Ghost-of-a-Chance

Every now and then, I take up a small sewing, mending, or needlework project, and I wonder why I don’t do it more often. Then I realize exactly why: somewhere between my chair and the back door—over half the house—is a one inch long needle the thickness of one of my husband’s beard hairs, dangling from thread the color of our floors, and I’m effectively blind.
...because I heard a bird.

Yes. I heard a bird and walked through several doorways, needle in hand, to see what it was; on the way back, my brain dumped its cache and the needle vanished. It has ceased to exist. It’s a brand new needle, too, so sharp AF. And our floors have streaks of grey, so the needle blends in like it’s invisible. Unless I magnet-sweep while walking like a Jain with a broom, the second my shoes come off, that little bugger is going to come careening out of nowhere like a heat-seeking missile just so it can stab me in the foot. Curse you, happy singing bird, for damning my feet to such fowl treatment. I may all your bath water be just slightly too warm or cold to be perfect.

Every now and then, I take up a small sewing, mending, or needlework project, and I wonder why I don’t do it more often. Then I realize exactly why: somewhere between my chair and the back door—over half the house—is a one inch long needle the thickness of one of my husband’s beard hairs, dangling from thread the color of our floors, and I’m effectively blind.
...because I heard a bird.

Yes. I heard a bird and walked through several doorways, needle in hand, to see what it was; on the way back, my brain dumped its cache and the needle vanished. It has ceased to exist. It’s a brand new needle, too, so sharp AF. And our floors have streaks of grey, so the needle blends in like it’s invisible. Unless I magnet-sweep while walking like a Jain with a broom, the second my shoes come off, that little bugger is going to come careening out of nowhere like a heat-seeking missile just so it can stab me in the foot. Curse you, happy singing bird, for damning my feet to such fowl treatment. I may all your bath water be just slightly too warm or cold to be perfect.

Every now and then, I take up a small sewing, mending, or needlework project, and I wonder why I don’t do it more often. Then I realize exactly why: somewhere between my chair and the back door—over half the house—is a one inch long needle the thickness of one of my husband’s beard hairs, dangling from thread the color of our floors, and I’m effectively blind.
...because I heard a bird.

Yes. I heard a bird and walked through several doorways, needle in hand, to see what it was; on the way back, my brain dumped its cache and the needle vanished. It has ceased to exist. It’s a brand new needle, too, so sharp AF. And our floors have streaks of grey, so the needle blends in like it’s invisible. Unless I magnet-sweep while walking like a Jain with a broom, the second my shoes come off, that little bugger is going to come careening out of nowhere like a heat-seeking missile just so it can stab me in the foot. Curse you, happy singing bird, for damning my feet to such fowl treatment. I may all your bath water be just slightly too warm or cold to be perfect.

Aside from my paranoia as an adult, my parents’ homophobia is likely the only reason they haven’t figured out I’m bi. Hearing your teenage girl singing the chorus of Spill the Wine as “Do I dig that girl? Heh!” probably should have made them question things. Fortunately, Heiferlump just thinks I’m embarrassing; her reaction to me singing is to roll over, grunt, fart, and go back to sleep with her paws over her nose. Cats don’t let you get a big head.
(Yeah. Almost forty and I just figured out I’ve been singing that wrong all these years. Freud would be clicking his heels with joy over that slip. And almost forty and I only noticed now that autocorrect cut my age the first time. Ugh.)

Did you know New York actually has 12 seasons? 

https://12seasons.nyc/

Pro Writing Aid is on such crack. I use actual line-breaks; it doesn’t recognize them as line-breaks and cries about “scenes bleeding into each other” and “mid-scene shifts in POV.” I use extra spaces, ditto, and same with several other ideas. It wasn’t even recognizing transitions, as it tends to. Well, I finally broke down and started writing this...
...every time I change to a new scene, just to hammer it in for the programming. This does not make it onto the finished product; I replace it with a proper line-break before posting because my readers aren’t morons. Well, today, PWA has something new to cry about:
Make up your goddamn mind, you worthless pile of code! I can’t psychically implant into your processors that I’m changing the scene, and you can’t recognize that a scene is being changed, so what the hell am I supposed to do? Just let your tantrum drag down my writing score because you can’t find any actual errors that need to be fixed?!
I swear. My writing skills have improved since I started using this app for editing, but my blood pressure has worsened. It wouldn’t be such a pain in the ass if any of the errors I’ve reported had ever been addressed instead of just happening time and time again.

