FeatherLight » indignities

Peeves, of the pet variety

Amanda — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:36:43 +0000

Hair stylists who don’t dry your hair all the way after a haircut, so you have no idea what your hair will look like when it’s dry. This is particularly challenging for those of us with a tendency to curl, because I’d really like to see it both straight and wavy so I can decide if the haircut is going to work.
Commercials for high definition televisions on my standard definition TV set. How am I supposed to see how good the picture is supposed to be on one of the new-fangled LED TVs on my regular old CRT set?
Poor drainage in the backyard. There is supposed to be drain tile installed back there in the drainage easement, but my mud puddle of a yard says otherwise. Giant muddy dog paw prints are not as easy to get out of the carpet as you’d think…

In other news, I’ve been revisiting last year’s resolutions. I actually managed to complete 3 of the 5 – I’m still not fit, and I didn’t travel, but those things just weren’t a priority this year. I don’t know if I’ll have the opportunity to travel this year, either, but getting fit is something I want to carry over to this year. I’m still paying for a gym membership, but rarely using it, so I need to get back into the swing of things. My plan for now is to hit the gym Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday, and to do some at-home exercising Thursday and Saturday. It’s just going to have to be a priority… help keep me accountable, will you?

And now I’m going to spend the rest of the evening catching up on the last 2 nights of TV…

Flies, redux

Amanda — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 03:37:39 +0000

Warning: If you have a weak tummy, you probably shouldn’t read this post…

I think Mother Nature must not like me very much. I really hate bugs… bugs of all kinds, and yet I keep finding them. In the last week I’ve killed three small cockroaches in the garage (and then I heard an Orkin ad on the radio say “It’s cockroach season, Indiana!” Ya think?), dumped about a teaspoon of fly pupae out of an outdoor trashcan, killed two fuzzy spiders, and tonight was just the absolute kicker.

I decided I needed to fill the birdfeeders – I have one finch feeder and one that I use for a sunflower/safflower mix. I store the birdseed in old Tidy Cat containers, and up until recently that has worked just fine. The finch food is fine – no problems with it – but I noticed a couple of weeks ago that the mix was kind of funky looking, and there were moths in it. I figured the birds would appreciate the live food, and just filled the feeder. Well… tonight, I opened the container and took a look, and it was NASTY. It was like the seeds had just fermented and become disgusting. I stirred around a little bit with the scoop I use, but decided I needed to go buy new birdseed. I loaded Moses into the car and we took a trip to Pet Supplies Plus.

When we got home, I thought I’d dump the old seed in the trash and bleach out the container before putting the new seed in it. When I went to get it, I noticed that there were – worms? – crawling on the scoop, which was laying on top of the container. Hmm. Not worms. Maggots. Which means that the seeds I had stirred up before I left to go buy new? Also full of maggots. In the airtight container.

GAH GAH GAH GAH GAH GAH GAH GAH GAH GAH GAH GAH GAH GAH GAH GAH GAH GAH

For the time being I’m storing the new bag of seed in the laundry room, and I’m going tomorrow to find a new storage bin. When I left the finch food was fine, but I may just dump it, too… it’s almost gone, anyway. I just don’t understand… Dad stores his seed in the same type of container on his freaking back porch in HUMID coastal Georgia and has zero problems. Maybe he goes through it faster than I do? Or maybe the flies have just decided to congregate here? It’s going to be the Amityville Horror, or whatever movie featured a whole lotta flies. Save me, please.

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In other, non-bug related news… I found a funny thing the other day while browsing the intranet job listings at work. Here are the job requirements as written by HR:

Education/Qualifications

A minimum of an Associate’s degree required.
Candidate must be an expert in Adobe InDesign.
Strong skills in Word, Excel and Powerpoint needed.
Strong attention to detail neccary.

I just thought it, you know, necarry to share that with you. In case you needed a laugh.

Cesar Millan can suck it

Amanda — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 02:28:04 +0000

Not really. I’m kidding.

