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Kitten's all like LET ME IN and the big cat's all "Problem? UMad,bro?" aaaaahahahahaha

Also cell23 needs to stop sending me pictures of Dakin Kitty porn. Between him and extrajoker, who volunteers over there, really the only thing keeping me from ADOPTING ALL TEH KITTEHZ is a lack of funds. Cause damn. Kitties.

Back to work!

There was good and bad stuff about today which is unfortunately all sort of making my brain implode around the edges, so I'm gonna skip writing about it until later, if at all. I will instead note that I have belatedly joined the Goodreads bandwagon (username is the same over there as it ever was) and spent the last half hour or so entering my library pulls from November onwards. Feel free to friend me back, or just friend me period if I haven't for some reason found you via email, facebook or twitter.

Also. I have a date to work towards in terms of getting at least some of my money in order, as cell23 and I have tentatively circled the weekend immediately before Valentine's Day to head up to Dakin and find a kitty willing to have us as its meat puppets. Dun Dun Dun.

I'm sure I've posted about this once or twice before, but one of the incredibly fun things about having small to medium sized people around is the opportunity to introduce them to new things. Well, new to them things, anyway, they could just be things you like. This evening, killing time before they got picked up, I was playing game number 2 of Othello with Kidzilla (I'd taught her how to play last night) and at the same time proving that no, I'm not making it up, "Fish heads, fish heads, roly poly fish heads" is an actual song, with like actual lyrics and stuff. Silly lyrics, mind, but lyrics nonetheless. This led to a discussion of "silly grown-up music" wherein I introduced her to a little TMBG (oh, "Fingertips"), and some Aquabats (we both agreed that "Attacked by Snakes!" probably wasn't Daddy's favorite song.) I think next week'll have to include some Weird Al. But yeah, it was really fun getting to share stuff like that with her, and I rather look forward to when Lovebug is old enough to do that with as well.

Dear fates, speaking of the little man, I am beyond impressed with him. He's pretty much by sheer force of sister-envy and all the three year old stubbornness he can muster (which is a lot, he is cell23's son after all) managed to force himself into literacy this fall. He still skips every fifth or sixth word or so, but he's getting through Dr. Seuss level books pretty competently, recognizes words in his environment that make me go O_o and has started to do the thing where he'll bring you a book, ask you to read it to him, climb into your lap or into bed with you, and then read it out loud by himself. Sheesh. If he applies that much determination to global domination next year, the world may have a shorter, scarier dictator to worry about than Kim Jong-Il. Just. Saying.

Apparently in addition to it being Fuck You Friday, it's also Shit On Everyone I Know Including Me Day as well. Between this morning's panic attack, realizing exactly (like with actual numbers and everything) how fucked in the wallet I am right now and will be at least until the new year, having several friends get super horrid news, getting some rather annoying news myself (long story short, Hanzo-san is staying home for the weekend at least), and having a major ex-relationship trigger set off in the booj I am amazed I'm sitting here being just angry and stressed about it all instead of cowering in a corner bawling my eyes out.

I'm fine, I'll get through this. But you know, one of these days it would be nice if every mistake I made in the last decade or so didn't rise up to bite me in the ass on the same damn day. JUST SAYING.

On the other hand it wasn't all bad today. I got to go with anothermurray to Dakin this afternoon and have a prolonged OMGKITTEHSSQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! moment. There was a magnificent large male orange cat that could very well have been Valentino's temperamental younger brother... but really my attention was quite taken with the two tortie long haired kittens in separate cages that climbed the bars and vocally demanded lovins, one of whom got out of her cage and went zipping across the floor when a volunteer opened it to clean it out. She got scooped up by another volunteer who later needed to not be holding her so he could go talk to anothermurray and asked if I'd like to hold onto her while the cage was being finished up.

No I didn't bring her home (did I mention fucked in the wallet?) But it was a very near miss, cause she was purry and hyperactive and hilariously clumsy and FUZZY oh my god. When I put her down she spent ten or so minutes attacking everything in her cage and falling off her box in the most hilariously clumsy fashion possible. Eeee. Someone's going to love the stuffing out of her soon. But I'm glad she was there to make me feel a little better today.

