Random domestic stuff
Jun. 12th, 2006 06:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeFlypaper : twenty-three trillion and seven
Flies: 0
Me: 0
Cats: -1
I maintain that flypaper is the most disgusting substance known to mankind, but by Gad it's effective! This morning there were no longer swarms of flies being gross around my food. I know where they've been, don't tell me that flies near your food isn't gross, because it is.
The only time I've ever been more grossed out was when I found dead weevils floating in my oatmeal. The possibility of ingesting dead weevils is the only thing I can think of that's more gross than the idea of flies crawling over my food.
I like insects. Or, at least, I have no major objections to them. No phobias, nothing like that. I just want them to stay outside where they belong. The only wildlife I want in my apartment is pets and people who pay the rent.
So, this morning, there were only two flies that I could see still buzzing about. The rest were all stuck to the flypaper in various stages of agonising death. I felt no sympathy whatsoever. If they didn't want to die, all they had to do was not invade my apartment. The one downside to this is that flypaper smells awful. I can't think what the flies find so appealing about it, but hey, whatever floats your boat, right? I shall be taking it down as soon as ever I can without risking the invasion of more flies.
As I've told a few people already today, I am in a revoltingly good mood. Of course, the people at the office seem to be doing their best to take the wind out of my sails, but thus far they haven't succeeded. I think it has to do with the fact that I've gone to bed early for two days straight. I was asleep by about 8pm on Saturday, and at 9:45pm yesterday, and so now I'm feeling the effects of, y'know, actually having a couple of nights' worth of sleep. It wasn't entirely unbroken, but even though I woke up every few hours, I went back to sleep almost right away. I think my body just isn't used to my providing it with enough sleep and was convinced we needed to get up.
This is sort of what would go on in my head whenever I woke up:
"Hey, it's been four hours! Why aren't we dragging ourselves out of bed?"
"Shush, she's letting us sleep more. Why on earth are you complaining?"
"I dunno, seems like the thing to do."
"Why are you guys talking? Less talk, more sleep."
"Are we getting up?"
"No, we're not. Go back to sleep."
"Shut UP!"
"Have we got cookies?"
"No cookies. Sleep."
"Isn't it time to get up yet?"
"NO!"
"Okay, okay, sheesh. No need to get snippy."
Etc. :)
I'm going to try for an early bedtime tonight again too, since tomorrow I'll be volunteering and on Wednesday I have a writing jam with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
toughlovemuse. 10pm at latest, but I'll be aiming for 9:00 or 9:30pm.
Even though most of my friends are night owls, I am not. I am emphatically a morning person, although I need a minimum of eight hours of sleep a night in order to be properly functional, and I function even better with nine hours. I've learned to cope with six to seven hours of sleep, since that's usually what I get, and five hours of sleep can get me through the day in a pinch (although I'm usually a danger to myself and those around me), but as a rule my best days happen when I'm in bed at 9pm and up at 6am. Granted, that hasn't happened in a very long time, but a girl can hope, right?
In other news, I am on a major apple kick these days. Isn't my life fascinating? Fruit and vegetables and sleep patterns and insect eradication. Don't you wish you were me? ;) Anyway, yes: apples. Apples are awesome, and I've been eating them like they're going out of style. Anglo!Manager apparently left behind an apple when she left, and no one ever claimed it. I didn't know it was her apple, so I asked about the orphaned apple that had been lying around for so long and was informed that it was indeed orphaned and alone. It's still good, so I'm eating it as I type this. It just so happens that it's one of my favourite kind of apples, though I forget the name: it's marbled red and yellow, and is just a little bit tart. This one is especially good, as the skin is still crisp, but the inside is just perfectly ripe, not too hard and not too squishy. Bliss.
My cleaning projects for the weekend mostly got ignored, I am ashamed to say. I cleaned up at the Parental Units' place, but my own apartment got a bit neglected. I did a tiny bit of tidying, the dishes, and a load of laundry, but none of the major stuff I wanted to do got done. So I shall be doing some of it tonight, a little bit tomorrow and Wednesday, and hopefully one last big push on Thursday. Then Saturday and Sunday will be left for cosmetic work, and potentially even moving in the new bookcases (well, new for me) that are currently residing inai731 and baronscartop's shed in the back garden.
baronscartop has been more than awesome, since he is not only giving me his old bookcases, but also racks in which to put my CDs. My CDs are currently living in my very annoying bookcases, in the giant space where my father kept his antique tomes and which is too big for any regular-sized book (paperback, trade paperback, hell even hardcover, you name it, it's too big). I keep all my large books on the two bottom shelves (all my gaming stuff and hardcover things), which are also not quite the right size for anything except weirdly-sized eighteenth-century antique volumes. Bah.
