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ShinyHappy - Thoughts for July 17th - 28th
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07/28/05 I like Mong's butt and I cannot lie!
I am so tired tonight, but I want to write an entry even if it's not very long. Or comprehensible.
The nicest part of today was that it's now officially two years that Andrew and I have been together. I love my fiance, and I'm so happy to have spent the last two years with him as my partner and best friend. We've had a lot of ups and downs, but there have been far more good times than bad. Yay, us! We'd kind of planned to go to East Side Mario's today, since that's where we first met and we made a point of going there last year. We didn't do it today, so next week after things settle down a bit after the cottage weekend we may go somewhere and celebrate after the fact.
We were out at Colin and Jen's place tonight hanging out in their backyard with them, roasting marshmallows over their barbeque pit. That sounds unattractive, like it might be a big gouged-out hole in the ground but it's really a very attractive device on four legs that sits there nicely with well-contained coals and everything. We had a great time just hanging out and chatting and enjoying the beautiful night. The air was cool, the fire was hot and the marshmallows were delicious. Good times.
At one point we saw something moving around in the dark and thought it might be a cat, but when it came closer it turned out to be a very inquisitive, very fearless-seeming raccoon. He was pretty small and adorable, but Colin didn't want to encourage this familiar kind of neighbourly behaviour on the part of raccoons, no matter their levels of cuteness, so scared him off with some authoritative clapping. The raccoon left with no roasted marshmallows of his own.
Speaking of bratty little animals with dark masks on their faces; I've been trying to get a picture of Mong demonstrating the proper use of his new scratch pad but he always slides off of it before I can do it. To use it most properly, a cat must have all four feet on it while scratching so that the box doesn't move and slide all over the floor. Mong can do it, but if he stops scratching even for a few seconds his enormous flabby weight causes him to slide off the scratch box and onto the floor. I got a couple of pictures of him doing it. Check out how much further down his butt is in the second picture:
Excitingly, Mong's butt is becoming more well known on the internet. Check out savemouse.com to see it in all its disqualified glory. I submitted the same picture to Stuff On My Cat so we'll see if it gets accepted or not! Yay, Mong's butt!
I may or may not be writing an entry tomorrow night. Probably not. We have a long day tomorrow, and we're having company stay over tomorrow night since everyone is leaving for the cottage weekend the next morning. So, if I don't write an entry I won't be writing another one until Monday or Tuesday. This is going to be a kick-ass weekend, though, so it'll be worth it!
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Today the weather was blissfully, blessedly not-hot. Right now it's fourteen degrees celsius outside! Woo hoo! I'm so stoked. The temperature is supposed to creep back up to stupidity over the next few days, but for now I'm thrilled. Thrilled! Not hot!
I went to Phase 2 this afternoon to buy a couple of things for the cottage this weekend and I ended up buying a straw hat. I want to avoid getting too much sun this year and Andrew suggested that I wear a hat. Now, I've never been a hat wearer, ever. I usually think they'll mess up my hair and I just never got in the habit of wearing them after my teens when I was too cool to wear them. While I was in the store today, though, I looked at the wall of summer hats (and the sign that said 25% off all summer wear) and figured I should at least try a few on. The one I liked best turned out to be the biggest, goofiest straw hat there! Go figure. So hatted I will be. May should like that, hat lady that she is.
Jenny was in town today so we ended up going out to dinner with her and their parents. We met Jenny in the Byward Market and she said she was in the mood for Indian food. We tried to go to her favourite Indian restaurant, but when we got there we found that the name had been changed. It was still an Indian restaurant, just not the one it used to be. Odd. We went in anyhow and had the buffet. I ate a ton of butter chicken, rice and nan bread. I had some delicious and interesting rose flavoured mousse for dessert and some fruit salad as well. Andrew and Jenny both drank mango lassis but I stuck with safe and familiar water. Now that I know what a lassi is, though, I might try one next time. Sounds pretty pretty good.
