my cat hates you

we have these animals that live in our house.  share our living space.  

shed.

back when i was in college it seemed like a great idea to get a little indoor kitten to cuddle with at night and sit in my lap while i studied.  simultaneously, somewhere on the other side of tulsa county, J and his ex-wife were childless and it seemed like a great idea to get a little indoor puppy to play fetch with and ... do whatever else you do with dogs.  i don't know, because i'm not a dog person.

seven years passed, and worlds collided.

gatsby.  gatsby hates you.  but don't feel bad.  gatsby hates me, too.  gatsby hates indiscriminately and with the inimitable contempt conveyed only by cats.  we are here only for gatsby's pleasure, to scratch him when he feels like being scratched.  the rest of the time, you and i can scratch off.

valkyrie.  valkyrie loves you.  valkyrie loves me, too.  the feeling is not entirely mutual.  valkyrie licks and i can't stand it.  valkyrie is overeager.  she wants to sleep in your lap.  she doesn't care that it's one hundred degrees outside.  valkyrie smells like burned scrambled eggs.  

when i think about a dog i'd like to have, i imagine a giant saint bernard who naps quietly fireside as i stroke his head and read my book, and who disappears the rest of the time.  and doesn't lick.  essentially a giant cat.  i don't need a dog, i need a tiger.

[digression: i just noticed that the television automatically switched from the music station to spongebob squarepants because J is DVR'ing it for autumn on TWO different channels.  IS THIS MY LIFE.]

but valkyrie is a good guard dog.  she's only 15lbs, but she's fracking loud, and antsy and skittish, so she doesn't miss a thing.  which is nice when J's gone at night, albeit annoying as all get out the rest of the time.  and i will admit to, on occasion, inviting her to sleep on the bed when J's gone, except that she takes this as an invitation to burrow under the covers and become dead to the world, totally useless.

valkyrie is a scavenger.  miniature pinschers are a rat terrier breed of dog.  when we moved into this house i posted about how irritated i was that she was turning our yard into a series of giant culverts, trying to unearth a mole or a gopher or whatever.

and then this turned up.  knock me over with a feather, right?

Exhibit 1: mole or gopher

it almost made me forgive her for turning our back yard into this:

Exhibit 2: culvertization

i am now of the opinion that everyone with a small child should have an indoor dog because valkyrie waits with such rapt patience at the foot of kitten's chair to immediately recover each tiny morsel of dropped food.  that's gross, but i don't care.  you can't imagine the time saved by not having to sweep after every meal.

Exhibit 3: 

isn't it cute the way kitten hooks her toes on the edge of the tray?

as i was mentally composing this post this morning while i fed kitten breakfast, the following occurred:

Exhibit 4: this morning

there are a multitude of things going on in this picture.  first we have the sleepy-eyed kitten--for once the innocent bystander--eating her banana and cheerios.  

Exhibit 4: continued

and then there's gatsby (who hates us).  he has just smacked the cereal box onto the floor with his front paw.  see how he's watching the minion below to see what unfolds?

Exhibit 4: continued

valkyrie has JUMPED INTO ACTION and is frantically cleaning as many cheerios as she can before i swat her away.  she has a pavlovian response that kicks in when she's eating human food, making her paranoid and jumpy.  as opposed to the rest of the time, when she's just paranoid and jumpy.

exhausted from his activities, gatsby reclines for a nap:

Exhibit 5: supreme indifference, thirty seconds later

so there you have it.  i let the dog clean my floor, and my cat sleeps on the kitchen table.  it's worth pointing out that i swiffer my floor once a week, and i wipe down the table before each meal.  my mom won't find this to be remotely redeeming because in her mind indoor animals are universally verboten, as evidenced by my hamster-free childhood.  

but i'm not holding back.  welcome to my life.

can you spot the dog in this photograph?

this is how the dog sleeps.  all the time.  i did not do that to her.  in fact, the blanket and pillows were nicely folded and stacked on top of the sofa.  but she noses and roots around until they fall.  then she dives underneath, pokes her nose out, and starts snoring.

on a related note, this is what the content of my day has been reduced to.  posting photographs of the dog on the couch opposite me.  being on maternity leave with no baby is STAGGERINGLY BORING.  apparently i'm a grass-is-always-greener type of girl.

