Nearing an overabundance of catitude

So, I mentioned we have a kitten and I thought I should give a few more details on why we got her. Because we needed another cat... Ahh, not so much. An elderly lady in our church has a cat who had kittens, and she had two she couldn't find homes for, so we ended up taking one of them.

So we now have three girl cats (girl cats are very catty, btw) and just this week our oldest one (Petunia) is finally getting along with the kitten. The other cat, Gracie, is perpetually cranky now. And by perpetually cranky I mean growling and spitting at me if I even get near her, and if I do get within reach, attempting to take an arm or leg off. She is not adjusting well, to put it lightly. I'm guessing she'll eventually get over it though; I certainly hope so anyway!

This is Paisley:

She's finally letting me sleep at night, and she really is a sweet little cat. She also squeaks. Loudly. Since she's so small she doesn't have much of a voice, but man, is she whiny! You pick her up and she says "Meeeeeeep!" "Meep" and "meh" are about all she says. (And yes, I swear she's saying "meh". "I don't want to be held....mehh...!")

I was pretty ambivalent about getting another cat, but she is hilarious to have around. If nothing else I get a kick out of technically, I suppose, annoying her...except, it's really amusing her because she's so little. :) For instance, she'll watch the cursor on the computer screen until her neck must surely be hurting:


What I didn't get a video of was her sitting on my bed, wobbling back and forth, until she quite literally tipped over and fell asleep. That was pretty funny. :D

And right now I'm holding her with my left arm because she's sound asleep (as will be my arm fairly soon!) and I'm too kind to wake her up by putting her down somewhere. I should, I suppose, after she's woken me up so many times. :D

See? this was a few minutes ago.

"I don't know you..."

"...but I want you, all the more for that."

I still haven't seen the movie Once, but I so love this song from it, rivaled in the "Haunting Songs" category (in my head) only by the song Hallelujah. (And incidentally, isn't it reassuring to know I have a "Haunting Songs" category in my mental playlist? No? Yeah, I thought maybe not.) :D

(Yes, I have real things to blog about, but I haven't gotten my thoughts in order for those posts yet, so in the meantime...enjoy!)

Dash it all, they've found my kryptonite!

I generally sleep like the metaphorical log. But apparently there is one good way to wake me up immediately: tickling. Along with being a sound sleeper I am extremely ticklish...really, act like you're going to tickle me and I will cringe and possibly shriek "Noo!!"

About a month ago I was at some friends' house for a birthday party/sleepover, and seeing as it was Friday, and I had had a long week, and I no longer have the energy of the usual sleepover-aged person I laid down on the couch to rest for a while when nothing was going on. (Nevermind the fact that my friend five years older and going through med school was wide awake...she probably had coffee earlier and I had not!)

At any rate, I laid down to rest and fell asleep of course, because that seems to be what I do anymore when I lie down on a couch. Soporific things, couches. I was rudely awakened some time later, pulled off of the couch, and beaten with couch pillows. I say! Once I had my wits about me I gave as good as I got of course. ;)

But how did they manage to wake me up? When I sleep so terribly soundly? They tickled me! It's not fair, I tell you...

Then the other night I was trying to sleep...what a novel concept! And the kitten (yes, we got a kitten; more on that later) not only walked all over me like she likes to do, she sat on me and poked me in the side to wake me up. Yes, poked me in the side. Which tickled immensely and woke me up right away. It's wonder I didn't wake everyone else up also with my combination giggling and Ahh!!-ing.

So, I despair of ever getting any sleep anymore. Although, the kitten left me alone and bothered my parents last night instead. I'm sorry to report that I only laughed when they told me the kitten had kept them up...it shows how close I was to cracking if she'd pestered me one more night. :P

Look what I got!

Or what I bought, rather. I wasn't really thinking I'd end up buying a car until this fall, but we went by the dealership Monday night and saw this car. It's a 2000 Nissan Altima, but it only has 81K miles on it! Plus it came with a warranty, so that's pretty awesome too.

Dad and I stopped by after work yesterday and test-drove it and the only problem I found with it was that it pulled to the right, but they did an alignment on it today, and it was fine when I drove it again.

So I have an awesome car! I'm so happy I can't stop grinning. :D

Two things:

I started wishing my name was shorter after signing my full name to multiple papers. Dang, my full name has a lot of letters in it...

Also, the car salesman who did all the paperwork made some remark about me being so young. I'm getting ever so slightly tired of hearing that. Yes, I'm only twenty, but really? Since when is that SO terribly young? Ah well. :D

But I have my own car. For real. I don't think it's quite sunk in yet...I suppose it might sink in when I see the chunk missing out of my bank account. ;) And now I need to wash and wax it, get the battery checked, and get a second key made...and probably some other stuff...like adjusting my budget to pay for gas and such.

Oh seriously

I think I've become one of those annoying adults. You know, one that remembers things from when they were younger and insists on reminiscing about when "they were your age...", to the utter boredom of the kids listening.

A couple weeks ago, one of the little girls at church was wearing a yellow dress with a lace collar and I while was looking at it, it suddenly dawned on me that it was "one of those dresses!". When I was her age (9-10ish) there were these dresses, made by My Michelle, I think; they came in various colors and fabrics, but they all had the same exact lace collar. As I recall, all the other girls my age also had one in one of the many colors they came in.

