I’m housesitting for my friend with six cats (and a dog) so you better believe I’m lying around being lazy. I currently have three of the fuzzbuckets piled around me getting alternate scritches - took a nap yesterday on the couch and awoke to 5 out of the 6 arrayed in a circle near me, all in full “catloaf” mode.
Two Siamese, a black cat (who looks like my Monkey except with more, uh, padding, so I refer to that one as “Chunky Monkey”) and three tabbies.
I checked my work email last night, from COVID-infected El Jefe. He says someone else (and her parents) tested positive. This morning, another cow-orker said she’d tested positive with a temperature of 99.9º.
I’m starting to wonder if there was something in the hot dogs.
Hey, I was working. Your order won’t crush itself, ya know. 
And nothing like walking in after work, and find your cat teabagging your dog’s Snoopy doll.*
Hapy Doperversary!
Happy Switzerland Day.
And also Happy Irish Bank Holiday Day!
One of my friends who was at the Hockey Convention tested positive today. 
Kinda glad I missed it now.
* technically Alex is anatomically unable to teabag, but you get the idea.**
** And not like Gordie hasn’t done weird and unnatural things to ol’ Snoop over the years.
mooom is away from home on an errand of mercy taking care of her in-laws in nasty Florida and is hopefully laying abed recovering from a loooonnngg drive yesterday. She’s excused.
doggio was on vacation and shouldn’t have to answer his alarm. It’s entirely likely he’s sleeping it off on his couch. I certainly hope so.
The rest of us have no excuse. Well, except perhaps swampy. He’s performing above average at professing to be a ‘retiring drain on society’ while actually getting way too much adulting crap done every single damn day.
nellie lives practically perched on the farthest west rim of the continent and her sunrise comes two hours later than even mine, buying her leeway.
Cookie I finally saw the immersive van Gogh (van Goff if you Brit speak) when on vacation in York in May. It was wonderful. You will enjoy it.
Happy Dopiversary! 2000 was a special year.
Gotta stick to this week’s theme, you know.
Too lazy to even complete the sentence. 
Didn’t do any organizing, but I did write a letter to my parents. Probably should get my backpack ready for going to work tomorrow.
It is possible to buy fireworks year-round, but only in specialty shops. In the weeks leading up to New Year’s Eve and August 1st, many grocery stores will sell fireworks as well, or someone will put up a fireworks stand in the parking lot.
A few years ago Switzerland changed some of the laws regarding fireworks, so many of the bigger fireworks are now restricted to those who have permits. That means that most personal firework shows are a bit smaller than before. As in, one of my neighbords used to do a firework show that was a similar show as the township firework show in the U.S.
It is permitted to set off fireworks only on December 31st and August 1st, except if someone gets the proper permission, which is not that easy. If the weather is bad, there is no make-up day.
Carefully backs out of the thread…
What about those of us in the Pacific time zone?
Can I really be branded a “slugabed” because I’m still asleep at 3 am?
Apparently we can. 
Entirely too much time in vehicles today. 45 minutes in the tow truck from home to my buddy’s shop, 15 minutes from his shop to my shop to collect some stuff, 30 minutes from my shop to home to get more stuff for the gift store (if the lake wasn’t in the way it’d only be 5), 40 minutes to the top of the lake to drop off stuff at the gift store, an hour over the top of the lake and back down back to my shop (I was supposed to be getting a $110 gallon of finish and didn’t want it sitting outside–it didn’t come), then another 30 minutes back home. Cayuga Lake is big.
Turns out the terlit clog was an incontinence pad. FCD had to take the terlit up and pull the clog out the bottom with pliers. So he needed to get a wax ring and new bolts. Anyway, it’s fixed and he’s napping.
I baked all the muffin batter and MIL froze a dozen. I have all the corn on the cob ready to cook and i just took the chicken out to finish thawing before I put it in the oven. So supper is planned.
