As I was walking down the mostly dark hall to the bathroom, well before Lin’s alarm went off, Myu decided to do her best impression of a fainting goat in which she runs two steps ahead of me, goes limp, and falls to the floor. No, it’s not a medical condition. It’s her method of begging for … nay … DEMANDING belly rubs. Not want to bend down and grope around for the fuzzy belly of a black cat in the dark shadows of the hallway, I reached out with my foot to gently push her out of the walking area. Just as I began this maneuaver, Ronin came speeding at me from somewhere in the region of the kitchen and smashed into the leg on which all my weight was centered. I believe he was moving at about Warp Nine. Maybe even ten. Well … that, of course, knocked me ever so slightly off balance, and not wanting to step on any part of Myu who was still rolling around in the shadows at my feet, I took an overly large step with the foot that was dangling in the air. That would have saved me and the cats from injury had I not, at the very last moment before putting any weight on that leg, felt a small cat tail underfoot. I immediately lifted the leg again and fell straight forward. Good thing the framing for the bathroom door was right in the path of my skull to block my fall!

My head didn’t even bounce off that door frame. Nope. The top of my head met the wood of the frame and stopped right in its tracks. Thud … and then I teetered there for a moment trying to remember why I was in the hallway and what I was doing with my head pressed solidly against the bathroom door frame.

It didn’t hurt at all when it happened. Sort of shocked my brain a little, but no pain involved. As soon as my brain rebooted, I had to stifle my giggling at the hilarity of what had just happened. When you are a natural klutz, you have to learn to laugh at yourself. Now, about two hours later, it hurts like hell! My teeth, sinuses, jaw, and the part of my skull just above my forehead are throbbing, and parts of my head feel like they’re on fire … likely the parts that soundly bashed into a door frame.

I’m fairly certain I don’t have a concussion. OK, let me rephrase that: I know I may have a concussion, but I am fairly certain it isn’t one that I need to see anyone about. If I should develop any blurry vision (blurrier than normal) or start getting sick to my stomach, I may have to rethink that assessment, but right now it seems all I am going to get out of this is a severe headache and being secure in the knowledge that no cats were crushed in the hallway.

This wasn’t how I planned to start my day. I’d planned to go to the bathroom, wash my face and brush my teeth and start my morning routine … then spend some more time trying to figure out what to do about rearranging the bedroom for TV viewing from the bed. I think my plan now that the usual morning routine is done (and last night’s last load of laundry folded), the next steps will be to take some aspirin, drink a small glass of Dr Pepper, and do the dishes … before retiring to some surface that will allow for a horizontal body position.

Holy freaking hell! I don’t think I have ever knocked myself on the head this hard before. I’m pretty damn protective of my head. I’m also pretty damn protective of my kitties, and at least I didn’t step or fall on either of the little beasts who were still hanging out around my feet demanding attention while I tried to orient myself in the world and determine if I had officially broken my skull open. Adorable little brats!

Myu made up for it all though by crawling into my lap, curling up in a little black ball of fur, and taking a purr-filled nap. Yes, she didn’t crawl into my lap to use it as a stepping stool to get to the desk, or to suck on my shirt, or just to be an annoying little pest begging for something. She just wanted to take a nap on my lap, and that marks the first time since they turned about 4 months old that either of them has done this. I suppose almost knocking myself out was worth getting some good kitty love.

I haven’t been keeping up with this situation, but you can’t help but hear about it. Something has been bugging me for a while … the reasons the judge gave for sending a teenager to jail until she is 21 for pushing a school employee (who may or may not have pushed her first).

In an interview with The Paris News, Superville said he chose the sentence because witnesses testified that placing Shaquandra back in her mother’s care was not the best decision.

“If Shaquandra had been white, the outcome would have been the same,” Superville said. “My decision was based on facts and law, and I am confident this was the correct decision based on the facts I was presented.”

So, wait … let me get this straight. We thought we shouldn’t send her home, because we think her mother is a poor parent (or whatever the reasoning is — abuse, drugs, etc.). Therefore, we will send this teenager to prison for a few years. To protect her from her bad home situation, I guess … right? Don’t we have some other system for dealing with this sort of thing? A few come to mind, but Child Protective Services comes to mind first. Do they really think spending the last years of your technical childhood in a youth prison, the system to which it belongs currently being under investigation for horrible sexual abuses of the prisoners by staff, is going to somehow miraculously convert a troubled teen into an up-standing citizen at the age of 21?

I’d like to have some of whatever it is they are drinking, because it must be good.

