If it's Friday, it must be Flotsam. Or Feral. Or both.

Friday again? Already? My, how times flies.

So, what's been going on in my little corner of the world, you ask? And how are those feral felines, Dolly and McBeady? Well, I'll tell you.

McBeady and I have had a little setback in our relationship. Apparently, he was REALLY freaked out by my petsitters, and their scary, scary hands, reaching into his little haven of safety. How dare they! They were trying to FEED you, Beady my boy. Cut them some slack. At any rate, he's slowly coming back around, I think, but he's quite easily startled, and sometimes he narrows his eyes, hisses at me and bolts away in fear for no reason I can discern. Dolly merely looks at him like he's crazy. She's my pretty little girl. She does love her some McBeady, though. They're so cute, rubbing and curling around each other. And sometimes I see them coming in from their daily adventures together, ambling along through the neighboring yards, looking for all the world like a couple of crazy kids in love. If they could be holding hands, they would be. Awwww.....sweet. Dolly also spends a lot of time peering in one of my windows. I've been opening the windows a bit in the evenings, since it's warmed up, and often the inside cats (including her babies--I wonder if they remember her?) sit with their noses pressed up against the screen, sniffing Miss Dolly. I wonder sometimes what would happen if I brought her inside. I hate having outdoor cats--I worry too much. Last week Dolly disappeared for 24 hours, and I was a nervous wreck. I don't know where she went, or why, or what she did while she was there, but I was sooo glad to see her return. She got a kiss first, and then a thorough scolding. She wasn't with McBeady, I know, since he came around several times while she was gone. And, despite my demands for him to tell me what he knew, he claimed to have no knowledge of her whereabouts, either. Silly critters. Do they not know I fret about them? Sigh.

So, what else is happening around here?

The exercise continues, unbelievably. Every day for a week now (and twice on Saturday and Sunday) I have done a workout tape. Yay, me! I'm also trying to eat a little healthier. My new plan is to not keep cheese or good bread (like the crusty artisan loaves of sourdough I can eat half of in a single sitting) in the house. Oh, I'm not going crazy--I'll still eat cheese and bread, but maybe not so much. Or so often. We'll see how that goes.

Dick Cheney is in town today, for a fundraiser for that motherfucker (no need to mince words here) Jim Inhofe. They've got part of downtown blocked off for "security," apparently. It's a good thing I didn't need to go downtown today, or I'd be really pissed off. Inconveniencing hundreds of people for hours, for a political fundraiser? Not cool. Official business is one thing, but this is not official business. They could have held the fundraiser on a Saturday, when downtown is a ghost town, and not inconvenienced people just trying to get to work. I must confess that I am giggling, though, that the local DFA chapter is staging a protest and sale across the street from the $250/plate fundraiser. For 250 cents, they'll sell you a baloney sandwich. Hee.

And, speaking of food, it seems there IS such a thing as a free lunch. Sometimes, there is such a thing as TWO free lunches. And both with guacamole! The owner of my company took us to lunch Tuesday for Administrative Professionals Day, to one of my favorite Mexican restaurants. Avocado quesadilla, guac on the side. Yum. She even encouraged us to order a margarita. And stopped on the way back to the office to buy us pretty hanging baskets of flowers. Nice. And yesterday, I stopped at Qdoba (sorry, Chipotle fans, Qdoba's all we've got) for a burrito--which was free, as I had finally accrued enough points on my Qdoba rewards card. Yay, free food!

Of course, munching down on free food, attained in part because I am able to freely go and purchase an embarrassingly large burrito pretty much whenever I want, made me feel incredibly guilty, having just cried my way through most of "Idol Gives Back" the previous night. Yes, American Idol made me cry, and it had nothing to do with Sanjaya's singing. The in-studio bits were cheesy, of course, but the actual footage...heartwrenching. I understand Angelina's impulse, I guess...I wanted to scoop up every one of those orphans and take them home with me. And I'm not even a kid person! And closer to home...I went into the Appalachians almost 30 years ago on a work-service project with my church youth group. How distressing that it seems like nothing much has changed in all that time. Sigh. At any rate, I'd been meaning to send in a post-Lenten donation to Episcopal Relief & Development, and just hadn't remembered to get the check in the envelope and the envelope in the mail. So I did that, buying drought-resistant seedlings and a malaria-prevention kit for an African family. I encourage everyone to give a little bit, to the charity of your choice. People shouldn't be starving, and dying of malaria. Mosquito nets are so cheap! Certainly cheaper than the burritos I consume all too frequently. Okay, moving on.

And, actually, that's pretty much all that's been going on with me. My next-door neighbor wants to sell me his house--an intriguing possibility, perhaps. But overall, my life's a little boring at the moment. Though, tonight, I am told there will be Indian food with the fabulous George, as she is passing through to see her posse on her way back to Seattle. Coolness.