The Cat Lady

Friday was Claws' birthday.



We had a party.


I am officially the cat lady.

Exciting things from last week:
I got the estimate on the damage on my car: 1,134. However, Pat Simmons has yet to answer the phone or call me back. Time for a police report?
I found a b-e-a-u-tiful apartment that's within walking distance from campus. I'm attempting to bail on my current place and get in this one. It has a blue kitchen, a red bathroom, a giant living room and hardwood floors.
Brian and I went to Louisville for the Southeast Christian (6 Flags over Jesus) Easter Pageant. It was a musical. There was a camel. And people descending from the ceiling. And a rotating floor. Needless to say, it was a bit overwhelming for this small-town Church of Christ girl, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. If you have an attendance of 16,000, at least you can do a lot of good work and put those resources to good use (ie, someone probably owns a camel?)
Went out to the Rexroat's to get Claws tonight, and of course, stayed more than the 15 minutes it takes to actually pick a cat up and put him in a car. But that's ok =)

There's more, but let's not kid ourselves, it's 14 minutes past my bed time.

Cat

The price of PJ

Monday night, after shooting with my subject at a "memorial," (aka, funeral for a creamated guy)I was told by a nice lady that her mother had backed into my car.
I haven't taken it to the dealer yet, nor have I heard from the lady who hit me. I did, however, over hear her before she left
"I better go ahead and leave, I can't see worth nothin' after dark. Y'all better wait a few minutes before you leave."

She wasn't kidding.

-Cat

Another week, another adventure.

I realize it's almost midnight, which is about four hours past my bedtime, so this will probably be a quick post, but I promise there will be more later!

Wednesday- work. class. spaghetti/church/cradle roll.

Thursday-class. cleaned. pretended I cared about March Madness.

Friday-work. went to Target to buy Blokus. stayed in Target for 2 hours playing Blokus. got locked out of apartment. broke into apartment (surprisingly easy. actually...I'm not surprised.) got locked IN apartment. figured out who to un-jam a storm door (just put your shoulder into it!) went to the Rexroats.

Saturday- tried to make breakfast smoothies. fail at making smoothies. explore parks in BG. take family portraits downtown and at WKU. go to baseball game. Chick-fil-a. go to Rexroats.

Sunday- paint Suzy's nails. let Suzy paint my toe nails. remove said paint from toenails. church in Cave City with Rexroats. come home and play outside. eat steak. play outside. play Blokus. sort 8,462 items on my desktop. take pictures of kids on mulch pile. find Claws, go home, go to church.

And now I'm at the Fiji house. But I'm about to go home. I'll post some of those pictures tomorrow, I hope.

Facebook sources tell me that two couples have recently been engaged. When is it too soon to ask if they need a wedding photographer? ;)
Along those same lines, I also think we lost the Nasvhille June wedding, so we're down to the one in Virginia. Hopefully something else will pan out, but I register for summer classes tomorrow! Woo!

-Cat

Happy Spring?

So I slacked off quite a bit, but you gotta admit, we all knew the 3-a-week updates would only last so long. Things that have happened since March 5:

