I'm working, he sneaks back in when the floor is ALMOST dry.... but not quite.

He's really not as helpful as he likes to think he is.

Cheers,
Red

Cinderella Kitty Does His Chores

Cinderella Kitty is the first to wake every morning. He has many, many chores to do. When the sun begins to rise, he slowly opens his eyes and gets ready for his day.

Cinderella Kitty rises with the sun.

First, Cinderella Kitty heads into the bathroom. His ugly brothers are very dirty and he has to scrub and scrub and scrub the tub. Even though Cinderella Kitty has worked very hard, when his brothers see the newly cleaned bathroom, they tell him it is not good enough! So, Cinderella Kitty sighs and gets back to work while his brothers watch him and make sure he does the job to their liking.

Cinderella Kitty's brothers watch him work.

After cleaning the bathroom, Cinderella Kitty wakes up his Uncle and begins his work on laundering the linens. Cinderella Kitty's Uncle is very particular and likes to inspect all of Cinderella Kitty's work. The sheets must be done just-so or Cinderella Kitty must re-do them.

Cinderella Kitty's Uncle inspects the laundry

Next, Cinderella Kitty starts working on making lunch for his brothers and uncle. He makes a delicious meat pizza and watches as everyone eats.

Cinderella Kitty watches as everyone eats the delicious food he has made.

Cinderella Kitty is not allowed to eat with his brothers and uncle. He eats alone after everyone else is done. They have eaten all of the pizza so Cinderella Kitty makes himself some toast and reads a magazine.

Cinderella Kitty reads a magazine as he eats alone.

 After lunch, Cinderella Kitty vacuums and mops the floors. He rolls around on the damp ground just for good measure. As the day is nearing a close, Cinderella Kitty makes a few final checks around the house. He needs to make sure that everything is clean and in order for the next day. He knows his family does not like it when things are out of place.

Cinderella Kitty inspects the house at the end of the day.

The day is finally over for Cinderella Kitty. With everything in its rightful place and his family tucked into their beds, Cinderella Kitty can finally rest. He first takes a quick bath. It is very relaxing after all of the work he has done today.

Cinderella Kitty relaxes with a bath.

Clean and tired, Cinderella Kitty climbs up to his small room and curls up for sleep. He knows he must sleep well, for tomorrow will only bring more work for him.

Cinderella Kitty curls up for sleep.



Good night, Cinderella Kitty.

---

Cheers,

Red

The Garage Sale

I want to discuss the garage sale. This is a very important tool used by many households to make a few bucks and get rid of extra stuff.There are some inherent rules to stick to when having a garage sale.

The Rules
1. Everything being sold is something you were planning on donating or throwing away
2. It should last no more than one weekend
3. If you think it is actually worth something then put it on ebay
4. Have some idea what the stuff is
5. Very small signs pointing in the general direction

Now I have been to tons of garage sales that break one or two of these rules, but in particular one so called garage sale is annoying me.

Near work I stopped at a garage sale that had nothing under five dollars and no real prices marked on anything. It was obvious he was collecting and obtaining items just to have a garage sale. This particular sale had been going on every weekend for two months straight. I finally stopped when I saw a table full of instruments, I asked about one particularly beat up marching french horn (marked as a rare trumpet) and he said he was asking five hundred for it, I laughed a little out loud.

So far this garage sale has broken every rule, except for the last one...........wait he has permanent neon spray painted signs that he covers with trash bags during the week....so yes he breaks every one of the rules.

No more shall his be called a garage sale! It shall be called a crappy roadside store with only weekend hours.

PS Red is King of the Garage Sale with the $25 snow blower.

All the commotion

So you have heard about our little bat problem. Apparently talking with people at work this is a very common problem in this area. Our house now hopefully has one way bat exits on all the points that looked like they could get in. As I write at the moment I cannot hear any bats in the walls or ceiling.

Now to address this first bat that supposedly came into the house, I maintain that I was asleep and it was a dream. The second bat just proved that Red did not need my assistance at all, and just wanted to lock me in a room with the bat. I am pretty sure Red's plan was closely related to something I saw in an episode of The Office.

Red's real plan.

Fruit Fly, Don't Bother Me.

We are having a problem with fruit flies in the kitchen. They showed up and now they won't leave. Part of the problem is that I don't like to refrigerate my fruit so it ends up being readily available to them like little private breeding grounds. The second part of the problem might be that I don't do the dishes fast enough so they accumulate a little bit and the bugs get to them. I PROMISE I AM NOT A DISGUSTING PERSON!!!!

I know I could use fly papers but I used those in an apartment once and it just was creepy and gross, it was a sticky strip hanging from the light fixture with dead bugs in/on it. Not really the decor look I am going for. That option out, I looked up other ways to get rid of these little buggers*.

