My morning, the weekend, and unconditional surrender

Atticus is on my sh*t list today. (Yeah, Lent is over and I'm already back to my old bad habits and sailor mouth. But I have cut back a lot on my swearing, overall.) He likes to watch me iron, something about the back and forth motion and the cord wiggling around simply fascinates him. He'll sit on this little cabinet right next to the ironing board and just stare.

And sometimes, get really wound up.

And his pupils get dialated.

And his tail starts flipping around all crazy-like.

Normally I'm able to stop him and kick him out of the room before any of us get hurt, but not today. Today my hand was right in front of him while he was getting agitated, so he sank his claws into it! I'm now the proud owner of a bright red, bleeding, 2 and a half inch scratch from my pinky almost to my wrist. (I know it's 2.5 inches because I'm a dork and I measured. And if you don't think 2.5 inches is a long scratch, then check your ruler, cuz it is!)

Owiiiiie!

So I'm in a bad mood today. I was 10 minute late to work, I feel AF heading my direction, and the back of my hand stings! Boo-hoo.

But it's Friday, and I will somehow muddle through.

In addition to the wedding this weekend (for which I still have no idea what to wear), we're also celebrating my mom's 60th birthday on Sunday. My brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and me and hubs are all heading to my parents' house for lunch, catered by our favorite Mexican restaurant. Yum! And tonight hubs and I may be heading downtown to watch a friend's band play (R, of the engaged couple A&R). I swear he's going to be famous one day, he's an amazing musician. Should be fun.

Final thought: I'm going to try not to think about this C anymore. It's all fine and dandy to be optimistic and hopeful the first 3 weeks of my cycle, but that's about all I can muster! I only have about one cup left of my optimism tea and I don't think it's gonna do the trick today. So bring it on AF, I surrender.

I love him, but...

I think I'm going to have to kill Atticus.

For the past few (several??) weeks, he's been waking up about an hour before my alarm goes off, ready to eat. I do my best to ignore him, but let me paint you a little picture of my mornings lately:

Hubs and I are sound asleep, enjoying our last precious minutes of dreamtime. It is 5:00 a.m. I am suddenly awakened by the sound of loud purring and the sensation of kitty breath on my face. My eyes start to open and I see two giant green eyes staring back at me in the darkness. It occurs to me that the alarm has yet to go off, so I close my eyes quickly hoping that Atticus didn't notice I'm actually awake. He did. He sniffs my face and I roll over, hoping to knock him back to the floor in the process. He walks over me. I choose to ignore this. He creeps up to my face again and crouches down with his nose inches from mine. I squeeze my eyes shut and try not to move. Eventually he gives up and jumps back down to the floor, where he lets out a couple parting meows that echo off the wood floors and plaster walls.

Two minutes later, just as I'm beginning to doze off again, Atticus starts the routine all over again. He jumps up on the bed, sticks his nose in my face with a loud purr, waits for me to ignore him and jumps back down. This goes on for the next 45 minutes until the alarm goes off. Occasionally he takes a break to play with a stray piece of carpet on the rug, a string, or just to tear around the house for a few minutes.

The key is for us humans to be as still as possible and under no circumstances talk to him. Once Atticus is SURE one of us is awake, he doubles his efforts to get us out of bed. If we pretend well enough that we are actually asleep, sometimes, once in a great while, he'll give up altogether and go back to sleep until the alarm goes off.

That didn't happen today and I got not a wink of sleep after the initial wake-up call.

I don't know how to fix this behavior! If I leave the bedroom door closed he will scratch at it incessantly until we let him in (he MUST have free access to all rooms that we are occupying. He's a people person). It's not only horribly irritating but it damages the paint too. If I give him a self-feeding food dish, he will eat all day and night and we'll have to rename him Porky. I am taking suggestions!

Wind and wishful thinking

Is anyone else having a really hard time focusing at work this week? I don't know if I'm delirious from lack of sleep, or just in a really good mood all of a sudden. But either way, I just have no interest in working on anything other that what immediately needs to be done.

Last night we had raging winds in our town, and HOLY CRAP was it loud! Our house isn't insulated and we have this giant star pine in our front yard that's old and tangled as all hell, so we had seed pods and gigantic needles (they're not like regular pine needles, they're like 18 inches long and 1/2 inch in diameter) pelting our roof, windows and walls all through the wee hours of the morning. This of course woke hubs and me up, as well as Atticus, who then decided since we were all awake it must be play time! Even as the wind died down, Atticus's playfulness didn't. His cuteness only works on me during waking hours, so I finally took his favorite toy (a stack of twistie-ties all smushed together) and put it in the living room for him to play with. Blessedly, that worked and I got a WHOLE HOUR to sleep before my alarm went off. I was probably awake for only an hour or so total, but I didn't sleep very well the night before either, so I can't wait until this weekend - 3 glorious days to sleep in!

I've been in a strangely optimistic mood since my lap. I keep having these visions of positive HPTs that I literally have to shake out of my head! I've decided to try really hard to stay calm and positive for the next 6 months (don't want to get overly excited, now). My new insurance will go into effect Jan 1, so that kind of helps my optimistic attitude too. If the lap didn't do the trick, at least I'll be able to get some more testing done. This is the best chance we've had yet to get pg, and just in case attitude really does make a difference (haha) I don't want to screw anything up!