March 8, 2011 (I almost typed 2010, yikes!) Running water was restored to The Trust Tree. Around 8:45 that morning I was awakened to the "BEEP-BEEP-BEEP" of large machinery in reverse. That large machine was a backhoe, and it was either putting in a very awkwardly shaped in-ground pool, or digging up my water line. Turns out it was the latter. I went to work at 10:30 (sans shower, bleh. They took away my water hose so they could dig.) and when I got back, there was STILL no water. It was ok, though. I just ate a hot pocket and went on my way. Claws, the ever-vigilant-window-watcher that he is, informed me that they were taking a lunch break and would be back later. I went to Brian's around 5 to work on our online Music Appreciation class and when I got back that night, WATER!!! I let it run for a while, because there was air and some nasties in the line, then I showered. And cleaned my stovetop.
[Note: my water went out on February 8, so this was after exactly— one month since the water initially died; 2 weeks and 2 days after I got the water hose; one phone call from my cop-friend who put in a complaint with the city. Maybe now's the time to tell the landlord that I wasn't kidding when I said the caulking in the shower was crap. Those leaks won't fix themselves...)
Anyway,
March 7-11 was spring break. Brian and I got back to Bowling Green on Monday morning just in time to go to work and bring home the bacon. Ooh, bacon.
We mostly worked in the Office of Admissions and worked on our online class. We had planned to do fun things and visit parks, but it was cold and rainy the first half of the week! So much for SPRING, huh? Things we did do included:
Going to Aldi: it's a really simple, very small, and incredibly cheap grocery store. You have to bring your own bags or boxes to carry your groceries out of your buggy (which requires a quarter to release from 'buggy prison.' You get your quarter back when you lock your cart back up.) which means I need to go to Office Depot to get some more because this place is GREAT! Not that I'll need to go back for a while, my freezer is PACKED, but $2 bacon and a gallon of milk? Heck to the yes. We grilled steak the same night we shopped, I've since made ranch pork chops, and I'm looking for good tilapia or salmon recipe (cough MOMMA cough.)
Friday afternoon, ok night, we left for Alabama to go see Bubba and Amy and Quinn and Zander and Riley. The puppies peed all over the place when Brian and I got to the house, so we cleaned that up and when we were done, Clark came home from work. we chatted for a bit then went to bed.
Saturday, not only was it GORGEOUS outside, but I got to spend time with Allie (and Mason) and Savannah. We went to an Athens Bible School soccer game since Allie had helped coach the team for a bit. A girl on the opposing team played with a broken arm. What a trooper. We tried to go to a consignment shop since Mason has outgrown all but two pairs of shoes, but it was closed, so we went to Zaxby's for lunch. I got the "Betty White sandwich," the chicken parmigiana wannabe thing, and it was really good. Incredibly greasy, but good. I dropped them off and headed back to Clark's for some quality photo time. (side note: I drive like a grandma with a baby in my car.)
We went to a small town in Alabama whose name I still do not know, but we took pictures on a caboose, on top of a caboose, inside a condemned building, at the old train station and on an old wagon. We got some nice golden hour light, used our strobes, and a stray beagle peed on our lighting bags right before the black lab got attacked by the fluffly cat and almost got blood all over Brian. It was indeed eventful. We went for Mexican downtown afterward and it was AWESOME. For the first time in my mexican food life, I did NOT order a quesadilla. I got some burrito dularjo thing. But it was good, too.
Sunday was church, helping Cindy and Allie with the 2 and 3 year old class, jambalaya, Blokus, and more pictures! This time we included Quinn and Zan-man for a bit, then ditched them and headed to another small town with railroad tracks. Clark really, REALLY wanted pictures with a train, and boy did he get his wish.
We anticipated the train wouldn't be moving very fast. We were wrong. Part of me thinks we shouldn't have been standing so close, and the rest of me knows that the conductor thought so, too. But I some some really great pictures. I WILL post those...maybe tomorrow?
Anyway, we got back Sunday night, went to bed, woke up and went to work. Brian sent me a text asking me to give the second tour, which I did....in the rain. I can no longer say I haven't given a tour in the rain. At least the group was great—they didn't complain any more than I did =)
Today I had class. And then more class. And then another, and that's where I still am right now. Chihuahua has the highest homicide rate in Mexico.
You've now learned as much as I have from this class.

pictures later, promise!
-Cat


aaaaand here they are!
This is Brian hopping off the top of the caboose where he was shooting C&A


This is the building that was probably about to fall over


This is Clark holding a buttercup for Amy (sometimes I am so proud of what my brain thinks of for pictures. I love it!)


