Heaven Must be Missing a Rug

The new rug is here.  And I love it.  It's neutral, looks antique, looks great with the couch and the other furniture, and is so soft that I'm pretty sure one touch could cure cancer or make angels cry.

Evidence of my attempt to make "carpet angels."

I may or may not have hugged the carpet.  I may or may not have also been covered with fuzz when I got up, but it was worth it.

Pooja was a little wary of the new addition, at first.

She got over it.

Naturally, of all the places in the living room she could sit, she chose my framing project.  She's a jerk like that.

As Jenny Komenda (who I am not shy about adoring) said in this post, the rug changes color in the light, and ranges from grey to cream to taupe to beige to gold.  It's a beautiful,beautifully soft, silky rug.

Now that it's here, I think I'm on the path to getting this living room in order!

Happy Monday, y'all!

Getting Up, Getting Out the Door

Lately, I've been having the hardest time getting out of bed and out the door on time.

Yesterday, my "leave the house" alarm went off while I was in the shower.  I've never showered so fast in my life.

Also, my "leave the house" alarm is the X-Files theme song.  It adds a real sense of urgency, like "put on your mascara faster, the aliens are coming!"  

(That song used to be my ring tone, but it used to scare me every time someone called, so I had to change it to something more innocuous.)

You know why it's so hard to get out of bed?  It's the darned cat's fault.  The alarm goes off, which signals her to activate snuggle/smother mode, which means she moves from her station at the foot of the bed and onto my neck/face/shoulder/hip.  I try to move, she adjusts.  That early in the morning, I'm powerless to overcome the comfort of a big, plushy cat purring away.

Anyway, I've been trying to aid my getting-out-the-door-within-20-minutes-of-on-time process by setting out my clothes the night before, having my breakfast and lunch items all grouped in the fridge, and gathering up all my work items (which are usually strewn about the house because I'm always working when I get home from work) and shoving them in my ginormous purse/laptop bag, which somehow always seems to weigh 20 lbs more in the morning than it does at the end of the day.

Consequently, my aforementioned ginormous purse/laptop bag always gets the following comments:

"Wow, that's a big purse!"
"I see you're moving in."
"Is that luggage?"

Everybody's a comedian.

What I try to explain is that it's usually got a laptop in it, which is why it's so large.  What I don't explain is that it's really just a structured bag of garbage and lipstick when there's no laptop in it.

I'm certain that anyone reading this post is asking him/herself, "What is the point of this post?"  The answer is, "absolutely none."

So what does everyone else do to get out the door on time?  Anyone?

Pooja vs. the Couch

I'm home today with the flu, doing little else but watching Bones, working my way through a pan of tuna casserole, and observing the cat demonstrate new ways she's found to make me insane.

  Since we moved to my new house, Pooja spent most of her time under my bed.  However, no longer allowed in my room after a three-day marathon of peeing on my bed, Pooja the Destroyer had to find another hiding place.

And she did.  Guess where?

Under the couch. 

That's right, Pooja has been squeezing herself through the 3" space under the couch.  However, in order for her to remain comfortably under there, she had to make some room.  My horrible cat ripped out the lining under the couch, exposing the wood frame and foam and springs. I couldn't find her anywhere else in the house, so I looked under the couch on a whim and found her curled up between the lining and the frame.

She is horrible.  But awfully cute.  And also horrible.



Captain Horrible on the back of the couch.



Cat Anxiety

Pooja vs. the treats

The only thing more high strung in my house than I am is Pooja the Emotionally Fragile Tuxedo Cat. 

I did a little reading and found that a lot of her behavioral issues are due to anxiety and stress.  Since I can't counsel her from God's word, I bought her some natural "calming" cat treats (read: Kitty Xanax).

She likes the treats.  A lot.  Mom was over and mistakenly left a bag of them out on the table overnight.  Pooja helped herself to all of them.

The treats seem to work. She hasn't lately tried to destroy the tub or peed on my pillow/laundry/duvet whenever someone comes over or I move a piece of furniture or I wear a dress she doesn't like or the sky is cloudy when she wanted it fair, etc.

I just have to remember to hide them in a drawer.

Pooja vs. the House: The Saga Continues

As I suspected she would, the cat has spent the last 24+ hours looking for another way to get under the house.  I caught her this morning in the process of trying to remove the front of the tub again.  Since she had successfully pushed it off, the adhesive sealing it to the frame of the tub was broken.  The resultant gap is large enough for my horrible feline to stick her paws under it and yank.  She was very nearly successful, and made pretty quick work of it.

I now have to keep the door to the bathroom shut whenever she is in the house (and endure the howling) until I can put my bathtub back together.

Any suggestions on how to reattach the stupid thing? 

Pooja is so upset about being denied access under the house, that I may have to give her (or myself) a sedative.

Pooja vs. the House: A Tale of Love and Betrayal

Pooja is a special cat.  "Special" in that she's special to me, but also that she has a special ability: finding new ways to make me crazy and add to the grey hairs I keep finding on my head. 

Since my house sits on land that is very moist for about half the year, it has numerous vents near the ground so that the house doesn't rot from underneath (maybe all houses do, but I never noticed/cared before). About three or four weeks ago, Pooja found that the wire mesh screen covering one of the vents was unsecured in one corner, and shimmied through the tiny opening.  She's since been hiding under the house about 18-20 hours a day.  I could understand; it's been hot, and it's nice and cool under there, cooler probably than in the house, so I let her do it until the day it proved to be a bad idea.

That day came today.

I made her come in the house this morning before I left for church, but when I got home a few hours later, she was nowhere to be found.  "Funny," I thought, "she must've escaped when I went out the front door."  I went on the back porch and yelled for her, and, as usual, she emerged from the portal to the underbelly of my house, and I picked her up and carried her inside.

Minutes later, she was again nowhere to be found.  "Wow," I said, out loud, to myself (because I'm now a crazy cat lady who writes blog posts about her cat and talks to herself), "It's like Pooja has found an alternate way in and out of the house."

And then it struck me.

The horror.

I bet she did find a way in and out of the house.


Too ashamed to look at the camera.