I Don't Bother Chasing Mice Around

So, Our little Gustavo P. Gustufson turned 5 months old a few weeks ago. He is getting so big, but most importantly, it was time to get him neutered.

He wasn't allowed to eat after 8 pm the night before, and if you know Gus Gus, you know that food is his favorite thing, so not eating stressed him out a little.

Believe me, I know how important it is to spay/neuter your pets. Every pet should be a wanted pet, and having a bunch of feral animals walking around does nobody any good, but it is also hard to pack up your beautiful hungry kitten in his plastic crate and hand him over to a stranger, who will give him drugs and cut his balls off, you know? But that's exactly what we did on Thursday morning, and then we went home to stress out about it all day.

They called us at around 2 o'clock to tell us that Gus made it through his surgery just fine, and that we could pick him up around three.

We went for a little bike ride, and then went to North Liberty to pick him up. The anesthesiologist  came out and showed us his blood work, then told us he seemed fine after his surgery, except for his little poop incident. Apparently, poor Gus decided to take a gigantic, messy shit all over the place and then roll in it. She said she had never seen a cat do that before. We always did say that Gus was special. Then she apologized for not being able to give him a bath, and just cleaning him up as best they could. Listen, as long as I don't have to clean up my shit stained kitten, I'm totally okay with him being half-assed cleaned off by someone else.

 She also told us that Gus was pretty drugged up, and that he shouldn't want to move much, but he definitely shouldn't try to walk up or down stairs in his drug addled condition. She lied to us. He was on deep spaz mode. She told us that we should try to keep him away form our other cats on account of the fact that he smells like the vet's office and his own poop. So, we decided to put him upstairs and then put a very tall piece of wood in front of the stairs, so he wouldn't be tempted to walk up or down them. Yeah, so instead, he found something to climb onto to jump up to the top of the piece of wood, and then jump down from there onto the stairs, where he preceded to run up and down. Damn it. 

We then just said, fuck it. We kept him downstairs and watched him around the other cats. They would just stay away from him, or hiss if they saw him two rooms away, or even thought about him.

The next day, Gus finally calmed down and did a LOOOOOOTTTTT of sleeping. It was actually quite peaceful for a day or two.

Now that I'm done singing the ballad of Gus' lost balls, I will remind you to vote...Hopefully, to vote out the super spreader-in-chief. Thank you.

And the Leaves That are Green Turn to Brown

Well, kids. It is definitely Fall around here. So, when in Rome...I did a bunch of seasonal shit last weekend. It's not that I don't like Fall, it's always more that I dread cold and the fact that "Winter is coming..." It's just a big wall I worry about getting slammed into every year.

But I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow. In that frame of mind, I descended on last weekend with fun plans.

It was unseasonably warm, which helped with that whole not thinking about Winter right now thing, and gave us fun options.

On Saturday morning, I played in the garden and made up flower bouquets to set out for my neighbors to pick up. It was National Mental Health Day, so it seemed like perfect timing. Then John and I rode our bikes for 25 miles and went home to get ready to ride our bikes some more.

A friend of ours had organized a progressive food ride, where you get a group of friends together (socially distanced, of course) and you ride to a friend's house and they have food and drink set up for you. Then you all get on your bikes and go to the next friend's house and they have different food and drink set out for you. So, basically you eat tons of food all day, but you kid yourself that it's okay because you are riding your bike a block or two in between eats. Man, do I love self-delusion.

The first house served lunch at 1 o'clock. They had sandwich fixin's and potato soup. It was lovely.

The second house was a snack house. They had cut up veggies in cups, with spinach dip and hummus. They also had that super cute seasonal mix of cheese popcorn, caramel corn, peanuts and candy corn in a serving size cup. Well, it was all cute except for candy corn, which I can't stand. So, I had to be very clever in hiding my cup under other things in the garbage, so no one could see how wasteful I was by tossing that vile food item. Yes, I am that asshole. Why do you ask?

We rode our bikes to my friend G.'s house who also served snacks. She had two baskets. One with variety pack bags of chips, and one with assorted Little Debbie snack cakes. You might think that people were upset at the lack of culinary delicacies, but you would be very, very, wrong. Seriously, when was the last time you had a Little Debbie snack cake? It's been forever for me. I wasn't the biggest fan of the Star Crunches, but you can bet your ass, I grabbed an Oatmeal Creme pie. It's just lucky for everyone there that they didn't serve any Nutty Bars, because I would have stuffed all of my jersey pockets with them without an ounce of shame.

