Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

Poor Me

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Because we have no human children, and a lot of free time on the weekends, my husband and I have recently been allowing Tigger to explore the back deck from the safety of a cat harness and an expandable leash.

tigger outside

Being that it is the summertime, and we do live in the South, and we are caring and responsible (or horribly mean and abusive, it all depends on how you look at it) kitty parents, tonight we forced all the cats to endure The Application Of A Flea Control Substance.

That means that now, wherever I turn, I am faced with the highly indignant, self-righteous, and martyred (not to mention EXTREMELY grumpy) stare of animals that have been denied the privilege of having creepy crawly critters hatching in their fur all summer long. Plus the frustration stemming from the fact that I have now messed up the pristine smoothness of their coat, which they just spent the last 87 hours licking into perfection. Mixed in with the calculating stare that tells me that they are trying to decide whether or not I’m worth the effort of reaching out and whacking as I pass them by.

Life’s hard when you’re a cat.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

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Up until a few years ago I used to go around bragging all the time about how I had a “black thumb”. Unfortunately it was true that I was spectacularly unsuccessful in keeping alive things like plants, flowers, and a beta fish. But I never realized until recently just how weird it was that basically I was saying, “You know, I just want to tell you how excited I am about this special talent of mine where I am really good at killing living things.”

Looking back now I really don’t know how my husband and I ever had enough confidence in our abilities to take in and nurture living creatures other than ourselves, given the fact that every time he goes out of town on a trip he has to sit me down, look me in the eye, and remind me to continue eating while he is gone. Or the fact that once my husband was in serious stomach pain for like 5 days, and it wasn’t until the day when he could no longer stand up straight and was walking around the house bent over at a 90 degree angle and I could actually physically overpower him and force him into the car that he went to the doctor to get treated. [Read more…] about How Does Your Garden Grow?

Thank You For Sharing-Not!

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Yesterday I saw one of my students for their final Spanish tutoring session ever. It’s good for both of us; for him, because he HATES Spanish; for me, because I am no longer responsible for shepherding him through academia now that he has discovered the magical sugary-caffeinated elixir that is a Tall Vanilla Latte.

As he was pacing around my office and working off his coffee high he began closely inspecting everything on my shelves, including my collection of cat figurines.

“Oh, don’t look at those,” I said. “I don’t want you to think that I’m a crazy cat lady.”
“Oh I already KNOW you are!” he replied. “Three’s the magic number!”

He is very lucky that I am not the person in charge of grading his final Spanish exam.

My Crack Support Team

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Do you remember those choose-your-own adventure books that were really popular back in the 1980’s? Well, today’s post is going to follow that format.

My mother-in-law, Gardener Extraordinaire, is coming for a visit this weekend to help us do some landscaping around our house.

If you are the person who runs your household, continue reading here. So of course that has meant 2 days of cleaning the entire house, doing countless loads of laundry, dumping all the trash, airing out the guest room, washing all of the bed linens, cleaning the cat boxes and moving them out of the guest room, planning meals, making sure I had all the ingredients for the meals, scrubbing the guest bathroom, making sure we have clean towels, budgeting the landscaping purchases, trading cars with my spouse so that I have the SUV for bringing said purchases home, and making sure that we have suitable entertainments planned.

If you are not the person who runs your household, continue reading here. So of course that meant we were visited by the Laundry Fairy, the Housekeeping Fairy, and the Meal Planning and Preparation Fairy who, with a simple flick of their magic wands, effortlessly and instantaneously prepared the house for her visit.

Apparently, all of my frenetic activity of the past 2 days was only made possible due to some sort of energetic Vulcan mind meld performed between me and my cats, whereby I increased my daily energy capacity by sucking away all of theirs. Because, boy, did I get a lot done. And man, were they tired.

Pip whooped

Pip

Tigger whooped

Tigger

Bailey whooped

Bailey

And The Universe Laughed

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Yesterday I decided that I had had enough of the muscle in my leg that had been twitching non-stop for two days. Since the “doing nothing” option really hadn’t helped it at all, I thought that maybe doing some yoga and stretching it out might. However practicing yoga always means I need a special strategy for dealing with the cats because, in addition to watching us clip our toenails, yogurt, and swaggering through the house knocking over all our trash cans, they are obsessed with my yoga equipment. I have absolutely no idea why this is; all I know is that there is a substance on earth more seductive and alluring to cats than catnip, and it is The Material That Yoga Mats Are Made Of.

But my practice yesterday was, for some reason, surprisingly cat-free. “How nice,” I thought.

“A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” That was the sound of the Universe laughing, because the Universe knew something that I did not.

Specifically it knew that my husband was about to call me, and that at the exact moment I picked up the phone to hear him tell me that his plane had landed safely in a whole other state, I would see peeking out from under the ottoman the teeny, tiny, terrified head of a lizard that my INDOOR cats had somehow found, caught, and brought inside for a play date.

Fortunately my husband has a PhD in Talking His Hysterical Wife Through Difficult Situations Over The Phone, and was able to guide me through capturing the lizard and releasing it back into the wild. Although I have to say that it pretty much undid all the good relaxation work I had just done in my yoga routine.

And you know how lizards have that defense mechanism where they can detach their tails in order to escape predators? (Important Side Note: Although I have to say, from my extensive experience over the past year, that that feature is apparently completely useless when facing cats.) Well, when I finally got the little guy back outside I noticed that he was very stubby looking, due to the fact that he was missing his entire back end. And I still haven’t found that part of him yet.

But I will definitely be needing something a little more powerful than yoga when I do.