This past Friday, Steve and I went over to our friends house for dinner and enjoyed a few hours worth of good food, laughter, story-telling and general conversation with some of our favorite people in the world. Eventually, as nothing lasts forever, we had to head home.
We pulled into our driveway and were doing the general end of night chit-chat: “I’m sleepy”, “Sammy needs to go out”, etc. as we headed up the walk to the door. I was in front so I saw it first.
Now, to be clear, I wasn’t quite sure what “it” was because I stopped dead in my tracks and just stared. But I was fairly certain that the long, skinny, furless tail curled around the small white ball of fur meant it was some form of rodent. Whether that type of rodent was mouse (ew!), rat (EW!) or baby possum (HOLY ‘EFFIN EW!) was yet to be determined as all I did was stand there and point in it’s general direction while looking at Steve.
(I’d be really, really effective in a crisis situation! Bear comes walking around a corner. Kristy sees it first and stands and points. Gets eaten by the bear before Steve even realizes what she’s pointing at.)
(Also, this moment was a quintessential depiction of one of mine and Steve’s favorite stand-up bits by Bill Burr where he explains in the simplest, funniest terms that men get paid more an hour because of the role they need to play in a crisis situation. You should give it a watch here and check out anything else by him because he’s hysterical!
As I was saying, I’m standing there like an idiot mute pointing at this tiny ball of white fur (with skeevy long tail! ugh!) while Steve goes over to investigate (YEA HONEY, IT’S A RODENT! AHHH, IT BIT ME! I HAVE RABIES! …. LOL). Of course, I can now follow because Steve is in front of me and he’s a boy and bigger than me and will protect me from whatever threat this ping-ponged size ball thing was posing.
(Gender stereotype enforcer right over here baby!!!)
As I guessed, it’s a rat. And Steve is crouching in front of it, checking it out, determining its intentions or reasoning or just generally getting all 12-year-old boy and being like “COOL!!”. I start to feel bad for the poor thing at this point because it’s huddled in a tiny ball in the corner right near my front door and looks terrified. Not like bite you, defensive terrified, but cold and hungry and just generally exhausted. It even allowed Steve to pet it briefly.
We both were pretty sure it wasn’t wild because it was all white with red eyes, which indicated it was an albino rat. While white rats are uncommon wild, we were pretty certain albino rats are rare, used more for feeder, lab or pets.
We go into the house, taking precaution to scoot in quickly so as to not let the rat in and not let Sammy out. This has become a situation of sorts and Steve decides it’s hungry, so he grabs some bread from the refrigerator and heads back outside. I follow.
He breaks the bread into pieces and drops it on the ground and the rat turns around at the noise but doesn’t eat the bread, just continues to sit in a shivering ball. We discuss whether it’s blind, where we think it came from, what were we going to do with it.
Call us bleeding hearts but the poor thing was cute and scared and this tiny ball of fur (except the tail. I couldn’t think about the tail) so we decided to get it inside and figure out what to do with it from there. (Also, we have a neighborhood cat that hangs out everywhere – including under OUR cars, on OUR porch, THANKS KITTY – so we’re pretty sure if we left him out, he would become Marshall’s dinner)
NOTE: We are insane!
I had one rule and that was we couldn’t keep him IN the house. The garage was ok because I pretty much ignore the fact that I’m sure there are other creepy crawlers in there. But inside was a no-no. Partly because what if, god forbid, he escaped and, even more god forbid, Sammy got a hold of him. Then I’d live in creeped out fear of waking up to a rat crawling on me in bed or finding it dead somewhere in the house, preferably not underneath Sammy’s grinning, panting, excited jowls! (Because that’s my job, MAMA! TO PROTECT YOU FROM THE RODENT SCUM!)
Steve searches high and low in the garage for something that could contain the thing, which was infinitely harder than you’d imagine as it couldn’t be cardboard (chew through), couldn’t have holes in the sides (climb up) and needed to be deep enough to keep it from climbing out. We settled on an old plastic garbage can.
