Facebook ate my brain
Well, hello there. Facebook didn’t really eat my brain… I’m just too lazy to keep updating my status there and keeping up with the blog. But I promise I’ll do better!
So, it’s Christmas. The first Christmas without Mom, which I’ve already decided will totally suck. It’s not that Mom ever did anything to make the holiday super-special or anything, but she knew it was my favorite time of the year. She always went WAY OVERBOARD with gifts, and while the gifts are not the important part, I always loved that she got me so well… she just always knew what I would like, even if it wasn’t something that I asked for. I will never again, for the rest of my life, get gifts as good as the ones she’s bought me over the years, and that just sucks. I’ve been so spoiled!
I went shopping for Christmas presents tonight – this was my first real shopping trip this year. I went to the mall, and wow. Talk about memories.
- I went to Macy’s first – we didn’t have Macy’s in Indiana when I was growing up, but we shopped every year at L.S. Ayres or Carson Pirie Scott. Dad got new cologne, maybe a wallet, and always clothes. Walking through the perfume department made me think of Mom.
- I stopped at the Hickory Farms kiosk – we used to get Dad a gift basket every year, so I bought one for old time’s sake. I remember picking them out with Mom when I was a little kid.
- Next stop was Johnny Rocket’s for something to eat. As I took off my coat, I realized how hot I had been, and how cumbersome it is to carry around a winter coat in the first place… and then I remembered how we always rented a locker at the mall so we wouldn’t have to carry them around. Do they even have those lockers any more?
- Finally, I went to JCPenney. We almost always shopped there for Dad’s clothes, because you could buy big & tall in the store rather than having to order it online. And picking up gifts at the catalog department!
It was just a crazy evening. It was like taking a little trip to Christmas past, minus the ghost to guide the way. Though I guess she was there, in a way.
Filed under blues | Comment (0)Staycation
So, it’s been a long while since I’ve felt inspired to post. Really, since I’ve felt inspired to do much besides sit on the couch and let my brain melt by watching too much television. Since I last posted…
- The flies have gone. I still get the occasional fruit fly, but the big house flies are under control.
- Moses and I have been spending time at a local dog park meeting new people and new dogs. He’s trying to make friends… it’s hard to run with the small dogs; they last much longer in the field. Moses is lucky to make it 45 minutes.
- Moses and I have also been to obedience class – our last class is this Thursday evening. He’s doing well, not that he really needed it to begin with. I’m the one that needed it – I have a much better feel for timing, and have learned some nice tips and tricks.
- Dad was here for a visit last week – he bought a new Sprinter, and flew in to pick it up and drive it home. He seems to be doing alright without Mom, but I know he’s lonely down there by himself. I’m trying to convince him to move back here, and I think I may be wearing him down. He injured his knee while he was here, and it occurred to him after he got home that if he has to have surgery, there’s really no one down there to take care of him. Gee, the car accident in April wasn’t enough to convince him of that?
That’s kind of it. My life has been boring: work is boring, home is boring… I need a change. Not sure what that might be yet, but I’ll figure something out.
Filed under blues, me | Comment (0)Lady of the Flies
Oh, God. I walked into the bunny room tonight to find that a first generation set of houseflies had taken up residence in the corner by the window, over Roxy and Rosy (the girlie pigs) cage. I had noticed more flies than usual in the house today but chalked that up to open doors and windows and ill-fitting screens – it was only 83 degrees here today and was a nice, breezy day to have the windows open to air things out. Evidently, the flies are coming from somewhere else and I’m terrified that that somewhere is the bunny room. Wouldn’t you think the highest concentration would be where they hatched?
See, this perturbs me for several reasons. One: while I may not keep my rabbit room sparkling, bleachy clean, I do try and change litter boxes and clean cages frequently enough to avoid something like this happening – for me, that’s one litter box every night, or a litter box change every 5th day. If I notice that someone’s litter box seems heavy or needs to be changed I’ll even go ahead and do it. Two: I HAD a fly infestation like this four years ago which prompted me to rip the carpet/pad out of the rabbit room and paint the concrete floor. The flies had laid their eggs under a plastic storage bin where one of my rabbits had made a puddle without me knowing about it and it hadn’t dried out, so made a nice, warm environment for baby flies to grow. Third: I plain old don’t have time to eradicate flies. There’s no safe way to do it around rabbits except for fly-strips and fly-swatters, and that’s just more time than I can spare.
For now I think I’ve taken care of most of them… there may be one or two hanging out lazily by the ceiling where it’s warm, but I’ll get ‘em eventually. I just hope none of them laid any eggs anywhere. I spent about 90 minutes in the bunny room cleaning the most suspicious-looking litter boxes and a guinea pig cage, and killing as many of the buggers as I could find. These are like mutant flies… it takes more than just a swat to kill them. It seems like they get stunned, fall down, and then I have to step on them, pick them up in a tissue, and flush them to make sure they’re really gone. I’m thinking they may have come from a pile of Moses poo that I picked up and bagged yesterday before mowing the lawn; it was, shall we say, infested when I picked it up, and I foolishly put it in the garage. There were not a lot of flies in the garage, though, and not a lot of traffic in and out today, so I don’t know how they migrated in the house… but that’s my hope. Because otherwise? I have to demolish the bunny room and start all over. And I don’t know if I have the energy for that.
I HATE BUGS.
