Odd Bird, Good Duck...

Mosquito's are the devil, always have been, always will be. There are several other bugs I feel this way about, but these are the ones driving me up a wall right now.

Sunday night, my younger brother and his family came over, we sat outside around the fire pit and roasted marshmallows and re-initiated dads fire pit for the new season. we weren't out that long, or so it felt but it was long enough for me to get 5+ bites on each leg and at least 2 or 3 on each arm.....

This, on top of being the first night with my CPAP machine might explain why I'm awake now at about 2:30 and can't fall back to sleep, and am quite cranky despite what feels like some decent sleep, despite it only being about 3-4 hours.

( Speaking of my CPAP machine... )

Today mom and I went shoping. She had a coupon for Bath & Body works, and wanted to check out the pinata's that the 5 Below had. She let me have one of the mini candles she got, it's the Limoncello, which is OMFG orgasmic (to me anyway). I got all my niece's and nephews their birthday gifts too, so that's something off my personal list of things to do! I always have that tiny little moment of wishing I could get them something better, but in general, I do pretty good for what I can afford.

Mom was reminded as we were looking at lip stuff that she had something she'd grabbed for me at work and had forgotten to give me the day before...


it's a key-chain(I collect key-chains), shaped like a golf ball....


That's a lip balm XD.It even has a nice little inner lid to keep the lip balm better contained in it's half of the inside! This is a good thing, since I have a tendency to forget(avoid) my potted lip balms, since the having to apply them with a finger annoys me.

This key-chain/lip balm is a giveaway type thing from the rehab unit at the hospital my mother works at. I haven't tried it yet, but it smells really good when I open it, very vanilla-y.


I meant to share this at Easter, but it kinda got lost in the shuffle of things. This was my "big chocolate bunny" in my basket. Mom got me the phone more so cause it was purple than it was a phone. They didn't have any purple chocolate cats. The name and location of the place is written on the label in the second pic. They've got a lot of neat stuff, of what I saw of what my mom had, and hearing what my aunt got her family. We've got alot of places that do handmade/customizable chocolates and candy around here.

This was ok, it's a white chocolate, which is my least liked, but for white chocolate, it was ok. I prefer dark


I kinda wish they'd have made a thinner shell, and then just filled it with dark chocolate, than just this really thick shelled thing they did...but it was still really cute.


And to round up the post, proof that the cats can all be not only in the same room, but on the same bed, and no one will 'melt' despite what Puddums might say ;D

The other day Patches was running about and stopped on top of the couch to take a rest...


... and watching himself being watched by the Gals. They're at least no longer hissing just from him being in the same room as them XD.



we corralled the kittens into a box with a blanket, cause they didn't seem to grasp the whole "huddle away from the cold exposed bricks" and stay in the nice warm pile of blankets by the carrier... they can't help but be adorable though.

We had fun, but as any day spent at a theme park or fair, you come home exhausted. Unfortunatly while we al had our phones and they all have cameras on them, we all forgot our real camera's, so not alot of photos got taken, and those that did are scattered across multiple phones, so not much to post photo wise.

One of the shops we stopped in sells wooden swords and sheilds, even some that the kids can color themselves, and this of course was loved by all three of the kids in our group. My youngest nephew Linus told his mother that he wanted to come back to the fair so that he could get a sheild, since he was only allowed to pick one or the other this trip. He'll have to wait till next year for that XD.

As much as I love anime and manga, I am also a bit of a geek about the rennisance era. if we'd have been able to sit and watch some of the shows at the black smith stand or the glass blowing stand, I think I would have died of glee. I could also burn alot of my money there, as I tried to do this trip. I got two of the people off my christmas list, and I'd show the items off, but they read my journal, so no can do. I can show off my stuff though.

I got myself this necklace.


It's a "fairy dust" necklace. it's hard to see the detailing of the fairy in the picture, since the metal reflects alot of the light from the flash, but in person its gorgeous. There's a flower garland decoration on the back of the metal caging that encases the bottle of fairy dustand of course I picked the purple one. I've seen similar neclaces other places, but this one was surprisingly cheaper that those, and I didn't have to pay for shipping on top of the price. The stand where I got this also had gypsi belts, which I thought about really hard, but they weren't long enough to fit on my hips, and for $27 I'm not buying something I have to doctor to fit.

As well as a new lip balm, cause when we passed the beeswax shop that had lip balm listed on the sign, everyone knew I had to go in and look ;)

I had a glass of Sangria, it wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either. I got to keep my glass



I look forward to going back next year, and hope to add on to my outfit in the meantime ;)

Patches continues to grow, explore and amuse.