Anyway, I now have new places for my CDs to live. This weekend I shall sort through them and fix the ones that need fixing. The cases, not the CDs. Some of the CDs are damaged beyond repair thanks to the tender ministrations of the Feline Forces of Entropy, and I am most displeased by this. Most of them I can replace, but some I can't, and while the FFEs are currently high in my black books, I realize that if I had stored the CDs properly, this wouldn't have happened. As it is, the CDs are easily accessible and thus easy to knock on the floor.
Those of you with cats may already know these rules, but for those of you who don't have the singular pleasure of sharing your home with cats, here's how cats view your possessions:
1- If it's on the floor, it's mine.
2- If I can knock it on the floor, it's mine.
3- If it's out of reach in a place I'm not supposed to go but I can still get to it, it's mine.
4- If it's mine, it's mine.
5- If it's yours, it's mine.
6- If in doubt, it's mine.
Yeah.
Anyway, I love my cats. I understand that they don't realise that peeing on my CDs is a bad thing as far as I'm concerned. They don't know that their pee is corrosive and has ruined some of my favourite CDs. They know they're not supposed to touch stuff that's on Mummy's shelves, but that's another kettle of fish entirely.
My life would be a lot simpler if cats didn't pee.
I've also decided that unless I move into a large house, I'm not going to get new cats when my current ones start going to the giant litter box in the sky. Four cats in an apartment is too many, no matter how well-behaved they are (and mine are not). This isn't going to happen anytime soon, anyway: Gretzky, the oldest of my cats, is about ten years old now, and George, the youngest, is only four. Pan-Pan is somewhere around nine, and I have no idea how old Smudge is, sincerotagar's reckoning is by all accounts way off. I suspect he's between five and seven. So I have a good ten to fourteen years of cat-life before any of this becomes a consideration, at the very least. I'll be in my forties when George will be an old man.
So that's what's going through my head on this fine Monday morning. If the weather holds, I shall go sit outside for lunch with my sandwich and my Amelia Peabody mystery.
Have I mentioned lately that life is awesome? All that's missing from my life is a semblance of financial security, and the wherewithal to make sangria.
Flies: 0
Me: 0
Cats: -1
I maintain that flypaper is the most disgusting substance known to mankind, but by Gad it's effective! This morning there were no longer swarms of flies being gross around my food. I know where they've been, don't tell me that flies near your food isn't gross, because it is.
The only time I've ever been more grossed out was when I found dead weevils floating in my oatmeal. The possibility of ingesting dead weevils is the only thing I can think of that's more gross than the idea of flies crawling over my food.
I like insects. Or, at least, I have no major objections to them. No phobias, nothing like that. I just want them to stay outside where they belong. The only wildlife I want in my apartment is pets and people who pay the rent.
So, this morning, there were only two flies that I could see still buzzing about. The rest were all stuck to the flypaper in various stages of agonising death. I felt no sympathy whatsoever. If they didn't want to die, all they had to do was not invade my apartment. The one downside to this is that flypaper smells awful. I can't think what the flies find so appealing about it, but hey, whatever floats your boat, right? I shall be taking it down as soon as ever I can without risking the invasion of more flies.
As I've told a few people already today, I am in a revoltingly good mood. Of course, the people at the office seem to be doing their best to take the wind out of my sails, but thus far they haven't succeeded. I think it has to do with the fact that I've gone to bed early for two days straight. I was asleep by about 8pm on Saturday, and at 9:45pm yesterday, and so now I'm feeling the effects of, y'know, actually having a couple of nights' worth of sleep. It wasn't entirely unbroken, but even though I woke up every few hours, I went back to sleep almost right away. I think my body just isn't used to my providing it with enough sleep and was convinced we needed to get up.
This is sort of what would go on in my head whenever I woke up:
"Hey, it's been four hours! Why aren't we dragging ourselves out of bed?"
"Shush, she's letting us sleep more. Why on earth are you complaining?"
"I dunno, seems like the thing to do."
"Why are you guys talking? Less talk, more sleep."
"Are we getting up?"
"No, we're not. Go back to sleep."
"Shut UP!"
"Have we got cookies?"
"No cookies. Sleep."
"Isn't it time to get up yet?"
"NO!"
"Okay, okay, sheesh. No need to get snippy."
