Christmas with the Cat

My cat hates Christmas. She has a long history of destroying things - for example, she is doing her best to kill the only houseplant I've ever been able to keep alive for more than a month. But with the addition of the Christmas tree into our living room, she is having more fun than a cat should have causing chaos.

She loves the satin tree skirt, and she has developed quite a routine. She pushes all the presents aside so that she can lurk comfortably and enjoy the silky texture, and then she claws at the fabric until she ends up underneath the whole thing. Once she finds herself there, she freaks out and bolts across the room. All this activity usually causes the train that goes around the tree to jump its track. I'm just glad it's only little Lego men on that train, because many a rail-related disaster has been caused by the cat's careless actions.

And of course she can't leave the ornaments alone. There is one kind in particular that hangs and swings just right that she loves to bat around and chew on. After I moved all of those ornaments higher in the tree, she started attacking anything that is low hanging. We've gotten to the point where the only decorations that are less than three feet off the ground are the plastic ones she can't break. Most of those just happen to be covered in glitter, so the cat is twinkly most of the time now, too. She's a black cat, and it's quite entertaining to see her walking around, full of cat-like dignity, with blue and white sparkles all over her face.

The worst part is how she deals with the tree itself. When she started chewing on the branches I wasn't too worried; after all, how much damage can she do to a fake Christmas tree? Then, she started climbing. She learned how to maneuver herself into the tree and hang out on the nice, evenly spaced branches. At first, she stopped at the bottom row, but lately she's been getting bolder, going about halfway up and then just sitting there. She watches us from between the fake fronds and twinkly lights, secure in her new lair, planning world domination or whatever it is that cats think about. I'm just waiting for the inevitable moment when she tries to jump out of the tree and ends up tipping the whole thing over.

So, I guess maybe the problem isn't that my cat hates Christmas. Maybe the problem is that she really, really loves all the lovely new Christmas-themed toys I've put out for her, and I just don't appreciate the ways she shows her holiday spirit.

Drug Addled Writing

My boyfriend is making me feel like a slacker. Here I am, trying to do a month's worth of blogs, and only getting entries written about half the time, and he's clacking away on his iPad every night night showing me up. While I'm reading before bed, already guilty because I'm consuming the written word rather than producing it, he's sitting next to me making the guilt worse.

He recently discovered that anyone can create a wiki, and he's hard at work creating a community based on the elaborate stories he and his friends have been making up for and about each other for the last 20 or so years. It's pretty interesting stuff. Even though I'm jealous of his productivity I'm having fun reading it all. Because I haven't been thinking about this stuff for years, I like to think I provide a valuable outside viewpoint.

The really irritating thing, though, is that he's doing all of this while he's drugged up. He takes ambien to help him sleep and, as anyone who's taken that drug knows, after a certain point in the evening you can be awake and (apparently) functioning but you won't remember anything about what happened the next day. Every night after he takes his pill, he writes for a while and creates pages on the wiki. And then, every morning he gets to open it up and see what new things he wrote while in the ambien blackout. It's like he has a ghostwriter doing all he work for him.


Although, now that I think of it, having someone else do all the work for me sounds like a pretty sweet deal. Especially since it would be me doing it, so everything would be done the way I like it. I wonder, maybe he'll loan me one of those pills and I can try it out...

My Cat Acts Like a Toddler

This evening my cat got her head stuck in a plastic bag she stole from the garbage. As I was chasing her down to extricate her from her mess, I realized that in some ways cats are like toddlers. Obviously, cats are waaaaaay less work than an actual toddler, but there are undeniable similarities.

People with toddlers baby-proof the house so the kids don't get into things that are dangerous or messy, and I've had to do the same thing. All over the house, things that used to be stored out in the open are now tucked away into drawers and other non-cat accessible areas. We haven't had to put those baby locks on the cupboard doors (yet), but we no longer get take for granted that anything we leave out will be in the same place when we come back for it. It doesn't help that I crochet, so there is a lot of yarn that used to just be laying around. Now it's all tucked away so that the dumb animal doesn't eat it and mess up her guts.