J is in stillwater for work for a couple of days so i'm going to go crash his hotel room.  i'm so bored that i'm willing to risk Kittin being born in the Land of Orange and Black.  although you better believe if i start having contractions i'll be booking it back to t-town with a quickness.

the weekend update

gatsby is really getting into baby planning mode. he's all for it. here he has found a cozy resting place inside a shopping bag full of new maternity clothes.

it seems like most of my posts about gatsby involve him finding a cozy resting place. for that matter, it seems like i probably post about gatsby too much. but for now, he's my bay-bee!

i'm STILL SICK. i can not get over this head cold, and it's giving me terrible migraines. wednesday i thought i was getting better, but in the last 48 hours it's moved from my head to my chest, which now aches with every deep cough. i'm sure the nurse at my o.b.'s office is fed up with me. "are you SURE there is nothing else i can take for this headache??" *hint hint PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND MERCIFUL IN THE WORLD TELL ME I CAN TAKE AN IMITREX* but no. she finally called me in a z-pack when the gunk in my chest turned green. TMI.  whatev.

i mean, the headcold-with-no-nyquil is one thing, but i'm totally emotionally and physically drained from having what essentially amounts to a five day migraine. my doctor allowed me to take some lortab for the migraine, which makes me loopy and helps me sleep at night (albeit fitfully), but i can only take one every six hours and it wears off in about two, and i'm trying to minimize taking them during the day anyway because even though they're safe, i just. don't. like. taking. medicine. while. i'm. pregnant.

so all of this means i've been getting zero quality sleep. i missed work on monday, and i didn't go back to work after lunch today, which contributes to the stress exponentially. it's so frustrating that i can take painkillers to (attempt to) mask the pain, but i am not allowed to take the one medication (imitrex) that is a non-painkiller and will actually treat the migraine and make it go away. ARGH! i can't even express my frustration after an entire week of bare-minimum functionality and constant pain.

in a desperate attempt for more homeopathic solutions, i have scheduled a prenatal massage for tomorrow morning, and i then am going to try to track down menthol crystals at the Peace of Mind bookstore (for my sinuses) and some rosemary tea at Wild Oats (per my Grandma's suggestion, for the migraines).

anyway, onto happier things.

today while i cooked dinner (glazed pork chops with hot chunky homemade apple sauce, green beans, and twice-baked potatoes - being sick makes me even more obsessive about preservative/chemical/hormone-free home-cooked meals), J took Princess to the recycling center to drop off our recycling for the month. he really wants to teach her about what we're doing and why.

i never thought i'd find another person who shares my passions about environmentally sustainable living, but i have. J's like the recycling police in the house, and i don't mind it a bit. he takes out the trash and he'll see pieces of junk mail that i mindlessly threw in there, or a plastic milk jug, and waves it around. "why did you throw this away! this is recyclable!" it's good to have a reminder, because it's so easy to just junk everything into the kitchen trash like you've been accustomed to doing your whole life. :) it takes practice.

as a visual aid, here is what one month's worth of recyclable materials looks like for our two-and-a-half person household:

these are the recycling bins that we keep in the garage. what you see is sorted into categories (cardboard/office paper, magazines/glossy paper, bags of shredded mail, aluminum/glass, and plastics), ready to be dumped into the recycling bins down the road. also, it occurs to me that there's a color shift in that photo that makes our walls looks like they're painted baby blue. they're not. they're a really unobtrusive pale grey color. i swear.

