We did our taxes this week and without going into financial details I'll just say that the words taxed and fucked are synonymous. Fucked. Taxed. Taxed. Fucked. FUCKED. Wheeee! To say we were unprepared for the results would be putting it mildly. FUCKED! Whoooo! Taxed. Fuck.

Continue reading "We've Been Taxed!"

I'm not actually depressed or down or anything, but in a funk all the same. I can't seem to really get going on anything. I've been sitting here pretty much all day, fucking around online, not really reading anything or doing anything, but lacking any drive to get up and get started on the stuff I need to get done around here. I have the urge to do so much in terms of organizing the house and spring cleaning (I did all my windows!) but can't seem to get started. I don't know where to begin and so I sit here, staring at the walls like a slack-jawed, uh, slackjaw. There may even be drool involved.

My knitting, similarly, is going nowhere. Over the past week or so I haven't done anything. Last night I knit a few rounds on a sock while watching reruns of CSI, but it was like I wasn't really knitting. I was just going through the motions, like how eating a ricecake isn't really eating. Every time I get the urge to pick up my knitting, I can't decide what to work on because nothing is near finishing and spending a couple of hours on a project seems pointless because it's not like I'm going to finish it. More slack-jawed staring, more drool.

What is wrong with me? I want to be invited to a party. Won't someone invite me to a party? I wish to get drunk.

My third pair of the year is made from cotton/wool Ja Woll, 64 stitches around, knit on 2.5mm Addis. Very comfy and really stretchy. I probably should have knit them on 62 stitches. They were very tight going on, but stretched right out after about a half-hour of wearing.

This weekend Jeremy and I cleaned out the closet in the office, finally unpacking the last of the boxes from when we moved last June. We threw out a bunch of stuff we decided we could live without, set aside some books and toys to be donated (we still have more books to go through) and repacked the rest of the stuff we want to keep but don't know what the hell to do with. We painted the inside of the closet and covered the shelves so they're nice and clean. I also took advantage of the fact that Alex is staying at his grandparents to prime and paint some of the trim in his bedroom.

While I was at it I painted some trim in the laundry room but since that's where we keep the litterbox, I couldn't lock the cats out. I used really thin coats in the hopes that there would be no cat hair/paint transfer. Good thing I did, because 10 minutes after I finished Jonah decided he needed to sit on the window ledge. I chased him away but the paint was dry to the touch so no harm done.

This home renovation stuff is starting to drive me mad. We've been here 10 months now and there is still so much to do, like proper baseboard trim, installing new doors in the hallway, lowering the top of the doorways in the living room so we can add crown molding, painting the trim in our bedroom, getting a whole bunch of light fixtures, redoing the entire bathroom...I could go on but I won't because it's giving me a headache.

Tonight we're heading over to my parents' for Easter dinner. Since we celebrate Easter twice every year, we'll be doing the same next weekend, too. This week is what my family calls, Canadian Easter and we have dinner together and eat chocolate bunnies and stuff like that. My family is Macedonian Orthodox, so for our Easter my mom and sister will dye some eggs during the week, my mom will make a raisin bread called, kusinyak and on Sunday when eggs are given out we play an egg-breaking game. You choose your victim, tap the pointy end of your egg to the pointy end of theirs and if you break their egg while yours remains intact, you are the King of the World and get to wear a bra on your head. I'm kidding, you just win their egg.

We're pretty secular. My grandmother was the religious one in our family. While my parents and sister do believe in the religion somewhat (I don't), we all enjoy the traditions of our culture.

Want to see some cats?

Continue reading "Long Weekend"

Here we have Cuba posing underneath my latest pair of socks, which I finished on Sunday. This picture is from a few weeks ago. I have one of the completed pair, but I've been too lazy to dump my camera. Maybe tomorrow. The yarn is Ja Woll, a cotton and wool blend, and the socks are very, very comfy. This is only my third pair of the year and we're already into April!

Things around here have been pretty ho-hum and I'm in a kind of slump, knitting-wise. I'm uninspired and bored. The truth is that I have just too many projects on the go which is rather overwhelming. I'm going to sit down tonight and try to get some stuff done.

The cats seem to be doing much, much better. When I last posted we were about to try a second variation of special food for them in the hopes that their insides would start working properly. They hated the new food and only ate when they were very hungry and the diarrhea didn't clear up by the time the vet had hoped. Luckily, the vet allowed us to return the opened bag of food. Apparently that brand comes with a money-back guarantee which was great since they barely made a dent in the bag. The next step is bloodwork for both cats, but we have to wait on that because it's expensive. In the meantime we went back to the special food they liked and the good news is that over the past few days we have achieved solid poop! Unfortunately it's not all solid poop, but I'll take what I can get.

Want to see a couple of photos from my birthday? I got an awesome tripod from my awesome friends.

Continue reading "Socks, Cats and Birthday Crap"

Better late than never but since I hadn't officially joined the Flash your Stash thingy I guess it doesn't matter. I wasn't planning on doing it, but when I saw Chelle's stash displayed on her staircase, I had the urge to go through it all and write down what I had.

Continue reading "Stash Flashing"

This morning at the vet went okay. We are trying another 24-hour fast and introducing a different gastrointestinal food for a few days, combined with some digestive enzyme paste and an antibiotic. If their poop doesn't firm up by Tuesday, the vet wants to do bloodwork and look for something more serious than a simple dietary problem. Jonah also has some excessive gingivitis, which the vet doesn't want to treat until we figure out what's going on with their digestive systems.

She told us not to worry right now but if the diarrhea doesn't clear up we are going to need to look into the possiblity of more serious conditions. She doesn't think it's likely because they are happy and gaining weight, but you never know. I must have looked stricken because she was quick to assure me that the cats don't show any sign of serious illness.

I didn't realize how upset I was about this until after we got home. I told myself I wouldn't worry until I was given a reason to worry, but I can't help it.