Identity Crisis, 2021 Edition

Every morning I wake up a fat lazy cynical lasagna loving orange cartoon cat from the late 1900's.

Once I've been awake for half an hour or so I'm Jeremy Renner.

Somehow by the end of the day I've morphed into The Jeffster from the TV series Chuck.

I Like Food, So.

I eat a lot in the fall and winter because, you know, it's cold out and a body needs some extra insulation, and I like to eat.  So I maybe put on a couple extra pounds but that's all right because I'll work it off in the spring and the summer.

I eat a lot in the spring and summer because, you know, there's a lot of manual labor happening in the spring and summer, and a body needs the extra energy, and I like to eat.  So I maybe put on a couple extra pounds but that's all right because I'll eat less and work out more in the fall and winter when I'm less busy and tired.

And now I need a personal trainer.  It's time to Jeremy Renner up.

Terrorism Tamed by Teamwork

We were concerned our new kittens would be harrassed--or worse--by the dogs.

As it turns out, the dogs would wear themselves out chasing the kittens, who would then take the opportunity to curl up and nap with the dogs.  The kittens learned to tag team, so when one of the kitties made a startled dash for a safe spot away from a mischievous mutt, another would materialize from nowhere to rub affectionately on the doggies' bewildered faces, until the dogs ultimately gave up on trying to terrorize a bunch of fluffballs determined to be their pals.

The kittens grew up, and occasionally the dogs still try to chase the cats but you can't chase someone who won't run, and Jeremy Renner couldn't have mellowed those mutts as well as the little kitty wizards did.

Sweat

I love summer.

I love being outside.

I love being not cold.

I love my yard, my garden, my patio, my firepit.

I love your yard, your garden, your patio, your firepit.

I love planting flowers while being stalked by a kitten.

I love sitting on the lawn talking and laughing with my family.

I love sitting up late with the cousins at the family reunion.

I love catching a glimpse of a hummingbird.

I love cruising with the windows down.

I love playing in the water.

I love life in bare feet.

I love Jeremy Renner.

I love summer.

I hate sweat.

Dog Toys Grow on Trees

Razzle likes to play with a ball.  She'll retrieve it if you throw it for her.  You can't have it back though.  She shoves her slobbery toy into your hand and makes you play tug for it.

The peach tree is producing right now, and not just food for people anymore.  The windfalls turn into--you guessed it--dog toys for Razzle.  She chooses not to differentiate between a tennis ball or a globular fruit.

Who knew that dog toys grew on trees?  When you live in the garden of Eden like we do, that's what happens.  Even Jeremy Renner's dogs aren't as spoiled as ours.

Shoes

I'm not a fan of foot injuries, but good shoes are just so...imaginary.  Occasionally I can find a pair with arch support, and once in a while I can find some with cushion, but both luxuries in one shoe is apparently too much to ask, and I suppose if such a product existed, it would be ugly and/or far too expensive.

It would be cool if somebody with too much time and money on their hands could spend some time inventing comfortable affordable attractive footwear, but evidently it's more fun to make satan tennies with people blood inside because I don't know why.  Thanks for less than nothing, world.

So for now I'm grateful that it's barefoot season, and for the record, it is absolutely legal to go barefoot in all fifty states no matter what anybody says, and even Jeremy Renner can't stop you.

No Means No

When someone's making an effort to quit marijuana, you don't invite him to smoke some with you.

When a scholar says she needs to stop wasting money and start spending more time studying, you don't beg her to go out for coffee with you every other day.

When an alcoholic is recovering, you refrain from bringing alcohol around.

When a patient declines an injection, you don't continue to "strongly recommend", and you most definitely don't give her the shot anyway.

For the love of Jeremy Renner, people, let's revisit personal boundaries.

It's Always Something

The instant you begin to believe you have your life figured out, a monkey wrench appears out of nowhere.  I don't even know what a monkey wrench is, but I seem to encounter them often.

This spring, it's a new weed.  It's popping up everywhere, and it's not just any weed.  It's a baby tree.  Now, it's practically an annual festival around here to spend weeks uprooting little maples, because our Mama maple tree has the babies.  (Before you go all arbor day environmentalist on me, please understand you can't have a hundred and eleven million maple trees on just one acre.  And you can't have them growing just one inch apart.  Or in your sidewalk crack.  Or adjacent to the foundation of your house.)  But these aren't baby maples. They're baby walnuts. How?

There's been a walnut tree here for decades.  It hasn't been fruitful and multiplied this way ever before.  What is happening?

Jasmine.

Of all the dogs who have been part of our family, none have been as obsessive as Jasmine about burying her treasure.  Anything Jasmine finds interesting to her, she buries for later.  Bones, mice, milk cartons, bolts, tennis balls, feathers, pop cans, gloves, heels of bread, and apparently, walnuts.  Thanks, my furry little garden buddy.  You excel at making sure I have plenty to do.

