Winterizing

I'm just now adjusting to the time change. I intensely dislike the fact that by the time I get home at 5:30, it's already dark. It's ridiculous. It's not like I live in Alaska. I'd like some daylight up until at least 6:30.

But now, after weeks, I'm getting used to this dismal new world in which I (and I supposed everyone else in my time zone) have been doomed to exist until Spring.

Alas, fires in the fireplace and hot chocolate can brighten my day, but they cannot solve my new problem. My first cold of the season.

For me, the first symptom is a low-grade fever. It wouldn't be so bad if it were just that, but fevers make me crazy. I giggle and say strange things. It's similar to sleep deprivation where all your brain's higher functioning starts to wind down. At this very moment, I could be typing badly written sentences and missspellled words and I wouldn't even know.

I'm just getting used to winter, but maybe it's impossible to just accept part of the bad in something. Maybe I can't start loving the terrible weather that keeps me huddled in my cozy house without also loving cold and flu season...?

And on that note, I'm going to put myself to bed.

Marxism

Click on my favorite Marx brother for a quotation.

Twismuss

Twismuss time is here!

I refuse to decorate or listen to Christmas music until December 1st. Not late October when the stores start assaulting you with premature Holiday merriment. Not the day after Thanksgiving when most people feel licensed to buy a tree and toss on a Christmas sweater.

My Christmas season runs from December 1st through January 6th, also known as Olde Christmas. I do this from personal preference. I'm an old fashioned girl and I like the idea of preserving traditions. But I probably also follow that schedule because I'm Moravian and at my parents' house we display a lit Moravian star on our porch for that same period of time.

And so when the 1st of December hits, I can buy a tree, wrap my work computer in ribbon and begin listening to Christmas carols. I start later than most people, but I get to enjoy it through the first week of January after most trees have been tossed to the curb and the unwanted gifts have been returned.

So go ahead, start your Christmas season in August. Get sick of it weeks before December 25th. I don't care. I get New Christmas and Olde Christmas. So there.

Insulted

Pandora.com just had the audacity to assault my ears with Tori Amos. This was within my first 15 minutes of ever using Pandora. "Why, why?!" I said to myself as she whined through my speakers.
I suppose it's because Pandora thinks that someone who listens to Sam Phillips (the first artist I told it I liked) would also like Tori Amos.
Pandora, you are wrong. And 2 am is especially not the time to try my patience with the train wreck that is that woman.
Sam Phillips is charming and soothing. I can see how a computer might confuse that for screeching and emo. So I will forgive you, Pandora.

Mommy's Treats

When my ferrets hear a bag crinkle, they think it's their treat bag. It's the one sound that can bring all of them running. The problem is, many human snacks also come in bags that make nice crinkling sounds.

Louis and Bella are particularly devoted to people food. Bella will relentlessly attack the futon if she finds out there's food on it and Louis just likes to steal anything that might be edible. Louis has these two cute little fangs that hang way down out of his mouth. Because one is slightly longer than the other, he looks like a snaggletoothed little vampire. As I've mentioned before, he's my favorite ferret. He's also a little bit special.

All of these things came together tonight as I found myself scruffing him and trying to remove his teeth from the corner of my bag of cheese puffs. Once he locks onto something, you usually have to pry his jaws open to get it back. There is now a half inch tear in the bottom of my bag.

Those are mommy's treats, Louis. Mommy's treats.

Like a Twisted Version of Charlotte's Web...

Click on the chick for my favorite fact of the day:

The Red Ferret

I am a multi-tasker. I take great pride in this. Apparently, it's very common for women to not only indulge in multi-tasking, but thrive upon it. I often monitor my ferrets' out of cage time while watching a video online, playing a game on Pogo.com and taking an online survey. I get bored doing just one thing at the time.

My ferrets have trained me well for future motherhood. Multi-tasking is a must with ferrets and kids since you have to watch everything going on around you while heading off potential disasters. I probably won't be able to let my kids just run around while I indulge in internet time, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Another good mothering skill I've picked up is calm in the face of crisis.