After dinner we walked partway back to where their dad had parked the car. We stopped in an open courtyard to sit and look at some of the candid wedding photos from Jenny's wedding. She and Colm did that awesome thing where every table at the reception has a disposable camera and the guests take photos with them, so she has an entire album filled with reception shots. They're actually really great and it was awesome to see everyone at all the tables and the kind of shots they took (lots of mugging and dancing). Jenny then pulled out her camera and took various shots of all of us. She got some pretty nice ones of me and Andrew (if I do say so myself [except for one evil one that she wouldn't delete]) and at the end took one of the three of us by holding the camera out at arm's length. It turned out great, as those kinds of shots aren't always guaranteed to do. Jenny is a talented photographer, though, so it shouldn't really surprise me.
Mong managed to pull the toy out of his scratch pad permanently. It's just a little carpet ball sort of thing, so today I figured I'd better remove the elastic it had been attached to so that Mong wouldn't pull it out and eat it. I yanked on it and it came right out. It had just been held in place by a metal washer it was tied to. I showed it to Andrew and he took it and tried to hypnotize Mong with it. I'm not sure what he was going to do to him once he had him hypnotized because it didn't get that far. Mong simply played with the washer on the stretchy string. He and Andrew enjoyed this game for a minute or two until it got caught on Mong's tooth, at which point it stretched out and then snapped out of his mouth. It flew back and rapped Andrew hard on one knuckle. Poor Andrew was in pain, but it was pretty funny. I tried not to laugh too much.
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I wish I had more newsy news to report, but not a whole lot is going on around here. I guess it's nice that we're having a calm, quiet week. The cottage weekend starts on Saturday and that's going to be a fun time, so it doesn't hurt to have some predictable days beforehand. I'm very much looking forward to this weekend. Seeing all our friends, partying at the cottage, seeing fireworks, hanging out ... good times.
Thursday is a special day, of course. It will mark two years that Andrew and I have been together. Two years! Pretty awesome. It's kind of amazing to look back on the last twenty-four months and think of how much has happened and changed. A lot of it is recorded in this weblog. I still like to go back and look to see what I wrote a year ago now that I can actually do that. I really need to stop missing days in my writing. Anyhow, Andrew and I don't have concrete plans for what we're going to do to celebrate, but it'll be something nice since it'll be us together celebrating our togetherness and love. Awww.
Speaking of too cute for words; Mong is being pretty cute lately, of course. I think he misses his old scratch pad. He had a routine with it. He'd come charging at it and jump on it so that it would slide a foot or two, then he'd madly scratch it. The new scratch pad just isn't the same, even if it is superior in many ways. He knows enough to scratch on it while standing on it with all four feet, but the slope of it seems to throw him off sometimes. We need to recycle the remains of the old one so he'll forget all about it, I think. Anyhow, here's a picture of him enjoying the new one so you can get a better idea of how big it is:
He seems quite fond of it already so it's not like he's mourning the old one in any spectacular fashion. I'm just looking forward to the day when he throws his octopus on it. Then we'll know it's part of the family.
Also, here he is enjoying his big leather chair in the living room. I'm sure that Brian and Denise thought that actual people would use this chair when they gave it to us, but Mong has claimed it as his own. When Andrew sits in it, he's just borrowing it.
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I'm home! I'm home and I somehow think that I have more pictures than words to share! Well, perhaps not quite, but it seems that way. Unfortunately, none of them are new baby pictures. I once again forgot to bring the camera to Kingston with me, so I'll have to depend on my mom to send me pictures of wee Rowan to share.
Andrew got into Kingston late Saturday night and today we went back over to Mimi's so that he could behold the tiny cuteness of the newest nephew. Rowan was very placid today too, unlike yesterday. Yesterday when Mom and I went to visit he was kind of cranky and hungry and kept wanting to nurse, then he'd promptly fall asleep in mid-nurse. After which he'd be cranky and burpy. Poor dude. But today he was lovely and spent a lot of time sleeping in Andrew's arms, which was wonderful to see. He's really an adorable baby already. I hope I get to go back and see him soon.
