My Cat Got Left Out on the Porch

My poor fat cat got closed out on the screened in porch last night. I didn't realize it till I went out there to vacuum a couple of hours ago.

She. Was. Not. Happy!!!! At. All.

She gave me a VERY dirty look when I opened the door and sashayed by me with a accusatory meow.

After she got over her initial snit, she came up to me and pretty much demanded I pick her up and pet her for a few minutes. She's a little scaredy cat and while she likes to stay on that porch a lot of the time, I'm sure being out there alone all night was no fun at all for her. So I petted her a few minutes and then she got down and disappeared to where ever it is she goes when she wants to be alone and sulk.

I feel bad :(

BTW, I've had her on a diet and put her food downstairs so that she has to walk up and down the stairs to eat. But she still looks like this. We are trying .....

ARRGGGG ..... I Can't Get Anything Done Today

I spent a lot of time at the computer today, but still got almost nothing done in terms of my blog or making any money.

I keep Yahoo Messenger open on my computer all the time because that's the primary way I communicate with my son. Actually, its the only way. I want to be available to talk with him when he can get online. He doesn't always choose to talk to me, but I want to be available anyway. He has a little fraulein he chooses to talk to online more often than he chooses me. I talk with my daughter numerous times on the phone and on the computer during the day.

Earlier today I got online with the intention of blogging something. As soon as I logged on two Yahoo Messenger windows popped up, one from my son and one from my daughter. That's very unusual because they usually tag team me. With him in Iraq and her in Southern California they are on completely different times. It's uncanny how as soon as one of them logs off the other will log on. They've been tag teaming me like that since they were babies. Their entire baby years are a blur to me. When I would get one of them to sleep the other would wake up. When I would get that one to sleep the first one would wake up again. That went on for seemingly years and I rarely slept more than an hour at a time. I tease them now that they obviously have some sort of code to let each other know when its time to get on line so that I'm at the computer way too many hours.

Today was an exception, they were online at the same time. My son sending messages to me in German because he's learning German and my daughter sending messages to me in Spanish cause she just does that. So I'm flipping back and forth between their messages and Babel Fish. My Beloved Curmudgeon is flipping the television channels between World War II documentaries, some show about truck drivers driving across ice roads (a show I have seen before a couple of times. Sadly.) and some boxing match from years ago. I asked him if he knew the outcome of the boxing match. He said he did, but kept watching it.

My son likes for me to send him photos so he can see what's going on here. My daughter was sending me photos so I was forwarding them on to him. I think they were talking to each other as well. The photos she was sending me were of her and her boyfriends on the beach, at Disneyland, and where ever else they'd been in the last few days. I told my son that she told me she's in love with this guy. 'She's always in love with whoever she's dating', he replied. I could see that he was looking through the photos. I wrote, 'Well, she's acting different this time. Very different than her other boyfriends.' He immediately replied, 'I want to see how he acts.' Woah. I watched as my son continued to scrutinize the pictures of his sister with 'the guy'. This guy has no idea that he's not only up against Beloved Curmudgeon but my daughters brother as well. I hope the guy isn't easily intimidated. If he is, he won't make it in this family.

At some point I became aware that I had been unconsciously moving myself around to get out of the way of our animals. I kept moving my laptop around because one of our dogs insist on curling up right under my feet and no matter how I move he moves so that I have to move again. The other dog watched this from across the room silently laughing because she was passing gas so badly I kept threatening to take her downstairs. The more I threatened the worse it got. Our cat was laying kinda on the couch and kinda on my shoulder so that when I moved to accommodate dog #1 she was inconvenienced and finally pranced off in a huff to curl up on the window sill.

To top it off, our bird was talking a mile a minute. His talking is usually white noise. I'm so accustomed to him that I don't really hear him until someone comes over and is shocked at his talking ... and how loud he is.

As I became aware of all the activities around me and that I was actually uncomfortable because I was accommodating ANIMALS I realized why I was getting in a foul mood. 'Do you see this?' I asked my Beloved Curmudgeon pointing at the dog at my feet. He just chucked and told me to push him out of the way if he was bothering me. Well, he won't move if I push him. Beloved Curmudgeon has to move him because the animal has no respect for me whatsoever. Beloved Curmudgeon laughed and made no move to make HIS dog move.

Worse still, both dogs and the cat can open the door between the den and back porch if the door isn't shut tight enough, which it usually isn't. They don't know how to close it, but they open it often. So I'm up and down closing the door back. Its maddening.

We have 3500 square feet in this house and all I want is a little corner of the couch to sit on with my laptop. Yet we are all crammed into this one little area. The animals are laying all over me and one of them just stinks. If it weren't so hot outside I'd take my laptop out to the back porch and make sure the door was shut very tight. But then I'd be watching my naked neighbor on his back porch.

No wonder I'm crazy.

There Are Uses for Dogs in the House

Dogs serve many purposes. They protect us, love us unconditionally and do stupid things that make us laugh.

They have a lot of faults. They stink things up, rub up against the wall and leave marks that have to be scrubbed off, drool on the carpet, nudge the back of the newspaper when you are trying to read it and much, much more.

Tonight I found another good reason to put up with all the aggravation they cause though.

If you drop a raw egg on the floor and have to go across the kitchen to get some paper towels, wet them and come back to clean it up. By the time you get back to the refrigerator to clean up the egg, the dogs have already cleaned it up for you. Shell and all.

They'll stand there licking their lips with innocent looks on their faces and believe they have tricked you into believing they didn't lick up the egg. You will semi-scold them but secretly be happy they licked it all up.

They do have their uses.

A Marine and His Iraqi Dog

Major Brian Dennis was serving in Iraq when a local dog took up with him. The dog's ears had been cut off when it was a pup so Major Dennis named him Nub. Nub came around for months and obviously liked hanging out with the Marines. One day Major Dennis found a deep puncture wound on Nub. It had been inflicted on Nub with a screwdriver. Dennis and the other Marines nursed Nub back to health. No wonder Nubs loves his Marines and was willing to do whatever he had to do to find them when their unit was relocated .....

Major Brian Dennis, while serving in Iraq, found a dog who had his ears cut off as a pup and named the little guy nubs.

Over a period of months, the animal came around, befriending Dennis and his fellow Marines. During one visit, Dennis found Nubs with a deep puncture wound on his left side. He later learned the injury was inflicted by a screwdriver. He helped nurse the dog back to health.

The time came, however, for Dennis' unit to relocate 70 miles from Nubs' home fort. Keeping nubs was against the rules so he had to leave the dog behind. As always, Nubs sprinted alongside the Hummers as they pulled away for what Dennis assumed was the last time he would see the dog.

Two days later, Nubs wandered inexplicably in below-freezing conditions into Dennis' new camp, shocking the Marine unit. "I won't even address the gauntlet he had to run of dog packs, wolves, and God knows what else to get here," Dennis wrote. "When he arrived he looked like he'd just been through a war zone."

Nubs' miraculous journey forced the Marine's hand, and Dennis and his fellow Marines unanimously decided to keep the animal, building a doghouse at the camp. When two military police officers told Dennis the dog could not stay at the camp, he decided the only way to properly keep the animal was to get it to the United States.

After raising money and setting up a home with a friend back in the states, Nubs will arrive in the US this weekend.

Read the rest of the story here.