Steve put on a pair of work gloves and I put a towel at the bottom of the can and we went out to commence Operation: Rat Catcher which really wasn’t all that hard since it involved Steve scooping the little guy up and depositing him in the can and me walking into the house towards the garage with it held like four feet in front of me and Sammy trailing my heels.
(WHAT?! It’s cute one minute, creepy the next, then cute again! I’M A GIRL WHEN I WANNA BE!)
The next day, Steve had to go to work so I got to rat-sit. I leaped out of bed at 7 when I heard Steve going in to check on it (curiosity killed the cat, eh?) and found him in there staring into garbage can. When I peeked inside, the poor thing was devouring a baby carrot. Steve tells me it’s my responsibility to check on him throughout the day and he would go to PetSmart on the way home and see about getting him a habitat or some better accommodations than a garbage can.
So YAY for that!
But it wasn’t a big deal. I eventually took the poor thing out of the tiny garbage can and put him into a much wider storage bin with more towels (wearing gloves as we were both being extra cautious handling him – washing hands when we petted, wearing gloves to move him). I gave him a few bits of dog food and another carrot and even put a toiler paper roll for it to chew and a brown lunch bag for it to hide in. I would check on it every few hours.
I wasn’t getting attached by any means, I just wanted it to be comfortable, per se!
Eventually, I got a bit perturbed as the day wore on and the thing got curious and restless. It would let us pet it but it nibbled, like a tasting nibble, on everything, including us. It also started trying to jump out of the bin. I caught it standing on the lunch bag to get height and then trying to jump to the other side of edge of the bin. At that point, I put the lid on enough to keep it from getting out but still allowing it to breathe and waited until Steve got home.
He arrived with a hamster starter kit and we set up shop for the little guy. He LOVED it! In no time, he had the bedding and the paper towels we used to line the cage all set up as a little nest. He had a little area where he ate his food. He was climbing all over the inside of the cage like he was Spiderman.
Now we had to figure out what to do with him. As the day had passed, I was fairly certain I didn’t want to keep him. For the reasons listed above and the fact we already have Sammy and the bearded dragon. And the fact that anytime Sammy was near the cage, he was FREAKING THE ‘EFF OUT, whining, trying to chomp at the bars, sniffing the rat. Plus, it was a rat and while some think they are cute and cuddly, I found him only cute and slightly tolerable as long as he was in his cage.
I think Steve kind of wanted to keep him because he had talked about having a rat before. From what I read, they are clean, curious animals and make good pets. And Steve never had the novelty of gerbils or hamsters like I did so it was cute seeing him watch the rat in the cage and saying “Get in the wheel! Get in the wheel! Do it! Do it!” because he wanted to see him run in the wheel. But I think ultimately, we both realized it wasn’t a good idea to keep him.
But we didn’t know how to get rid of him. Steve was fairly certain he came from our neighbors across the street because he had seen a reptile light on in their house and was pretty sure this little was supposed to be or had been, at one point, food. And we knew that ultimately, that’s what he probably was – food. So we didn’t want to drop him on Craigslist because people would scoop him up for dinner for one of their reptiles. We didn’t think the SPCA would take him or value his life enough to keep him and find a home. And we didn’t know too many people who would want a rat as a pet.
But we knew ONE! And that was all it took. One of the girls in our group, as it turns out, had always wanted a pet rat and as soon as another friend passed along the word that we were looking to get rid of one, she jumped on the chance.
They came over to pick him up last night. He acquainted himself by nipping at them (or biting, whatever you want to call it!) and she left with a new pet. And now we can at least feel better about rescuing the poor guy and making sure he lives and long and happy life somewhere other than in a snake’s stomach.
So again, we are insane but I feel much better knowing we did what we could without having to keep him. And that we did it so quickly, because any longer, and we would have had a new pet – by the name of Snowball. That’s what Steve had named him!