She'd better not get a hold of my Jeremy Renner dvds.

If Your Family is Awesome

If your family is awesome, your Mother's Day might go something like this.

Somebody cooks you a delicious hot breakfast.  Your out of state daughters call you first thing in the morning. You get hugs and kisses and happy-day greetings as your people wake up one by one.

Your family goes to church with you and on your way out the door they find a long stemmed flower on your porch from #MothersDayMarauders, and at church your pastor delivers an uplifting and encouraging message, because your church is also awesome.

There's an iced coffee for you to sip after church while the sons make you lunch, plant and water your vegetable and flower gardens, dust your life-size Jeremy Renner cardboard cutout, and shower you with exotic potted plants and your favorite candies and goldfish for your pond.

Your sons bake you brownies (from scratch even, not a boxed mix) with nuts in them because even though they don't like brownies with nuts, they know that you do.

Maybe this all sounds too good to be true, but that's because things like this only happen if your family is awesome.

Angel Got a Wing Clipped

Don't wash your dishes too hard.  Angel Doll did this, and the resulting broken glass sliced the tendon and nerves in her thumb.  Thanks to the absolute stupidity of meaningless rules imposed by exploiters of the fashionable new illness that's currently ruling the faux-civilized world, surgery to repair her opposable digit was delayed for a stinkin week.  (Do I have an attitude about this?  Yes.  Yes I do.)

Now Angel Doll is trying to cram forty-seven college papers into the last two weeks of the semester by typing with her non-dominant left hand.

It ought to be a snap for someone who in the past month since clipping her little wing has learned to tie her shoes, shower and dress, cook her meals, eat with chopsticks, and wash dishes (not too hard) without her dominant hand.

Even Jeremy Renner couldn't be that cool.

Gardening Hacks

Spring is here, and if you're interested in gardening but don't know much about it, let me offer a few items I've learned over the years.  I've been a gardener all my adult life.  Not a good one, but still.

I could have been way better at it, like Rapunzel, my mother, but there were books to read and music to hear while I was growing up and she was gardening.  These are things either she didn't teach me because she assumed I was paying attention which I wasn't, or she did teach me and she assumed I was paying attention which I wasn't.

Seeds may not germinate if they're eleventy years old.

Anise, anise hyssop, and hyssop are not the same things.  Pay attention to botanical names such as Gardenerus newbius.

"Annual" doesn't mean the plant grows back every spring.  It means you have to replant or repurchase every year.

"Perennials" only grow back each season if the dog doesn't dig them up and the cats don't latrine them to death.

Free range chickens sound neat but are the opposite.  They are weapons of mass destruction and will destroy all that you hold dear.  You're better off setting your money on fire than trying to keep a couple of cute hens in your private Eden.

If you take your life-size Jeremy Renner cardboard cutout into the garden with you, keep him out of the sprinkler.

Carry a portable timer or alarm clock on your person.  Five minutes in the garden is three and a half hours in earth time.  Dinner will burn, you'll miss your appointments, and the laundry will rot in the washer.

Follow me for more tips.

Easter Miracles

After an entire year of living in a house crammed full of people who have always been essential to me but were recently also deemed essential by our benevolent government, and keeping house for them while they work multiple jobs in multiple towns and more than one county, none of us have died of any newfangled illness or any of its mutations or variants.  Not only that, we haven't killed anyone else of it while we roam the countryside hugging people, touching our faces, and breathing indoors, outdoors, and everywhere in between even in our asymptomatic and nonvaccinated but certainly still deadly state.  Even our at-risk, immunocompromised friends and family are still alive.  And well!

This, plus Jesus breaking out of his grave alive two millennia ago, and Jeremy Renner still making music and movies even though the whole world is (not) dying at a crazy rate from that popular new virus, combined with the fact that Hunneypunkin found my car keys on Easter Sunday that have been lost since last Easter, just seems like a pretty fat set of Easter miracles.

Believe, people!

Mother Nature Celebrates Diversity

Last week I worked in the yard in a t-shirt.  I mean, I had other clothes on too, but the point is I didn't need a jacket.  Yesterday we had gale force winds.  Last night it blizzarded sideways.  This morning I'm trudging through the snowy back yard on my way to put a sprinkler on the dry front lawn and rake up some dead leaves from the driveway.

Take a lesson from Mother Nature.  If she can celebrate summer, winter, and autumn in the spring, then you can learn to appreciate diversity as well.  Take Jeremy Renner for example.  He apparently identifies as a white heterosexual areligious male, but he still seems a semi-decent fellow.  Nondeviant low melanin middle aged carnivore lives matter too.