Our prison system (and to some extent that covers the legal system as well) is totally messed up. People can be rehabilitated. Not all of them, of course, there are some real nut-jobs out there, but many, maybe even most first time offenders could likely be rehabilitated. The system has to try to do that, as does the society that system works within. We don’t. Oh, we make token gestures, but the mission of our system of incarceration hasn’t been about rehabilitation for quite a while now. It’s all about locking them away where we don’t have to think about them and they can’t hurt us, and making them PAY for what they did. It’s all about retribution and revenge.

Anyway, not going to rant about it. Just an observation. Too tired to rant about anything right now … a mental tired brought on by reading too much legalese and trying to make the pieces of my bedroom fit together in a functional and pleasing way. Amazing how tired brain-work can make you.

If I weren’t doing laundry, I’d go straight to bed right now. Unfortunately, I realized I really needed to do laundry, and there was way more than I thought there was. If I can just make it to the point of getting the last load in the dryer, I can then pass out in peace. Folding can occur at a later date … like in the morning … after my brain has rebooted and my arms don’t feel like lead.

I already give up. There is no way to have the bed not be in front of a window and not to need a long cable extension. Even when I had the though that having the bed directly in front of the window on the front of the house (a window headboard, so to speak), that won’t work, because we won’t have anything to lean against while sitting up in bed. Unacceptable.

Bottom line? The cable will have to be extended about ten feet. It’s already a long cable that runs under the house, so the signal may be lossy already. If not, another ten feet of cable for it to travel through won’t be a good thing. Then there’s the cable laying around, which I hate.

I give up.

OK, I give up for today, until I can ask Lin what he thinks we should do. I have the feeling he will say we should just move where the cable comes into the room, but I know how such projects go. It will never get done, and I am sick of the TV sitting in front of the closet, not being used and taking up room.

Personally, I think the solution to the problem is to get rid of the huge and mostly broken TV and buy a nice, small, pink, Hello Kitty TV that will fit anywhere, but I doubt Lin will go for that plan. :roll:

Want to know how the bedroom project is going? I got the floorplan, as it is now, all measured and drawn up in Photoshop layers for ease of repositioning.

There is, of course, a lot more stuff than that in the bedroom, but … the stuff in the boxes in one corner can be gone through and moved out or gotten rid of, the musical instruments stacked in front of one window can be stored elsewhere, the rolling rack can be squeezed in somewhere or taken apart when I don’t need it anymore, and the laundry hamper that is currently being used as storage could be moved to the bathroom and actually used as a laundry hamper. None of it needs to be in there, and I am not planning around it. If there’s still room for it, cool. If not, I guess I will finally be forced to deal with it. Also cool.

The problem is two-fold. The cable connection is in the corner under the corner table (picture here in teal), and we don’t want to run a long cable all around the room. Also, the window placement annoys the living hell out of me, because I don’t want the bed sitting right in front of a window. That’s not some sort of modesty issue. Our windows are drafty and leaky. I would prefer not to freeze all night during the winter.

So now the fun of finding a way to fit everything in (minus the TV stand if the TV can go on the chest of drawers), and not have a drafty bed or any long cables. This should prove interesting to say the very least.

It’d be really cool if I could squeeze in a large cat tree and my art table at some future date, but I am not holding my breath.

I have changed my project for the week. I am just not ready to face doing anything about organizing the kitchen, so now I have decided this week’s project is to rearrange the bedroom to integrate the TV and the cable box. Even though it is the more physically challenging project, it is easier. All I have to do is find a way to fit all the pieces of the puzzle into the box, leaving enough room to walk and open drawers … and see the TV from the bed.

First I have to do all that tedious measuring first. I know we have the whole house measured and drawn out on graph paper somewhere, but now I can’t find it. Bah, humbug. I hate the “tedious measuring” part of this, but I will love the “watching TV in bed” part. Hopefully in a few days, I will be doing just that. Then you will see the true level of my laziness.

Or you will see it sooner than that when I blow off this project as well and get nothing of importance accomplished this week.

I have to stop reading AskMetafilter. Actually, I have to stop reading Metafilter altogether. Oh, there’s lots of good things there to read and great links to visit, but there always seems to be that makes me want to strangle someone … or shoot myself in the head to escape the insanity known as other human beings.

I wrote an incredibly long rant about one of two questions that bugged me this morning, but what’s the point, really. The bottom line is people can be incredibly short-sighted and ignorant, if not just downright stupid. Though I am not going to rant about these questions, I have to point them out to you, and I have to say something about them. Just no ranting about it. No … ranting. I promise, NO ranting. No matter how much I would like to rant, I will NOT rant. I will keep my commentary brief and to the point, even though you know in your heart of hearts, I would love nothing more than to have a good rant.