Thank god for friends!!!!
Holy crap on a cracker, there’s a blog here? Something I can write in every day if I’d like? Pffft, who knew? Apparently not me since it’s been close to a month and a half since my last update. I feel like this is confession …
Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It’s been <too many to count> days since I have blogged …
(Look at me trying to act like I’m Catholic. The closest I come is that I was baptized. I tried to ask Steve because he did all of that good Catholic child stuff up until high school and then he quit. Which, apparently it’s like a job that you can just stop. They even have a colloquial name for it … lapsed Catholic, which basically means you don’t give enough of a shit to care about the rituals and traditions anymore.) But I digress, because I didn’t disappear for a month and a half to talk about religion. I would just look like an idiot (and probably offend what little readers I have left) if I tried.
But no seriously, I know, I’m bad, I’m awful at this. I just can’t force myself to give up on it. Actually, these past few months, there has been more I wanted to write about than in the past few years. My problem is that I’m such a damn perfectionist that I’m not good at snippets and I haven’t figured out how to let go of the ideal of a complete and concise blog entry, one that has a beginning, middle and end and tells a story and makes a point. Or something like that. So instead of trying, I just don’t do it and then it gets daunting when I do try it because there is JUST.SO.MUCH and I’m writing four or five pages worth of crap that makes no sense because it’s all thrown together and one long rambling mess of I did this and went here and tried this and etcetera and so on.
And the days, they just disappear. I keep telling people the older I get, the faster time seems to go. One minute its January and then I turn around and the holidays are staring me in the face. I’m closer to thirty than I like, all my siblings and cousins are growing up, all my parents and and grandparents are getting older. Time moves so fast that it’s hard to get a grasp on it. Even these past few weeks, we’ve been making plans for the holidays and other stuff and it’s like oh, we have three weeks, no, wait, two weeks, holy shit, it’s just days away.
And of course, it flies when you’re having fun!
One thing has changed that has consumed a lot of my time these past few months: me. In a sense that I stopped being so lazy and started making a point to give myself a routine that worked. One that allowed me to be more organized and to effectively accomplish the tasks that needed to get done in a timely manner. I don’t know how it started or what forced the change but basically, at some point a few weeks ago, I realized we had A LOT of things coming up this holiday season and I need to budget them into my finances as well as my time.
I made up cleaning lists, ones that allowed me to do one area of the house in about half-an-hour each day during the week (my weekly list) and ones that forced me to take care of daily chores that made the weekly ones easier (my daily list).
That change alone really revamped how I spent my time. No longer would I come home and mindlessly veg out on the couch, playing pointless games on the laptop or watching TV (it could be argued that I never posted or did tasks during that time either and that’s correct because even when I was “vegging” out, I was so exhausted that I didn’t do anything on the computer that required me to think). Instead, I started coming home, cooking (or finishing) dinner, doing my daily chores and whatever room that needed to be cleaned that evening, watching whatever shows came on that night, then bed.
Of course, this freed up time on the weekends and I spent that free time, plus whatever I had during the week, doing productive things, things that needed to be taken care of. Paying bills, returning emails from family and friends, working on some business related stuff. We also spent more time with friends and I didn’t have to feel guilty about it.
Because we’ve been trying to cut down on expenses here, I spend a lot of time “managing” the house to be more efficient financially. Budgeting in events and meals so that we can buy only groceries that we need and will use.
I’ve just been more organized and more active and more productive and unfortunately, that means some of my hobbies have suffered more than ever. But I’m working towards a balance and have been doing quite a few things in my Internet life on the back end. So eventually, I think this is going to get me to a place where I can have life in order, both online and off!
Coming soon are the monthly love posts for September and October, because I am that behind!
Twenty years ago, Hurricane Hugo came ashore and wreaked havoc on the Lowcountry area. At the time, it was the most damaging storm to occur but as time and fate happens, it was surpassed by Hurricane Andrew and eventually, Katrina.
