meeting kyle this thanksgiving, i got to meet my new nephew, kyle.
he was born in july, but lives roughly 1600 miles away.. so i braved the arctic (okay, 30-degree) temperatures to come to wisconsin to meet him and eat girl scout cookies.

kamille wouldn't let me wake him up (she's not even his mom! apparently she doesn't know about the just-keep-'em-alive rule when it comes to aunts), so i had to go take pictures of him and try my best to "accidentally" be loud. he slept through it, though. you can tell he's related.

this is kyle and me, during one of our few waking-in-common moments.
he wouldn't look at the camera for anything.

he has a very pretty little face. i love the nose part! and i really thought dooce was goofy when she said she wanted to eat her leta's cheeks, but i found it hard to keep my mouth off his.. despite all that drool. :)

he's a very smiley little fella.

it makes me pretty sad that i won't know kyle well.. i have just one other n-person (niece/nephew), and she and i are buds.. maybe kelli and her little family will come to florida sometime, though, and i can be the aunt that takes him to the ocean.. rather than the aunt who comes to wisconsin and sniffles a lot and complains that it's cold. let's hope. :)

  ¶ 4:39 PM 0 comments

  that stacey is such a pretty girl!   ¶ 4:27 AM 0 comments

  oceanwatch fish id, 11/21

a not-at-all accurate depiction of sunday's waters

me.

  ¶ 1:26 PM 0 comments

  robokitty

yes, those are little wires poking out of my poor little kitty's shaved little belly. awwww.
  ¶ 4:26 PM 0 comments

  kitten surgery update alright, so the kitten is fine. she mostly just sleeps, but she made it through fine. i rushed home after work.. "rushed" meaning it took me an hour (gotta love s. florida traffic).. to see her and hold her and all she'd do is cry. so i made her a nest under the coffee table with blankets and left her alone.

ed about fell on the floor laughing when he saw how disappointed i was. "i was thinking about this all day!" he said. he knew i would want to comfort her and think she'd want to be held and petted on and knew she would want nothing to do with me. he keeps saying i don't know cats and finds it amusing when i expect them to be more dear than they are. he's mostly right.

at bedtime, i couldn't leave her downstairs so i brought her into the bedroom and made a new nest for her behind the chair she likes to sleep under and try to dismantle. i put her in her little kitty bed and covered that with a fleece throw.. as i said goodnight, she sat there blinking at me from inside her coccoon.

this morning, i sat up in bed to see if she was still sleeping soundly or if she'd move her little kitty ass to the closet just to make me feel silly for making her a comfy bed to sleep in. she wasn't there.

where was she?

THE BED. by my feet. cuddled up in the blankets.
my baby got her groggy little ass to her wobbly little feet and made the huge leap onto the bed to sleep with us.

so like i said, ed is mostly right. but not all right.
  ¶ 7:25 PM 0 comments

  reintroducing my turtle you don't see or hear much of my turtle these days.. he's a damn good pet, though. unlike, say, my tortoise, he reacts when i walk in the room (by jumping off his basking log in terror). and unlike my kitten, he doesn't make me sneeze.

i got turty, as he was named, at the (depressing) swap shop in 2001 or so. i actually got two little turtles, but the other barely made it through the night. turty was tiny at first.. he even had his little egg tooth. hatchling! i kept him in a little tupperware container and he ate tiny itty bitty pellets. i remember how cute it was when he tried to bite. "oh, whatcha gonna do, TRIM MY NAILS?"

he used to be really cute. he used to sleep on me when i had him in wisconsin and the winters were cold. he's been in an airplane and driven with me cross-country. well, i did most of the driving. he just fiddled with the radio and pooped a lot.

five years (and many enclosures) later, the turtle has grown from quarter-size to bigger-than-my-hand size. his pinprick nostrils that i used to think were so cute are now cavernous, gaping holes. instead of tiny pellets, he eats the grown-up kind. or goldfish. he prefers the latter. and yeah, it's not so cute when he tries to bite now. luckily, that's not often. mostly he just hides.

see why they call them "turtlenecks"?

turty was definitely an impulse purchase, but never one i regretted. even though i'm pretty sure he'd eat me if he could.