This weekend we had a couple of college friends staying with us. I'd promised to apply eye makeup to one of them before she went out for the evening and so I left my boyfriend, Will*, with the ferrets while I played makeup artist. I was sitting in my roommate's room swiping eye shadow onto my friend Susan when I heard Will call me.
"Honey?" he said.
"Yes, sweety?" I replied, finishing up the eye shadow.
"Fox turned over the punch." Fox is our number one son. I mean ferret. He has a tendency to climb onto the furniture and, in this case, turned over a glass of red kool-aid. "Can you come get him?" Will continued.
"In a minute." I moved on to lining Susan's widening eyes as we listened to the details of the incident.
"There's punch all over the futon and he's red. Can you come here?"
"Scruff him with one hand and clean up with the other." This is what I would have done if I had been in there. 'Scruffing' ferrets, or holding them by the loose skin on the back of their neck, is a safe way to calm them down and immobilize them temporarily.
"I can't, he's going crazy and the rest of them are trying to drink punch off the futon cushion," Will's voice informed me from across the hallway.
I sighed. "He's obviously not a mother," I told the three girls sitting with me.

They laughed and I realized that what I had said was very true. I realized that even though none of us are mothers yet, or plan to be any time soon, we all pride ourselves on our womanly common sense and ability to take control of a situation. The two friends we had visiting are both teachers and one of them said, "Yeah, a mother or a teacher would have that cleaned up in no time." We laughed again, sure in our capability and proud of the natural wiring that makes us tough in messy situations and calm in the face of crisis.

I finished Susan's makeup and went across the hall to mop up the punch and give Fox a bath in the kitchen sink.


*All human names have been changed.

Camel Crickets and Ferret Sales Continued

Camel crickets are not the only danger I face (even though we have found 2 or 3 more since I last updated). There is another danger out there far more...dangerous.

The dreaded ferret sale.

I was buying ferret food the other day and, naturally, I stopped by the ferrets on my way to the food aisle. There was a pile of sleeping fur in there. Ferrets sleep in the most uncomfortable looking positions. They're long enough to lie with their stomach up, twisting around midway so that their head is chin down. If you have more than one they curl up together and make it difficult to figure out what tail belongs to what animal, not to mention all those legs.

In this cage, there were eight. That's a lot for such a small space and as I leaned back I saw the price tag. Ferrets in this area range from about $110-$130. The price tag on this cage said: Ferrets $59.99. My first thought was that I must not tell my boyfriend. He would immediately demand that we buy several at such a good price. Not that I wasn't tempted myself. In fact, I counted and did some quick math to see how much it would cost to buy them all. Even as I did it, I knew I was slipping into insanity.

I grabbed the industrial sized bag of food and headed for the counter. "So, I see your ferrets are on sale," I said casually to the guy at the counter. "Yeah, and they all have great personalities--" he began. I waved my hand and cut him off. "I have 6. Don't need more," here I patted the huge bag of ferret chow. "Why are they on sale?" Turns out they had received ferrets from two other stores that were closing or undergoing work and they were, very simply, overstocked on ferrets.

I have resisted admirably. Even though I know there are adorable ferrets just down the road to be had at half price; a white one with red eyes and a dark little female with an itchy chin and a chubby boy with brown and grey fur; even though I know all this, I haven't emptied my bank account to buy them and the required accessories.

Because not only do I not have any more space to add cages in the ferret room, I have several other pets. I have 3 fish tanks, a chinchilla and a hermit crab. Any time a free animal or a cheap ferret comes my way, I have a hard time resisting. But I have. And I continue to.

Does this mean I'm getting better?

Camel Crickets and Ferret Sales

Since before I moved into my house this spring, I've known it was popular with camel crickets. Unfortunately, despite their harmless ways, they are some of my least favorite bugs. I figured that once I moved in and cleaned up a little, they would go away. They like things to be damp and dark, two things my house is not. But even now, months later, I still find at least one cricket a month. Often they're lurking under the bottom edge of my kitchen cabinets or hopping around in my living room. On several distressing occasions I've found them in my bedroom.