Pro Writing Aid is on such crack. I use actual line-breaks; it doesn’t recognize them as line-breaks and cries about “scenes bleeding into each other” and “mid-scene shifts in POV.” I use extra spaces, ditto, and same with several other ideas. It wasn’t even recognizing transitions, as it tends to. Well, I finally broke down and started writing this...
...every time I change to a new scene, just to hammer it in for the programming. This does not make it onto the finished product; I replace it with a proper line-break before posting because my readers aren’t morons. Well, today, PWA has something new to cry about:
Make up your goddamn mind, you worthless pile of code! I can’t psychically implant into your processors that I’m changing the scene, and you can’t recognize that a scene is being changed, so what the hell am I supposed to do? Just let your tantrum drag down my writing score because you can’t find any actual errors that need to be fixed?!
I swear. My writing skills have improved since I started using this app for editing, but my blood pressure has worsened. It wouldn’t be such a pain in the ass if any of the errors I’ve reported had ever been addressed instead of just happening time and time again.

Had to order something called a “happy hoodie” for the old lady Siamew.  She has an ear infection, is being treated for it, yet is now scratching furrows in her right ear.  So, hopefully this will protect her ears from herself.  

Aside from my paranoia as an adult, my parents’ homophobia is likely the only reason they haven’t figured out I’m bi. Hearing your teenage girl singing the chorus of Spill the Wine as “Do I dig that girl? Heh!” probably should have made them question things. Fortunately, Heiferlump just thinks I’m embarrassing; her reaction to me singing is to roll over, grunt, fart, and go back to sleep with her paws over her nose. Cats don’t let you get a big head.
(Yeah. Almost forty and I just figured out I’ve been singing that wrong all these years. Freud would be clicking his heels with joy over that slip. And almost forty and I only noticed now that autocorrect cut my age the first time. Ugh.)

Aside from my paranoia as an adult, my parents’ homophobia is likely the only reason they haven’t figured out I’m bi. Hearing your teenage girl singing the chorus of Spill the Wine as “Do I dig that girl? Heh!” probably should have made them question things. Fortunately, Heiferlump just thinks I’m embarrassing; her reaction to me singing is to roll over, grunt, fart, and go back to sleep with her paws over her nose. Cats don’t let you get a big head.
(Yeah. Almost forty and I just figured out I’ve been singing that wrong all these years. Freud would be clicking his heels with joy over that slip. And almost forty and I only noticed now that autocorrect cut my age the first time. Ugh.)

Aside from my paranoia as an adult, my parents’ homophobia is likely the only reason they haven’t figured out I’m bi. Hearing your teenage girl singing the chorus of Spill the Wine as “Do I dig that girl? Heh!” probably should have made them question things. Fortunately, Heiferlump just thinks I’m embarrassing; her reaction to me singing is to roll over, grunt, fart, and go back to sleep with her paws over her nose. Cats don’t let you get a big head.
(Yeah. Almost forty and I just figured out I’ve been singing that wrong all these years. Freud would be clicking his heels with joy over that slip. And almost forty and I only noticed now that autocorrect cut my age the first time. Ugh.)

Always love your pets. You never know when you’ll lose them. 

Sleeping naked is the shit when you’re young. Then, one day, you’re middle-aged with a cat who likes sleeping between the sheets and has frigid toes, and you start second guessing everything.
Heiferlump, by the way, wasn’t just thawing out her frosted toebeans on my bare ass. She also kept wiping her cold, wet nose on the ticklish spot between my thigh and cheek every time I dozed off. I’m not ashamed to say I committed the unforgivable crime of yeeting the baby off the bed. I’m not sorry. Kid needs some fuzzy socks or something.

