Home improvement

I am ridiculously pleased with myself today. And ridiculously pleased with the glories of that series of tubes known as the World Wide Interwebs. Why, you ask? Because I actually managed to diagnose AND solve a problem with my refrigerator without having to call my landlord or sit at home for hours waiting for a refrigerator repairman. (Who, if I had to call one, would almost certainly not arrive wearing a cute little blue suit and cap, like on TV.) I simply googled the symptoms--water pooling inside the fridge--and quickly found a website devoted to diagnosing appliance problems. Neato! It only took a couple of minutes to find the section dedicated to addressing my problem, and to discover the solution: clean out the drain plug located underneath the crisper drawer (is that what that thing is!). I did that yesterday (and may I just say...ick!), and my refrigerator's bottom has been dry as toast ever since. Whoo hoo! I'm so proud. (Okay, all you truly handy people are no doubt snickering, but go ahead and snicker. I'm still pleased.)

I needed a reason to be happy with my home life, silly as the reason might be, since the cat medicating of the last six days was working my very last nerve. It sounded so easy. Put the granules in the yummy canned food, set it down, let 'em eat. But the first night I forgot Ruthie doesn't like the flaked tuna. She only likes the stuff with GRAVY. Well, excuse me! Tomorrow we'll make sure you have some GRAVY. And then EVERY SINGLE DAY one or other of the cats decided they just weren't hungry right now. Thanks, anyway. Maybe later. Of course, their sniffing and walking away necessitated a quick Plan B on my part, since failure to act quickly would have resulted in one of the more aggressive eaters getting a double dose, and the picky eater getting none, and I had just enough packets to go around. No extras. So I ended up scooping up the rejected blobs of food, which were then pureed, put into a large syringe and manually inserted into the offending cat's mouth. You can guess how popular that made me.

That was the indoor cats. The outdoor cats were better, with the exception of the one night Dolly decided not to show up for dinner at all, and I had to save her portion for breakfast.

Pudge was best of all. Dogs are so much easier to medicate than cats. Gulp, gulp--all gone. May I have some more? Wag, wag.

Yes, the cats were treading on shaky ground this weekend. Saturday I managed to accidentally roll the vacuum over an errant pile of cat poop hidden under a throw rug (Why hidden under the throw rug? I don't know...I guess the medicine had someone a little upset, and cats do so love to show when they're upset.) and I spent a delightful few minutes trying to clean mushed-up cat poop out of the vacuum rollers and wheels. If someone had knocked on my door just then, requesting donations for the "Send a Cat to the Animal Testing Lab" drive, it would have been a hard call. "Come here, Stella...you're going on an adventure." (I kid, I kid!!)

I did get a knock on my door a few minutes later, but it was only a few smiling representatives of the "Friendship Fellowship Church," wanting to invite me to join them some Sunday morning. I told them I had my own church, thanks anyway, but I have to say...they were certainly the most pleasantly sunshiny people who've ever knocked on my door in the name of religion. Some sort of religious ecstasy? They certainly must have been under the influence of something, to be willing to subject themselves to my company, given the sweaty, disheveled, "I've been cleaning cat poop out of my vacuum with a cotton swab" vibe I was no doubt manifesting.

So....what else has been going on? Not much. Tomorrow will be Day 70 of consecutive days of exercise. Whoo hoo! I wish I was losing more actual weight, but I can feel a definite difference. I don't feel constantly energetic by any means, but I feel stronger, and more flexible. And underneath the shrinking-but-still-present layer of flab, I'm getting some kick-ass calf and arm muscles. I'm still doing really well on the eat-less-cheese-and-fried-stuff front, as well, and I have to say I've noticed some differences there, too. I've long had the occasional acid reflux problems, but they now seem to be gone. I haven't popped a Tums or a Pepcid in weeks. Whoo hoo! I hadn't really anticipated that, but it's a nice bonus, since they're now saying damage from acid reflux can be a precursor to esophageal cancer, and I have a family history of that, anyway. (My aunt no longer has an esophagus. Her stomach has been stretched up to her throat--ouch!--and she had to relearn how to swallow. She's doing well, though.)

Okay, enough drivel for now. Maybe tomorrow I can regale you with the tale of that time I relit my own hot water heater, and talk about poop some more. Hee.