I was living in Charleston when it came through. I was in third grade at Orange Grove Elementary. My memories of my youth, even at this age, are sporadic. I remember the townhouses we lived in on Windermere and meeting a family whom we are still close friends with today. We had dinner with them the other night and their 19-year-old son joined us and I couldn’t help but remark on the fact that I remember when he was an infant and still have pictures of him chilling in his little swing at our house while our mother’s hung out.
I remember third grade the most because of my teacher, Mrs. Telles. I LOVED her! She was sweet and kind and patient but firm enough to keep our rowdy class of 8-9 year olds together. This was the year I was tested for gifted classes because I kept “faking” sick so I could leave class, since I was ultimately bored.
But what I don’t remember is the storm. Part of that is because my parents sent my little brother, who was about five or six, and I to North Carolina to stay with my grandparents once they got the slightest wind that the storm was a major problem. And we stayed there long after that. I don’t remember when we came back exactly. I don’t remember what I saw. I know there was storm damage for many, many years after but I don’t remember if I saw it firsthand, if I processed what happened.
My parents stayed and since we were living in fairly stable brick townhouses and they were boarded up rather well, we didn’t sustain much damage. Just a few roof tiles and maybe a window being blown out, if I can remember what my mom told me.
The most vivid memory I have of Hugo is a t-shirt my mother used to wear afterwards. On it, in large, LARGE black letters, was printed, “HUGO. THE $7-BILLION DOLLAR BLOW JOB”. And, since I was an innocent, impressionable and naive third grader, I took it literally. Hurricane Hugo was a giant storm with really high speed winds. It blew boats into driveways and trees across roads. It blew a bridge off kilter, cutting people off from the island they lived on and their homes. It was, literally, a HUGE BLOW JOB.
Now, I get it. HA! Funny … the shirt and the fact that’s my only memory of it.
It’s probably a good thing – I can’t imagine what I would have retained had I actually lived through it.
On a side note: I also slept late the morning of September 11, 2001, purposely, in order to skip class. So when I awoke at noon, I had NO idea what was going on, and had to call my mom after I heard on the radio that the City of Philadelphia was closed. I feel like it’s Final Destination or something. Maybe I should be worried.
I never would have thought that my attempt at resuming normal posting would circle around something so idiotic and mundane as Kanye West’s little outburst at the VMA’s last night but I caught the reruns after Twitter was all aflutter about it and everyone is still chatting about it today. And since what I want to say doesn’t really fit into a 140 word tweet, I’m going to put it here. After all, that’s what this space is ultimately for.
Here’s the lowdown: Taylor Swift wins Best Female Video, her first VMA. As she’s up accepting the award, Kanye bounds onto stage, grabs the mic and starts yelling about how Beyonce’s video was the best and Beyonce deserves to win and poor Taylor just kind of stands there looking dumbfounded and never gets to finish her speech. (Links to the video below – attempts at embedding it)
Kanye Jacks Taylor Swift\’s Acceptance Speech
I’m going to say it here then I’ll be done with it.
I think Kanye’s consistent behavoir is a manifestation of the term “the pussyfication of America”.
Kelly Clarkson (I know, I’m quoting fabulous sources here!) made a comment asking Kanye if he was “hugged enough as a child” on her blog. I personally think he was hugged too much. I think Kanye might have rarely been scolded, rarely told he was wrong. He probably was consistently told how wonderful he was, how great he was, how extremely talented he was, how everyone else in the world who hated on him was jealous.
In this day in age, children have it easy. Everyone gets a trophy, regardless of whether they win or lose. Everyone makes the team. Parents enroll their boys in football then scream and yell at the coaches because somebody hit their kid too hard. Boys get into a fight at school and it turns into a major legal issue, with parents suing each other and restraining orders and meanwhile, the boys have already forgotten what they were fighting about and just want to go back to playing Transformers or whatever it is that the kids play these days.
