• a variety of fine pickles •

why i love cats

because they don't like to fold laundry any more than i do.

home again, home again...

...jiggity jig. something about buying a fat pig.

i'm home! i officially "moved" back home this morning after my follow up appointment with my arm doctor. it was so nice staying with my family for the last 2 weeks, but i have to admit - i wanted to be in my own nest again. so here i am.

i've been trying to take it easy today and still get a few little things done. a load of laundry. my first "real" shower in 2 weeks. glorious.

little pearl is getting used to her new surroundings, which must be HUGE to a tiny little kitten. she explored the house and played until she'd exhausted herself, then curled up on my bed and took a kitten nap for a few hours. then she stretched, and found a sunny spot in one of my bedroom windows to bask in. she found this perch in the window to be the ideal vantage point for bird watching, as there is a bird feeder just outside the window in my bedroom. cardinals, bluejays, doves and mockingbirds galore.

she also did a lot of this today:











nauseatingly cute. she's gonna be a handful.

i'm glad we're home.    

meet little pearl

the newest member of my family, little gracie pearl. i call her pearl, pearlie, puddin and baby.

she's good for me. kitten therapy.

i ain't got time for this crap.

there is a desperate plea for help at the end of this post - please read on...

fleas.

i am infested with fleas. well, my house, not me.

ever since willie has been gone, thefleas have gone after the only other warm blooded, mammalian carbon dioxide emitting life force in the house, and that would be yours truly. for a month now, my feet, ankles and calves have looked like i've got some horrifying disease. my skin doesn't handle any kind of bite well and nasty little flea bites turn into blistered whelps on me. pretty.

i could write on and on about the terror that has been my life for the last month and all the myriad methods i've employed - to no avail - to rid myself of this pestilence, but a) i'm still very much one-handed and b) nobode really cares, so here's the skinny a la cliff's notes.

i have:

• flea bombed 4 times - one of the bombings included two - count 'em TWO bomb kits.
• emptied more than a dozen aerosol cans of raid carpet and floor treatment for fleas, which promises on their mother's life to kill fleas AND their bastard hell spawn eggs for up to 4 months. raid, i am here to tell you, is full of shit and empty promises.
• emptied 9 cans of raid "kills fleas on contact!" spray, which the fleas pretty much chuckled at while taunting me with chants of "nanny nanny boo boo" as they jumped away from the stream of the billowing, lung and environment destroying spray. jumped away and DIDN'T DIE, by the way. raid is a bastard.
• actually purchased 10 insecticide cow eartags on the crappy advice of a friend who SWORE they worked for her. whatever. they sure as hell didn't work for me.
• gone through 4 bottles of avon skin-so-soft (i have really soft, silky flea bites).
• gone through 3 cans of off! brand every-insect-except-fleas-repellant.
• gone through 1/2 a can of cutter brand grody insect repellant. as for it's effectiveness, see above description of off! brand repellant. it was so greasy it felt like i'd hosed myself down with WD-40.
• enjoyed a visit from my sheister of an exterminator who today did exactly what i did with all the spray, and instructed me to vacuum my hardwood floors tomorrow and every day for the rest of my alotted time on earth, and - i am not joking or otherwise embellishing this statement whatsoever - said "like we usually tell people, borrow somebody's cat that's been treated with front line, and let the cat take the hit from the fleas instead of you."

i am not joking. i said "what?" and he said it again. he said "i know it sounds weird," and repeated almost verbatim what he'd just said, about borrowing somebody's cat. "weird" isn't a word that came to mind.

irresponsible. asinine. rediculous. getting reported to the bbb. dumb ass. talking out your ass. blowing smoke up my ass. hillbilly. no f'ing idea what you're doing.

those words came to mind.

tomorrow, i'm vacuuming again then dusting every centimeter of floor in my house with 100% boric acid, which will sit on my floors for at least 3 days, undisturbed, hopefully dehydrating those little mofos AND their mofo eggs. after that, i'm dusting the entire house and yard with diotomacious earth, which will stay on my floors inside for another several days before it gets vacuumed up. fortunately i'm still staying with my parents, so i won't be homeless while i'm committing mass murder in my house. so freakin' what if i spent the WHOLE weekend 2 weeks ago sweeping, mopping and waxing my floors until they shined like the damn sun. so what. i'll freakin' pay somebody to do it for me again after this is all over, just as soon as i quit crying. i didn't get enough pain medication prescribed for this crap.

by the way - when i say "i" in all this, as in "i am going to do this" or "i am going to do that", what i really mean is "my sister and her friends". i can't do squat with my popeye arm all wrapped up the size of a tree trunk. i can't even manage underwear. i sure as hell can't vacuum.

does anybody have any GOOD flea remedies that ACTUALLY WORK? please share them with me. i am past the point of desperation. puhhhhhhleeeeeeeease. i'm at my wit's end!

and no namby-pamby crap like telling me to plant pennyroyal in my garden. i need it NOW.

PART TWO COMING SOON. TEASER: IT'S A GIRL!