Last night I trapped one under a plastic cup in my kitchen. I keep some cups under the sink for such times. If I find them at night, I usually let them sit under the cup overnight and think about what they've done since it's too cold and dark to go out on the patio and release them. So I left Mr. Leggy under his punishment dome and hopped on the exercise bike in my living room. After pedalling for ten minutes or so I saw a cricket come creeping out from behind the love seat. This is the scene that followed:

I jumped up, screaming, "Mama!" and then, "This is highly unacceptable!"

I ran to the kitchen and checked to make sure Mr. Leggy hadn't escaped. Sure enough, he was still in time-out.

I grabbed yet another bug cup from under the sink (Yes, I have several. Is that weird?) and proceeded to go after Mr. Bigger and Leggier.

Knowing that these monsters jump TOWARD you when startled, I snuck up behind him and started slamming the cup down. It took several tries and in the process I severed one of his large hind legs.

I made an executive decision and smashed him to death with the cup. If he had just been cooperative like so many others, I would have kept him in solitary overnight and then freed him the next day, but no.

Tracy Chevalier

I finished Tracy Chevalier's Falling Angels this week. I knew I would like the book since I loved her Burning Bright, which includes the bizarre poet William Blake among its characters. Falling Angels, like Burning Bright, centers around real places and events while following the lives of its fictional main characters. The two girls at the heart of the story, Maude and Lavinia, meet for the first time in a cemetery while participating in public mourning for the death of Queen Victoria.

During the course of the story, Maude and Lavinia find themselves living in a rapidly changing world. Lavinia clings to the traditions that flourished under Victoria while Maude must reconcile her ideas of family and her place in the world with the increasingly outrageous behavior of her suffragette mother. All of the important people in the girls' lives have a chance to speak for themselves and add their own information to the appearance and truth of the other characters. Lavinia's melodramatic views remind me of myself when I was younger, but her sister Ivy May, a silent figure in the background of the story, may stick with me longer.

I tend to finish books in clusters and I also finished reading Blood and Gold by Anne Rice this week. Longitude will probably be polished off along with some leftover birthday cake tonight.

All Bow to Hulu

I don't watch TV. I don't have cable and my TV doesn't pick up local stations, so the giant screen in the living room is only for watching DVDs and occasionally playing video games. There are a few shows I'd like to keep up with but I can't make them appear on the magic screen.

Enter Hulu.com. It started out as a casual thing. I somehow got sucked into Grey's Anatomy last year and I'd go to Hulu to watch the new episode each week. But on those lonely nights in the ferret room or sitting on my bed with nothing else to do, I found I wanted to watch more than just the latest episode of GA.

I moved on to Glee, Flash Forward, and Modern Family. Before I knew it I was devouring all available episodes of Cougar Town, Saturday Night Live and Community. Conversations with my boyfriend began to center around shows he'd never watched and had no desire to, but which I gleefully quoted and described to him as his eyes glazed over.

I seem to have run out of shows for the time being and will probably soon find myself drifting back to Pogo.com (which is another story entirely) to fill my internet hours. Hulu only has the 5 or so most recent episodes at the time for most shows and now that I've watched all of them I find myself having to wait patiently for the next installment. One episode per week. It's just like I'm watching TV again. But I can't play Battle Phlinx on my TV...

The Only One Laughing

I saw a musical at my Alma Mater today. It was a show with a lot of references to movies and other shows. There were also several theatre jokes during which I found myself to be the only person in my entire section laughing. And I laughed loud.

As a graduate of the Theatre Department, I seemed far more amused than most of the audience during lines like, "You're INDICATING!" I was sitting next to my mother and started jabbing her arm and shrieking at that point. During intermission I found myself compelled to bring it up again and explain to her what that meant. I impressed upon her the idea that an accusation of indication is one of the biggest insults in theatre.

My favorite thing about the play was the similarity to The Bad Seed. The Bad Seed is a movie from 1956 about a murderous young girl. It was originally a play and was made into a movie again in the 80s, but the 1956 production is the best. It's so satisfyingly dark and compelling.

Halloween

There's nothing quite like the joy of handing out candy to children. You don't even have to be nice to them, they just come right up to your door to be frightened.