Wiki-how has an entire section devoted to "How To Ger Rid Of Fruit Flies" which would be great except for the fact that most of the "getting rid of" seems to be a "catch and release" program.

Just to be clear here, I don't have a baby penguin epidemic, nor do I have a horde of hedgehogs, I don't even have a bevy of hummingbirds in my house. I have disgusting little insects that just want to eat (and poop on) all my fresh fruit and vegetables.

I do not want to "catch and release". I don't need to tag their tiny little insect legs and free them into the wild. I don't need to safely transport them to a new safer location.

I want to exterminate them. I am looking for a "capture and destroy" method of "getting rid of", not a "hold it's hand and take it to the park" method.

If we're catching and releasing fruit flies, what's next? Humane ways to catch fleas? How to live with bed bugs?

CAPTURE AND DESTROY, PEOPLE, CAPTURE AND DESTROY.

Cheers,
Red

*buggers! Because they're BUGS! durhurhurhur...

The Scary-Scary Room

In our house we have what we call "The Scary-Scary Room". The Scary-Scary Room is located in our basement and is really just the utility room. When we moved in the room was AWFUL, hence the "Scary-Scary" moniker.

We (obviously) have problems with bats in the house and I'm pretty sure there are some mice as well. Apparently the utility room was a big hub of animal activity. The floor and all the surfaces were covered in animal droppings. A week ago, I went down and started cleaning it out down there. It then looked like this:

This is only the half of the room that doesn't house the water heater and boiler (we have hot water heat), but don't worry. The other half of the room is also a crisis.

While cleaning out the Scary-Scary Room, I found all (or at least most of) the original doors and windows from the house. The hinges and door knobs are gorgeous but the doors themselves are garbage. I'm not sure why the previous owner(s?) would even keep them, they're not good enough to use for anything. Later this week I'm going to take off the fixtures and get rid of the doors, it'll open up a HUGE area in the basement and hopefully I'll be able to use some of the old knobs on the current doors and bring back a little retro class!

The windows down there are a totally different story. There is NOTHING salvageable about them. I suppose I could use them for some sort of art project but that's really all they might be able to be used for. Again, why would the previous owner even keep them around??

I also found, what I find to be, a hideous Oriental rug. It doesn't seem to ever have been used, which is kind of weird. Just another question as to why it's still in there.

Next I found a miniature life jacket and two butterfly nets. These might be useful later when the mice start coming into the house in the winter... Actually, no, that life jacket will probably not ever be useful. 

We also have, as I mentioned in the last post, an additional toilet down there. Yes, a THIRD toilet chilling out down in the basement, but, no, we cannot be so lucky as to actually have it be hooked up in a secret third bathroom down there. So we just have another ugly, uncomfortable toilet (plus a fairly okay looking sink) taking up room in our house.

But finally, I will share the piece de resistance from the Scary-Scary Room. A paper bag entirely filled with buckeyes. Old, shriveled, some moldy, buckeyes. What would somebody DO with a bag of buckeyes?? I thought maybe they were saving them to eat them but AV says they are poisonous. Maybe some sort of ... craft project?? But they're all moldy so that wouldn't work..

So I decided to chuck them. I didn't want to hold them too close to my chest because of them being all nasty in there... Which was apparently not the best plan, because one corner I was holding tore. And then THIS happened:

So there were like a million molding buckeyes rolling around on the basement stairs. If it hadn't been for our buddies, the buckeyes would have just stayed in that little pile on that one stair. But alas, SOME PEOPLE thought that these little buggers were fabulous and spent the afternoon kicking them down the stairs.

It's a good thing there's no attic in this house, who knows what we'd find if we had one of those!!!

Cheers,

Red

Toilet Trauma

We have yet another small and obnoxious thing to add to our growing list of house repairs... This afternoon the toilet seat cracked in the downstairs bathroom.*

To make matters worse/more obnoxious the toilets currently installed in the house have round bowls instead of the more common (and way more comfortable) elongated bowls. So we will have to buy a round replacement seat which will be getting trashed/sold when we eventually get new (elongated!!!) toilets in the next couple of months.

And on a final obnoxious note, we actually have a spare THIRD toilet sitting in the utility room in the basement. It is ALSO a round bowl toilet BUT it DOESN'T HAVE A SEAT so I can't even use it to solve our current problem!

UGH.

Cheers,
Red

*I would post a photo but then you might see how disorganized we are and I can't let that happen!

Chipmunk Invasion

I have a confession to make. I spent a good five minutes* of my day today yelling at a chipmunk. We're working really hard on our house and I know chipmunks have a tendency to burrow and ruin stuff, so I wasn't exactly pleased to see this little buddy** scampering across the yard towards the house.