Then there's the whole toilet issue. Again, I'm not comparing litter box maintenance with changing diapers, but I am dealing with the animal's poop on at least a daily basis. Also, I swear that she finds us and situates herself as close to use as she can before she passes gas. I have lived with cats before, but I had no idea that their farts smelled so bad until Thud came around.

Christmas is another thing that presents similar challenges to people with cats in the house as it does for those with toddlers. Earlier this week I decorated my Christmas tree, mostly with delicate glass ornaments. I distributed them with an eye towards balance and beauty, and the tree looked lovely. I'm glad I took a picture when I was done, because the next day half the tree was re-organized. I had to remove all the ornaments from the bottom branches because the cat was attacking them rather vigorously, and I was afraid she was going to bring down the whole tree. Now that there aren't any shiny things that she can reach and destroy, she's started chewing on the tree itself. I haven't lived with a toddler in a while, do they do that too?

I never get too exasperated with the fuzzy-faced critter, though, because she's sure to do something adorable before too long. And as soon as she does, I'm whipping out my camera like a sucker, trying to capture the moment of cute before she goes back to being a terror. I have a feeling that many parents of toddlers feel the same way.

Hobbitses and Legoses, Precious

I am getting a very special birthday present this year. Peter Jackson is giving me a movie I've been excited about for a long, long time. The Hobbit's release date is the day before my birthday, and I am looking forward to it more than I probably should.

Tonight I got a little fix to help hold me over until the movie comes out. Lego, in its infinite wisdom, made several sets based on The Hobbit. We bought the ones that were released yesterday (no waiting for Christmas here!) and the boyfriend, the kid and I spent the evening around the dining room table, putting together Legos. It was downright heartwarming, in a geeky way.

Personally, I spent a couple of happy hours building Bilbo's hobbit-hole. It looks great - it really is a good set - and there are so many great touches. There are even stickers in the set that turn normal lego blocks into miniature reproductions of the actual maps from the book.

Maybe Legos aren't quite as exciting as finally seeing the actual movie, but we had a lot of fun, anyway.

Breaking in a New Computer

Getting a new computer is kind of a bitter-sweet experience. I mean, your old computer may be slow and half of the programs you need don't work very well, but it's familiar and you know exactly where everything is. Your settings are the way you like them and you don't ever have to type a web address because your browser knows them all. I, for one, find myself resisting getting a new computer - or doing what is needed to fix the old - just because it's so much work getting everything back to normal and tweaking all the setting to be just how I like them.

Well, I got my comeuppance for that attitude this week with a vengeance. My work computer has been slow and buggy for months now. It's about two years old and wasn't that great of a machine to begin with; it was just a basic laptop that could do the types of things I needed. Last week, though, it quit doing some of the crucial things I need to do my job, so I finally had to call IT in to fix the problem.

First, they did a whole system reset (I think that's what they called it) which erased all my settings, icons, favorite, bookmarks, etc. After that, I spent all day putting things back the way I like them. I tweaked settings and tried to remember all my bookmarks. I even did Google searches to remember how to do the obscure changes I had discovered ages ago and never thought of since.

Actually, I wasn't working on it quite all day. A couple of hours before quitting time, one of the IT guys came in and said that they were going to have to re-image the machine - it just wasn't going to work otherwise. Basically, everything I'd done that day to make my computer work the way I wanted it was all going away and I'd have to do it all again.

At this point, I'm more than happy to have them do what they have to do to make sure I can use my computer. After all, they already deleted the favorites and such, and there is no getting them back. I just wish that they had told me they I would have to do it all again before I spent the time fixing things in the first place.

I guess I'll just have to console myself by doing my job on a computer that doesn't randomly freeze up, crash, and generally works smoothly. I think I'll be fine.