I didn't get to see enough of Alannah, either; only for about half an hour at most on Friday night. She's working very hard these days and had a full weekend, so I hope that I get to see her soon, too. Something I didn't write about the other night, though, is her very bad cat. I've written about Koal before when he was a funny, playful kitten. Well, now he's gotten big and much more ill-behaved. On Friday night Mom ordered pizza for us and the kids. When a knock came at the door Mom asked Skotia to grab the cat so he wouldn't go outside. Skotia tried to do so, but Koal freaked out and attacked her, giving her nasty cuts on her neck and arm. I, despite all my complaining about the brattiness of Mong, think that the title of 'Jerkiest Cat Ever' belongs to Koal. The jerk.
Skotia recovered quickly. She's tough, that girl.
When we got home today I had my first look at the new scratch pad that Andrew bought for Mong to replace his old one. He destroyed his old one rather thoroughly. See him lounging near the remains:
The new one is very large and much fancier. It's called the 'Cosmic Catnip Alpine Scratcher' and it has very disturbing images of a mountain-climbing cat on it with creepy green eyes. Here's a picture of it:
See the round hole in it? There's a cat toy hanging from an elastic inside the scratch pad for cats to bat at. Mong gets it, thankfully.
It also came with a bag of catnip and a bag of catnip treats. This is like the Rolls Royce of scratch pads or something.
The last picture for today is the evidence of Mong's absolute badness over the weekend. Here is the key that he pulled off of Andrew's iBook and subsequently mutilated:
Sadly, it did not escape.
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07/22/05 When I make him mad I just get dirty looks!
Here I am, still in Kingston missing Andrew and Mong very, very much. Today, though, I got to go and hold Rowan for an extended period of time and it was awesome. He squinched and scrunched and made faces and farted and generally was an adorable, helpless, kissable red and tiny sweetheart. I haven't heard him cry yet, as he seems to be pretty good natured and quiet (so far). Here's a picture of him looking very new on the day he was born:
His full name was on there but I blurred it so that all you creepy internet baby stalkers wouldn't stalk his newborn cuteness. His big sister, July, has apparently informed her mom that she doesn't want to be a big sister. I think that they should have her on some kind of constant watch. Those older siblings will try to take out the younger competition. Alannah tried to kill me twice, with mini marshmallows and Tylenol. Truly.
While I am missing Andrew and Mong I was grateful not to be there today. Andrew was using his new iBook in the bedroom and left the room for a little bit. He went back in to find that Mong had danced on the keyboard (messing up his email program in the process), pulled off a key (I'm not sure which one) and chewed it up to such an extent that Andrew now has to get a replacement key. Oh, the anger that must have ensued! Mong did other various bad things today too, of course, and when I spoke to Andrew tonight he informed me of all of them, including the fact that Mong had finally destroyed his scratch box totally. So, Andrew went out and bought Mong a new scratch box. And a jingly ball to play with.
Do you think Andrew loves his cat? Hmmm ... I'm not sure why anyone would think that.
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Hooray! Baby Rowan (whose name I may or may not be misspelling at this point) was born at exactly 5:00 pm on Monday, July 18th. He weighed 7 pounds four ounces and apparently was kind of squishy looking (according to my spies). He is very healthy and so is his mom, despite having had a longish labour. Congrats, Mimi! I hope that July likes being a big sister.
I'm going to be spending some time in Kingston to get to meet my new nephew and will be coming home on Sunday, probably. Andrew has to work so won't be able to join me until the weekend sometime. That's O.K.. He'll have Mong to keep him company, and vice versa. I'll get to see my other family members including my adorable, cute sister Alannah (who didn't tell me to say she was cute, no siree).
It's been ridiculously hot. Extremes of weather make me cranky, as I'm sure this weblog has proven. When Andrew arrived home from work today he said, ")#%^! &!&&( $^#*!%^ ^#$!@&, it's hot out there!" And it was true. We're trying not to run the air conditioner very much since there are dire warnings of blackouts and we have an ancient machine that sucks power like a vacuum, but when it's so meltingly, torturously hot out it's a temptation to have it going all day long. Mong is dealing with it as best he can, even though he's kept busy trying to stay in the same room as us all day long. Often if one of us is in the living room and one is in the dining room he'll position himself in the hallway where he can keep tabs on us both. And if we both go into the living room he'll eventually come lazing in and spread himself out on the floor, usually with his belly in the air. He's very sociable, even if he's not cuddly.