  ¶ 1:25 AM 0 comments

  meet molly! update 11-15:

after a week with molly, i have to acknowledge some decidedly un-cute habits:

1. eating kleenex. used kleenex. out of the trash can. you can't turn your back on her if the bathroom door is open. how foul is that? the best part about this is now when she poops kleenex, eddie is going to get in trouble for letting her eat it!
2. stealing my bathing suit/shoes/underwear and running around with them, hoping i'll want them back enough to chase her.
3. jumping on people at the pet store.
4. jumping on people at the beach.
5. sniffing aforementioned people's dogs in places we don't like to talk about.
6. capping off a session of horseplay by.. humping me. repeatedly.
7. grabbing my hand off the gearshift in the car. but it's just because she wants to lay her head on it, so i guess that'll fly.

so while i am now really happy that i found a cat in a bush a few months ago rather than a dog, i am going to be sad to see molly go tomorrow.

11-10:

this is ed's parents' doggy, molly. we may as well call her ed's sister.

suki and lucy already know her, luckily. the poor kitten, however, is traumatized. she's spent her time since molly's arrival on sunday hiding in the bushes, in the neighbor's porch, and under the guest bed. she's warming up a little, though - she only hisses when the dog gets close now rather than just when the dog is in the same room.

unfortunately, molly is a mama's girl and is taking their week away pretty hard. we'll find her laying in the bed, alone, in the dark. i've tried to engage her by feeding her spaghetti & meatball (she only wanted the meatball) and playing fetch with wine bottle corks. poor girl.. she's still doing a lot of this:

depressed or not, i love having a dog in the house, even if it means my eyes are a little itchier than normal. :)  ¶ 9:27 PM 0 comments

  the kitten eating ice cream

as you can see, the kitten has grown so much since i found her. actually, i probably shouldn't really call her a kitten anymore. this no doubt has something to do with the fact that she eats twice as much as the grown-up cats. this is the funny part.. she'll eat ANYTHING that i'm eating, including many things no self-respecting cat would be seen eating, including:
ice cream (as you can see)
veggie lo mein and rice
string cheese (actually, she just kinda makes it wet and mushy and then gives it back. yeah, it's just as cute as it sounds.)
cereal (w/soymilk)
fake meatballs, burgers, corndogs, etc.
tofu
triscuits! (crunch, crunch, crunch)
and the funniest thing to date? a pepper from my homemade pasta sauce (which she also liked).

she got all excited the other morning when ed opened a starbucks frappuccino. pathetic! but hey, don't feel too bad for her - ed does give her sushi.

  ¶ 8:26 PM 0 comments

  saturday's chick dive i did my first beach dive off of hibiscus street in fort lauderdale on saturday. since it was free, i figured it would be too much of a good thing to actually have it be interesting (using the same reasoning as when i refuse to buy something fat-free as i'm sure it'll taste awful). when we were swimming out, i saw a shoe. "oh, i'd better remember that shoe since it'll probably be the only thing to add to my "species seen" list in my divelog." yes, i'm an optimist.

much to my surprise, though, it was actually a good time. the reefs were covered in sand and looked more like rocks made of concrete than anything else. i guess this is thanks to our lovely hurricanes this season. but there was some coral left exposed and the fish that live in the corals. i saw the biggest, prettiest parrotfish i've seen yet.. lots of little pretty aquarium-worthy fish.. lots of boxfish (hi, goofy looking).. and the dive's highlight? a HUGE, adorable porcupinefish! it had to have been two feet long. i saw its back half disappear behind a rock so followed it, finding it tucked under a ledge. i got down on the sand and saw it, looking at me with eyes worthy of a japanese cartoon puppy. i stayed until i realized i could only see one of my fellow two divers.

we were down for about 45 minutes before we swam back to shore, intending to go out again in a bit. unfortunately, the clouds covered the morning's perfect sky and the blue, flat ocean became green and rough. however, the day wasn't wasted -- a small group of divers and i sat around talking until 5 in the afternoon. pretty nice day. :)  ¶ 12:11 PM 0 comments

  no, those are not flowers i was driving to coconut creek the other day when i noticed this tree. for those of you in the area, it's by where coconut creek parkway and lyons meet, in a little industrial, under-construction area. for whatever reason, it seems that every bird in the area has chosen this tree out of thousands to roost in. it is truly a sight.

the tree is so full of white birds that it looks as if it's flowering. they were mainly ibises, but there were also egrets (including a fluffy-headed baby), herons, and one little anhinga sitting at the top of the tree. as i stood taking this picture, groups of four and five birds were constantly coming in for a landing, squabblng with one another for perching space. you know, as if there isn't another, empty tree 20 yards away.