I was already not in the best mood and seeing a stripey tail bounding through the grass (he had to bound, we've yet to mow the lawn) did not cheer me up. The "buddy" ran straight for the house and slid under the back porch. That whole side of the house has cement walkways butted up against the house, so a single chipmunk probably couldn't do to much but I knew he must be the little scout looking for lodging for an entire chipmunk army.

Lined up in tiny little ranks, they'd march across the lawn... well probably bound since, again, we haven't mowed the grass. Each little chipmunk division would be led by a head chipmunk carrying a tiny little flag. They would drag behind them a miniature Trojan horse. They would ask for entry into my house. I would deny it. They would present me with the little wooden horse. I would accept it (can you blame me though? A tiny wooden horse! Made by chipmunks!). I would bring it into my home and little chipmunk archers would dash out. They would savagely attack my knees and ankles. Even the cats would be no match for their toothpick arrows. We would be defeated and the conquering army would move on to invade and destroy.

So, obviously I chased the "buddy" as he scampered under the porch deck. This particular chipmunk was either a very well trained soldier or he did not speak English; he did not even look nervous as I threatened to "grab you and squash your head".

This standoff lasted for a few minutes. Me squinting under the decking and him staring me down with beady rodent eyeballs. I continued to yell obscenities at him and he continued to not look nervous. He was sitting only a few feet from me and I contemplated grabbing him. While this was a tough decision to come to, I ultimately did not grab said chipmunk as I know they are wild animals and carry things like rabies, salmonella, botulism, and rheumatic fever.*** So instead I resorted back to yelling and making what would probably be considered "jazz hands" at it.

The chipmunk was, regretfully, not threatened by me in the slightest and may or may not have taken up residence under the front porch.

I expect so see teams of chipmunks pulling a tiny wooden horse any day now.

Cheers,
Red

*It was quite possibly ten minutes.
**"buddy" is not really the word I would use, but we're trying to keep this sh*t family friendly.
***I never lie. This is ALL true. Sometimes they also carry umbrellas.

Spam-a-licious Financial Decisions

I am waiting on an email from a job I applied to so I checked my spam folder to make sure it didn't get sent over there by mistake. It did not, but I do now have another lucrative opportunity:

"I request to channel a left over fund to your account for partnership investment under your inspection the sum of (6.7m) Six Million, Seven Hundred Thousand Dollar's) the said amount belongs to one of our foreign customer."

SOLD.

But, I also have a Plan B if that one doesn't work out: I can always buy/sell/trade some "MaxGentleman Enlargement Pills".

My only question is in regards to this comment: "The only Penis Enlargement pill PROVEN in clinical trials". Now, how would one run a trial of this type of supplement?

"Alright sir, now that I've used this tape measure to record the size of your 'Little Friend', take a couple of these and check out these complementary magazines. I'll be back in a few minutes to re-measure. " Or maybe they use time-lapse cameras like in those documentaries when you can watch flowers grow from seeds. Regretfully, those movies would probably not be nearly as spectacular as watching an entire field of daffodils bloom in fifteen seconds.

Cheers,
Red

Bat-Attack 2.0

Our current Bat in House Frequency is 2 per week.

AV and I were hanging out in the living room on Friday evening. All of a sudden we heard that chirping noise we've become so familiar with... I sighed and turned to AV. "Crap... There's another...."

WHOOSH. A bat flew through the double doors to the living room, followed closely by Kelly, once again on bat patrol. We watched as it circled the room, chirping.

I got off the couch and headed out into the house to find something to catch Bat2 in. I ducked as the bat flew over my head. I closed the doors behind me so the bat wouldn't escape further out into the house.

Pause story.
I CAN HEAR BATS IN THE WALLS RIGHT NOW.
Continue story.

As I was shutting the doors, AV crouched down beside the couch and stared at me with wild eyes. "What are you doing? Don't do that!"

But I shut the doors anyway. That'll teach you to not help me at four in the morning with the last bat! Too bad I forgot we have a transom and open gap over the doors in the living room, thus negating the effect of closing the doors...

Bat 2 sped through the gap over the door and landed on the curtains in the entry room. Apparently curtains are awesome bat hangouts...

AV came out of the living room and we located and emptied a box to catch Bat 2 in.

Bat in a box! ... Again...

Cheers,
Red

Duh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh BAT(wo)MAN!

On Tuesday night, at 4:30am, or I suppose that would be Wednesday morning, I was awaken from a solid slumber by a chirping noise followed by a thumping. Obviously chirping/thumping noises are not exactly top of the "Common Nighttime Noises in My Bedroom" list so I was rather confused and completely terrified.