You can’t spank your child anymore. Kids get to graduation from Kindergarten to first grade, or from 5th grade to 6th, or from 8th to high school. Everything is a milestone, an accomplishment to be celebrated. Everything deserves a prize, a trophy. Kids seem to think they should get recognition for just living a normal life and being a normal person.
You can’t even teach your kids to fight anymore. Seriously, my little brother got teased relentlessly. He’s a high school freshman, 6’3″, about 250lbs (that’s a rough guess), muscular and he plays football. In middle school, he TOWERED over the other kids. Like, he could stomp them into the ground. But they went at him. All of the time. And we couldn’t teach him to defend himself without fear of other parents screaming because god forbid, boys got into a fight and have a few bruises and stuff.
(I’m not advocating violence in anyway and certainly, in that situation, since my brother was bigger, it was probably best for him to restrain from beating their ass since he could do a lot more damage. But the overall example is that kid’s these days, we don’t teach them to defend themselves. We teach them to cry and tattle and get the police involved and all sorts of things like that. Does violence beget violence? Maybe, maybe not. But violence certainly does not beget that my child would just sit there and take it from someone so he could run home crying later.)
The bottom line is: Kanye is the perfect example of what our children are going to turn into if we keep massaging them and stroking their egos and making everyone “equal”. It’s not a gender thing, it’s not a race thing, it’s not even about who deserved what. It’s the lack of class and respect he showed to that poor girl who was reveling in what was probably one of the coolest moments of her life. It was the sense of entitlement that drove him to think that getting up on that stage and overshadowing her and basically saying ‘You suck! Beyonce is cooler!’ was ok.
There’s a difference between confidence and narcissim. One has toppled civilizations, won pivotal battles and built great leaders. The other has (mythically and metaphorically) led people to their own demise.
It’s pretty evident which trait he possesses.
Note: This is a general rant brought on by an invidual’s behavoir. It has nothing to do with their talent or their quality of work. It doesn’t matter if you love all three of them, hate them or think what he said was true. It’s about the actions that he took.
Second Note: I find all three of their bodies of work okay and somewhat catchy. But seriously, neither the “You Belong With Me” or the “Single Ladies” video are remotely awesome enough to be fighting about. Because seriously, it feels like both of them do the same type of video over and over again.
Final Note: mad props go to Beyonce for the graciousness and class she showed by allowing Taylor to come up on stage and finish her speech. I gravitate between loving her and hating on her, but it was nothing love last night (aside from the fact that she looked amazing during her performance – man, she has legs for days!)
Now that I feel all caught up with July’s post, it’s time to turn over a new leaf. I’m tossing around the idea of trying to post everyday for a month again, just to give myself another kick start. I’ve gotta do something. Got so, so, so many ideas rolling around in my head of stuff I want to write about and suss out and I just need to give myself a good kick in the butt.
But let’s end August and start of September the right way – with a monthly love post. There were SO MANY THINGS to love in August and I am thoroughly addicted to each and every one of them.
We kicked off August with STAYCATION! We were supposed to go to Pennsylvania but circumstances and finances didn’t work out so we decided to take a week off together and spend it in the Charleston area just relaxing and enjoying time sight seeing in our area and enjoying time together that we don’t normally get because we’re wrapped up in normal lives and when we do travel, we’re usually visiting friends and family. So we slept in and cooked dinner and baked food. We went fishing at the new Mt. Pleasant Pier (well, Steve fished, I read books all day on what turned out to be an absolutely BEAUTIFUL day!), watched a bunch of movies, drove around exploring the Lake Moultrie area, which we had never really been too, and even went to Savannah for the day. Overall, we had a great time and a much needed rest. It allowed me to recenter myself and reconnect with Steve and just overall have a wonderful time. It was such a great way to start off the month!
