ZOMG don’t bitch that you want/need work and then don’t answer my calls/texts to give you work! I realize the world isn’t on call but seriously, who doesn’t check their phone for hours and hours and hours? Not once? Did you home AND work phones miraculously break at the same time? Jesus it’s so annoying!!
Person who was trying way too hard to please me:
What I want— what I really, really want-- is SPACE. Breathing room. Freedom to make decisions that only affect me.
Now it’s not your fault that I’ve just spent several days with someone else who wanted to please me way too much, but I needed SPACE desperately for a while today.
Maybe tomorrow I can be cheerful and patient and friendly to you.
OMG I would totally do that, and I totally agree about the kitten thing, I’ve never adopted one. But if one my other cats got a crush, I would totally do it.
On a separate post note, I got to briefly meet a favorite minor celebrity of mine, YouTuber, one third of the parody group DWV and RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant, Willam Belli. So nice in person, and even prettier. We exchanged greetings, a few words, and I got a pic. I also shared a pitcher of Long Islands with my friend who went with me, so I’m a little buzzed. Yay, Sunday Funday!
Heh. Actually posted during my lunch hour at work. The incident happened on Friday morning.
P. S. I hope you got through your birthday with a maximum of available happiness, and a minimum of difficulty. 
I can’t tell you how much I love this 
That’s totally something I’d do, and it makes me happy when others are as insane as I am 
It’s like real life Neopets. You can adopt a petpet for your pet!
That’s what my Dad and step mom ended ended up doing. Step bro had budgies, went on vacation and left the birds with Dad. Dog took a liking to birds, got really mopey when they went home.
Dad and step mom now have a cage of budgies for the dog.
Darn fucking damn it. A bunch of little stupid things are piling up and making me feel bad. Not having gone to friends’ shows recently. Having forgotten someone’s birthday today and yesterday. And now I feel so bad that I’m in one of those moods that I don’t feel like doing anything at all so I’m getting nothing productive done. Geez. I’m pathetic.
I’ve gotta go kick my own ass off to the bank soon. If I ever frigging get around to it.
It worked the first night. Unfortunately I had to enlarge the crawl space opening to get the trap out. Also unfortunately, the power tools were in a tool bag in the shelves up over the basement stairs. Easy for son to reach, kind of a stretch for me. And the whole bag is too heavy for me to think of juggling off the shelf while teetering over the stairs. So it was reach up on tiptoe, pull a power tool from the bag - nope, wrong one. The fourth one was the right one.
I am so glad that we found out that we couldn’t get the cage out of the crawl space before it had a cat in it. This cat was really sure that it could get out of the cage if it just launched itself at one end or another and fiddle with the corners the right way. Getting it up the basement stairs was interesting enough with it doing that.
I don’t blame him for putting off the surgery. Big surgery is a big insult to the body. I say this as someone who’s had a knee replacement and found it life changing.
I don’t know your honey, but it might help if you start theoretically planning it from a point of suspicion. There are a wide range of bone doctors and several styles of knee replacement. My uncle, for instance, got both knees done and they’ve never been completely right. He still has poor range of motion and and unsteady gait, although less pain that before.
So I’d either start a list of things you don’t want and doctors that you don’t want doing it. Or I’d start asking folks who have had the surgery who their surgeon was and how things turned out, on the idea that there are probably one or two surgeons in your area who get the best results consistantly and you don’t want anyone else. If you know any doctors with a geriatric clientele, ask them who they’d recommend. They get feedback from a lot of different knee surgeries.
I apparently lucked into the rock star of knee replacements. I was not dancing on it the next day, but I was able to walk to the bathroom. The day after that, the physical therapy started. I was back at work in a week and a half. By the end of the PT (months) my other knee was doing better.
Thinking back over the stages of recovery, I have to say that the recovery is shorter if you don’t put the surgery off. I put it off and found that my body had adjusted to me not walking much and walking with one knee worse than the other. When the knee was better and I started taking walks to build it up, all of the other weakened parts of my body started giving out first, and I had to start working on them, too, to be able to do enough walking to make the knee better.
That’s too long. Shorter version: if you find the right surgeon, it’s less insult to the body and a quicker recovery. Time spent finding the right guy is crucial. And your sweetie may be less resistant to the idea that you’re eliminating surgeons that are merely OK, because that’s not good enough for him.
Awwww. That is industrial grade cute.
Maybe she will be a gateway kitten, and Steve will lose some of his feral.
Do not talk to me when I am driving.
If you must talk, do not ask me questions. Especially " I can name this song in six notes" type questions. Especially if there is traffic I should be paying attention to.
And do not tell me to look out my window at the scenery.
Or tell me how much faster/more aggressively your parents would have driven.
Also, do not tell me ways in which I could improve my gas mileage. Or detail other ways in which my car kinda sucks right now.
Look, it’s a 2000 Saturn, with almost 100K miles. The next major recommended repair will be a sign that it’s time to replace it.
The air conditioner hasn’t worked in years, and will not be repaired while I own the car.
You’re my kind of driver, Eureka.
Hey, flatlined – Steve with his new kitten pics as a birthday gift for me? 