Hope I can sleep better tonight. < yawn>
Wifey got home from the ‘festival’ or whatever it was, late last night so we didn’t get to bed until after 1:00am. She got up around 8:30 or so, and I got up about 20 or 30 minutes later, so slugabeds we do be. 
it’s 88f now and 'sposed to only get to 101f later. That’s better than it has been, for certain values of ‘better’. We need to finish unloading the truck, but I don’t expect a whole lot of other stuff to happen today, but ya never know.
ETA: an incontinence pad? Really? you ain’t supposed to flush those.
Have a fun week Mom.
Bumba - we think it fell in accidentally. FIL knows not to flush them, but he’s also not really observant all the time. We did save them a big plumber bill.
I sent a message to my PCP last week, giving him the heads-up that I have a buncha sutures he’ll want to look at when I come in for my routine exam on Friday. He finally answered this morning. I replied, saying that the only concern I have is a little numbness on the proximal pad of my left index finger. I guess he was concerned, so I got a call to come into the office. (It’s less than a mile away.) It turned out that he wanted to check for any distal numbness. I was like, ‘Um… If there were, I would have mentioned it.’ (Not sure if I said that out loud.) Anyway, he said my wounds looked good. I may get the stitches out at the end of the week.
Happy Moonday!
Nice cool, although wet, 67 degrees at the park this morning. Not a lot of people were there, no surprise considering how wet it was.
I finally saw the (unneutered male) mastiff whose owner likes to dump him in the park while he sits in his car smoking pot and blasting his stereo. Explains all the BIG piles in the park. The dog seems nice even if the owner is an asshole. A little tense for me as Echo wants to fight him (the dog) and that is not a fight I want to break up. She’s fine as long as he stays away from me, but he wants attention from everybody.
The dogs took being boarded well. I splurged on daycare during the day with boarding overnight. They said Ripple did well. I was afraid he might go all Cujo on them when they put him in the kennel. Poor babies were worn out exhausted when I got them. They slept for two days. Other than going to the park, I didn’t see them all day.
The viewings and funeral were nice and not emotional. The service was generic, just plug in the name kind of thing.
The oldest grandnephew is not taking it well. The second oldest is quieter and stoic. The two youngest woke up with fevers the morning of the funeral, so their father had to stay home with them.
I skipped the limo and I’m glad I did. I told my son to go ride in it so he’d be with the other pallbearers. He said never again.
Niece1’s husband is 6’4" and weighs about 400 pounds, my son was squished between him and the door.
I’m just glad it’s all over and I can get back to some normalcy around here.
The nastiness of the estate has already begun.
I feel a bit guilty because I am the one making a fuss right now. My mother had set something aside for me and my sister ‘took it for safe keeping’ because Niece2’s ex has had a substance problem in the past and she said she was afraid he would steal it.
Uh huh, yeah right, she has had it for weeks and hasn’t given it to me. I know it was a bullshit excuse to take it and she will not give it back. My mother and nieces defended her, because you know, whatever… and of course, I am the bad person in all of this because, well, it’s not a big deal.
Anyway, my nieces said property taxes were coming due and they couldn’t find the bills and could I find out when and how much. I don’t know why they asked me when my sister is a realtor, or used to be one anyway. Simple search and I had the information and sent it to them. I thought my mother had sold the property she has up this way, it’s actually over an hour further west of here, so about 3 hours from the armpit. When I sent the tax info, I said when the land needs to be sold, I know a realtor up this way who knows that area.
Somehow, that and wanting the item back, has turned into ‘we didn’t hate her (my mother) like you do and you even got a realtor before she was even cold in the ground’.
The realtor is a friend, I didn’t go looking for one.
I am royally pissed by that comment, and my response was going to be a BIG F’ YOU, but I decided not to throw fuel on the fire.
They are meeting with the lawyer tomorrow. I don’t want to go, but I need to get his name.
Anyway, sorry to dump on all of you.
I have a lot of catching up to do around here.
I have a lot of catching up to do around the house.
Happy Dopeiversary, FCM! 
It’s August! Yay! 