So, Moses has seemed kind of bored the last couple of days with only ME to play with. I mean, he’s mostly just a fluffy throw rug anyway, but he does like to play. I have plans to try out a dog park in the Avon area this Saturday (I have to pick up a day pass tomorrow), but what to do in the meantime? We walk around the neighborhood on a daily basis, but that’s getting old quickly. I went to the Indy Parks website today to see what parks are close to me – I figured we could walk for a good, long while and he’d get some exercise. You know, a well-exercised dog is a well-behaved dog… I’ve been watching a little too much Dog Whisperer, I think. Anyway, the closest park to me is Southwestway Park. I always thought it was just a softball park, but it does have a playground and picnic shelter, AND hiking trails.

When I read the words “hiking trails”, I had visions of the nice paved paths at Eagle Creek Park. Or at worst, the mulch-covered trails that wind through many Indiana state parks. I packed Moses up – water bowl, bottle of water, treats for the road, and plastic bags (you know, in case he left a deposit on the trail) – and we headed out. We got out of the car, I sprayed myself down with some skeeter keeper-offer stuff, and we hit the trail. It was kind of downhill at first, and a wee bit muddy, but it seemed to be gravelled so I thought we’d be okay. We came to a clearing pretty quickly, only it wasn’t so much a clearing as it was a cleared path for power lines. Whatever… we kept going, came to a fork, and Moses wanted to go left so left we went. Went a little further down an increasingly muddier trail, climbed up a little incline, and took a right. I’m thinking that at some point, we’ll come back out close to where we started, so we forge ahead – up a little more of an incline. It was doable, though I was breathing heavily by the time we got to the top. Kept going… and came to an even steeper and longer incline. Still thinking we’d come out where we started, we headed up the incline. Moses did just fine, but I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE. There’s a reason I don’t do interval training on the treadmill… I’m overweight and very, very, very, out of shape. Anyway, we kept going until we ended up in that same clearing with the power lines, only… we were two towers away from the one we started out next to. We started to walk up the next incline, and I decided that was it. We were turning around. I’d rather the devil I knew than not knowing where I was.

We made it back to the car in one piece, not really worse for the wear. Moses was still ready to play when we got home, so the half hour hike didn’t wear him out much, but I’m pretty well done for the day. I tell you, if this is going to be a regular thing, I’m canceling the gym membership.

Lady of the Flies

Amanda — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:04:22 +0000

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.

Health

Amanda — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:51:32 +0000

So, there’s financial health. I mentioned before that I was signing up for SmartyPig, and I have since registered, opened an account, and set up my first savings goal. I decided to save for a down payment on a new car – it’s getting to be time to replace the ol’ Spectra. She’s been a good car for a cheap, Korean piece o’ crap, but I’d like something a little nicer.

I have also finally, finally linked all my accounts to Mint, which is this nifty online financial management thing. You can set a budget, it sends you alerts, and it downloads all your account information so it’s visible in one place. There are some drawbacks to using it rather than, say, MS Money… you can’t enter transactions you’ve made and scheduled transactions don’t show up – it’s more of an “actual” than a “forecast”. I don’t like keeping all of this information in more than one place, but I imagine it’s only a matter of time before they upgrade the tool and charge a fee for that kind of functionality. Oh, did I mention it’s free?

I’ve also increased my automatic savings plan at ING Direct to help bulk up my emergency fund. I haven’t had ANY emergency fund until this month, but I had my tax refund direct deposited there, and it gave me a bit of a boost. Now I just have to keep my hands off of it. I’m terrible about leaving money alone…

… and here’s an example. I paid off a high-interest credit card with part of my annual bonus. I’m not going to close it, because that can actually hurt your credit rating by lowering your overall available credit. Anyway, wouldn’t you know that card is just burning a hole in the desk drawer where I stashed it? I mean, there’s tons of things I could buy… I need (want) new shoes, I need (want) a new purse/bag, I need (want) some new clothes. But this is the year I become more financially responsible, right?

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And then there’s physical health. You know, the Feather family is just not having a great year, so far. Mom has been diagnosed with uterine cancer – her appointment with the oncologist is this Thursday, so we’ll find out more about what type of cancer it is and where we go from here, but it’s kind of rough. She is, after all, over 800 miles away from me and RC, so it’s just her and Dad down there, goin’ it alone. As for me, I’ve been battling this ridiculous stye now for the past week, and it just doesn’t want to go away. I hate styes. There’s no reason for them, no reason at all. And there’s no cure for them… just put a hot compress on it, they say. BAH!!