Still need to do something about the raging headache, and squeeze some more productivity out of my day. I may spend tonight chugging caffiene and angstily watching Netflix movies/Torchwood/Sons of Anarchy while I yarn up my head. a) I wanna look a little less like Buckwheat for aersi&verbena76's wedding, and b) the last thing I need to be worrying about in the next few weeks is my goddamn hair. Man, some days I miss my dreadlocks.

NEW SIMON'S CAT!!! Very apropos, considering the pack&move happening.



Here's to hopefully a good thursday? Or at least one reasonably devoid of angst?

• Kidzilla's "Adventures" are getting more and more interesting. Yesterday we had to figure out how to attract sun bears that had invaded Venus. Her idea of playing a CD of their mating calls through the spaceship loudspeaker caused a stampede of them, so we have to think of a way that's not quite as effective. D: Tune in next time (aka later today) to find out where we end up next.
  
  
• tagged along for cell23's parents taking Kidzilla shopping for new shoes and school clothes; had a surprising amount of fun doing so. I now sort of understand why my sisters and Mom used to find an unholy pleasure in taking me shopping - meanwhile I remember it being excruciating. But other than a tendency to not really focus on what she was supposed to be good, Kidzilla was pretty well behaved and reasonably easy to shop for - pretty much it came down to me or her grandma holding up things and going "yes? no?" and occasionally "pick a color."
  
  (cell23, I might remark, took one look at the girls' section of Target, picked up Lovebug and vanished, mumbling something about this being way out of his league. Cackle.)
  
  There was a moment where I picked something off the rack because I was all "okay that's adorable" and held it up for Kidzilla's inspection, fully expecting her to hate it... Um. Her eyes got so big with "I CAN HAZ THAT???" that I was afraid they were going to fall right out of her head.
  
  
  
  The only problem we had during the entire shopping trip is that boy howdy she did not want to put the dress she came to the store in back on after trying this. But she got to put it on as soon as we got back to cell23's.
  
  
• The other big event for yesterday was aersi's bachelorette party. Bean did not want the penis hat.
  
  We started it up at House of Teriyaki, where I rather gorged myself on edemame and maki.
  
  
  
  No I didn't eat ALL of that. The two big rolls in the middle are aersi's.
  
  The second bit was a trip to Elements Hot Tubs and Spa in Amherst, which I'm actually really glad I went to because a) it was fun b) I apparently rather needed the hour long hot-tub soak and didn't know it - 12 hours later, and I'm still pretty much a limp noodle. Man, it's a pity hot tub trips are so damn expensive, I'd totally make it a monthly indulgence otherwise. But yeah five giggly women with wedding Mad Libs (read in our best porn star voices) and hot water? nice. Very nice.
  
  I think yesterday was also the first time Hanzo has ever carried his capacity of passengers; I'm sure he was all HELLO LADIES. Me, I had no objection to chauffeuring four lovely women around either... even though driving after hot tubs made for an interesting experience.



• came home and would have fallen over instantly except EPEEN was all like O HAI I HAS A VIRUS AGAIN FIX ME. (Fucking fake antivirus hijackers.) Luckily I had the shit set up so I could deal with the problem quickly this time, and then spent a bit tightening the security in various parts of my machine. Ugh. On the list of THINGS TO DO IN THE NEXT YEAR: Do some serious OS maintenance on EPEEN. He's a year or so overdue.

Today: gotta figure out some way of dealing with the sun bears, among other things.

I have been awake for the last half hour because there is a wildly happy gray furball curled up on my feet making up for six months of not seeing me and purring like an idling tractor trailer while doing so. This process by turns tickles insanely or hurts, seeing as this cat has freaking talons, not claws. Ow. Yes Moonbeam I missed you too now please stop kneading my toes.

I should get up and see what baked yummies dad's got in the kitchen.

K I lied, I can't actually sleep yet.

