Just want to make note of a set of instructions for a humane mousetrap made from 2L soda bottles. You know, just in case.
I forgot to mention the mouse this morning. There was a mouse in the house this morning, and it was like this: I got up around 7:40 and went into the bathroom to take a shower. I noticed two blood smears on the floor, each about the length and width of my thumb. I asked Greg if he knew anything about them, but he didn’t, and I knew it wasn’t my blood, so that meant either the cats or (possibly) a mouse. I found Skeeter and examined him – it wasn’t his. I looked for Chalupa, but couldn’t find her. I was starting to get worried, when I noticed her camped out in front of a bin that’s pressed up against a wall in the dining room. So I pulled the bin away from the wall, et voila: a mouse. Chalupa looked ready to take care of it, but Skeeter hopped over her, and succeeded in chasing the mouse out of the dining room, through the living room briefly, through the hallway, and into our motherfucking bedroom. SHIT.
Where it proceeded to get under the bed, get under the nightstand, get behind the bookshelf, get back under the nightstand, and back under the bed. There was much moving of furniture. The cats thought they had it cornered behind the bookshelf, when it fled back under the nightstand, back under the bed, and back into the dining room. Chalupa figured out pretty quickly that it wasn’t in the bedroom, and came out to find it, but got spooked when Greg walked past, and she hid out in the living room. Skeeter was convinced it was still in the bedroom, because he is a sweetheart but a little slow. And by “a little” I really mean “a shit ton.”
We carried Skeeter into the dining room – because Chalupa is too skittish to be carried from room to room without immediately fleeing when you release her, anyway – and put him down in front of the mouse. (I seriously did not want to try and catch it, so I was thinking, like last time, Skeeter could catch it for me, and then I could take it outside. Plus for some stupid reason, considering the cats are more mouse-killer than I am, the mouse would let them get much, much closer to it than I could, before it would decide to run. Probably because I’m bigger and it saw me sooner? I don’t know.) Anyway, Skeeter looked at the mouse, and walked back to the bedroom, convinced it was still in there. I had to carry his punk ass back out and deposit him in the room with the mouse TWICE before he figured it out. At which point, he chased the mouse under the credenza I keep all my tea in. I think at this point Skeeter must have touched the mouse or something, and gotten bitten maybe? Because he let out this really pissed-sounding hiss and exploded out from under the credenza, sans mouse. The mouse ran out from under the credenza, and up the side of a hamper full of clothes I keep meaning to donate to the thrift store, but keep forgetting about. So, the mouse is now catching his breath on the side of the hamper, and Skeeter is looking at it like he doesn’t know what the fuck to do.
So *I* grabbed the mouse.
I told Greg’s boss about it at work today, and he informed me that, according to The Most Extreme, cats are like the number one animal killer (of other animals) on the planet. (I guess we’re not counting humans.) Not in this household, that’s for damn sure. Crumpled paper, now, that’s a different story.
The pea plants are finally producing peas! Not a ton – there are only four plants, after all. But enough that I can go out and pick a couple pods and have a snack and feel good about my growing skills. (Really, I just lucked up with these.) Yay! Here are four fat pods I picked today, and we added to a stir fry:
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One of the houses we pass on our way to work has pet chickens! I love it. It never occurred to me that you could keep pet chickens, but there you go. And they seem pretty good about staying in their yard and not wandering into the neighbor’s yard, or (more importantly) into the street. Here’s a picture I got while we were driving past. They have a white one, too, but it wasn’t visible that morning.
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I’ve been working on the Luna Moth Shawl, and I had to move it to circular needles to accomodate all the stitches. No new pictures, though. I’ve also been working on my Elfine socks. The pattern calls for size 1 needles, and I didn’t get gauge (too small), so I had to go up a size. I got gauge, but so far the sock seems like it might be just a wee bit too big? Not enough to be a problem, just a little looser than I’m used to. But I am loving this yarn and this pattern!
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The first picture is Skeeter – but the second one is a cat that seems to live on campus. I always see him in our parking lot. He usually disappears into the bushes – there must be a drain or something. He reminds me of Skeeter, so I think he’s pretty cute.
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And last but not least, Episode 8: Skeeter is afraid of a thunderstorm.
Vegan Knitting wanted to know what yarn I was using for the Luna Moth Shawl: Elann.com Callista, which is a rayon, cotton, and linen blend that I am really, really enjoying. I definitely plan on using this yarn again, maybe even several more times. I think it’s that nice.
Well, damn. I’ve misplaced my Nancy’s Knit-Knacks cards, so I don’t have the needle measuring tool, so I can’t figure out which are my size 1 dpns, so I can’t start the Elfines. (I *know* the pattern says to use the magic loop method, but that’s too fiddly for me, so I was going to try using dpns instead.)
I finally checked the yardage requirements for the Elfine socks against the yardage in my Black Stitch yarn, and I’ve got enough. So tonight after I got home, I wound up some West Indies yarn cakes. They are gorgeous. These are going to be some fucking awesome socks. I can’t wait.
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Greg cracked my shit up today, so I am recording two comments for my future reference (and future cracking up):
“we’ll just get the sledgehammer…”
“when I cook eggs, I take them right out of the carton and put them in the toaster”
Hubs, you are too funny!
I made prik khing over the weekend with Maesri brand prik khing paste, shiitake mushrooms, green beans, and fake shrimp. It turned out pretty well, although 1-I much prefer wet curries to dry curries (and prik khing is a dry one), and 2-after a couple bites, the fake shrimp was tasting too realistic for me.
I’ve decided to go back to vegetarianism. Well, it’s more that I haven’t been able to keep my non-cheating resolution, and vegans don’t eat cheese, even occasionally, so let’s call it what it is. I don’t really want to talk about it more than that, because I’m already plenty conflicted about it, and I’ve gotten a couple shitty reactions, and am anticipating more. Yay for high horses. Sigh. But there you go.
Stupid Animal Planet. Why did you just show me a sloth and her baby getting eaten by an anaconda. It was so sad. I hate you.
I’m having fun organizing my stash on Ravelry. No link to Ravely, because I appear to have hit some crazy ass combination of keys and now my keyboard is fucked up. So when I hit the apostrophe key, I get this {. I get apostrophes when I hit the hyphen key. Most of the symbols over the numbers (that you get by pressing shift and a number, right) are shifted one to the left. So for those parentheses, I just hit 8 and 9, instead of 9 and 10. I’m learning to get around it (see that apostrophe), but I still don’t know where most of the weird symbols are, and it’s frustrating. Like a question mark. Jesus. I wish I knew what I typed so I could undo it. Oh well.