Well, lucky for me it's really busy here today, so even though I don't want to jump into any big projects, I have enough that has to get done RIGHT NOW. The good thing is that my day is going by pretty fast so far.

Only 3 days 'til Christmas... Is everyone ready?

Diva drama and PMS

Sigh. So I tried to use the Diva Cup last night, anticipating that AF might show up overnight. OMG is that thing a pain in the ass. I felt like such an idiot trying to figure out how to get a proper "seal" because it says to put it in, and then turn it. Well, I don't know how that's even possible. Once it's in there's not much to hold on to, and what you can feel is allllll slippery - hence impossible to turn! And of course the directions tell you about 100 times, "If ___, then it's inserted wrong," so I'm feeling like a TOTAL MORON for apparently doing everything WRONG. Luckily AF didn't show up last night because I'm all out of pads and that sucker is still sitting in my bathroom.

Ugh. Can you tell I'm PMSed?? I actually cried about 3 times last night I was so frustrated, so hormonal and so depressed. I googled to see if anyone else had as much trouble as I did, and thankfully, I found a LOT. Seems like it takes some practice and finagling. I feel like slightly less of a dolt now and I'll try again tonight if AF has shown up by then. Jeez, how would I even survive without the internet? I'd be hysterical.

Atticus my catticus

(Disclaimer: My grandma told me that I talk about my cat like he's my son. To that I say, until I have a baby, he is my kid! And I am not ashamed.)

My cat. He's crazy.

I'm not joking when I tell you that my period is his FAVORITE time of the month. That right there should tell you how weird he is. He loves it for 3 reasons:

1. Pantyliners

2. Pads

3. Tampons

All three of these products utilize types of paper in their packaging that make a very satisfying crinkly noise when crumpled, which brings him running to the bathroom every time. He particularly likes the little paper lining on the back of a pantyliner and will play fetch with it for hours. It is, by far, his favorite toy. I wouldn't mind this at all, but I end up with crumpled up pantyliner backings hidden in various places throughout the house for a week every month.

I've tried buying him real cat toys but anything without a string holds no interest for him, and anything with a string he eats! I even bought a laser pointer because he loves chasing shadows, and I figured it would be about the same concept (with less energy output from me, natch). He did love it the first 2 or 3 times we used it. Then he slid a little too fast around a corner on our hardwood floors, and slammed his side pretty hard into a bookshelf. Shortly after that he learned that he can't catch that little red dot, and has given up trying.

So, I will continue to allow him to play with the wrappers from my feminine hygiene products every month. His enthusiasm for "that time of the month" is sometimes the one thing that brings a smile to my face when AF defeats me yet again.

Weekend update

For not doing anything I planned on doing this weekend, it was actually pretty productive!

Let's see, on Saturday the hubs and I did some yard work, and he scrubbed the whole outside of the house and garage. I've never even thought about having to clean the outside of a house before, but ours was FILTHY. So we got one of those broom-lookin' things that you hook up to the hose and he went to town. He ended up soaking wet and ruined his cell phone (which he 'wisely' kept in his pocket the whole time), but the house looks great now! Unfortunately he is now bugging me twice as much as before about getting an iPhone. Oi. Boys.

Yesterday we went to breakfast with BIL and SIL, then back home for more work. Gotta get the house sparkling for Beer Festivus this weekend! We finally went out and bought plants for two areas in our backyard. I tilled them at least a couple months ago, but we just kept putting off buying plants for some reason. Well, now we have a red rose bush, 2 kinds of yellow lily, a hydrangea, 2 azaleas, a gerber daisy and a fern, and almost everything is already flowering. Hooray for buying plants in spring! We managed to get everything planted yesterday, and I figure with my black thumb, they should last at least a week right? So the yard will look nice for the party. I took some pictures so I could remember how they looked before I killed them, I'll try to post those later.

We had an Atticus scare yesterday too! He's an indoor cat, but I let him out in the backyard if either hubs or I is keeping an eye on him. Well as we were busy planting, he was going in and out of the house through the doggy door. I was sorta paying attention, saw him go in, but didn't see him come back out, and when we were done in the garden, he wasn't in the house. I panicked. He has never gone wandering around by himself and there are some SCARY looking stray cats in our neighborhood, so of course I start thinking the worst. We checked everywhere: all around the front and back yards, side of the house... nothing. Hubs starts talking about driving around the neighborhood to look. So I check the front yard one more time, walk around the side and there he is, casually hanging out in the neighbors bushes right next to our driveway. Damn cat! He scared the crap out of me! I can't imagine if it was my KID that wandered off, geez! Parenthood, even animal parenthood, is hard!

Last but not least, my friend Tracy got engaged this weekend! I've been anticipating this almost as much as she has, so we're both very excited. I love planning weddings and she promised I could help her. Hooray! When can we start planning?? ;) But seriously, she is a great girl, and she found herself a great guy. I am REALLY happy for them!!

Okay, gotta do some work now. Hope everyone is having a good Monday.