I must report that I might be officially sick of spaghetti sauce. For a long time we bought a particular brand of sauce at the grocery store and I would add some ground beef to it to make meat sauce. Eventually we figured it might be better to make our own sauce, financially speaking. So, I started making a very simple sauce. Until the day we were at the grocery store and Andrew pointed out some crushed tomatoes with italian herbs already added and wondered if we should use that for making our sauce. I took this to mean that my spaghetti sauce was the worst, most flavourless and disgusting sauce in the world and flared up right there in the grocery store. Andrew quickly said my sauce was fine and ran away.
I took that as a challenge. A challenge to make an awesome spaghetti sauce that wouldn't have Andrew trying to gently hint at me that my own sauce sucks donkey butt. So, after a little research online I did just that. I made a sauce that was delicious, and Andrew even commented on what a good sauce it was. Yay, me. Andrew went on to ask what I'd done differently, but like a good magician who never reveals her secrets I kept mum about the ingredients of my new wonder sauce. He could not let it lie. He'd ask me now and again what the ingredients were. I was amused by his interest and teased him about it, and he kept trying to guess. He started watching what I bought at the grocery store whenever I planned to make this yummy stuff, and announced to me that the new ingredients must be ones we already had around, since I wasn't getting anything different. He was right, too. I'm happy to announce that as of Monday Andrew finally figured out all of the ingredients. It took a lot of effort and the final two had him stumped for a while, but he did it.
But like I said; I'm getting sick of this stuff. Because it's good we've been having a lot of it lately and I'm starting to get queasy about having more, so it'll have to be put to the back of the rotation of easy, cheap meals. I am curious about coming up with a vegetarian version that's just as good, though. I wonder if TVP would be all right?
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07/17/05 Large gray monstrosity.
I haven't updated in a few days and there's a chance I might not actually update tonight. My computer has been acting like a jerk today and giving me blue screens when I'm trying to do the simplest things. Why, I do not know. It goes in fits and starts and while I pretty much know what things are going to crash it for sure, it sometimes surprises me by choking on something that it's usually O.K. with. I write my weblog entries in WordPad and for some reason WordPad is triggering these horrid blue screens, plus my mail program is freezing everything. For now (and I'm talking this very minute) it is behaving, but I don't trust it. My computer is ass and I wish it loved me more.
The last few days have been all right. I'm anxiously waiting to hear the news that Mimi is going into labour. So far she hasn't, and since her due date isn't until Friday she likely won't for a while, but I'm ready for a surprise.
We went out for pho with Colin and Jen last night. We went to New Mee Fung, which is probably the best pho in town. And the best cold pork rolls anywhere. I could have eaten only pork rolls and done without the pho, they were that good. I didn't, though, since I learned my lesson about not getting pho a long time ago. That lesson being; I always regret it. So I ate pho and cold rolls and drank green tea and was happy. After pho we went back to Colin and Jen's place to watch a movie with them. We rented Team America: World Police. It was a remarkably silly movie, but enjoyable. The IMDb says, "Rated R for graphic crude and sexual humor, violent images and strong language - all involving puppets." That pretty much says it all, actually.
Mong has been playing like crazy with his Coca Cola 12-pack box. It's been a continuing project of his to fit more and more of himself into it. His theory on cardboard boxes seems to be that they will eventually bend to his will, and it appears he is not wrong. To refresh your memory (and because it's my favourite Mong picture ever) here he is last week during his first attempt at getting inside the box:
And here he is just a couple of days ago:
See how much more of himself he's managed to wedge in there? I especially love the way he has his tail up in the air in the second picture. The trick to fitting his big belly in there seems to be to get a good run at it. We also gave him a Coca Cola 8-pack box and I was hoping that he'd dive-bomb into it and discover the hard way that it was much shorter than the 12-pack, but he didn't really do anything like that so no pictures of him trying to fit into it are available, unfortunately. Perhaps next we'll give him a refrigerator box and see what he does. Anyone buying a new refrigerator? Maybe I'll give him the box that Andrew's iBook came in. Moo ha ha! (The laugh of an evil cow.)
Well, it appears that I am at the end of my entry and my computer has not blown up or anything overly dramatic like that. Phew!
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