Today cell23 took me and the kids to Groff Park, which started off as an adventure because a bee blew into the car window and landed on Kidzilla's booster seat, and much to everyone's terror (except mine apparently - hence the OOOH A BEE I MUST TAKE ITS PICTURE instinct) seemed content to hang out below Kidzilla's arms for half the trip. We finally pulled into the Hadley Pride so I could get rid of it (why do I always end up being the goddamn Bug Whisperer??) Turns out it had a wing problem. Poor bee.

Anyway, we got to the park without any further nonconsensual wildlife in the car, and after being a little surprised by the emptiness of the part (we showed up around lunchtime) we had a lovely few hours of sunshine, sandbox and playground, and I took a crapton of pics of the kiddos and read and revelled in the fact that I come with natural sunblock (especially since there was a bit of a struggle getting it on the kids before we left.) Also I must add that the best place to reread Alice in Wonderland is under a tree on a warm sunny day.

We went home, had lunch and watched the end of the Indy500, then went to deliriumdeva's and renegadethumper's new place to let the kids play with Ollie. Small creature meet small creature. *shakes head* Oh two year olds. Kittens don't take well to being bossed around.

At that point, I left to drive down to Hamp for a bit, as Bosslady's widow was holding a gathering/barbecue and I hadn't seen her or the dogs in a couple of years so I figured now that I can, you know, DRIVE I'd show up. I'm glad I did, though I was slowed down a bit by a nasty three car crash that shut down part of 116 in South Deerfield on my way there. It was so nice to see her, and Cisco and Dottie and a bunch of V's friends and V's dad and all them. Plus there was dead thing on a grill and that always makes me happy. Even picked up a couple of contacts for work on Tuesday so profit? heh. I would just like to say that Dottie is still a big gorgeous golden nuisance. Seriously, I make a big exception in my general dog terror for golden retrievers (okay, and borzoi) but she is still easily the prettiest one I've ever met in person. Even if I did spend a good portion of the cookout holding her leash so she wouldn't steal the food.

Home again home again (did I mention one of my favorite things is to drive up I-91 BLARING "Sabotage?") then back to cell23's to say goodnight to the short stacks and to spend an hour or so after that sprawled on the couch with him until he went up to bed, whereupon I went home and discovered picasa's crop tool works very well and spent an hour or so cropping pictures from today and Easter that suffered a bit due to my lack of zoom lens. Le sigh. If I were a rich man, lada dada dada dada dada dada dada daaaaaaaaaaaa. Ehhhh, honestly I'm okay with the Hatemonger's kit lens for now - in terms of camera equipment I'd like a tripod first and a couple of filters before a new lens anyway. Specifically an infrared filter - I've been looking at the infrared pictures crazybee has been posting into pic365 and positively drooling, not to mention summer is the perfect season to get that freakishly pretty white foliage effect.

On a tangent, I'm having an unholy amount of bliss being able to wander from my apartment and through Squire barefoot. There is something rather delicious about being able to run through lawn and feel cool grass between my toes. I almost ALMOST get lawns now. They're nice as long as someone else is mowing them, basically. I have a feeling this summer is going to be spent mostly eschewing shoes.

On a completely different tangent, I kinda envy everyone that moved this weekend. Not for actually having to move, mind, because moving sucks, but because I just want to get mine over with. I hate waiting for things, and this goes double for moving because I loathe the month or so beforehand where I'm waiting and packing and detaching emotionally from whatever place I'm currently in and ugh. Not to mention other stuff I've bitched about before concerning the boobyhaven. But mostly the anticipation stresses me out - I just want to fast forward and have it over and done already you know? and dear fates please please PLEASE let this be the last goddamn time for a while. Moving, how I loathe and despise you. But yeah... I'm not looking forward to the summertime's worth of transitional period, but I'm grimly determined to make it a decent summer, nonetheless. I'm WAY overdue for a truly good summer, and the season is usually running at a disadvantage considering it's already the season I tend to hate above all others (it's always hot, lonely, and angst ridden for me), so we'll see how I do. It may have to be a sort of "GOOD THINGS WILL HAPPEN OR I WILL DIE IN THE ATTEMPT" sort of deal.

Nothing on tap for tomorrow, other than a low key Memorial Day and then driving the kiddos back across the state. Then back to your regularly scheduled week-a-day worries. Yippee.