Rest In Peace

Gobblin the turkey was unlawfully apprehended by the dog late Friday evening.  Unbeknownst to me, he was forcefully escorted into the doghouse, where the pooches frequently hide their toys and snacks.  When the puppers were closed into the kennel at night, Gobblin was inadvertently closed in there with them, as he made no movement or sound to alert anyone to his presence.

Gobblin was discovered missing from his home Saturday morning when I fed his flatmates.  Seeing masses of feathers all over the ground, I hurried to the kennel expecting to find a large bird carcass, but what I found was the turkey, standing majestically in the back of the doghouse.

In a strikingly Daniel in the Lion's Den/Jeremy Renner as Aaron Cross fashion, Gobblin had survived the night in the lair of his would-be attackers.

I crawled inside the doghouse to scoop up his forty-some pounds and carry him back to his own home where, unlike Daniel from the Lion's Den or Jeremy Renner in The Bourne Legacy, Gobblin passed away early Monday morning from injuries sustained in the initial assault.

Gobblin's incessant competition to out-gobble every loud noise, magnificent tailfeather display, and imperial pose atop the aviary at roosting time every evening will be sorely missed.

A private burial and memorial service will be held this afternoon.  The family asks that in lieu of flowers, mourners offer up a prayer of...thanksgiving for his life.

I Took the Day Off

I was cold today, so aside from feeding the animals, washing the dishes, doing the laundry, baking a load of bread, and cooking dinner, all I did was huddle with a blanket to read.

John Flanagan's The Battle of Hackham Heath,  Cron and Stabile's The Road Back to You, Cloud and Townsend's How People Grow, and Dee Henderson's The Protector have been the order of the day.  I was so wrapped up in my blankets and books that I haven't even looked at Jeremy Renner's social media accounts.

Maybe tomorrow I'll work in the yard.  Maybe tomorrow I'll write my own book.  But today, I read.

Pixie's Pet Mildred the Spider Plant

The problem with Pixie naming her pet spider plant Mildred, is that her brother the Treasure has a pet cat who's also named Mildred, and Mildred the Pet Cat was born and named before Mildred the Pet Spider Plant; therefore if dibs are to be had on a name for a pet, Treasure has dibs.

Pixie doesn't care.

Mildred the Spider Plant lives on the books by the window, and is the only reason Pixie ever remembers to open her curtains so she doesn't live in a cave.  Mildred the Pet Spider Plant is a terrible conversationalist, but Pixie can hold up a monologue so it works out all right, and she never forgets to water Mildred on Wednesdays so it's okay that Mildred can't ask.

Mark Sinclair Vincent St. Agnes von Lichtenschtein (the cat and Pixie's self-appointed bodyguard who considers himself to be a small plush god) believes Mildred the Spider Plant to be a sacrifice unto the joys that is himself, and regularly makes his nibbles upon her leaves.  Pixie finds this as annoying as the fact that he insists on being her bodyguard.  She prefers the term "creepy stalker".

Mark Sinclair Vincent St. Agnes von Lichtenschtein doesn't care.

I was worried that my Treasure would be offended that Pixie stole his cat's name for her plant and I suggested he rename his cat Jeremy Renner, but he doesn't care.

Angel Boy keeps a purple passion plant, but it's more of a roommate than a pet.

Uncommon Sense

I must confess to an unusual way of navigating life.  I feel alone about it, so holler back if you do this too.

For legal matters, I refer to an attorney.  When my back is out of alignment, I see a chiropractor.  If my muscles are tight, I make an appointment with a massage practitioner.  In matters of women's reproductive health I schedule with an ob-gyn.  (A lady one!)

As for parenting matters I've always deferred to well-rounded child psychologists, particularly those known to have successfully raised children to competent adulthood.

I seek financial advice from my financial advisor.  I speak with a knowledgeable, genuine, honest pastor for spiritual help.  I listen to news from trustworthy and unbiased reporters, and straight from the horse's mouth when possible.

I get entertainment, but not political direction, from entertainers.  Jeremy Renner, for instance.  And I'm not interested in health instruction from politicians.

Is it just me?

Dry Erase Markers

Dry erase markers aren't just for white boards in this house.  They work well for leaving notes and messages on the Formica countertops.  I like to use them for writing the contents and date on reusable containers of leftovers in the fridge.

If you're into home canning, you can label your jars with dry erase markers.  I used to write on the lids, but it's easier to read the fronts of the jars when they're sitting on the shelf.  (You really don't want a swallow of beet water when you're thirsty for grape juice.)

Life hack: if the dry erase marker doesn't wash off the countertops, Formula 409 will not help, but SOS pads will.

Dry erase marker does not easily come off of your life-size Jeremy Renner cardboard cutout.  And when I find out who's responsible, you'll find out what else I can do with a dry erase marker.

Time to Change Things Up

We recently binge-watched the entire series of Poldark, after we finished all of Downton Abbey (again) including the movie. Don't judge. It's icy cold outside. This is the season for binging on television. Anyway,  Hunneypunkin was channel surfing and there wasn't much on. So he looked at me and said, "Do you want to start something?"