can you imagine if we had just dumped all of this into the trash this month? it's unbelievable how much perfectly good recyclable material gets sent worthlessly to the landfill. what's even more unbelievable is that recycling is free and people still don't do it.

before we started recycling and composting, our household trash output was one full (sometimes overflowing) industrial-sized city-issued trash bin per week. this amounted to about five-six large trash bags. a week. now we are taking out the trash bin once per MONTH. that's right. about one trash bag a week. four trash bags a month. for the entire house.

for those of you readers who don't recycle, here is your official guilt trip. do it. you have no excuse. as the biggest consumer society in the world, we have a global obligation to mitigate the damage we're doing. just buy a couple of $2 bins at wal-mart and start. it is so easy.

and more baby things

this will be a post full of pictures, and bear with me, because i can never get the formatting quite right. just when i think i have it all arranged correctly on my Mac, i go to work and look at the page on my PC and it's completely different. unlike my friend carrie, whose picture-filled posts are always perfectly spaced.

today i went to the "just between friends" event at the expo square. it's basically a big consignment sale for kid's clothing. i was going mostly for the maternity clothes. i was pretty disappointed. i got a few cute tops, but there was a serious lack of work clothes (suits/pants/dresses), which is why i went. i did pick up some summery clothes for Princess, and didn't even glance at the baby clothes. there were some good clothes, some overpriced clothes, some overly threadbare clothes, and some dreadfully tacky clothes. i seriously cannot believe some of the things that people will dress their kindergarteners in.  scandalous.

also, although i had not planned on buying one, i bought a bassinet. it was only $40, and it's in perfect shape, and it rocks and has (locking) wheels. i've heard of people who bought a bassinet and only used it for a week and regretted it, but i think it will make sense for me, and besides, it was used, so worst case scenario i lost $40 on the deal.

since i plan to breastfeed, it will be good to have the baby right next to the bed at night for a while, without having to deal with co-sleeping, which i just don't think is for me. i slept alone for the first 26 years of my life, and it's hard enough sharing the bed with J without waking up sprawled across the middle of the bed with J hanging off the edge. bringing a baby into that mix is sure to affect everyone's sleep quality. bad idea. and this way we won't have to retrieve the baby from the nursery for nighttime feedings. at least, this is the way things play out in my head. we'll see how it really goes.

gatsby is thrilled with our new purchase, he is certain that it's a big special bed just for him, and he immediately took to it. he is passed out asleep in it as i write this.

i was also excited to get a package from my ultra-cool aunt patti today, postmarked from destin, florida, where she's been enjoying a prolonged respite. inside were the FIRST BABY CLOTHES i've received. patti has always had impeccable taste, and in this instance she nailed it. these are SO ME:

(you can't really tell in the pictures, but they're SO TINY.)

our doctor's appointment last thursday went perfectly. the ultrasound was amazing, it's so weird to see the baby kicking and moving around in there while i can't feel a thing. it's the exact right size for 12 weeks, and i'm still dead on target with my weight gain (for now). we will go back on march 27, and hopefully we will find out the sex at that appointment. between now and then i'll have some routine screening tests done to test for down's syndrome, spina bifida, and other such abnormalities.

i guess that's all for now. another post full of nothing but bebbe news. i'm may to live to disappoint my friend kara after all, who assured me that i would not become a mommy blogger. sigh. oh well, you write about what you know.

THE DOG

DID IT AGAIN. WITH THE TRASH. YESTERDAY.

and this time there was a huge bag of yerba mate that a mouse had gotten into that i'd thrown away, so there was this gigantic trail of green herbal matter all over the floor where she'd dragged the bag around.

it was tea. i swear. but man, it looked funny.

the following happened between the hours of 8am and 6pm.

today we came home from work to find the house looking like this:

did we get robbed? no.

are my housekeeping skills hideously slothful? no.

the bad bad dog, who has really been on a roll lately, decided to make a day out of strewing the kitchen trash all. over. the. house.

i don't know if she's sensing that i'm pregnant and she needs to run amok, or what, but i'm seriously about to lose it with this dog. we're going to have to buy a crate and start keeping her in it during the day. we haven't done that in forever.

here is a picture of the no good very bad dog begging us to forgive her of her transgressions:

she's pretty convincing to the untrained eye. she's also a tiny demon clothed in shiny black and tan fur.