I can’t have a monthly love post without talking about food and I tell you what, I’ve had only ONE addiction this month: Whole Grain Goldfish crackers. I CANNOT get enough of these. Seriously, they are all I snack on these days and I’d like to say it’s because they’re like $2 a bag, but that doesn’t count when I can finish a bag in a day/night of snacking. I eat them at work, I eat them at home. That picture below is of my cabinet – those are FIVE bags that I just bought this weekend because they were cheap at Wal-Mart. What you do not see is the two packs of 9-bag snack packs at work or the countless number of bags that I have finished this month. I don’t know if it’s their cheesy, salty baked goodness or the whole grain, but something about these particular ones make them better than the original and it doesn’t hurt that they’re probably slightly better for me than the usual things I reach for, which is ice cream. Or Oreos!
Another discovery: Bacardi Puerto Rican RUM. I know, I know – it’s just rum and yes, I knew what it was long before this month. But I didn’t know I LIKED it until I didn’t have any wine one night and wanted a drink so I mixed it with Diet Dr. Pepper and damn, is it delicious! It has a nice, sweet, smoothness and it doesn’t give me a headache like hard liquor has previously done in the past. So hello, Bacardi, you are my new friend! Hope you like partying with goldfish because you’ll be seeing them in my stomach with you.
In the entertainment category, there’s nothing but Dexter! Holy shit, DEXTER! What an awesome, amazing show! We started watching it because others had recommended it and it was available on our Netflix Instant Queue and wow, why didn’t we hear about this show before? I have never wanted to root for a serial killer but I love Dexter. I love the stories, the mysteries and the unique and unpredictable twists and turns. I love the characters: Batista, LaGeurta, Masuka, even Quinn. I thought Jimmy Smits was phenomenal on the third season! (I hate, hate, hate Deb but I see her as a necessity to play against Dexter) And I’m so very excited for the fourth season. Seriously, if you are not watching Dexter, you should start. Right now! Like yesterday!
In the beauty category, I decided to try something new. I’ve been a Bare Minerals foundation user for about two years. I liked it because it was light and didn’t feel so heavy and cakey on my face. But this past month, I started noticing that the powder actually began to cake and settled into my pores and sometimes, it made my skin feel irritated. Plus, it was $25! So I decided to switch it up and picked up some Maybelline Dream Matte Mousse. I picked it up because they said it was good to help disguise large pores and it still provided the coverage of a liquid with the feel of a powder and man, am I glad I did. It definitely helped disguise the pores, the coverage is nice and even, it goes on softly and smooth and it makes my complexion look flawless. It is my new love and is even cheaper than the Bare Minerals but about $15. So that’s make it all worth it!
There was also a rediscovery this month. A rekindling of a flame, per se, with my Canon 50mm f1.4 lens. I bought this lens when I originally bought my camera, forgoing the kit lens for this one at the advice of many others. I used it as my primary lens in the beginning but a 50mm focal length was hard for me to get used, having jumped for a point and shoot that had a wide zoom lens and focal length. So I bought a cheap 18-55mm kits lens to allow myself the ability to get more in the picture and began to rely heavily on that one because I hadn’t gotten used to 50mm yet. But I went back, because overall the 50mm is faster, has a crispier focus and does bokeh and depth of field wonderfully. And I’m so happy I did because I do love this lens so much! It’s going to take some getting used to again but I think I can handle. Practice makes perfect right?
And that’s about it! There are some other guilty pleasures, like the Real Housewives of Atlanta, the joys of cooking and baking goodies in my own home and coupon clipping from the Sunday paper (because, holy crap, they have coupons and great savings, in the PAPER! I would always look online and it never even occurred to me to look where women have been looking for years! DUH!) but I don’t find them guilty at all because I thoroughly enjoyed them and didn’t feel bad about it all.
Overall, August was a great month with wonderful finds! Here’s hoping to a productive and fun September. I can’t believe it’s three quarters of the way through the year. And I seriously, cannot wait for FALL!
I want a chill in the air, hoodies, sweaters and jeans!
