Feline Trifecta

Here they are: all three kitties in one room not killing each other.

Sadly, the collegiality is short-lived. If Cosby isn't picking fights with the other two, PK and Belita fight with each other while Cosby is confined. Sigh, three is more work than two.


There is one thing they all agree on (besides chorusing to be fed): the stretchy gummy hand one of the kids left behind makes a great cat toy.






We hung it on the utility room doorknob for all to enjoy. Cosby would bat it around, then grab the hand in his mouth and back up as far as he could stretch it (about 6 feet into the dining room). Then he would gnaw on it until his grip loosened and it would snap back to the door with a resounding whack.


After a few entertaining nights of this, he gnawed the hand off. Mike tied a Beanie Baby to the stretchy stump and Cosby gnawed that off, too. Now he'll bat at the remaining four-inch stump, but it's not as fun. Which means a trip to the Evil Store (WalMart) to restock.

Texplanations

Last Saturday, the Ward toiled again at Peggy's house. The fellows were outside in the rain scraping paint and the women/youth were inside painting. I ended up pulling ceiling duty. I pooped out by the time they got to the fourth room, so I only did a little stripe of paint in there.

We ended up taking a young guy and his ladder home. He grew up in the area and is headed to grad school and eventually for work on a Navy submarine. I kidded him about getting as far away from the RGV as possible. He laughed, but didn't confirm or deny.

So far, he offered the best explanation/description of this part of the world: The RGV is not Mexico, but it's barely Texas. And that the RGV is what Mexico would look like if the U.S. invaded and solved all its problems.

To which I would add, this is what Reynosa would be like if it had better shopping, slightly better drivers and four Applebees.

Since Mike and I carpool to work most days, we've seen a lot of the RGV's bad drivers on their way to work. My biggest peeve is the kamikaze/ill advised left turn, especially when a driver noses out of the Stripes/Vallero parking lot through stopped traffic on one side of the road to get to the median to complete the turn. My next biggest peeve would be median drivers. Every time I want to make a left turn, I have to check for drivers barreling down the median at 45 mph before I can safely enter to make a turn.

Mike's biggest peeve: the aggressive, high speed lane changes made by folks who, for all their efforts to get ahead of cars going the speed limit, end up waiting at the same stoplight with everyone they passed.

Those assholes don't peeve me as much as scare me. I'm actually more scared of drivers here than of Los Angeles drivers, LA freeway shootings, street racing, overpass rock droppers and some unpredictable Asian drivers notwithstanding.

The Eyes Have It

It being pinkeye. Blech!

I woke up Monday morning with a left eye that looked like it had been on a three-day bender. I applied Visine last night with no discernible effect, so this morning I started calling doctors. Seven doctors, in fact, before finding one whose number wasn't disconnected, who wasn't a surgical specialist, who wasn't out of town, who wasn't already booked solid for weeks.

I've been feelin' poorly the last couple of days, too, so the Dr. wrote me a note to stay home from work until Monday. I don't know if I'll be out that long, but it's nice to have the option. Given all the things I need to do this week (step kids arrive next Tuesday), it's not a bad time to be out. I dragged a couple of thick policy manuals home with me so perhaps we can call this respite "working from home."

I don't know where or when I got exposed to the dreaded pinkeye. Church, maybe? It's the largest concentration of people I'm ever around at once. Dr. said it can take up to a week to show up after being exposed.

I just hope I won't be felling others at the office.

Wish We'd Known Sooner

Mike and I had one of those NPR driveway moments tonight--you know, when you get home but are too engrossed in the story to turn off the radio?

This was maybe a two-minute piece on adding cats to your household. The vet/narrator explained that if you want a mainly trouble-free household, just have one cat.

If you have two cats, be prepared that they might not always get along, even if they're reared together from kittenhood.

And if you have three cats, the vet said to be prepared for increased "inappropriate elimination" and/or urine spraying.

Check.

Wish we'd known that three weeks ago.

Alas, Poor Uric

We've discovered two kitty accident sites in the past week--one on Saturday when I found ancient turds and recent urine in the spare room closet and and a pee puddle on the seat of Mike's TV watching bean bag thingy from his bachelor days.

We aren't sure which cat is responsible for the latter, which makes evasive/corrective action that much more difficult. Belita has peed outside the box before. So has PK, but his accidents seem to be directly related to the cleanliness of the litter box.

PK never had litter box misses until we moved here, which makes Belita look like the likeliest culprit for last night's unpleasant discovery. And if she's pissed (pun intended) about having a new sibling, this could get increasingly destructive.

We haven't let the other kitties mingle much with Cosby. These latest discoveries will likely draw out the introduction process even more. Was hoping we would be able to leave them alone together by the time we leave on vacation in July, but I'm not sure where we'll be by then. Cosby can be pretty destructive to papers and he keeps overturning his water dish. Sigh.

Star Struck

After an impromptu status meeting with the Provost this afternoon, my supervisor and I waited for the elevator to whisk us back to ground level.

When the doors slid open to admit us, I did a double take. There stood the president of UTPA. My supervisor greeted her and introduced me and explained I was the person keeping the time and effort process on track (with a 94% return rate as of this afternoon, thank you very much!)

The president smiled and said "Oh, I've heard about you!" My supervisor gushed about how well I've handled things so far, so I assume the president has heard good things.

I got all star struck at the notion that the university president had heard about little old me. My supervisor said my work would have visibility; I just didn't know it was that visible.

Hoping this means the outstanding 6% of the certifications will come back by tomorrow afternoon.

Buggin'

Spring has sprung in the RGV and this means the insects are in the house. Literally.

I've found silverfish in the cats' water dish, ants in both bathrooms, winged ants which stormed the living room en masse after a rain shower, fruit flies hovering around the to-compost pile and the dreaded roaches, most recently discovered in our closet. Ugh.