"oh it's nausea/it's nausea/and we're gone"

-Beck

the sickness is getting better, but i'm still having issues with cooking. which is really annoying because i have a lot of cravings and i'm hungry all the time.

so today i was in the little local pharmacy waiting for them to fill my prescription (two follow-up stories on that to follow) and i saw a box of sea bands. my doctor had suggested that i try them for the nausea, so i bought them and proceeded to go home, don them, and cook dinner.

they look like this:

really cute, huh? so i'm in the kitchen cooking chicken chili (after the DOG got out of the back yard through the hole left by Miles that we still haven't filled in and i had to chase her all around the neighborhood as she's gleefully terrorizing the neighbors and this was after i came home to discover that today in her spare time she's destroyed all of jake's travel toiletries and there was shampoo and lotion and toothpaste smeared all over my carpet OH THAT DOG IS SO, SO BAD) and jake walks in and laughs at me. he's like, 'what are those?' i said, 'they're wristbands, can't you tell? and after dinner i'm going to take my camaro to a jazzercise class.'

needless to say they will not be worn outside the house.

follow-up story no. 1. yesterday and today i had the most terrible migraine and it has been the most frustrating thing. after years of seeing neurologists and undergoing ever test under the sun and every experimental treatment, i have found a trifecta of prescription medications that will kill a migraine inside thirty minutes if i can just take them and lie down for a bit.

unfortunately, i can't take ANY of them now that i'm pregnant. my doctor called me in some sort of painkiller today, but it's really a small help after two days of nothing but tylenol.

follow-up story no. 2. when my doctor's office called me to ask what pharmacy they should call the prescription into, i told them my usual pharmacy - walgreens. and then i quickly thought better of it and told them to call it into the little local pharmacy, which J has been encouraging me to try.

i like walgreens a lot because when i travel i can fill my prescriptions from any walgreens without having to hassle with having the prescription transferred, and also because there's almost always a 24-hour pharmacy open SOMEWHERE in any city i'm in.

but the logistics of using them on a regular basis have become simply too daunting. try to use the drive-through on any weekday and you will be in for an hour wait. ditto for going inside. and they can never get scripts filled the same day. they're just too busy. it's annoying.

so i had them call it into the little pharmacy down the street from my house, and LO AND BEHOLD, i walked in at 6p.m. and they prescription was filled, and i handed over my prescription card and they ran it RIGHT THEN, and i was out of there in five minutes.

BEAUTIFUL. remind me why i ever started using a big chain? i boycott wal-mart because of their evil ways, why would walgreens not fall into that category? never again.

oh, and my little local non-wal-mart grocery store started carrying reusable shopping bags. made of recycled plastic, 3 for $5. happy day.

OH, and ever since i watched "No Country For Old Men," which i freaking LOVED more than any movie i've seen in years, and then J and I rented "3:10 To Yuma" on On Demand, which I also loved, and so I've got a newfound love of westerns, so tonight we watched Tombstone and J--who grew up watching westerns--has undertaken responsibility for my western-genre education. i'm excited.

on a slightly related note, did you know i've never seen Gone With The Wind? yup. never.

so that was my day. sorry if i've rambled. i'm on bebbe-friendly migraine barbituates. woo-hoo.

until next time.

last night i was just dozing off to sleep when J came into the bedroom, asking if i wanted to see Gatsby doing something funny.

apparently he'd decided that the pottery barn sack full of Princess's old clothes slated for goodwill was a nice-looking place to settle down for a long winter's nap. 

gato loco.