Cats with Wet Faces

I'm a good cat mommy.  My cats always have water -- it's in the bathroom so I don't have to transport water very far.  And they have round the clock food.  It's easier for me to just leave their food out all the time.  This way they can nibble when they want to, and they don't get fat.  And the food is just outside my bedroom door, so I can see when they need food -- it's also neat to watch them eat.

So why do both of the cats insist on drinking from my dripping taps?  (Plumbing Very old, unfixable without total replacement and pipes that don't fit etc.)  Kaliko has been drinking from the bathroom sink for a long time, but now Kia has discovered the bathtub tap.  She gets her face totally wet and can barely drag her old body out of the tub.  (What a lot we have in common.)

They are so cute I can't stand it.  =^••^=

Mixed Minded

I've just realized that I haven't posted anything about Mixed Minded, and it's been a month since I was there.  This is a memory I want to preserve.

I had fun.  In fact, I loved it.  I love the art I created.  I loved working on art and finishing it in one session.  I especially like meeting Karen Ellis of the art house studio, and getting a welcoming hug from Donna Downey.  They will never read this, but thank you so much.  You were both so kind to me.  In fact, just about everyone was helpful, going out of their way to offer assistance, so I didn't have to move.  I wish I could have taken more classes, but I took the right amount for the limitations of my body.

The only bad thing that happenend, and unfortunately I got a little upset about, damn it all, is that my heat gun ceased to work.  It must have been the fuses and electric at the hotel because the power kept going off while 30 or so women all used heat guns at the same time.  I would guess there was a power surge that wiped my heat gun out.  Unfortunately, it also destroyed the one that Karen leant me.  I feel very bad about that.

It was nice to be with creative women.  I did notice some of them were a bit clique-ish, and one was kind of nasty to me.  What is it about me that makes me dwell on the slights and my shortcomings instead of rejoicing in a glorious weekend?  Especially as inspiration and creativity was what the conference was all about.  I am going to try to change my outlook a bit.  I may never be able to write the kind of 'be happy' statements that abound in this arena, but I can try to be more positive.  And I will.

Fabulous time.  I even conquered a detour with lousy signage on the drive, and I got all my stuff out of the car and into the house by myself.  Not sure this çonference will be offered again next year, but if it is, then I'm going.  Maybe I should look farther afield for more creative things to do and attend.

Mutant Flies

Let me start off by expressing just how much I hate insects.  They give me the creeps, make me shudder, make me hide under the covers.  I can't even touch pictures of them in magazines like National Geographic.

Suddenly, two days ago, my kitchen was invaded by flies.  Not just any flies, but huge, monstrous, probably alien flies.  How did they get so big and where did they all of a sudden appear from?  I have managed to inhumanely destroy a few of them, but it's become a running battle.  There is currently one ensconced in my bathroom, buzzing merrily away, hiding from me and my pink fly swatter.

As I sit here on my bed and write, another one is periodically flying around my bedroom.  I sit armed with trusty pink swatter waiting for him to alight somewhere with a hard surface (not the TV screen for which he seems to have a certain fondness).  Damn fly will not cooperate.  I just begin to think he may have left the room for other climes when he pops up and charges my bedside lamp.  It is now 2:30 a.m.  I may never get to sleep because even if he settles down for a nap, I get the creeps thinking of him roaming about in my air space as I try to sleep.  Eeww.  I need to be rescued by a superhero, but not one like spiderman or batman -- much too insect-like.

Note to Self: Things not to do again

So I'm having a fairly good RA day.  It's early in my Orencia cycle and I'm tired of having things I want to do and not doing them.  I decide to drag my planters out of the wasteland I call my garage and start planting the tomato plants I bought weeks ago.  I wasn't surprised when my body said enough before I actually got the plants into the soil.  That's OK, wasn't expecting to do too much.  I'm nearly there and I can finish later.

Then, later in the day I decide to wash some newly bought fabric.  (My brain still thinks my body is going to let me do some quilting.)  The quandry -- brave the stairs to the washing machine in the basement, or hand wash?  My knees say hand wash.  Apparently my knees did not consult my hands.  Wringing out wet fabric --  not a good activity when I had already been using my hands.  Ouch.  I can't express how much I hate this disease.  I hate it that tasks that I wouldn't have thought twice about a few years ago and that seem so simple are now something that has me wringing my hands in pain tonight.

The Mess Before the Clean, continued

Still can't edit on my tablet, so when the cursor (sp?) disappears it is best to start again.
The problem with sorting, is that everything else remains in a total mess.  I'm talking disaster.  I'm also packing for Mixed Minded so the dining room which I use as my art studio is also a mess.  Funny, I used to be able to live in mess, but my tolerance for it is growing weaker.  At last.
Back to the Big Sort.

The Mess Before the Clean

It is totally out of character for me to want to clean and sort.  Yet here it 5:30 in the morning (and mornings don't even exist as far as I am concerned) and I am sorting through 15 years of teaching papers.  Basically, I am throwing my life for the past decade and a half - or a bit more - away.  It is a very odd feeling, considering the amount of sweat and tears that went into the accumulation of so much stuff.  I've only just started and am dying to finish, but the amount of stuff I dispose of is limited to the number of times my poor joints allow me to go up and down the stairs.  But moving into a place with no stairs to hamper my movement is the prize at the end of the exercise.  Don't know why, but I can't sort in situ (sorry, couldn't get the italics to work).  Everything must be dragged into my bedroom to be gone through.  I found the library card I lost many years ago!

The

Houston, We Have a Problem

Anytime I find myself challenged technologically, that famous, titular phrase comes to mind.  I remember all the moon and space missions, at least before the shuttle made inner space routine, and the calm understatement of those words have always made me catch my breath in admiration.

Of course my dilemma is miniscule, but in my small world it does tend to stymie me.  I had a very busy (for me) ßhopping 'spree' yesterday.  I made stops at two different places, scooter in and out of van, in and out of van.  This is something I try to avoid by shopping in malls and big stores, with a lot of planning.  But I wanted a new TV, which required a stop at Best Buy and the cable company so I could see more than channel 11, the local station.  I did collapse and disease-enforced nap when I got home.  (Annoying because I missed 3 live events I wanted to watch - one on TV (car race), one on radio and TV (baseball), and one on the internet (live art lesson).

So Saturday, I read manuals, put together the stand for the TV (lets not even think about tightening screws).  But I got it all set up (yeah me).  Sort of.  I just can't get the cable box to acknowledge the TV exists.  I tried to introduce them nicely by inputting each of the plethora of possible codess in turn, but to no avail.  Alas, they still won't talk to each other.  I'd gladly pay someone to come in and fix this for me, ut 'who do you call'?  There should be Technology Busters.  I know I will eventually get it to work.  I went through this with another similar set of devices.  But it will take a while , while I fiddle with codes, with pressing buttons in the rightnorder.  Or maybe I will have to give in and call a neighbour.  (My misplaced sense of independence hates to do that,)

Sigh.  Not again.  I really wish there was a Technology Busters.