ETA: oh, right, came here to rant. Sooooooo … I’ve sorta started seeing a guy. He’s made of awesome – so nice to me it’s ridiculous. And while I have already met his mom (!) and one of his sisters, the idea of introducing him to my parents has been giving me the (expletive delete) and it’s all for the shittiest reason: he’s the wrong color (as far as they’re concerned).
I take it this person is a non-driver? I’ve come across this since I moved into the city in 2000 and have occasionally toted adult non-drivers around. They can be very distracting. I’ve come to the conclusion that other drivers are simply following their training and being nearly as observant as passengers as they are when driving. I’ve certainly had a couple occasions where a passenger who also drives catches something I didn’t, while non-driving passengers are oblivious and tend to be more of a distraction because they’re competing for my attention rather than observing the road and shutting up at appropriate times like a trained driver would. It’s interesting, and makes me feel that everyone really should go through some kind of driving training, even if they don’t ever get a license.
Yes, adult non-driver.
Sitting still and shutting up are not in his skill sets, and somehow I’ve ended up driving him around four days in a row-- and I was already cranky and short tempered for reasons that aren’t his fault.
And really snapping at him would make me feel like I kicked a puppy.
So I brought it here, instead.
I knew you would understand about the kitten thing. I called our Rescue Director and told her that we wanted the kitten and that I’d pay the adoption fee on Saturday. We got into a bit of an argument about it. We pay the vet from the adoption fees, and we are always short of money. She can’t just be giving kittens away when we can clearly afford to pay for her.
So…I kinda lied to her. I didn’t tell her about Steve (because I knew that if I did, she would have won the argument), I told her that Bill wanted to get her for me for our anniversary.
Ain’t that the truth!
That is just so cute.
I’m so glad you were able to get the cat. I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t have any advice to share…but good job.
Thank you so much for the information about Bill’s knee replacement. I will start doing my research now. I don’t like seeing him in pain, and its not going to get better.
Steve isn’t a bad cat. He doesn’t rip stuff up and he always uses the litter box. He’s just afraid.
And he’s going to be so sorry, his kitten has already chewed his whiskers off and she thinks his tail is the best toy ever. She is too young to be trusted with the run of the house, but when I brought her downstairs for some “family” time, Steve was always within 3 feet of her, which means he was within 3 feet of the scary humans.
So, you could be very right. I don’t think Steve will ever be a lap kitty, but she might force him to stop hiding.
Missed this, so sorry for the double post.
While I’m very happy that you are hanging out with someone who makes you feel good, the bolded part is making me all grrrrr and stuff. I have other words, but they are your parents, so I won’t say what I’m really thinking.
horseshoe, is he fake-tan-orange? You’re right, that would totally clash with you…
Yeah, I have a friend like this and it can be really frustrating. I was driving her home one night and we got caught in a torrential downpour. Terrible visibility, flooding, etc. Most passengers with a decent amount of driving experience just kind of realize that this is a situation in which one shuts up and doesn’t speak unless spoken to until the weather improves. Not my friend. I finally had to ask her to be quiet so I could concentrate on more important things, like locating the lane markers.
She also is absolutely terrible at navigating because since she doesn’t drive, she doesn’t realize that you need to tell the driver about an upcoming left turn more than 100 feet in advance because it is not possible to get across 4 lanes of traffic in that span, or that it would be really helpful to have some idea of which exit we’re taking out of this traffic circle before we get there, etc. Thinking at pedestrian speed in a car doesn’t work.
purplehorseshoe, have to agree with Nava. If he’s orange you might want to re-think, otherwise… their problem, not yours.
flatlined, loving the descriptions of Steve with his kitten! Totally something I would do.
In fact, I did something similar: we lost one of our dogs last fall and the other one went into depression so we found another dog to keep her company. He shares a father with the original dog and looks virtually the same. I also have three cats; one little female who does not give a shit and gets along, and two older males. One of the boys (it’s been nearly six months now) is beginning to tolerate the new dog (Niko). The other male moved out of the house when Niko moved in and is living rough in the barn and woods. He did the same when we got the first dog (now deceased), the second dog (Gracie) and the female kitten but the longest he stayed out was a month. Niko is not helping matters by having a huge hard on for the two male cats. He barks when he sees them and tries to chase them whenever he can, ie. whenever I’m not on his case. The males don’t help by running away. (the female said “fuck you” and smacked Niko so no chasing). The ‘missing’ male cat (Ren) has no problem with Gracie, he’ll smooch with her when she finds him outside and Niko has no problem with the female cat (Minou). They’re buddies. So I don’t think it’s a ‘hate dogs; hate cats’ thing. Only this specific dog and this specific cat.
So… advice please. How do I integrate the stupid dog with the stupid cat?
tl:dr; One cat hates new dog. Dog can’t stop chasing cat that runs.
Interesting idea. I know that as a fellow driver, I try to help my husband when he’s driving, not distract him (when he’s looking one way, I look the other way, I keep my eye on cars while we’re passing, that kind of thing). When I can see the traffic is heavy and he’s busy, I try to shut the hell up.
Oh my God, you’re dating a Jersey Shore guy?!? :eek:
Yeah, your parents are sounding awfully sucky, PurpleHorseShoe. You’ve got to find your happiness where you can in this life (I guess you know that as well as anyone) - I hope your parents come around to that idea, too.