Sleeping naked is the shit when you’re young. Then, one day, you’re middle-aged with a cat who likes sleeping between the sheets and has frigid toes, and you start second guessing everything.
Heiferlump, by the way, wasn’t just thawing out her frosted toebeans on my bare ass. She also kept wiping her cold, wet nose on the ticklish spot between my thigh and cheek every time I dozed off. I’m not ashamed to say I committed the unforgivable crime of yeeting the baby off the bed. I’m not sorry. Kid needs some fuzzy socks or something.

Sleeping naked is the shit when you’re young. Then, one day, you’re middle-aged with a cat who likes sleeping between the sheets and has frigid toes, and you start second guessing everything.
Heiferlump, by the way, wasn’t just thawing out her frosted toebeans on my bare ass. She also kept wiping her cold, wet nose on the ticklish spot between my thigh and cheek every time I dozed off. I’m not ashamed to say I committed the unforgivable crime of yeeting the baby off the bed. I’m not sorry. Kid needs some fuzzy socks or something.

Sleeping naked is the shit when you’re young. Then, one day, you’re middle-aged with a cat who likes sleeping between the sheets and has frigid toes, and you start second guessing everything.
Heiferlump, by the way, wasn’t just thawing out her frosted toebeans on my bare ass. She also kept wiping her cold, wet nose on the ticklish spot between my thigh and cheek every time I dozed off. I’m not ashamed to say I committed the unforgivable crime of yeeting the baby off the bed. I’m not sorry. Kid needs some fuzzy socks or something.

Sleeping naked is the shit when you’re young. Then, one day, you’re middle-aged with a cat who likes sleeping between the sheets and has frigid toes, and you start second guessing everything.
Heiferlump, by the way, wasn’t just thawing out her frosted toebeans on my bare ass. She also kept wiping her cold, wet nose on the ticklish spot between my thigh and cheek every time I dozed off. I’m not ashamed to say I committed the unforgivable crime of yeeting the baby off the bed. I’m not sorry. Kid needs some fuzzy socks or something.

Nothing like a trip to the veterinary ER to make a night interesting…

Long story made short, Freyja had an abscess of her left anal gland. How did we know this? She decided to pass blood. While I’m not particularly squeamish, nor prone to the vapors when confronted with blood, this is my baby girl. She is not allowed to bleed, or have pain, or do any of the things that will make me want to strangle a handy god or three. She is an innocent furbaby, and deserves nothing but joy.
But this at least was something that can be dealt with, and she is now home, loopy on pain meds and wearing the Inflatable Collar of Great Annoyance. She would like everyone to know that she lives with exceedingly evil humans, but we will be forgiven with sufficient treatos.

Checking in on all the rest of y’all in the range of Snowmageddon 2026. (Basically, the southern half of the US, northeast downward, half the Midwest, etc.) Everyone doing okay out there?
It’s freezing here in southwest Missouri with snow on the ground, but our neighborhood hasn’t lost power...yet. Tomorrow is supposed to be round two of this nonsense. Cold’s vehicle doesn’t handle cold well, so he’s bundling up like he’s bound for the arctic and walking to work. Heiferlump, meanwhile, is determined to crawl inside my skin to sap all the warmth from my corpse, and let me tell you, that cat has cold toes. Those toes are also equipped with unfailing nipple-seeking stomping hardware, and I have the bruises to prove it. Naturally, I’ve held her up to the window circle-of-life style a few times so she can cuss out starlings on the feeder. 
Everybody, stay warm out there!

Checking in on all the rest of y’all in the range of Snowmageddon 2026. (Basically, the southern half of the US, northeast downward, half the Midwest, etc.) Everyone doing okay out there?
It’s freezing here in southwest Missouri with snow on the ground, but our neighborhood hasn’t lost power...yet. Tomorrow is supposed to be round two of this nonsense. Cold’s vehicle doesn’t handle cold well, so he’s bundling up like he’s bound for the arctic and walking to work. Heiferlump, meanwhile, is determined to crawl inside my skin to sap all the warmth from my corpse, and let me tell you, that cat has cold toes. Those toes are also equipped with unfailing nipple-seeking stomping hardware, and I have the bruises to prove it. Naturally, I’ve held her up to the window circle-of-life style a few times so she can cuss out starlings on the feeder. 
Everybody, stay warm out there!