This was the only photo I could find of one of those collars.

So I of course had to tell this girl about those dresses being around when I was little. To her credit she didn't look bored. Maybe I was just an easily irritated little kid. I guess I am and always have been sensitive to anything that seems condescending, which in retrospect, stories like that are not. :P At any rate, I'll try to remember to keep my irritating exclamations to myself...or just say what the heck, and be an annoying older person... Hmm, sounds like a plan. :D

Have done this? And if you're a girl, did you have one of those dresses when you were a kid?

Hi, it's Saturday

And I made another vlog. It came out a little rough because it picked up every bump I went over, and I must not have had the iPod strapped to the sun visor very well.



Oh, and to make a long story short, when I say "the cheese guy", I'm referring to a time a few years ago when my cousins were here to visit. We were a little hyper, as usually happens when we get together, and we went to the grocery store, didn't pick up enough bags of cheese, realized this in the checkout lane, and the guy working in that lane had to wait while we consulted/dithered/ran to get more cheese. Meanwhile, he stood there looking baffled and thoroughly convinced we were crazy.

Moral of the story: don't go grocery shopping with five people, and if you do, avoid making the grocery store clerk's life confusing...they can't handle it.

Okay, that's pretty funny

Or maybe I'm easily amused. I've heard the ABBA song "Take a Chance On Me" several times before and thought it was kind of a cute song. Heard it at the gym the other day and thought I'd look up the video for it. Okay, I now have a completely different view of the song after watching the video. The video is almost making fun of the song, or making it more ridiculous than it already sounds, and I just kept laughing while I was watching it. :D


It also occurred to me that "Why Not Me" by the Judds is almost the same premise. What's up with that?


Overabundance of makeup either way. :D

Well, it occurred to me

On a scale of 1 to 10, how morbid is it that I was thinking about cremation the other day? I wasn't really thinking about it morbidly though, it was just something that occurred to me, possibly because we've met for church in a funeral home chapel the past few weeks. (While that sounds a bit strange, it's really not...it's a lovely chapel, away from the rest of the funeral home and it's certainly much quieter than the hotel meeting room where we were meeting, where there were pans being thrown around in the kitchen on the other side of the wall.)

At any rate, it suddenly occurred to me that I would much prefer cremation to a typical casket burial (is there an exact term for that?), which got me thinking about why more people aren't cremated and trying to think if there was any Biblical reason why that wouldn't be a good thing.

After a little bit of reading about it, the only things I can come up with is that it is somewhat similar to a pagan funeral pyre, which I had thought of, or that it shows some denial of belief in the resurrection of the body. The former sounds more valid than the latter to me. No matter how we're buried, the body is dead and will decompose.

It seems to me like it would be rather symbolic for the body to be returned to dust, such as it was formed from. Is there something I'm missing? Some scriptural/traditional/comforting reason that people have to see the body and it has to be embalmed and buried?

I've only been to three visitations, two of which were relatives, so I had no option but to see the person's body both of those times. Granted, both times I was fairly young, and maybe as an adult this would make more sense. As a kid, I didn't want to go up there...not out of any particular fear, per se, but I just found it extremely weird. And obviously I had no morbid curiosity either. I knew the person was dead, and didn't see what viewing the body one more time was going to accomplish other than making me cry more. As I said, not having been to a funeral in the past nine years or so, I may completely understand if I had to go to one now. In my mind though, I don't.

That's why I wonder if there's something I'm missing. Some reason my loved ones would not want me to be cremated when I die, which, barring a tragic accident/health problem probably isn't going to be anytime soon. :P Cremation, and having the ashes buried in a cemetery seems much nicer to me. But perhaps there's some comfort or some sort of closure (hate that term, by the way) in seeing the deceased person's body? If any of my close relatives died (which is a horribly sad thought) I don't feel as if I would want to be a part of an open casket funeral/visitation. Anyway, with my pondering of this I guess I sort of decided I want to be cremated, provided there's not some horrific reason why that's not an option.

And in closing, death isn't morbid really, not for Christians. When we die we're going to heaven, to be with the Lord, forever away from the curse of sin, which is truly wonderful, more wonderful than anything on this earth!

All the same, this was a slightly weird post...

Just thought I'd share

I just ran across this blog and entry recently and it thoroughly cracked me up. I'm giggling because she's so spot on! :D

How to Impress a Boy by Baking

And yes, pie seems to be quite impressive. I don't know what it is, but pie is always raved over. Some guys don't like chocolate things, or cake, or even to bother with cookies, but there's probably some sort of pie they adore!

Unless for some strange reason they don't like any baked goods, there's always at least one dessert they really, really like and would be thrilled to have made for them. Girls, please don't abuse that though...it's not fair to the guys. ;) Unless of course you have a really good reason...but...yeah...*cough* I'm just saying it doesn't hurt to have a sort of mental list of what desserts your male acquaintances like, but use it responsibly please. :D

Which reminds me, I should make some oatmeal cookies sometime soon. My dad really really likes them...and I should also make some chocolate chip cookies because, well, I rather like them and want some myself!