I noticed that the fifteen or so trick-or-treaters we got didn't say "Trick or Treat!" Some of them were too young to get the whole concept yet and the rest of them just stood there and looked at me until I handed out the candy. In my day we said "Trick or Treat," gosh darn it.

I did have a young girl tell me she liked my outfit. I could see in her eyes that she couldn't wait until she too was old enough to wear lingerie in public. That's what I decided on to go with my fangs, by the way. Lingerie.

Mad About You

I love this show. They are the cutest couple on earth. I want to steal their dog, Murray. I'm sure that dog is dead by now, though. Mad About You started airing in 1992, so he's got to be either dead or decrepit. He looks like a giant corgi. I love corgis.

When I was home-schooling and could sleep all day if I wanted to, I always stayed up late to watch the two episodes they showed on Lifetime in the middle of the night. That and Designing Women are the only reason I have EVER watched Lifetime. Their whiny made for TV movies are the bane of my existence

I always wanted to have a relationship just like Paul and Jamie's. Only the early years. Before they had that kid. They're best friends and have adorable fights about absolutely nothing. It's the only show I've ever watched that makes marriage look wonderful. In most shows marriages range from tragically laughable to disastrous. But the Buchmans are their own self-sufficient little world. They have friends and jobs but are happiest to be sitting at home playing a board game with their dog.

They probably seem so happy because they're an incredibly witty sitcom couple, but you know, I can dream.

Vamptastic

Plastic fangs it is...

Now what do I wear with them?

Survival of the Fittest

The population of this planet is getting out of hand. The Illuminati are falling down on the job. They're supposed to plot and carry out mass acts of population control. I am not impressed by their accomplishments. I think they could use my advice.

It's time for me to do my humble part. I hereby announce my intention to reinstate Survival of the Fittest. "I thought survival of the fittest was part of nature. When did it stop?" you may ask. Let's face it, people in developed nations these days have to try pretty hard to not survive. If you're American then you may want to look at statistics regarding what kills people like you. Chances are you will eat, drink or smoke yourself to death. That is if you don't get killed while speeding with no seat belt on or get mauled to death by the ferocious guard dog you trained to protect your big screen TV. In other words, people seem to be actively avoiding dying of old age.

The first step in my plan is to remove that seemingly innocuous recorded message you get when you call any doctor's office these days. It's the first thing you hear upon dialing to schedule your flu shot or yearly checkup.
"If this is a life-threatening emergency, please hang up and dial 911."
Really? You mean if I'm vomiting blood I shouldn't call my chiropractor for advice on what to do? This recorded message may seem to be offering helpful information, but really it's keeping stupid people alive.

I have to call at least one doctor's office every day at work. I usually call to make sure they have the correct insurance information or that the amount on the bill is correct. And every time I hear that same message. It's always a different woman, but she always sounds like she would completely understand if you chose to call your radiologist instead of 911 when having a heart attack. She's simply trying to tell you that you may want to rethink that plan.

I'm sorry (I'm really not sorry, I'm just saying that), but if you're too dumb to figure that one out, please send me your name and address so I can forward it to the Illuminati. They have quotas to meet, you know.

Ferrets are like toddlers

I share my home with 6 ferrets.

I'll let that sink in for a while.

Processed that yet? Ok, as I was saying, I have 6 ferrets in one of the bedrooms of my house. 3 boys and 3 girls. I got the first ferret around 5 years ago and have been adding them steadily ever since. Their names are: Fox, Claudia, Louis, Scully, Bella and Skeeter. They need their own room because they live in 3 separate cages and that takes up some serious space. There's a boy and a girl in each cage. The question people always ask here is whether or not I breed them. NO. They are all fixed, thank the good Lord. They also need their own room because of the smell. Ferrets produce oils that make them quite odoriferous. It takes constant vigilance to keep their bedding and cages clean and as smell-free as possible.