The weather’s gonna keep sucking for the next 4-6 weeks, but a bunch of good stuff is happening this month: tomorrow night my bariatric support group is meeting IRL for the first time (
that it goes OK); on Saturday I have plans to meet one of my old high school teachers for lunch (I haven’t seen her since '89) and then see another friend/great singer perform in the evening; on the 13th I have my third tattoo removal session, after which I should finally start to see some of the ink begin to disappear; on the 19th I’m taking the day off work and going to a gem/jewelry show with my BFF in the morning followed by my first guest vocalist gig that night (the 19th will also be the sixth anniversary of a friend’s suicide, so being busy that day will be a Good Thing); the 22nd is my BFF’s birthday; the 25th is my second guest vocalist gig; and on the 31st my “nephew” turns 21.
*whew*!
Somewhere in there I also want to trek into DC to try out (and likely order) an Aeron chair; and, it may be time for a professional haircut. I have a very simple style (straight, shoulder-length hair), with bangs that I’ve been trimming myself for the past 2.5 years, but I think a return to the salon is finally in order.
I’m glad the wounds are looking good, flyboy! I know you have Wifey, R.N., but consensus from another medical professional is never a bad thing. 
Ugh, Sahirrnee, I am so sorry about the ridiculous estate drama. Grief can make people say idiotic things…well, grief and idiocy.
Really cool and worth the price of admission. Difficult to describe, really.
Happy dopiversary Mooooooom! Those pads can be a pain for those who don’t wear them. My mother once fried out a dryer with one. 
yank, have you checked the refrigerant in the ice maker? My late brother worked a big hunk of his life in refrigeration and that was always the first thing he’d check.
Happy Switzerland day dicey!
I know what you mean about the lakes VanGo. I grew up in the Great Lakes region too and something might just be a couple of miles by boat but 15 by car.
{{{sari}}} Fighting over an estate sucks.
I was a flasher today. (that just means that I upgraded software on Samsung phones). It’s been in the eighties for a few days, but that’s due to change later in the week. Oh, well. My electric bill is much smaller when I run AC than when I run heat.
Stay safe and healthy y’all!
I was out walking last week, having gotten my fingers stitched up last weekend. The part-time next-door neighbour asked if I had a weed-whacker. I do. He asked if he could borrow it. Of course. I told him it’s corded. He said he could try to remember to bring his cordless one next time he came up. He wanted to whack the weeds next to my canopy garage. I thought that was a little passive-aggressive. I’d do it, but… my hand. Anyway, half an hour ago I got it out of the shed and whacked the weeds. Thankfully I could do it without putting undue stress on my fingers. I didn’t rake the debris though.
Hey, we all know BooFae was tongue-in-cheek with the slugabed remark, right? Slug-a-bedness, like sloth, is a skill to be envied, I say.
Worked out, got hair trimmed, made calls. Laundry is laundering. Now I’m tired. On the way home from the gym, I was joined by three college-age kids. One of them jumped up and clicked his heels. I gave him a thumbs=up and said, “Very impressive…random stranger!” We all laughed, and he introduced himself and shook my hand. We talked while we walked together. It made me realize how much I miss teen-agers.
FCM, do you think your FIL has deteriorated since you last saw him?
Sari, that was a nasty crack about not waiting until your mother was in the ground. Kudos to you for taking the high road. I doubt I’d have been as noble.
Oopsie, yay on having so much good stuff to look forward to!
Flyboy, glad the weed-whacking didn’t take a toll on your injured fingers.
Definitely. He does understand that his Parkinson’s causes hallucinations, but he’ll still insist he sees things. And he’ll come up with strange non-sequiturs or he’ll totally lose track of his thoughts. And physically, he struggles. But at least he remembered us.
Supper was good, but the 4 of us didn’t even eat half a chicken. So lots of leftovers. And today FCD and I set up autopay for most of his folks’ bills. We’re taking over their finances since it’s become a huge chore for them. And in the next day or so, I’ll help MIL to sort and toss papers and clean out some kitchen cabinets. At least I can be useful.
Hope I can sleep tonight.