On the wagon outside the train station


And the field across the street from Bubba's house


Anticipating the arrival of the train


And yet they survived the passing train anyway


Sunset that night (we just pulled over in some random field to take pictures)


After the color was gone from the sky, I played around with some of these


AND! I'm finally finding ways to get back at Clark after roughly 13 years of torture

Loo-uh-vull

Since Brian and I are officially on spring break, or SB11 as the "cool" kids abbreviate it, we decided to take a quick trip up to Louisville to see B's family. His parents were in town a few weeks ago to order the new computer, but since his sister got engaged last weekend, we needed to come see the ring! (And take awesome pictures of it with the macro lens I got from gear checkout at school!)
Sanibel, the Japanese Shiba has grown a LOT since I was here for New Year's. What was then an energetic ball of fluff has since turned into a energetic rocket-dog with long legs that allow her to jump on the couch and lick my camera. (It's ok, I put her in timeout for two whole minutes, see if she messed with ME again!) She's super fast and plays intensely for about 10 minutes before she needs to lie down for a nap, wake up, go outside and pee, grab a snack, and play for 10 minutes, nap, pee, snack, play, nap, etc. It's a dog's life in this place.
Not much exciting happened throughout the week, but there was some stimulation last night when our adoptive dad/cop friend asked for my Realtor's number so he could make sure my human rights were being fulfilled since Tuesday will be a month since my water went out.
Hopefully he lit a fire under her butt and I'll come home to no water hose-hooked-up-to-my-apartment-that-I-"probably-shouldn't-drink."
Claws is being kittysat (kitty-sitted? cat sat?) by the Rexroats. When I dropped him off Friday night, he lay down in the living room floor and let 3-year-old Gavin pet him. Clearly, he loves that place.
I would like everyone (all 3 people that read this) to note the use of lay and lie in this blog. That's because I took a feature writing test on Thursday and our teacher is a lay/lie Nazi. I'm feelin' pretty good about it.
If this was a feature test, I'd pass.
Off to play cards for a bit, and then buy this dress for $15, and call it a day.
(I actually wanted this one but it's about 6 inches too short. Not ok, guys. I thought long dresses were supposed to be good for tall people?)

Anyway, card time. I may post pictures later!

Cat

I hope this post only takes 34 minutes...

because my computer only has 35 to live.
But let's be serious, there's not that much to talk about.
I didn't find Buddy, (it just jumped up to 38, so I think we're safe) my little point and shoot camera, in Murray over the weekend. I decided to clean out my car, thinking maybe he was lost under a seat or suffocating in my trunk.
No such luck.

The good news—my car is the cleanest it's been since it was purchased in July 2009.
The bad news—I still can't find the camera =( AND my apartment looks like a small disaster zone. There's no where safe to walk, stand, or sit...probably.

Maybe tomorrow I'll look in my closet, but that's the last place I can think of. I looked under my bed when I rearranged, so that's out. The last time I had him was right before Thanksgiving when my roof starting leaking into my closet. I took pictures of that and don't remember using him after that. Sad day.

Tonight's adventures will include food and hiding in the pj lab and hopefully accomplishing some nice product for tomorrow's class. The fire alarms in Mass Media and Technology Hall (I said that in my tour guide voice) were going nuts yesterday, and they actually closed the building, so I couldn't work on it last night. That's ok though because I had to go see a play called "Khamaseen" for my theater appreciation class. It was pretty good, but there were some really immature people sitting behind me that more or less ruined the experience for me. I'm sad to report that the same ator that played Gaston in Beauty in the Beast back in September play a wife-beating-man-whore in this movie. But that's ok, if you're good at being a jerk, stick with it!
(In the crazy happenstance that Joshua Stinson, the student who played these parts, reads this, I am in no way dismissing your acting abilities based on the two characters I've seen you portray. I'm sure you're an upstanding gentleman that just wants to get ahead in your career and will play whatever role you are called to do, and you just happen to do them very well.)

I feel the need to paint something. Katie had a really cool painting she did and it made me want to copy cat it, sort of. Because she's just cool like that.

Oh! An update on the water situation!

There's not one.
Go figure.

-Cat

PS-no, that's not copied and pasted, no progress has been made as of 9:15 this morning when I left my apartment. And rent is due by the end of the week. Part of me wants to not pay it until I have running water. But the other part of me likes having somewhere to live...

Speaking of Copy and Paste:
my niece, Quinn, and nephew, Zander. They're cuties.