I thought I was buying Nala a new toy. See the unboxing video here:
But turns out, the budgies love it:
And Nala, who is very stubborn about eating her fresh fruits and vegetables, stole their apple. Crawled in their cage and stole it!
Meanwhile, I had cats galore. Te-he-he pussy galore. James Bond. I’m half way to Octopussy.
Yes, I know the title is nonsense— but the world has turned a tad upside down as the world tends to do as having billions of people and billions of animals on a planet will erupt into some unexpected situations from time to time.
The teenager loves to eat lemons. I love to cook with lemons. For a while, especially when I first discovered Gaz Oakley the Avant Garde Vegan (Check him out on YouTube—amazing falafel, his own recipe for peri-peri sauce) I always kept fresh lemons in the house.
That was also about the time I would have lemon water first thing in the morning. The juice of half a lemon with tap water.
I did that again this morning. First time in probably a year. Or more.
Today was also the first time in a week I haven’t gained weight. The first month of this pandemic, I was eating better but stopped because… Easter… or so I claim. I am a jelly bean addict and once I start eating the jelly beans I launch onto a sugar and caffeine roller coaster.
So maybe this post should be called “bad habits.” I originally lost about 5 pounds due to stress in the beginning of the pandemic, but between beer, pizza, Easter candy, homemade cookies and triple jalapeño bacon cheeseburgers from Wendy’s they have found their way back.
It’s been rough. More pressure than ever at work. A good friend walked away coldly without even saying goodbye. A work colleague who often made me smile left unexpectedly. Medical bills still coming in.
But in the end, I still feel inside these struggles help us grow and bring us to the next level— as another work colleague likes to say— we don’t age, we gain experience like in a video game. So I’m less than a month away from my 45th Level with the teenager two months away from Level 16 and a drivers license.
Designated Driver AND babysitter, mom friends out there!!!!
Yesterday was a sunny day amidst a forecast of rain. Last week the teenager did not complete her three weekly gym assignments and she told her teacher in her log that she “got lazy” and he wrote back that sometimes he gets lazy, too. This is a great lesson for our (older) kids in communication and work ethic. Those of you with younger kids, God Bless You and Keep You.
I would be screaming every day if the teenager were, say, six. Our brains are wired too differently.
But back to gym. We got out the tandem bike. (Yes, we have a bicycle built for two— it was a gift.) I wanted the teen to “win” gym this week. And she should get extra credit for captaining a bike with her mom, who has cerebral palsy and no real balance skills.
Then her dad came over and brought his famous hot buffalo chicken dip for dinner, at the teen’s request, and included beer for us grown-ups. And he even got on the bike! (He doesn’t ride bikes.)
I excused myself to work on some more chapters of Bill’s novel Debauchery (and reached the first sex scene— those characters are so in love it hurts). Please don’t be scared by the violence and BDSM in this novel/series. The real theme here is the beauty of acceptance no matter who you are.
And the first of several pet related packages came. So here is a Petco unboxing and some animal videos:
Let’s see what adventures today brings! Stay well, friends! Let’s crush this day!
It’s definitely Saturday. I stayed up late working on the first draft of a poem— right now in very poor shape and entitled “You become”—but I slept really well.
I fed the beasties, did some vacuuming, started some laundry and my mom dropped off some Easter candy.
So, since I am a mature adult, I decided to have the bottled Starbucks drink and Brach’s classic Jelly Bird Eggs for breakfast.
I gave the budgies some shredded wheat as a treat and let them fly free for a couple hours. The teen came down to my room to use my desk to complete this week’s geometry and Oz the big, dumb, recovering-from-depression cat opened the door to my room to join us.
I’ve been allowing myself to sleep in a bit and these days I’m waking up between 6:15 and 6:30. I lay in bed sometimes until almost 7, but I’m always dressed, with pants and everything, and at my desk with a hot cup of coffee by 8:30.
I’ve enjoyed sharing an office with my birds— three budgies and a Goffin’s cockatoo—all of whom must be enjoying the electronic swing I listen to at my desk and the bird playground I have assembled for them.
Yes, that’s the teenager’s kitten who refused to get out of the cockatoo’s cage.