Like the crybaby I am, I woke up AV. We continued to listen to the chirping and thumping for a moment then both came to the sudden realization of "THAT'S A BAT". The chirping was the little guy's frightened crying and the thumping was Ned Kelly attempting to jump up, catch, and eat said little guy.

"Turn on the lights!" I requested and AV complied. The suddenly bright room was strangely quiet and bat free. I looked over the side of the bed to see Kelly staring back at my with pupils bigger than my head. He was in "Nighttime Hunter" mode and it was terrifying. AV came back to bed and pulled the covers up to his neck as I got out.

We had determined that the bat was in the curtains* and as Kelly snuffled around on the floor looking for it I tried to figure out how to flush a flying mammal out of the curtains without getting a bat in the face. As I stared at the curtains trying to locate the animal I noticed a small black triangle sticking off the top of the curtains (we have those kind of curtains that have a ruffle along the top, above the curtain rod). I stood on top of the bed for a better view and noticed the black triangle had a skinny toe attached to it.

Then it moved. Bat located.

I got down from the bed and turned  to AV. "What do I do??" I asked. He shrugged, "I donno", he responded as he snuggled deeper into the bed and pulled the blankets up to his neck.

I had been trying desperately to determine how to catch the bat ever since we had identified the initial noise. I knew there was a small butterfly net in the ceiling of the basement, but the image of myself dashing around the room  flailing a child's toy around after a terrified flying animal quickly made that particular course of action significantly less attractive.

"What do I do??" I asked AV again. Same response before. "I donno" and more snuggling. My hero....

I finally decided to capture the bat in a shoebox I'd been using as a garbage can. I dumped out the contents and slunk towards the curtains. I stopped when I realized I was much too short and wouldn't be able to scoop the bat into the box without being able to see it. "I'm not tall enough, I can't see it!" I called out to AV. "What do I do?" He just stared at me. I'm not sure why I bothered asking anymore.

I dashed into the office (its upstairs as well) and dumped out a plastic milk crate we were using for storage. I brought it back into the bedroom and climbed up.

As I listened to my heartbeat thundering in my head, I pulled down the edge of the curtain ruffle. I inched closer and closer to the little black triangle still sticking out of the top of the curtains. I finally folded the last bit of curtain down to reveal a little brown bat clinging desperately to the back side. I slid the box around him and pulled him off the curtains. A few little thumps were heard from the inside of the shoebox, but then it went quiet.

I turned back to AV, he was still snuggled in bed, ready to pull the covers over his head to deflect any wayward bats.

"Bat in a box!"** I croaked, my voice high and squeaky, full of terrified adrenaline.

I started to scamper downstairs with my bat-filled shoebox. It wasn't until I was halfway down the stairs that I realized: I'm in my underwear; I have to go outside now.

Cheers,
Red

PS. Stay tuned for AV's "Bat(wo)man Rebuttal". Apparently there's another side to this story...

*We heard the chirping noise coming from the curtains after we turned the lights on. As it turns out, locating the bat was actually just a lucky guess as the "chirping" in the curtain was really a sound coming from the air conditioning unit in the window.

**This is a reference to an SNL skit. NSFW: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZLIQodHaFk

Internet Connected!

We finally got the internet all hooked up and running in the office! Next step it to get the wireless set up so we can be overly connected as normal.

But this means that I have loads of stories to share!

Cheers,
Red

We're down to the wire...

Our lease ends tomorrow. We still need to do a bit of cleaning and get the rest of our stuff out of the house.

This consists of:
A stack of 2x4's
A half of a piece of plywood
Three pairs of shoes
A lawn mower
A mountain bike
A dirt bike
Safety gear for said dirt bike
Cleaning products
A box of insect repellent
A rake
Two brooms
Three vacuums (yes all three really are necessary)
Other small pieces of wood
A kitchen trash can
Two rolls of wrapping paper

Where we are going to put these things in the new house I do not know...

Cheers,
Red

Move, move, move....

We're still in the process of moving.

There are boxes scattered across the new house, trash and scattered things (both incredibly important and not so much so) across the old house. There's stuff in both our cars, in the old garage, out on the porch, and a bit in the yard. I'm not quite sure how we managed to acquire all this stuff, but we did and it has most definitely been a b*tch to move it all.

Our lease at the old house ends on Thursday so we have to have it all cleaned up and moved into the new one. The countdown is getting into the final moments so I guess we need to kick up our game.

I'm currently at the public library looking up internet plans. We still have no internet hookup at the new house, the last check box in terms of utilities.  Not to worry, when I finally get connected, I have many stories and photos to share, so just stay patient!

Cheers,
Red