On the physical fitness front, though, I’ve been going to the gym regularly since they opened in February – at least three times a week for cardio work. I am SO out of shape… I made the mistake of glancing at the treadmill next to me the other day to see what the little chippy was doing, and she was walking at a brisk 4.0 miles an hour. Hmm. I’m really hoofing it at 2.8 miles an hour, on an incline, even, to get my heart rate up. But it’s more active than I’ve been in a long time and it feels fantastic. I actually *like* going to the gym. And as soon as I hit 3.0 miles an hour, I’m going to start adding some weight-training into my routine.

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Now if I can just keep my mental health on an even keel… I think I’ll be alright.

Funbags? Hardly.

Amanda — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 01:47:16 +0000

Boobs. Breasts. Tits. There are lots of words for these appendages, but the one that seems most incongruous to me at the moment is “funbags”. There’s nothing fun about these things… they’re too big to be anything but a nuisance. I have been shopping for the right bra for the last 4 months now. I had the perfect bra, but when the first underwire snapped as I bent over to get out of my car one day, I knew I would have to find something else. Wacoal bras aren’t cheap, and while I think you should support “the girls” to the best of your ability, I just can’t spend that kind of money on undergarments. I’d rather spend it on shoes… but I don’t.

Anyway, because I am 1) overweight, and 2) of good, German, farmhand stock, I am well-endowed. Doesn’t well, when used as a prefix, usually indicate something positive? Yeah, I’m not feeling so positive… just very frustrated. I’ve measured, and measured, and measured again… according to all the calculations I’ve done, I should be wearing one band size and one or two cup sizes larger than my lovely Wacoal bras were. So that’s what I’ve been trying on, but that is a large enough size that it’s very difficult to find locally. I’ve ordered about ten different bras online, and have had to return them ALL. All of them!! Every last one. None of them fit. Some were pricey, some were not… but they all looked terrible. In the meantime, the last underwire on my last perfect bra gave out as I was cleaning the bunny room one night. I had to do something, so I went to Kohl’s and bought a couple of stopgap measures. They don’t fit very well, but I figured they’d do for now. I can tell they are the wrong band AND cup size – I can use the tightest hook closure and still pull the band over 2″ away from my body, and the center wires don’t lay flat like they’re supposed to.

So, lastnight I go to Kohl’s, not really intending to look at bras, but figuring I might as well try to find the next cup size bigger. It’s a triple-letter size, so I don’t have a lot of hope, but they actually do have a few different styles. I pick a smaller band size and the larger cup size, and they are ENORMOUS. There is enough extra fabric to fit at least one more breast in each cup! I’m so confused… what the heck? So, I try just reducing the band size, leaving the cup size the same as what I’ve been wearing. Still too big. Then, I figure I’ll try the size I was wearing before I started my search for the new perfect bra. Lo and behold, I tried on 3 different styles, and they fit. Hallelujah! It’s puzzling, for sure, because it’s not like I’ve lost any weight over the last 4 months… so I don’t understand why the size and styles that didn’t fit back then suddenly do, but I’ll take it. They cost together what one of the Wacoal bras do, so I’ll take it.

I have happy boobs now, that’s for sure.

The worst timing

Amanda — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 04:27:14 +0000

It’s been about three weeks since I’ve been needed overnight at my brother’s… my sister-in-law was on vacation over the holidays, and RC took vacation last week. While it was a nice respite, being able to sleep in my own bed every night, I’m now out of practice. The girls were SO excited to see me, even the four-legged one – you’d have thought they hadn’t seen me at all during that time! And they were terribly cute, playing “let’s dress up and pretend we’re playing in the snow”. Wia has such a big imagination for a three-year old, and Emma follows right along behind her.

Yep, they were cute until bedtime rolled around. Wia took the opportunity to get up no less than 10 times… “I need a little drink of water”, “I need to make a stinky”, “I need to take out my ponytail”, “I need a little drink of milk/juice/more water”. I finally had to threaten a spanking, and fortunately it worked, because I don’t think I could follow through with it.