Now, when Nala the cockatoo destroys toys I save the salvageable pieces and put them in these spare dishes and she plays with them and throws them at the cats.
I think I have some new toys coming for the parakeets, and I also need to order them more ladders and perches because they have suddenly destroyed everything in their cage.
Work passed easily, I feel like I was quite organized and productive. And I’m off tomorrow. I took an unplanned paid time off to take care of some health issues. So it will be part trip to the pharmacy, part virtual doctor visit and part mental health day.
There’s a contact we have at work at a local company that is the point person for a rather large food drive that benefits our agency. Because of the state lockdown, they can’t host this food drive so the employees contributed cash instead, but she didn’t want to mail it and our offices are closed.
So the teenager and I took a road trip. It’s strange when a 25-mile round trip to the next town and back feels like a major outing. I donned my mask, put on my gloves and we exchanged an envelope of cash in the parking lot.
That might be the closest I will ever come to feeling like a drug dealer. Nope, scratch that. I’ve driven around with a trunk full of Girl Scout cookies.
My teenager and I have the best conversations while in the car. We talked a lot about financial responsibility and budgeting and how important it will be for her to determine her own style of fiscal management. She admires my discipline, chicanery and creativity with making my money work for me.
I taught her about different ways to trick yourself into putting money into savings. The first of course is to set up automatic transfers. Another is to have a portion of your paycheck direct deposited into savings.
The easiest is to always, as soon as you take a new job, decide on a number of how much goes into retirement if your job offers a retirement plan. That way before you even see how much your take home pay is, the money goes into your future.
And if your job doesn’t have retirement options, go to your bank and contribute to an IRA. Every year. Because money saved when you are young goes far.
That motivated me to go ahead and take the plunge and use that last $1,000 of my stimulus check that I had put into savings and use it to prepay for 400 gallons of fuel oil for next winter’s heat at $2.199.
That was painful. But at least it’s over. Next I need to contact the dentist about the $859 bill they sent me for my crown. My insurance company didn’t cover anything but $17. I’m annoyed because the dentist thought they’d pay 50%, the tooth still isn’t right AND the bill they sent didn’t include the credit for the $394 I already paid.
But paying for the fuel oil was enough adulting for today.
The teenager made an amazing steak dinner.
And Nala loves onion rings.
The teenager discovered, because I sent her an Instagram post, that The Attic thrift store has an online sale and bid on a red dress. That she won.
I love the ingenuity our local small businesses are showing. I hope it continues after the lockdown ends.
Last but certainly not least, I tried this Cascara tea which is supposedly full of antioxidants and it tasted really good.
There is just something about life in these pandemic times that I find uplifting.
Maybe the sense of nowhere to go or a certain carefreeness that reminds me of being on summer vacation as a teen.
Our grocery trips focus on the present more than ever. I normally only grocery shop once every two weeks but find that now I’m going once a week, buying less and rotating stores.
Today I went to a local small independent grocer, Park Avenue Market, where they are known for their amazing sandwiches and in store meats.
I treated the teenager to her first taste of olive loaf from the deli, slab bacon and their own feta spinach sausage patties. I also bought some stew beef and a small steak.
I discovered, in the middle of the store, with my order and my blind friend’s order, that I did not have my wallet. I found myself staring straight at a local cop and wondering where my wallet at fallen out of the back pocket of my jeans.
I told the teen to keep shopping and went home to look for it— it had fallen out of my pocket when I used the toilet before beginning our journey.
After the market, I took Nan her items and took the teen home before heading to Weis. There I got bananas, muffins, some discounted chicken and frozen vegetables. Half off fresh bakery products that weren’t so fresh any more. Milk, eggs, half and half and two six packs— one of Yuengling and one of a raspberry ale with a name I don’t recall.
We got some other items between the two trips: broccoli and cheese whipped into something akin to mashed potatoes, bread, mini shoo fly pies, A-Treat soda and lord knows what else.
Because suddenly life is shorter and the carbohydrates and sweets provide a taste of celebration.
I ate a vat of spaghetti squash when I arrived home and helped my daughter design a marching band show for her music assignment. Her dream has long been to play Cake’s Short Skirt Long Jacket in band. So she was ecstatic when the web sure her teacher posted had the music.