Next to their smell, the most well-known ferret trait is curiosity. They explore, they romp, they steal. Sometimes all at once. Ferrets are perhaps the best animals to train you for parenthood. Just like a young child, they have to be watched CONSTANTLY. You can't leave them unattended for more than 30 seconds unless you crave disaster. They're liable to eat something they shouldn't or climb a piece of furniture and fall off. They knock over glasses and carry off any item that strikes their fancy and is small enough to drag. You mustn't put any behavior past them, both for their own good and that of your belongings. In the course of my ferret owning my boyfriend and I have saved them from leaping from the suicidal height of a recliner back, disappearing into a sub woofer, tearing out a nail after getting it caught in a towel, drinking an entire glass of Mountain Dew, and escaping the house entirely.

But the ferret trait with which I'm most concerned today (and one they also share with toddlers) is their reluctance to be potty-trained. I moved into my house in May of this year and the ferrets have occupied their bedroom here since then. Ferrets are like many small animals in that they instinctively find a corner when it's time to relieve themselves. Knowing this, I put something in each corner of the room but the one I wanted them to use. I used cages and dog beds to funnel them towards the corner opposite the door where I put one of those sheets of plastic you keep under the wheels of your desk chair. They got the idea pretty quickly and started doing most of their business either there or in their cages. I let them out of their cages for about 3 hours a day to get their wiggles out. I play with them or use my laptop until it's time to put them up again. Once the cages are clean and the ferrets are bedded down in them I wipe off the plastic latrine area with paper towels and it's all set for the next day. When it gets gross, all I have to do is Windex it.

But ferrets and children, no matter how much you love and encourage them, do not always want to go potty in the right place. For three nights running, Claudia decided that the stretch of carpet between her cage and Bella and Skeeter's was as good a place as any. After the first time I explained that it was not a potty place and after cleaning the carpet, put a big plush fish in the spot to convince her. She went next to the fish after that. But ferrets, much like Fate (and like toddlers; do we see a theme here?) are fickle and she stopped after the third night.

Then, tonight as I was sitting on the futon with my trusty laptop, I watched Louis opt for the corner right by the door. Louis is my favorite. I make no secret of this fact. But Louis is also a bit "special" and it's hard to be upset with him. It's not like there was much I could do anyway. You have about as much chance of stopping the impending carpet soiling from happening as you do of getting to your cat and moving her onto the linoleum in time to save the Persian rug she's dry-heaving over.

My favorite is when I start cleaning and returning ferrets to their cages and notice that someone left me a present behind the futon. The very futon on which I've been sitting for a couple of hours. It's as if they're saying, "if you'd been watching us more closely, this never would have happened..."

Halloween Costume 2009

Halloween is mere days away and I have no costume plans. This is saddening since it's my favorite holiday. For as long as I can remember, I have waited each year for that day to roll around. I was almost born on Halloween, so maybe that's it. Or maybe it's the fact that since birth my mother has instilled in me the thrilling idea that it's a night for dressing up and wandering the neighborhood in search of candy and spine-chilling events.
Granted, it's not surprising that I haven't planned a costume yet. I think I ran out of my best ideas sometime in middle school. That's around the same time I stopped trick-or-treating, but the costume problem had nothing to do with that. I stopped because I knew I had grown out of it. Trick-or-treating is for kids. That's what makes it so special. It's one of the few privileges the under 13 set really gets.
My most original costume, as I've told a few people lately when the topic came up, was the year I was a picnic table. I got the design from a magazine. My dad took pieces of wood and made a frame for my shoulders. Then we draped a vinyl tablecloth over it with a hole cut out for my head. I took items from my extensive plastic food collection and glued them to the front. Voila. Except the people opening the door at several houses had no idea what I was. They were at a complete loss. It got so bad that I finally started saying, "Trick or treat. I'm a picnic table." whenever people answered the door.
Maybe I'll just break out the plastic fangs again this year. I made a modest investment back in middle school into two individual fangs that I molded to my teeth for a vampire costume. Ever since then, I've been a vampire for Halloween more often than not. I even pop them in just to startle people or when I need a pick-me-up. What can I say, it makes me feel good to have fangs.
This year I was hoping to talk the boyfriend into being Mulder and Scully from the X-Files, but I don't think that's going to work out. I've already been a witch, a pirate and a cat burglar and I don't really feel like repeating those this year.
Plastic fangs, here I come.