But poor Bailey suffered the most… she’s now 15 weeks old, and is 99.9% house trained. She’s so good – she lets you know when she needs to go out, and will even come and get you if you’re in another room. But she still takes a long time when she needs to do her business, and I wasn’t paying attention to the cues tonight. I sort of hurried her back in after she squatted, and didn’t give her time to… you know. Wia and I finished up her evening ablutions, and came into the kitchen to get a sip of water, and there it was. In the middle of the living room floor, a steaming pile of Aunt Amanda’s Mistake. Poor puppy. She was so embarrassed; she just stood by it and kind of whined. I felt terrible. Thankfully she forgives easily.

I got nothin’

Amanda — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 04:33:18 +0000

I’m tapped out tonight – it’s been a stressful day, and trying to think of something interesting to write is the very last thing I want to do right now. My pillow is calling my name…

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Silly me… when I filled out my timesheet at work this week (we have to track our hours every week for planning and resource management), I put the actual hours I worked, which was only 34. You know, I figured it was better to be honest, since I totally did not plan to use vacation hours for the other 6. My manager rejected it. Despite the fact it was a holiday week and I was one of maybe 10 people in the entire department, and at least I bothered to come into the office (my coworker didn’t even bother to send an email Tuesday or Wednesday to let us know she was working from home). Ugh. I’m just really, really tired of everything being about whether or not I’m in the office or not, taking up space, breathing the air. I don’t like feeling like I’m just there to fill a seat… shouldn’t it be about whether or not I’m producing the desired results? Plllblllbltttt. I don’t wanna talk about work anymore. Blech.

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I made a sugar cream pie for my birthday. I baked it Monday night, and it wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t the best I’ve ever had, but it was good enough to eat. It used to be my favorite, but that sour cream apple pie I made for Thanksgiving and again at Christmas is coming up a mighty close second… it might just overtake the current numero uno.

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And that’s… it. I’m out for tonight. You stay classy, America.

Ten days

Amanda — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 06:56:34 +0000

How has it been ten whole days since I last posted? Sheesh.

Well, I evidently have not won any of the HP Magic Giveaway contests I entered. Bummer. I must be doing something wrong… I enter just about every sweepstakes and contest I come across online, and I have yet to win anything. I guess I’ll just keep trying. Can’t win if you don’t play, right?

Speaking of winning… we had our annual Christmas pitch-in today at work. After the “town hall” meeting where the boss congratulated everyone on a decent year and told us to “sharpen the saw” over the holidays (he actually said “take time to reconnect with your families if you need to” – it totally came out wrong and was HILARIOUS), about sixteen of us participated in a little competition. Someone found these puzzles, and the first person to finish correctly would win a prize. Now, let me say right now I didn’t finish it alone. One of my co-workers came over and helped me… I could not have finished it without her. But finish it we did, and first! We won a $50 Mastercard gift card, which I offered to split and she turned down, so I won it. I WON SOMETHING!! Whoopee! So exciting.

Twitter. I am terrible at it. I go days without posting an update, and then I post two or three in a row. It seems like I could just, oh, I don’t know, blog it instead? I may quit, I just haven’t decided yet. I’ll give it until after the holidays, I guess.

That new puppy smell

Amanda — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 03:31:23 +0000

100_0867
Originally uploaded by Little Miss Magic

What IS that smell? I’m sitting here on my brother’s couch, snuggling with my brother’s puppy, and I’m having a hard time seeing the computer screen through the haze of puppy farts. She’s only 10 weeks old… how in the world can she make that kind of odor at such a young, innocent age? If she weren’t so cute (see picture at left), I’d throw her away.

I still think I’d like a dog, despite spending all this time with Bailey. I also think I’ve decided an adult dog would be great. Or at least a young dog, already house trained and past the mouthing/biting stage that this one is currently going through. When she’s not asleep, she’s attached to one (or more) human appendages with those needles other people call “teeth”. Tonight I literally dragged her around the living room by my pants leg… I used to only worry about the bunnies ruining my clothes, but now I have to worry about an 11 week old puppy? Again, it’s a good thing she’s cute. Also, I can leave her here and go home to my quiet little bunnies, who do NOT bite.

ETA (the next morning): The haze of puppy smell? Was NOT puppy farts. It was a pile of puppy doo-doo on the floor behind the couch. Apparently when I took her out to go potty I didn’t wait long enough for her to do all her business. Bad Aunt Amanda.