It was hard to unify songs since we didn’t have enough Cake songs to do a Cake theme. She found a lot of Green Day and thought maybe she should do all Green Day. But I couldn’t let her dream die.
She found the theme from Die Another Day— which I believe is Madonna performing in the James Bond film. I didn’t think mixing a movie theme and alternative would work. And her band director has done a Bond show.
Finally I researched early 2000s alternative rock in a Google search and we decided on Nickelback. Green Day’s Basket Case for the Opener, followed by the Cake song, closed by some Nickelback song that I’ve forgotten already.
So the theme would be alternative rock from the era in which these musicians were born.
And here’s Nala, my Goffin’s cockatoo, rocking out to Green Day.
I added a 4-year-old Goffin’s Cockatoo to my menagerie in January with little real bird experience in my past.
My stepmom had a full-sized cockatoo when I was a teenager so I know they can be moody, noisy and demanding pets.
And then Nala took a liking to me.
I don’t know why. But it was clear from the get-go that she wanted me.
I think Nala recognized what a soft-hearted sucker I am.
So having a cockatoo like this little lady is like having an agressive toddler with the sophisticated yet immature brain of a teenager. Nala is having a mini-tantrum right now because I’m not paying attention to her yet she refuses to step up.
But what I wanted to mention today, is I noticed an amusing behavior. She has a nice bowl of pellet and seeds in her cage. I check it and clean it every day.
On days when I am too slow to feed her, and she is hungry, or if she’s picked out all of her favorites from the bowl, she peels up the newspaper from the bottom of her cage and uses her toes and beak to forage from the bottom of the cage for things she discarded earlier.
One day she even found a peanut.
I started today with the debate of whether to blog about Nala, my Goffin’s cockatoo, or my thoughts on what makes a good day or a good weekend, something the teenager seemed insistent upon us having.
But the cats started climbing the parakeet cage, I made the “mistake” of reviewing some news coverage of Donald Trump’s handling of the Coronavirus pandemic, and frankly, I’ve lost my train of thought more times than I can count.
So while I’m still lost in a sea of randomness, watching Mistofelees (my daughter’s formerly feral/stray kitten) decide how to get off the budgie cage without crossing Nala’s path, let me also say I used the hydrating hair mask from last month’s Ipsy Glam bag and my dry curly hair is remarkably not puffy today.
The first time I tried it, I didn’t see any results. This time was very different.
(For more on my Ipsy experiences, see here: Review of my Ipsy April 2020 Glam Bag)
It’s Easter Sunday, but the teenager opened her basket on Good Friday (I’m suddenly realizing how disrespectful that was of traditional Christian culture). Oops.
To see our silliness on that, I have YouTube videos:
I washed her new sheets and hung them on the line yesterday. I helped her make her bed and I hope she had a lovely night of sleep on them. She picked the most colorful ones first.
In the next order of randomness, I think I’m going to make a Buffalo chicken spaghetti squash casserole for Easter dinner.
Now, shall I even expound on my thoughts on the Coronavirus situation. Perhaps briefly.
So let’s enjoy this sunny Easter and celebrate life and spring.
With the pandemic looming, and people still struggling in the every day ways, you have to rejoice one moment at a time.
Hello, all.
I have so many organized wonderful ideas for blog posts but my energy and focus level say, here— have a cat picture. The whole pride!
And more fun footage of kittens in the other porch window.
The governor has canceled school for the rest of the school year as of today so for the next seven weeks the teenager will be completing her sophomore year at home.
Alice Cooper & The Muppets — School’s Out
For dinner I did something decadent— I made thick cut black pepper bacon and cooked cabbage in the bacon grease. I piled the bacon, cabbage and some extra sharp New York cheddar onto a bagel.
And the teenager spent some time today recreating her mother on the Sims. Here I am:
And thanks to a college friend getting a vibrage wringer washer for her birthday I actually spent some time today watching YouTube videos of men doing laundry on washing machines more than 50 years old. The teenager found that amusing. And so dreadfully boring of me. I subscribed to this appliance man’s channel. I love this 1952 Frigidaire with the antique box of Tide.
After all, this washing machine is older than my mother. Give it a watch. Go on.
There’s a ridiculous hashtag trending on the internet.