i've driven by in the evening since i took this picture and it would appear this is a nightly phenomenon. sorry i couldn't get any better pictures -- it was dark and the birds were far away.
  ¶ 8:49 PM 0 comments

  alley cats, pound puppies this weekend i went to the broward county animal care & regulation department to volunteer for the first time. there's a place nearby named the wildlife care center that has more exotic animals i could tend to, but i recently fell for a pretty grey cat for adoption at pet supermarket and decided, since i really shouldn't get any more cats (one is enough when you're deathly allergic, i figure), i should do something to help.

after an early friday night, i woke up in the 8's on saturday to get to the shelter by 10. me being me, however, i got lost and didn't get there until 10:30. the coordinator said she was overrun with volunteers that day (one walking the dogs, one helping the public, one older one who hugged and kissed all the animals, and one playing on a computer is apparently what "overrun" means) and sent me on my way to do laundry. yes, laundry. "oh great," i thought. "i get to do busywork." but, as we all know, laundry isn't a full-time job, so after i put a load in, i took to wandering the shelter.


this is the sweet grey kitty that needs a home.
if interested, check out the pet supermarket at atlantic & federal.
dogs are entirely too depressing in a settling like that. first of all, they're barking madly. a shelter soundtrack is constant barking, which you can tune out unless you're walking right by the dog pens, in which case the big, scary dogs make you jump. second, the ones that aren't barking are sitting quietly, either facing a wall and looking depressed or looking at you, looking hopeful. usually the ones that are facing the walls will look back at you, hopefully, as you pass or you stop to say hi. that's the saddest.
you can't really reach the dogs in their pens anyway, so i didn't spend much time with the dogs. on top of that, i'm pretty allergic to them.

i did, however, spend three hours in the two cat rooms. one area is for adoptable cats and the other is for strays, which have to be held for five days before they are put up for adoption. the back area of the strays room seems to be reserved for cats that would eat a person if they got the chance. they all looked pretty much like this:



so, between checking on my washing/drying loads of towels, i cleaned out cat cages. probably more than they needed it (you know, if it poops once in its little litter box, it's probably not necessary to change it.. but after all, they are cats and much cleaner than your average person). i replaced tipped water dishes. changed newspaper. replaced spilled food. and when all that was done, i could indulge the cats and myself by petting them. as a former non-cat-person, i'd guess that the way these cats were behaving would shock a lot of people. i had a whole wall of cats rubbing against the sides of their cages, just dying to get some loving by that blonde thing with THE HANDS. and, reasoning that they would need to be socialized to humans, i held the little wild kittens quite a bit. now that shit was ridiculous.

picture something this small and this cute, hissing at you with all its might if you approached its cage:


rahr!

it's hard to not just take them home. much easier when you remember, however, that they're kittens and their furry little paws and big eyes will be snatched up just as soon as they go up for adoption. it's the older cats that need homes. sad, sad. there were some real sweethearts, too, including a couple of cats that spent their day nestled in their metal litter "box" (bowl) but would perk up if you opened the cage door. another tomcat, found on the street, was just about the worst-condition animal i've seen in my life.. both its ears had been attached and were a mix of scabs and open sores. poor thing was just horrible looking, but not that he realized it.. he rubbed that scabby head all over my hand, loving on me and loving the attention. i can sleep after meeting that little guy because someone told me one of the shelter workers is going to take him home and get him back to being healthy.

i want to go back soon, if only to not lose the tiny bit of progress i made with the little fluffies. see, the one still hisses when i go over to the cage, but she'll stop when i'm petting her. another kitten went from pissed off to indifferent when i was around, although his little sister still steps all over him when i walk by, hissing and staring at me with her cute little wide kitten eyes.

if anyone needs assistance in finding a new pet, come to me. i'm told i'm good at picking out animals, since that one i found in a bush doesn't count. and anyone, as long they don't have any pet lizards they would mind finding sans tail on the kitchen floor, can have a cat. that whole cats-are-snobs things becomes much less annoying the first time you have one in your lap, purring and pawing at the air like a kitten. or the first time you wake up with one curled up beside you and realize, "ohmygosh, it does like me. or at least it likes that i'm warm!" hey, good enough.

so yeah, if anyone (ahem, B.) needs help picking out a cat, i'm your girl. don't be too surprised if you get one with less than the optimal amount of limbs, however.

links:
http://www.petharbor.com
http://www.petfinder.org
http://www.broward.org/animal/

  ¶ 5:52 PM 0 comments