Knowing full well he was asking what series I'd like to binge-watch next, I slammed my phone across the (carpeted) floor, threw the blanket off myself, got all up in his face and yelled, "You wanna fight? Do YOU want to start something? Do we need to take this outside? Come at me, bro!"

He didn't even blink. He just stared at me till I was through, and said, "I knew as soon as I heard my own words come out of my mouth that that would be your reaction."

Now, you have to understand that a key factor to effective sarcasm is don't let them see it coming.

He saw it coming.

I've become predictable.

There are only two choices now: die of shame, or up my game. I'm going to have to Jeremy Renner up.

Everyone Wants To Be Alpha

Old Dog was getting old, so Pixie got a new dog who could learn the family rules and boundaries from Old Dog.  Old Dog immediately established herself as the alpha, and the new dog let herself be the beta.  Angel Doll also got a new dog, who was also willing to submit to Old Dog's alpha status.  Neither new dog, however, was willing to play second beta.

The new dogs established a fight club that even I was afraid of, until finally Angel Doll's new dog packed up and left home, which was heartbreaking for all of us but better than someone getting dead or maimed in a dog fight.

Subsequent research taught us that a male and a female are less likely to fight for dominance than two males or two females, and we didn't want the remaining new dog to be all alone when Old Dog went to the happy hunting grounds, so we picked out a male dog from the animal shelter.

Lefty and The Precious, getting acquainted and approving of Shelter Dog, said, "I thought you said this was a boy."

Shelter Dog was no Jeremy Renner.  He was a girl.

Fortunately, Shelter Dog learned fast that Old Dog was the boss, and wasn't in a hurry to challenge Pixie's pet for dominance either.  But then...

Old Dog went to dog heaven.  Pixie's Pet became alpha.  The Precious was followed home by a stray ("Can we keep it?"), and would you believe, it's another girl.  And while the new girl acknowledges that Pixie's Pet is number one, she's not sure that Shelter Dog outranks her.  Here we go again.

Getting Good at Faking It

Seriously.  I didn't hear all that well to begin with, but now being in public is extra fun.  What with crackly drive-up window microphones, the plexiglass savior walls, and then the mucous mufflers blocking the ability to see anyone's mouth move, I can't even make an educated guess as to what people are saying to me these days.

Mostly I assume people aren't saying anything to me at all, but when they lean around me and into my face, I begin to believe someone is attempting to communicate.  At that point I just imagine what their snuffling might be about, and give a generic response.

Maybe they're apologizing for getting in my way so I'll give a "No worries."

Or it might be a greeting so I just say, "Hi."

When the bank teller said, "Mffff blpr tnnnf lrmr," at the drive up window I simply replied, "Okay."

I could have had a non-conversation with Jeremy Renner in Fred Meyer and not even known it.

The best all-purpose answer I have is, "You too."  Now that might be a problem if whatever they're saying isn't nice...but it would only be a problem for the other person, because whatever I imagined they were saying was pleasant.

Checking Email

No, I don't need Silver Singles, thank you.  I'm not single.  I'm not even that silver.

Messages marked URGENT, HURRY, or LAST CHANCE get deleted without a second look.  Aren't electronics supposed to make our lives simpler and full of ease?

Very few online petitions are for real.  If any.  Not signing.

I don't click links, especially not regarding my Amazon order (that I never placed) from asboinrioelwknflvkjfg.dltpohoghnlarelot@scammer.com.

It isn't true that I'll SAVE MONEY on my purchase of any product from any website.  The only way I save money is by actually saving real money.

If I want to know that someone "liked" my social media post, I'll take a look at my social media post.

I probably ought to take a look at those statements, but in all reality, I'm not gonna.

I already know what Jeremy Renner is up to, I saw him on Instagram.

Ooh, there's what I wanted to see!  The latest news from the homeowner's associating that my email address somehow got mistakenly included in.  I've never met those people, but I love them now.  It's good to know that life goes on in my HOA.

Feeling Tame

Things I've already accomplished so far in the new year:

Made it out of bed every morning.

Picked up a gift for an upcoming birthday.

Tucked away nineteen cents for a rainy day.

Destroyed the house on a "let's paint this wall" whim.

Kept the family fed...or at least supplied with something they can cook for themselves.

Things I haven't done so far this year:

Killed.

Robbed.

Rioted.

Looted.

Bombed.

Got drunk and picked up women.

Asymptomatically infected anyone.

Watched a Jeremy Renner movie.

Insurrected.

Hm. Now that I read this back to myself, my life looks pretty lame. Time to up my game, maybe.

Happy New Year

No resolutions, I'm just reverting to precedented times.  Who's with me?  And we'll recruit Jeremy Renner.