You take a photo of your pet, #TheDrunkAtTheEndoftheBar, and state what your pet is doing.
Well, here’s Nala, my naughty Goffin’s cockatoo:
And Mr. Mistofelees — the formerly feral kitten has an entry too:
Some of this might be repeat for my regular followers, but I thought it would be nice to compile some of the animal news here.
Lord knows happy pet news can be beneficial to everyone’s spirits.
Opie and Oz, our two male tiger stripe cats, both turned 9 this month. Nine! The teenager and I raised Oz—the big, dumb, cuddly teddy bear—from a three-month-old kitten rescued from the local animal shelter.
The teenager, then turning seven, wanted an older pug but her father said no dogs and certainly not a pug. So we explored the kittens, basically because my husband trusted me more raising cats.
Oz was one of several kittens from a litter the animal shelter named after Pepsi products and his original name was Dasani. Oz was the tiniest kitten with the biggest damn paws. He grew into a big cat, with an even bigger docile personality.
The teenager named him after The Wizard of Oz but also after Scott Green’s werewolf character on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, then her favorite TV show.
I made the decision to put Oz down when he was three because he had recurring urinary crystals and we couldn’t afford the $1000+ surgery he needed to flush the crystals out of his urethra or the even more expensive surgery to cut off his penis and make him a bigger hole to pee from so he could pass future crystals.
Luckily, the veterinary practice had a young vet who had never performed the surgery and offered to use him as a test case for $600. At that point, that is what I was almost spending to put him down. I think it was $200 more expensive that killing him. So I took the deal.
That’s why Oz can only eat wet food.
And Oz had a fear of drinking water— because he associated it with the pain of passing the crystals when he urinated.
He has since learned to drink lots of water.
But he still has an obsessive desire to eat kibble.
Opie, our other male cat, is a major badass. Super loyal. Super cat-like. Some cats act more like stereotypical cats that others. Opie is pure feline.
In addition to a birthday this month, Opie also celebrates the one year anniversary of his leg amputation. Opie is a kitty cat bone cancer survivor.
We took Opie in when he was seven months old after friends rescued him from a feral mama. They had planned to keep him but their other cats picked on him.
Oz was still a kitten at the time and the two got along beautifully and look very similar.
Opie was our head mouser, but the kittens might give him a challenge.
Misty was the first of three kittens my daughter trapped between late December and late January. They were born probably in late October under my neighbor’s porch.
Misty was the runt. When the others went out to hunt with Mama, he stayed behind.
My daughter worked very hard to tame him and earn his trust.
We trapped the kitten that later got naked Smoky next. The neighbor named it. And it found a good home. But now a theme was developing.
Fog was the last one trapped. I named her to fit the theme. She was on her own for about two weeks after Smoky. She would reach into the trap from the side, slip her paw into the food and ladle it out of the trap lick by lick.
When we reunited her with her brother, my heart melted and I couldn’t give her up.
Peek-a-Boo (Boo-boo), so named because she was so spastic when she came home we thought she had a hurt wing, is the dominant bird in the group. And the fattest. She is pure yellow.
The teenager bought her and Periwinkle (Wink) for me as a Christmas present. Wink is the pale blue bird and the most skittish of the group. She and Boo were bonded from the pet store.
I added Yo-Yo (Yo) to the group last fall because I really wanted a traditional green parakeet and to add a male. He is vivid green with some yellow and this amazing navy blue tail.
The teenager made a lot of progress hand-feeding them but hasn’t maintained the training.
And that leaves… Nala.
Nala is a four-year-old Goffin’s cockatoo with a lot of attitude. I have no large bird experience but she took to me. We brought her home in early January.
She can be very obstinate, which is very common in cockatoos, but we are progressing well.
In the beginning, toweling too often became necessary to keep her from being too aggressive but now that we have learned more about each other it is easier for me to work with her and I can often get her to do something she really doesn’t think is fair— like go to bed—without even threatening to towel her.
It helps that I finally found a treat she can’t resist. She turns her nose up at everything.
She’s displaying a new behavior that I call the “step up” noise and she uses it when she wants to confirm my step up command or is asking me to come get her or sometimes as a demand, like when I won’t let her have my coffee.
Here’s a video from yesterday:
Angel Ackerman 