Etc. :)
I'm going to try for an early bedtime tonight again too, since tomorrow I'll be volunteering and on Wednesday I have a writing jam with
toughlovemuse. 10pm at latest, but I'll be aiming for 9:00 or 9:30pm. Even though most of my friends are night owls, I am not. I am emphatically a morning person, although I need a minimum of eight hours of sleep a night in order to be properly functional, and I function even better with nine hours. I've learned to cope with six to seven hours of sleep, since that's usually what I get, and five hours of sleep can get me through the day in a pinch (although I'm usually a danger to myself and those around me), but as a rule my best days happen when I'm in bed at 9pm and up at 6am. Granted, that hasn't happened in a very long time, but a girl can hope, right?
In other news, I am on a major apple kick these days. Isn't my life fascinating? Fruit and vegetables and sleep patterns and insect eradication. Don't you wish you were me? ;) Anyway, yes: apples. Apples are awesome, and I've been eating them like they're going out of style. Anglo!Manager apparently left behind an apple when she left, and no one ever claimed it. I didn't know it was her apple, so I asked about the orphaned apple that had been lying around for so long and was informed that it was indeed orphaned and alone. It's still good, so I'm eating it as I type this. It just so happens that it's one of my favourite kind of apples, though I forget the name: it's marbled red and yellow, and is just a little bit tart. This one is especially good, as the skin is still crisp, but the inside is just perfectly ripe, not too hard and not too squishy. Bliss.
My cleaning projects for the weekend mostly got ignored, I am ashamed to say. I cleaned up at the Parental Units' place, but my own apartment got a bit neglected. I did a tiny bit of tidying, the dishes, and a load of laundry, but none of the major stuff I wanted to do got done. So I shall be doing some of it tonight, a little bit tomorrow and Wednesday, and hopefully one last big push on Thursday. Then Saturday and Sunday will be left for cosmetic work, and potentially even moving in the new bookcases (well, new for me) that are currently residing in
ai731 and baronscartop's shed in the back garden. baronscartop has been more than awesome, since he is not only giving me his old bookcases, but also racks in which to put my CDs. My CDs are currently living in my very annoying bookcases, in the giant space where my father kept his antique tomes and which is too big for any regular-sized book (paperback, trade paperback, hell even hardcover, you name it, it's too big). I keep all my large books on the two bottom shelves (all my gaming stuff and hardcover things), which are also not quite the right size for anything except weirdly-sized eighteenth-century antique volumes. Bah. Anyway, I now have new places for my CDs to live. This weekend I shall sort through them and fix the ones that need fixing. The cases, not the CDs. Some of the CDs are damaged beyond repair thanks to the tender ministrations of the Feline Forces of Entropy, and I am most displeased by this. Most of them I can replace, but some I can't, and while the FFEs are currently high in my black books, I realize that if I had stored the CDs properly, this wouldn't have happened. As it is, the CDs are easily accessible and thus easy to knock on the floor.
Those of you with cats may already know these rules, but for those of you who don't have the singular pleasure of sharing your home with cats, here's how cats view your possessions:
1- If it's on the floor, it's mine.
2- If I can knock it on the floor, it's mine.
3- If it's out of reach in a place I'm not supposed to go but I can still get to it, it's mine.
4- If it's mine, it's mine.
5- If it's yours, it's mine.
6- If in doubt, it's mine.
Yeah.
Anyway, I love my cats. I understand that they don't realise that peeing on my CDs is a bad thing as far as I'm concerned. They don't know that their pee is corrosive and has ruined some of my favourite CDs. They know they're not supposed to touch stuff that's on Mummy's shelves, but that's another kettle of fish entirely.
My life would be a lot simpler if cats didn't pee.
I've also decided that unless I move into a large house, I'm not going to get new cats when my current ones start going to the giant litter box in the sky. Four cats in an apartment is too many, no matter how well-behaved they are (and mine are not). This isn't going to happen anytime soon, anyway: Gretzky, the oldest of my cats, is about ten years old now, and George, the youngest, is only four. Pan-Pan is somewhere around nine, and I have no idea how old Smudge is, since
rotagar's reckoning is by all accounts way off. I suspect he's between five and seven. So I have a good ten to fourteen years of cat-life before any of this becomes a consideration, at the very least. I'll be in my forties when George will be an old man. So that's what's going through my head on this fine Monday morning. If the weather holds, I shall go sit outside for lunch with my sandwich and my Amelia Peabody mystery.
Have I mentioned lately that life is awesome? All that's missing from my life is a semblance of financial security, and the wherewithal to make sangria.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-06-13 01:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-13 01:18 am (UTC)One day I will be able to afford more cabinets.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-13 12:49 pm (UTC)And cats, well, I understand your pain.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-13 01:10 pm (UTC)Cat pee has made my life simpler often, in a rejection of material possessions to achieve a deeper spirituality kinda way.
t!