First there’s the vegan who eats at Subway and is worried about cross-contamination on what I can only assume to be the microscopic level.

Dude. If keeping to your religious dietary rules is so important to you that your vegan sandwich being prepared by a person wearing gloves that might have touched meat at some point, or that your vegan sandwich might bump up against the turkey sandwich in the line in front of yours on the workspace is going to send you to hell (or your particular equivalent), you should not eat at Subway. Subway is not Kosher, or Halil, or vegan, or any other dietary standard/preference. It’s a fast food shop, and the cross-contamination that has happened at all levels of the processing of the foods in the little plastic bins, long before you walk through the door, far exceeds any that you may witness right before your very eyes. You should be at home making your own vegan sandwiches so you can control the process, but … don’t think too hard about what sort of cross-contamination on the small scale has been going on at your local grocery store either. It will make your head explode. For example, I go to the meat department before I go to the produce department. I fondle packages of meat, and then … I go and fondle produce. Imperceptible bits of meat will transferred. I do not wear gloves when I shop that I change with each department, nor do I wash my hands while shopping. I have the feeling that my act of touching meat and sometimes getting “meat juice” on my hands and then touching produce would make this person’s head fall off. Like I said, don’t think about it too much.

Look at it this way: You are making a good faith effort to abide by your dietary rules. What you cannot see and cannot control, you have to assume on faith God will forgive you for, knowing that we live in an imperfect world. It’s not like you are secretly munching on bacon behind locked bedroom doors or something. You have done your best, and that’s all he ever really asks, right?

After reading questions like this, I always wonder how some people make it through the day.

Moving on, we have a question about how to keep someone viewed by the question-asker as a gold digger, that they don’t like, from inheriting their father’s estate should he decide to leave it to her (or should they get married) … because their dad’s stuff is THEIRS, THEIRS, THEIRS! Well, that’s the way the question comes across to me and many of those answering it. I say this as someone who has a family which contains members who sound just like the person who posted the question.

All I can really say is your dad’s stuff is your dad’s stuff. He can do with it what he will while he is alive, and he can leave it to anyone he choses once he dies. You have no control over it, and it is not your stuff until a lawyer says it is after his death. It’s not your house. It’s not your car. It’s not your bank account. And … never count on an inheritance or look forward to one. It’s tacky, as is making special overtures as someone grows older in the hopes of getting in a will (or staying there).

This really got my goat, so I have to quote it here:

What can three ambitious, intelligent young people do to to influence, intimidate, manipulate, scheme, and connive our way into a better relationship with our father despite this person’s tactical blockade, and protect his legal and financial interests to boot?

You are not trying to protect your father’s legal and financial interests. You are trying to protect your future, potential, legal and financial interests. The above statement is a classic example of GOLD DIGGING. This person states that their dad is happy and the lady in question cooks and cleans for him, coos over him, and is a support system for him during his illness. They don’t mention her going out every afternoon and running up huge credit card bills buying Prada handbags or in any other way intentionally siphoning money away from the household for her own benefit, and I am sure this person would have mentioned that had they seen that happening … being as they are all so terribly concerned about getting that inheritance. In fact, one complaint is that she always wears sweats and doesn’t … gasp … even wear makeup!

So what’s the problem? Your dad found a lady younger than himself who he seems to enjoy spending time with enough to let her and her pets move in. She seems to be there for him and not just to take him for what he’s worth. Maybe he’ll marry her. Maybe he won’t. Maybe he will include her in the will. Maybe he will leave her everything. Maybe he won’t. There’s no easy or right way to tell your dad you are pissed off and afraid he is going to leave the woman you think is a stupid, awful, gold digging bitch all his worldly possessions. It will only move you one step closer to not being left anything at all, and I have to say I wish your dad could read this question, so he’d know just how greedy his children are. Gah!

OK, so I sort of ranted, but I did manage to keep it somewhat brief. I could go on. You know I could. It wouldn’t do any good. Besides, I already ranted in a post I saved as a draft, so I got it out of my system. I will now go on with my day. Hopefully I will be able to avoid coming into contact with any obsessive-compulsive vegans or gold digging brats.

Being the idiot I am, I laid down on the bed at some point today. I don’t even know what time it was. Naturally, it being a rainy day perfect for falling asleep, I did just that. When I woke up at 3 pm, I still had to go to the grocery store. It was still raining, and afternoon rush hour was going to be starting soon. Rush “hour” around here is a total misnomer. It starts at about 4 pm and doesn’t really end until around 7 pm. Today, thanks to the rain, it seemed to have started at 3:15 pm when I hit the road.

