Wait.... I actually have horizontal surfaces?

It weirds me out a little that people live inside boxes called houses, and those boxes are a reflection of who these people are. If that's so, then what does my house say about me?

Today it says that I must have gone a little insane, because it's CLEAN. For me, that's a huge deal. I like things very messy. But sometimes, and only sometimes, I need to purge and scrub and vacuum and find places to put things. Interior decorating, in the sense that a place can be pretty AND functional, is an odd concept for me. Horizontal places are only meant for collecting rubble, right?

However, Santa brought me a really nice Swiffer thingy for Christmas, and you can't just swiff and leave the rest of the place a mess.

So here's the hallway. Hmm. Will we come around the corner and see something out of "Hoarders"?


No, not today. Huh.


I do spy a cat, though.


Me: "I will put this plastic up to keep the cold out and the warm in." Julian: "Who put this forcefield here? How can I do my neighborhood spy patrols now? I'll have to take drastic measures and rip through this ridiculousness! Seriously!"


But back to the tour. A clean kitchen? This is UNTHINKABLE!!


And of course no living room is complete without a gigantic baby carriage. I love the thing, but what to do with it or where to put it is the question..... thus I just parked it in the dead middle of the room and hoped for the best.


Ooooh, there's Julian! I have an idea...

I can always put cats in it!


Hee hee.... Ahem. And over here's the monstrous jade plant...


...and the china cupboard...



...and those random pottery animals Ellen and Kate gave me...


...and my grandmother's antique writing desk.


And finally, here we have a clean bathroom. And since no one wants to see pictures of a toilet (even a clean one), I aimed the camera upwards so you can see my "conservatory". These spider plants are a little over a year old and they are already making lots of babies. And the aloe plant likes it in there too, as long as it doesn't get too cold for its liking.



Now the question is, how long will this clean state LAST??

When you leave it lying around, the kitties will take advantage of it...

Julian: Oh, you left this box here just for me? How kind!


Zeek: Oh, you left this blanket here just for me? How kind!


Julian: Oh, you left this backpack here just for me? How kind!


[Initiate Kitteh affection-rotation series ...


...rotation in progress...


...rotation complete. Initiate purring sequence. PUUURRRRRRRRRRRRR.]

Babies and Cats

So between visiting cemeteries we just hung around at home and chilled out. Upstairs I found these two pictures, both with the same goofy-looking rubber lamb. Can you tell who these people are?

The top is my Mum, in 1949, and the bottom is me, in 1978. I had a hard time recognizing myself because the picture is so dark-- for the longest time I thought it was Ellen, because she has the dark olive skin from my Dad's side of the family and I have the pale slightly freckly skin from my Mum's side... but eventually I figured out it was me-- though slightly underexposed (or tanned?) -- mostly because of that ridiculous widow's peak. Mum says when I was little I used to reach up and pull own my hair out. There are pictures of me where I have nearly a mohawk... yeah, I was just a punk kid or something.

We still have the lamb, by the way. It hangs out on Dad's bureau. It kinda freaks me out.

Meanwhile, downstairs, we have a cat infestation. This little guy is pretty cute, though.


Here is Mum snuggling with this little kitten who is tiny and has weird eyes and has a seizures and can't walk very well. Mum says that since I majored in Special Ed/Mental Retardation and am a Special Education teacher, I should stop calling the cat "Gimpytard."



Angus wanted some attention too.


But Nanny just ignored the whole situation.

The little ones are always the most dangerous...

I just walked into the hallway to find Zeekie lounging in a sunbeam.


Getting Miss Prissy Pants to "smile" for the camera is nearly impossible.


During vacation I was sleeping in, or at least trying to, and Zeekie took it as a personal insult as her breakfast was delayed. She decided to sleep on my chest, facing away from me, and would "snuggle" backwards inch by inch, until she had almost completely covered my mouth and nose with her floofy little bum. When I woke up coughing and gagging, she seemed very proud of herself. I worry a bit about her homicidal tendencies...

Magical Marvelous Movie Night

So on Monday my sister and me and Kate had a movie night. Originally it was going to be a Tim Burton night but Ellen couldn't find Sweeney Todd anywhere, and I hadn't seen Mamma Mia yet, so our night became a Movie Musical Night.

I arrived extremely early, even after killing time at Barnes and Noble and at the grocery store. Kate, in all of her mysteriousness, said she was cooking up an idea that she had been working on for some time. So what did we do to kick off this party? We colored Presidents' Day print-outs and decorated the front door. YAAAAYYYY!!!! To keep with the Presidents' Day theme, we even used the Crayola State Crayon box. Any day spent coloring with new crayons is a good day.


Kate even used the just-for-construction-paper crayons, of which many of them were blues and greens, so she made an ocean scene. The problem was, she forgot what a starfish was. She called it a "jellyfish." I drew her a picture of what a jellyfish really is:

And Fred helped her, because coloring (or at least correctly labeling sea creatures) seems just a bit above Kate's ability:


Ellen's reaction to all of this was priceless:


We feasted on bean burritos and Valentine's day cookies, which The Resident Cow approved of.


Weasley tried to help us by being underfoot the entire time. May I present: Crucifixion Cat!



Speaking of religion, we opened up some very belated Christmas presents. I just don't know what to say...

....except that the Holy family is trapped in this box not being able to see each other. I don't think the Bible mentions much about styrofoam barriers.


Then let the Movies commence! For our matinee, we started with Horton Hears a Who. It's not technically a Movie Musical, but it's close enough.

This is all that there is to say about that movie:




I think Katie is my new favorite hero.

Next, as Elphaba settled next to me giving me the evil eye...

...we popped in Mamma Mia and oh my god there are only two words to describe it:

SOOPAPA

TROOPAPA.

....except that we all came to the consensus that Pierce Brosnan should NEVER AGAIN attempt singing. NEVER. Just shut him up.



... if only ABBA could come over and very loosely (not to mention plotlessly) make a very long music video about our lives, then everything would be complete.