Our last stop was our friends, Doug and Lisa. They served dinner there and had an awesome taco bar set up with grilled shrimp and chicken in some kind of delicious sauce. They also had hot queso sauce, guacamole, cream cheese frosted banana cake, and homemade chocolate chip cookies. Did I ever tell you how much I loved food?

Another great thing about this progressive food ride was getting to hang out with people's pets. There were adorable animals at every single house we stopped at.

The one bad thing, were the gnats. There has apparently been some weird Pirate Gnat infestation in Iowa this Fall. Yeah, I had never heard of them either. They were out in full force last weekend. In a sign of the times, one of my friends even used her broken mask to try to keep the gnats out of her drink. They were making it look like people shook all kind of pepper into their Mojitos.

Some of our friends got smart and ate in the screened-in-porch. If we didn't have to social distance, I would have been all over that.

As it was starting to get dark, the puppy got tired and that's when we knew we had to ride off into the sunset and go home. It really was a beautiful and fun day.

Later that evening, Coadster called me and asked me if I wanted to go to a pumpkin painting event with her the next morning. Before I could feel too special, she told me that two of her friends had backed out first. Whatever. I'll take it.

The event was held by a friend of hers that she met in junior high, but who now owns an adorable little shop in the town where Herbert Hoover was born.

 It was all set up nicely and safely with tables spread out outside and almost everyone wearing masks. I painted a pumpkin with ghosts and one that was supposed to look like Nemo. Coadster did a white pumpkin with the "Scream" face on it. It was very appropriate for 2020. She also painted one blue with moons and stars and clouds on it. I think they all came out very well.

 I spent most of the rest of the day taking care of chores that I should have been doing the last couple of days, and then John and I walked to Shakespeare's for dinner and a beer out on their patio. It all feels so urgent now, that we know these could be the very last warm days.

I know there are good things about Winter too, but right now...Right now, I prefer to crunch leaves and paint pumpkins and appreciate this season.

As always, don't forget to vote!

Some Paintings Smell of Joy and Sweat

Damn it, kids! I suck at writing in my blog lately. One of these days, I really hope to get my $hit together and write a few times a week. Until then,you can count on getting these apologies and excuses, when I actually do write. Today, I'll just give you a quick recap of all of the fascinating things in my life the last few weeks.

I started working on the puzzle that John gave me for my birthday. I am an obsessor, so  I just had to work on that stupid thing instead of doing almost anything else. Who needs to eat or sleep or clean? I still haven't finished it, but I'm close, and now all that's left are the mud and dirt parts, and it's kind of boring.

I also took a vacation day to vote this week. It felt good to actually do something about our snake oil salesman in chief. I hope it works. Fingers crossed, and legs and eyes, and whatever else I can find to cross.

Let's see...Gus is getting bigger. He's still the sweetest boy, and he still drives the older cats crazy. We sure got lucky with this little lion cub.

I've been pretty migrainey the last couple of weeks, and that makes me stoooopid. Since I couldn't do much else, I decided to hang out on the back porch and draw and paint a couple of days ago. I'm trying to do simple abstract figure drawings. I'm pretty lame at it. If I ever get rich, I want to take a couple of art courses at the community college. For right now, I'll  just have to mess around and play, and do a LOT of erasing.

Ive been using water color paper to make cards. I'm not much of a buying cards kind of person. They seem expensive, and then what do you do with them? But I do love cards that people make for me. Those you can frame or stick on your refrigerator with a magnet. You all know how much I love refrigerator magnets...

 We're getting near the end of gardening season. The Dahlias, Marigolds, Pot Marigolds, Lavender, Zinnia's, Snap Dragons, and Amish Cockscomb are still putting on shows, but everything else is starting to get all rusty and brown. I did just buy some garlic and some tulip bulbs, so I can get those planted for Spring. That should be here before we know it, right?

So, Have a great weekend you all. Make sure to play outside as much as possible, eat good food, wear your mask, and vote. We can all work for change for the better.