Oh … the … joy.

Driving the truck in the rain wasn’t so bad, but the traffic was insane. I drove slowly, calmly and at a steady speed, allowing anyone in front of me who wanted to do anything stupid more than enough room to do so without it effecting my existence. Boy, did a a lot of people do a lot of stupid stuff.

When I pulled into the HEB parking lot, it was a freaking madhouse! It’s always sort of crazy, because it’s a very busy store, but it seemed more crazy than usual. As I got further into the parking lot, I saw the reason why: several cops cars, an ambulance, and a firetruck blocking most of the front part of the lot. I had thoughts of just leaving right then and there, but hell, I was already there, right? Might as well just grit my teeth and make the best of it.

I ended up parking WAY out on the outer fringes of the lot and hiking the block and a half to the store in the rain. Being damp, cold, and grumpy inspired me to make my trip as quickly as possible. I think I cruised through the produce department and canned goods section faster than ever before. I even managed to get checked out quickly.

Then I had to hike the block and a half back to the truck, and the rain was about ten times worse than it had been just minutes before. What really made that all the more exciting and joyful was the fact that the further I got from the store, the more uncooperative my basket became … thanks to the radio-wave-controlled anti-theft devices they have on the wheels. Look, I realize they don’t want people making off with the shopping carts, but is it too much to ask that they at least function in the entire perimeter of the parking lot?! I finally had to ditch it and carry my groceries the rest of the way. Good thing I didn’t buy more, or I would have never made it to the truck.

I sat in the truck for a few minutes hoping the rain would let up just a little, but it didn’t. It only seemed to be getting worse. It took me 40 minutes to get the mile and a half home. I hate to take the truck out of gear while sitting at stop lights, because it leaves you with no control if you should suddenly need to have control of movement, but by the third round of sitting at the first stop light, I had to. My leg was starting to shake from holding the clutch in so long.

I sat through four rounds of the first light, three rounds on the second light, and two rounds of the third light. During all this sitting around doing nothing, I saw two fender benders, one near wreck that would have been far more serious (red light runner), and all manner of driving stupidity.

For example: You want to make a left turn into a parking lot off a busy road. There is no left turning lane, there is an endless stream of traffic coming from the opposing direction, and you have already sat in your lane blocking traffic for three rounds of a stop light. Do you A) continue to sit in the lane and wait for a break in the opposing traffic, B) continue to the light where there is a left turn only signal and enter the parking lot by a side entrance, or C) force your way into the slowly moving oncoming traffic and make them stop for you to make your left turn? B would be the wisest and quickest choice. A would be acceptable, though you may aggravate everyone behind you and that break in traffic may never come. The person in question chose C. Yes, he just forced his way into the opposing traffic and sat there for a while blocking the two inner lanes going in opposite directions. Luckily this happened behind me, so I got to watch it but not take part in the fun.

I’m sure I forgot something important at the store, but I have Dr Pepper, coffee, cookies, salad fixings, and veggies to chop into toppings for the pizza I am making for dinner tonight, so at least all of our immediate needs are covered. I’ll need to go back later in the week, hopefully when it isn’t raining cats and dogs and people aren’t having heart attacks (or whatever was happening with the ambulance and stuff) at the grocery store.

I better go get chopping on those pizza toppings. I have a huge, jumbo-sized deli pizza with one pound of meat on it to fill with more toppings. Lin must have been hungry when he bought the thing on Sunday. It barely fits in the fridge, and to be honest, I am ever so slightly concerned it won’t even fit in the oven without being cut in half first. I really need to get it into his head that just because a food item is larger than what we usually buy and the same price we usually spend, it doesn’t mean he has to buy it. We really didn’t need a pizza large enough to feed a small country. But … at least I know what we will be eating for the next two days, and I get to be a lazy slug about dinner tomorrow.

Well, here I go to chop, chop, chop!

It’s Monday again, isn’t it? Doesn’t matter what I do, Monday always shows up right on time.

We successfully had a completely lazy weekend. It’s been a while since we had one of those, so it was nice to just lay around and do nothing at all, and no lawn mowing at all took place on our property. In fact, no yard work or any other sort of work at all took place at Casa de Orb. What a wonderful weekend!