We came back from an overnight to Corpus Christi and found three dead roaches in the living room and kitchen. This shreds my theory that if I don't SEE roaches, they aren't really there. At least I have a good set of hunting cats to keep the indoor population out of sight/out of mind.

Spring means a lot of creepy crawlies outdoors, too. Like the massive caterpillar chowing on our lemon tree, an orb-weaving spider that looks like a spiky black crustacean. And the ants. I don't go looking for them, but lordy, do they ever find me.

A few weeks ago, I was trimming some brush along the back fence when I felt the first sting. I look down and my shoes, socks and cropped yoga pant legs are covered with ants. I started stomp dancing around to dislodge them but got a few more bites before the end of the dance-off.

Later, I unwittingly stepped on another nest while watering and ended up with six bites on my left leg and two on my right. Ant bites itch and eventually blister, turn a vivid scarlet on my gringa skin and take upwards of three weeks to heal. Oh, and they look ever so attractive when I wear a skirt, too.

So I'm spraying up before I leave the house every day and wishing there was something that effectively repelled the little blood-vacs that smells less chemical. Sigh.

Settling In, So To Speak

Things have calmed down a bit at the office. We're slaying errors, having meetings and generally getting a handle on how the process will work for spring semester (which just ended and needs certifying).

Our move to the third floor is on hold. Most of the furniture is out of storage and arranged in the new space, but there's no wall/door in the are where I am likely to sit; until we can secure the area, it doesn't make sense to move. And my supervisor said if we move before the wall is built, they won't do it.

Meanwhile, I'm getting used to campus practices and quirks. Like the relentless use of "ma'am" in the workplace. I don't know whether it's a Southern politeness thing, a deference to the gringas thing or both.

You know how you pick up expressions and speech patterns from friends? If I hear it constantly, how long before I start "ma'am-ing" people around me? Perhaps that will be around the same time I start answering people's questions in Spanglish.

None of the gringas in our office are fluent in Spanish. I've never said how much (or how little) Spanish I speak, so I'm not really included in the conversations the native speakers carry on. They go too fast for me to pick out more than a few words, pero since I hear them mixing Spanish and English I'm sure it's only a matter of time before I start doing the same--albeit con my pequeño vocabulary.

The other fun thing is trying to pronounce all the Spanish surnames. My tongue gets tied up over Guajardo; I want to say it right but I don't want to sound like I'm straining to enunciate, so I end up getting it mostly right if a little mumbly.

At least I don't mangle names as badly as the university's voice mail system. It flattens all the music out of Spanish names. Take Alicia Villareal. Properly said, it should come out like Ah-lee-cee-ah Vi-ya-rey-ahl. But the voice mail system asks me if I want to leave a message for A-li si-ah Vil-la-ree-al and puts the stress on all the wrong syllables.

I have fantasies of chiming into a conversation with impeccable Spanish, surprising my colleagues (and making them wonder how much I understood all along, although I'm fairly sure they don't say much about me. Then I remember that in Spanish, I have the linguistic prowess of a four-year-old and they'd have to be asking where I live, what my name is or where's the nearest toilet for my fantasy to play out as imagined.

Crew Shot

One of the worker bees took pictures at Saturday's service project. Homeowner Peggy is in the purple shirt kneeling on the front row of the big group shot. I won't identify anyone else to preserve the privacy of those described in unflattering terms in previous posts about my weird ward.

It's a toothsome little cottage. The bottom pic is the "before" shot; we scraped all the popcorn crap off the ceiling and found rich, dark hardwood under the cream colored paint.

_____________ Dominion

As a service project, the ward has decided to rehab my friend/VT partner Peggy's house; today was the kickoff.

The menfolk did yard work, cleared brush, trimmed trees and scraped paint off the front porch. Next week, they'll take down the listing brick facade. The women were inside on ladders wetting the ceiling and scraping that popcorn crap off the ceiling. (It was so easy, it got me psyched to scrape the popcorn crap off OUR ceilings!)

After the ceilings were done, I chipped at a corner of paint on the mantel and discovered the top layer peeled off rather easily. I scraped further and found a layer of wood grain contact paper, which also pulled off in sheets. Under that was a coat of mustard yellow paint, and below: the original 1920s hardwood.

At the same time, some other women were scraping the paint off the woodwork and hit hardwood, too. The RS pres & others got all excited and wanted to strip all the wood and leave it exposed. They'll have to scrape whether they paint the wood again or not, so why not rehab the wood to add value?

Restoring the woodwork went beyond the original scope of work the ward planned to pay for. The ceiling scrape revealed more areas that need new drywall, too, and that will cost more. The RS Pres also has designs on redoing the hardwood floors once the walls are done and the carpet's up. Scrape a couple of ceilings and we all turn into Ty Pennington.

The bishop walked into the house and overheard our Woodwork Fever and He. Freaked. Out. Went all Nazi/authoritarian on everyone: This is for The Bishop to decide! (along with Sister Peggy, he allowed). Additional work HAS to be approved by The Bishop!

The bishop actually told Peggy, the RS Pres and a handful of nearby women NOT TO TALK TO EACH OTHER while he dragged the contractor guy into the bedroom to discuss the additional work. When they emerged after sorting it out Man to Man, the bishop dragged the RS Pres off to sit in the cab of his truck for 15 minutes, I supposed to rein her in on the creeping scope of work.

Despite my bitching, there are some good-hearted folks in this ward. At our high point, there were 30 people working on the house and yard. But the sudden transformation of the bishop, from mild mannered to throwing his weight around as reigning ecclesiastical authority was nothing short of WEIRD. In fact, maybe I'll start calling it that: McAllen First Weird.