Christmas is Here at Last

If you read my post about Christmas music, you may already know that I am a huge fan of the holiday in general. I love the way everyone is thinking about others, I love the music, I love spending time with my family, and I really love the decorations. I have a long history of taking whatever crappy little apartment I live in and, with the help of my excellent friends, turning it into a Christmas wonderland. One year, we had a Christmas tree that was bright enough to read by. It was amazing.
Now that I have a spacious, pretty house instead of a crappy little apartment, I've really been looking forward to the Christmas decorating. I have been trolling Pinterest for ideas for weeks, and when we moved in, one of the first things I did was plan for where we'd put the Christmas tree.
Normally, I bust out the decorations on Friday after Thanksgiving, and that night my tree is burning brightly for all the world to see. This year, though, after hosting the big family dinner, most of Friday was spent cleaning. When that was done I really didn't relish the idea of hauling a bunch of boxes up from the basement to decorate. Then, on Saturday I wanted to enjoy my first chance to relax in about a week, and on Sunday I was running around to family dinners and orchestra practice.
All of this means I didn't get my tree up last weekend, and I felt like a Christmas fraud. I, who normally spreads the Christmas spirit around to others, couldn't even find the time to get my decorations up? Well, I put a stop to that Monday night. I came home from work, found all the boxes (we moved since last Christmas so I had to hunt through several different storage areas), and filled my house with Christmas joy.
Of course, I'm just getting started. I still plan on putting lights up outside, and I'm going to do a great deal more decorating inside. But the most important things are taken care of. The tree is up and beautiful, and the stockings are hung with care. But you don't have to take my word for it, here's the proof!

Post-Thanksgiving Breakdown

My mom has always hosted the big Thanksgiving family dinner at her house, and for several years now I've been trying to help her out more and more with all the work. I go to her house the day before and help her make a half-dozen or so pies, and I go out early on the day of to help her with all the cooking. I set the table and try to take over organizational aspects so she doesn't have to worry about them. I even help her clean up; well, at least, I help as much as I can make myself do, seeing as how I hate that part. Helping this way for years now led me to think that I wanted to host the holiday at my house this time.

Well, I did host the dinner, and I think everyone had a lot of fun. I invited the in-laws to come to make an addition to my large, raucous family. Everyone got along, nobody brought up politics or religion, and we all sat around eating pie and playing games all night.

On top of being a lot of fun, though, it was a LOT of work. I knew it would be, but I didn't appreciate how much until I actually did the work myself. The biggest hassle was, of course, the turkey. I've assisted in the preparation of turkeys before, but I've never actually done all the heavy lifting myself. Oh, and speaking of heavy lifting, for all you aspiring cooks out there - based on my experience, I would suggest that you not start with a 26-plus pound turkey on your first endeavor. Everything was about 15 pounds harder than it could have been if I had done a turkey half the size.

As much as I complain, everything came out all right. The turkey was juicy thanks to the preparatory brining I did the day before. It even took less time than I thought it would to cook, and we were able to have dinner at the time I we planned for. That is a small miracle of its own. All the side dishes were tasty, and there was enough that everyone went home with plenty of leftovers.

There was one catastrophe, however. This afternoon when I went to the fridge to ravage the leftovers for a post-Thanksgiving feast, the mashed potatoes and gravy I had carefully put in tupperware to keep here were nowhere to be found. I think that in the general chaos of left-over divvying up, someone saw my nicely packaged containers and walked off with them. I'm trying not to assign pernicious intent to this action, but it's really difficult not to do when I didn't have any mashed potatoes today.

Even with the tragedy of the lost leftovers, I think this whole hosting Thanksgiving thing was a success and I enjoyed it. I've always enjoyed throwing parties and having people over, and now I have a house big enough to do some real entertaining. My first experience was exhausting, but I'd definitely do it again. Which is a good thing, seeing as how the boyfriend and I have already volunteered to host another massive dinner party in December. I guess we're just gluttons for punishment.