The weather is looking to be most foul today. On the one hand, that’s a good thing. Can’t mow a lawn while it’s raining, and Annoying Boy tends not to be out and about when it’s nasty out. Unfortunately, I desperately need to go to the grocery store for fresh veggies, and I am none too keen on driving in the rain. Not so much because it bothers me, but too many morons out there drive like brainless dweebs when the roads are wet. I’ve got the local news on right now, and there are already several wrecks out there, and it isn’t even raining yet. Still, I have to go to the store. I guess I’ll be watching the weather and when there looks like there is a clear patch for about an hour, I’ll make a quick trip and get as few things as possible so it doesn’t take me forever. I can always go back later in the week.

The only other plan for the day is to stuff more trash into my near overflowing trash bin, doing the dishes from the weekend, and the laundry. Then I want to play some FFXII. I am well into the end game, but my characters are still not a high enough level to complete the game. I always do that the first time I play a Final Fantasy game. I get too involved in moving the story along, and then I look up when I get to the end and realize my characters are spending more time dying than fighting … or actually more time curing and reviving each other than fighting. The last “boss” I fought was doing about 1000 hit points of damage each round to all my characters, and they only have just over 2000 hit points each. Yeah … tough little battle that was!

I also have a household project for this week to get started on. I am planning to pack up some of the stuff in the kitchen that is just sitting there taking up space and not being used. Actually, it’s not so much stuff that isn’t being used, but do I really need to have 20 coffee mugs and innumerable glasses in my cupboard? All that leads to is me putting off doing the dishes until everything is dirty, and then it’s a chore. It’s not like we ever have more than two or three people over at a time, so I think maybe 6 of each will be more than enough.

For that matter, does the entire top shelf of my cupboard have to be filled with hurricane glasses? We never use them. I could certainly use the space to store some of my small kitchen appliances so they’d be more handy than in the lower cabinet under the pots and pans. I’ve been eye-balling the pots and pans too. I have a lot of duplicates. While I don’t want to get rid of any of them, I don’t really need them sitting in the kitchen either. I’d rather have my storage containers sitting somewhere other than my limited counter space.

Basically, I want to force myself to do the dishes more often by not having so many dishes, because if there are clean dishes, glasses, pots and pans, I will use the clean ones and ignore doing the dishes until I simply must do them.

I also need to go through the pantry. I know there’s stuff in there that could go in the trash, and it could certainly be organized better. That may be a project for another week. Let’s just get the dishes dealt with first. That’s going to be enough of a task.

There’s a big storm front headed our way and expected to hit in about an hour or two. Since I won’t be doing any driving until after it and rush hour are over, I guess I’ll go putter in the kitchen for a while. You know, maybe doing the dishes … unless I get distracted by cute kittens demanding attention or the painting sitting on my art table.

Lin said someone mowed their lawn yesterday evening while I was napping. I went outside and checked to see who had done it, because it would be the first appearance of a lawn mower on our street this year. It was Annoying Boy next door. I think I have figured something out about his bugging us all the time about mowing our yard. Neither of the adults living there have ever said anything to me personally about our yard, and I’ll ask Lin about that, but I don’t think they have ever said anything to Lin either. It’s always been Annoying Boy being annoying. I think he gets upset when his mom tells him to mow their lawn, and because he has to do theirs, he thinks we should have to do ours. So his annoying behavior on the state of our yard may not be coming from his mom at all (though it still could be, who knows). All I really know is the next time he gets in my face about our yard, I am going to point at all the other yards on our street and tell him to go pester them about not mowing. He doesn’t, you know. Just us, and it certainly isn’t just us that doesn’t mow regularly around here.

I might also mention to him he could do something about the stacks of junk in their front yard. We have bulky trash pick up on our street about once every three months. The crazy people next door start their pile of large junk as soon as the previous pile is picked up, so there’s this huge mess of junk sitting there growing for three months, and this happens year round. I’d rather see unmowed lawns than piles of trash. Call me silly.

Aaaah. Spring. The time of year when all us cranky hermits step out our front doors for a few weeks, encounter our neighbors, have dramatic disagreements on the state of things, and then return to the comfort of our homes once it starts getting too hot to be outside.

I am still seriously considering the Southwestern rock garden with cacti and natural prairie grasses for our front yard. I might even throw in a few pink flamingos, just for the fun of it. When we came to look at the house the first time, there actually were some pink flamingos in the front yard. I wonder if the previous owners had them there to annoy the crazy people next door.

True art or a fake?

Interesting little quiz. I managed to pull off a 100%. I recognized all the true art pieces, and I guessed that anything I didn’t recognize was a fake. I’ve obviously studied too much contemporary art history.