February 2nd

Oh, I see you're trying to play a game, you don't need that keyboard, do you?

That's some good foot chewin'

Jolene tried to tell Olive that her breath smelled like feet. Then she slapped her and ran off. 

Every single time Gerald gets home from work, Lenny does this. Every single time.

There's not enough room on this couch for all of us. Clearly Heidi is getting the better deal here, she gets the biggest spot!

February !st

Norma enjoys her field of homemade catnip pouches.

The butt snuggler strikes again, this time with Heidi on the window seat.

Lenny, being the jerk that he is, attempts to steal my straw. Sure, he's cute, but it'd be nice to have one drink every once in awhile that doesn't have cat hair in it.

January 31st

He may not love me as much as he loves Gerald, but damnit if Lenny isn't my favorite. Don't get me wrong, I love each of my pets far more than anyone should, but I gotta say Lenny is my buddy.

Olive has a well established problem of "drowning" her mice. She dunks them in water bowls and bath tubs. A few in the sink before. She also likes to play hockey with them in the bathroom and shove as many as she can under the closet door. I'll have to get a photo one day of "rug-mageddon" where she messes up every single rug she can find. Today, I found the first mice ever in the toilet. Dangit Olive, would you knock it off already? They're not REAL mice!

Finally took some good photos of my completed dining room. It's probably the only room in the house that's actually complete (and clean!!!), but I'm really happy with it. 

January 30th

A lot of people like super fancy cheeses. I stick with something I've eaten ever since I was a wee gal. A very simple, salty, hard Greek cheese. It is absolutely delicious, and averages about 6$-8$ a lb at local ethnic markets. (This wheel is 1.6 lbs)

I also found another butt snuggler. I couldn't figure out who was here first, but neither was enjoying it. 

January 29th

We had a pretty bad storm roll through town, but luckily we only got some high winds and a bit of a downpour. Before the storm hit, though, a break in the clouds gave our yard Dinosaur a halo.

The storm didn't bother Lenny too bad, though. He hung out in the bathtub most of the day being stupidly adorable.

We hosted another game night, like we do every Tuesday night, and this time I decided I needed alcohol to participate. I'm not nearly as nerdy as these folks, so I needed something to help me deal with the smell of acne cream and social awkwardness. And I opted for super mega cheap booze. 2.39$ for 12% alcohol .. sorry "malt beverage" .. was probably one of the worst decisions I've made recently. haha. It was so bad. But I drank the whole thing, surprisingly. Made for an interesting evening.

January 28th

I've been making these catnip pouches for our cats, and I made a few prototypes to put up on etsy. Well, Norma freaking loves them. Also, look at that belly hair!!

Told ya Olive was a butt snuggler.

She also loves Jolene, even if Jolene only tolerates her.

I finally finished my dining room make-over, which included paint, cleaning the carpets, and rearranging some things. I didn't take a finished photo today, but I'll get one. 

I decided to rent a Rug Doctor from the store. I haven't before, but I thought for 25$, that's cheaper than a tank of gas to go up to my mom's house to get her carpet cleaner, it'd be worth it. Renting it was no problem, I bought a name brand cleaner simply because I didn't care for the Walmart brand I had tried in my dad's machine. Anyhow, this is a terrible spot right in the middle of the dining room. I don't know what's it's from, the carpet in the entire house was in pretty bad shape when we moved in, so who knows. This spot had been cleaned at least twice with the 'rents machine (and hence the reason I don't care for the Walmart brand cleaner). Pretty gross, right? Well I pre-treated it with my homemade carpet cleaner (more on that later) and ran over it ONCE with the Rug Doctor. What a difference that made!! It's hardly recognizable, and while the carpet in the dining room is in the worst shape (due to sun-fading from the many years the house sat vacant) and will need to be replaced, it cleaned up really nice and at the bare minimum I've added a few years to the life of the flooring. I'm totally impressed with the Rug Doctor, too. It's quick (super quick), it leaves the carpet relatively dry, and it does a great job in some tight places. I did my entire house in one day for 25$ plus about 15$ for the soap. 40$ total ain't bad for ~2000 sq ft.

January 27th

Lots of pictures today, but I wanted to show how I have to sleep every single night. (Please disregard my bedroom, it's bare because I haven't gotten around to decorating it yet.)

First, here's Heidi looking innocent.

But zoom out a little further and you see that Heidi and Jolene sleep butt to butt right next to my side. We bought a larger bed mostly because the cats take up most of it. What you can't see is Heidi is actually laying on my arm, sort of in my arm pit. Jolene laughs at my inability to be comfortable.

90% of the time, Olive is sleeping next to someone's butt. Either mine, Gerald's, or her favorite .. Heidi's. But this morning she was snoozing somewhere else. Can you find her? 

It's near impossible to get decent photos of her, so these will have to do.

When she's not attacking my feet with her death claws, Norma's new spot is sleeping right at the end of the bed. We have an ottoman placed there, and she seems to enjoy it.

Then there's Amigo. He doesn't yet have a favorite spot, but this morning his sleeping position of choice was as close to my butt as he could get.

A little more of an aerial view. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a photo of this? So, we have Heidi (not pictured) up on my left side, with Olive (also not pictured) on that side in the window. Then there's Jolene's head in the bottom left, Norma at my feet, And Amigo at my butt. Lenny is snoozing in the window on the right hand side, but sometimes he'll snooze by my face on that same side. 

Lenny is kind of the loner of the group. He generally sticks to himself if Gerald isn't around, and he loves this window seat.