Checking in on all the rest of y’all in the range of Snowmageddon 2026. (Basically, the southern half of the US, northeast downward, half the Midwest, etc.) Everyone doing okay out there?
It’s freezing here in southwest Missouri with snow on the ground, but our neighborhood hasn’t lost power...yet. Tomorrow is supposed to be round two of this nonsense. Cold’s vehicle doesn’t handle cold well, so he’s bundling up like he’s bound for the arctic and walking to work. Heiferlump, meanwhile, is determined to crawl inside my skin to sap all the warmth from my corpse, and let me tell you, that cat has cold toes. Those toes are also equipped with unfailing nipple-seeking stomping hardware, and I have the bruises to prove it. Naturally, I’ve held her up to the window circle-of-life style a few times so she can cuss out starlings on the feeder. 
Everybody, stay warm out there!

So, getting some running around done, so I don’t have to deal with the chickens and the snow….
Ye gods...you’d think they never saw the stuff before. 🤣

In my 2013 Phineas and Ferb fanfic “Candace’s Perfect Body,” there’s a scene wherein Dr. Doofenshmirtz captures Perry the Platypus by trapping him inside a wool sweater and then using a huge blow dryer on it to make the sweater shrink around him. Tonight, I watched an episode of the recently revived Phineas and Ferb in which Doofenshmirtz traps Perry exactly that way. 
I’d love to think that the writers got the idea from me, but honestly, they’ve used so many different Perry-traps over the years that this coincidence seems like a statistical inevitability.

When I say, “The world would work better if women were in charge,” I mean just about anyone but me. Why? First fact: It’s “my job” to make sure that all the lights are off and doors are locked when we go to bed because my husband will zombie walk right past a door that is standing open. Second fact: we go to bed when the sun is still up and wake up after dark so customers of my husband’s store can panic-buy their milk, eggs, and bread at the crack of dawn. This means when I check the back door, I get blinded by sunlight through the kitchen window if I’m up too late.
Well, a few minutes ago, I flipped the switch on my way out of the room, but the light only got brighter. I spent probably about a minute and a half squinting at the glowing boob-light, wondering what sort of black magic electrical fuckery I was in for now, and contemplating what a sledgehammer would do to the fugly glass shade. Then…it hit me, just like a sledgehammer.
Y’all. I just tried to turn off the sun. With a light switch. And got pissy when flipping the switch just made the room brighter. So, yeah. Just about any woman except me. I would do my level best only to get knocked down by a barrage of blonde moments. I’d attempt to bring about real, needed legal, societal, and economic change. Instead, I’d get hung up on ridiculous things like declaring boob-lights and whining electric cords illegal and enacting laws decreeing that pets are taxable dependents and people can be considered pets if they’re not fully housebroken. The world would burn.
 

When I say, “The world would work better if women were in charge,” I mean just about anyone but me. Why? First fact: It’s “my job” to make sure that all the lights are off and doors are locked when we go to bed because my husband will zombie walk right past a door that is standing open. Second fact: we go to bed when the sun is still up and wake up after dark so customers of my husband’s store can panic-buy their milk, eggs, and bread at the crack of dawn. This means when I check the back door, I get blinded by sunlight through the kitchen window if I’m up too late.
Well, a few minutes ago, I flipped the switch on my way out of the room, but the light only got brighter. I spent probably about a minute and a half squinting at the glowing boob-light, wondering what sort of black magic electrical fuckery I was in for now, and contemplating what a sledgehammer would do to the fugly glass shade. Then…it hit me, just like a sledgehammer.
Y’all. I just tried to turn off the sun. With a light switch. And got pissy when flipping the switch just made the room brighter. So, yeah. Just about any woman except me. I would do my level best only to get knocked down by a barrage of blonde moments. I’d attempt to bring about real, needed legal, societal, and economic change. Instead, I’d get hung up on ridiculous things like declaring boob-lights and whining electric cords illegal and enacting laws decreeing that pets are taxable dependents and people can be considered pets if they’re not fully housebroken. The world would burn.