He's developed this habit of laying just outside the edge of my chair mat and turning his pur up to full blast. Conveniently just out of reach of the chair when I roll back, aaaaand just out of easy reach of me to pick him up for a cuddle XD.


A fact that seems to amuse him...

We've left my bedroom door open for half the morning, and Duchess and Puddums have wondered in and quickly found the food bowl and litter pan in my closet and therefore quickly located the kitten who is currently hanging out under my hope-chest next to them.


( Kitty kitty kitty... )

While my cats may or may not grasp that I'm in the middle of rearranging my books, which therefore involves my headboard and the new small shelf I got from my grandmothers place next to the bed, they're doing a very good job of playing oblivious.



They're doing such a good job of it, Duchess has gone into full on comfy kitty, not moving if her life depended on it mode.



They'll catch a clue once I've finished my dinner and go back to shelving books though.

I went outside this morning to try and figure out why the dog seems to be sleeping in the shrub that's by the foot of the stairs, rather than in her house(turns out one of the lawn chairs got set down across the run line[P.S. the dog tried to run ahead of me and caught my ankles in her rope and dammit rope burn stings like the dickens!]) and I found these as I was checking out the plants in the green house. The last couple years every tomato plant we've had has either withered before bearing fruit, or the birds and other pests have eaten all the fruit.



When I went out, I took Puddums with me. for the last year or so she's been tiptoeing out onto the porches when the door has been left open for longer than 5 minutes, and starts to nose about things at the edge of the steps. She's still too afraid to stay out there on her own much. As soon as someone moves as if they might be going in and shutting the door, she bolts like lightning back into the house and hides for a bit.

Because of this trend, I have taken to dosing Puddums as a sort of therapy in the hope that she'll get over some of her anxiousness about the whole thing, and maybe she'll start going out and work out her problem with *blech* is at the very least do it more outside like Duchess does. I can hope.

Today when I was coming inside, rather than bolting ahead of me to the door, Puddums seemed determined to sit where she was in the greenhouse and chill, so *shrug*. I propped the door to the back porch open though before Duchess and I came in, and I won't be surprised at all to find her waiting to come in when I go check in a bit.

I'd probably be asleep now, if my body hadn't decided to throw uber heartburn at me just before I was going to head that way, so I'm killing time by uploading this video to share.

My younger brother Peter and his kids and their dog have been here all day, and since his kids crashed on him, and his wife is out of town overnight, they're all spending the night here.

Their dog Nali, has a natural curiosity and fascination with our cats, despite the cats steady growl and swipe when she gets close....

Puddums has gone from hiding under the bed and hissing and swiping claws at the dog, to chasing after her.




but then, Nali has also started sticking her head further under the bed that before XD.

I've been pestering my mother that she needs more season appropriate wreaths to cover other parts of the year, aside from Christmas and Autumn. I've also been pestering her that she has several wreaths that are abused and beyond salvaging, aside from their wreath bases. Back in the Autumn I got her to go pick out the flowers and whatnot that she'd like for a fall wreath(posted pics back here...), cause the old one was one of the old abused wreaths.

So after much dropping of hints that good old A.C.Moore was having sales(when doesn't A.C.Moore have a sale though, really?) I got Mom to the store to check out their holiday clearance, and as is the nature of the stores, they already had the St Patty's day items out,

( They always look better in person, but that's true of most things. )

And now back to FF8!

I spent the last week watching my younger brothers dog. When I say adventures, I mean it. She's a Siberian Huskie, which I may or may not be misspelling but that's ok. Among other things, we I figured out that if I should ever watch this dog again, it will work out alot better if I go stay at my brothers house with the dog, because she spent much of the time here, trying to mark territory rather than just going potty and she ended up peeing on the floor often, despite how many times I took her out. I also found out that the previous owners claim that she used to catch rabbits all the time was quite true, and that she's exceptionally good at it, I lost count of the field mice she caught on our walks, but despite not eating her food most of the time, she did anything but starve while she was here...
( Puppy dogums... )

Also, I did in fact change my layout again, but just a color change, still roughly the same header, and added in a bg. The orange was starting to make me twitch every time I opened my LJ. Sorry to anyone who was enjoying it.

So, Earlier, Puddum's bit my hand hard enough to draw blood, I chased her down, and there were words....

So, Puddum's is now avoiding me. This will likely end sometime in the night while I'm sleeping, and she thinks it's safe to climb up on my bed, but who knows.

Duchess is however living up to her name and basking in having the bed to herself.




This is from today. It's apprently some unwritten cat rule that she who has the middle of the bed owns the bed...


( But we can see she makes a habbit of this..... )