‘Allo, darlings. Welcome to my private boudoir. Here you may talk about anything you wish. You may talk about my beautiful eyes. Or my soft snow-white fur. Or my 1,000 thread count sheets. Oh, but enough about me, let’s talk about you.
Via Imgur.
84 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread”
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If I had those eyes to look into I would never leave the house. Of course it is supposed to be 118 degrees here in Phoenix tomorrow — so it’s not like I was going outside anyway.
I’m off to sort soda bottles at the local animal shelter. I hereby pledge not to bring home a cat, since I already have 5 I’ve plucked from my yard (and am feeding another 10 strays and ferals). My crazy cat lady credentials are bona fide.
I tip my hat to you, Stephanie. Crazy cat lady standards must be upheld.
Still working on my kitchen. With cabinets due around the very end of June, I’m on a tight deadline and it’s going to be 97 here today! At least it’s a dry heat.
I’m trying to have a yard sale, but not many lookers or buyers so far. I don’t want any of this stuff to come back in the house though, so the local donation center may be getting a large drop off later today…
How’d the sale go?
Dear S – I hear you. I have a friend who serves as my “Cat Police”. Unfortunately, while her “1 cat per house” rule works for her, she has been unable to enforce it at my house. My “as many cats as one has bedrooms” rule isn’t working either, as I have 4 cats and need to add one bedroom.
Meanwhile, friends asked me out for a boat ride on our lake this afternoon, and I am rushing to finish the laundry before I go.
My friend and her husband got a dog, then had a kid. Then they got another dog, then had another kid. She says she can’t get another dog because she doesn’t want any more kids. (The first dog passed away recently, and a week later they rescued another senior dog, so I guess replacement rates are okay.)
I am on my way to visit a friend for the weekend. This is my first trip someplace not within an hour’s travel of my mother’s house in eight years. She died peacefully in her sleep at the end of April after suffering with dementia for about 10 years.
Bless your heart, that was a tough row to hoe. My mother lived with me but she wasn’t suffering from dementia. It’s tough, no matter the individual circumstances. We don’t have kids so who knows what will happen to us! (no guarantee even if you do, I realize) My Mom died end of April 10 year ago, having lived with us for 12 years.
Today I’m off to an Old Timey Music festival along the Brandywine in PA. Gorgeous day for it here – high of 83 forecast, low humidity. Have fun today, everyone!
Murray, what kind of old timey music?
Five string banjoes and Appalachian
dulcimers? Harpsichords? Rebecs?
Love that stuff.
Banjos, fiddles, guitars mostly. Occasionally a squeezebox of some kind, harmonica. Dance tunes, a bit of singing. I’m home now, tho’ could’ve gladly stayed longer but tomorrow is a work in the yard day after breakfast OUT! Yay! I love having breakfast out once in a blue moon.
Having breakfast out is sometimes the best part
of taking a trip. No, seriously, I think the best
part of travel is having someone else responsible
for breakfast, making the bed, etc. Give me a
hotel/motel/b&b, whatever, over RVing anytime.
Having to do housework in an RV is NOT a vacation.
AMEN!?
Love me them fiddles and banjos.
?
Good for you on both tending to your Mother and now taking care of yourself. ?
Faye’s just said it! You have proven to be wonderful caregivers. Now you get to give that care back to yourself. I hope your trips are enjoyable!
You deserve a good time now, after all your care for your mother.
Take care and enjoy.
Thanks for everyone’s good wishes.
I am stressing about Father’s Day tomorrow. My father is older and not in perfect health and I find gift-buying very difficult. He doesn’t want clothes, has a restricted diet so no food things, never listens to music or reads books. Has some mobility problems and doesn’t really go out. Has no hobbies other than playing solitaire on his iPad. Sigh. I’m off to drive around to a few stores to look for some inspiration. Every birthday, Father’s Day, Christmas is like this……..
Would he perhaps appreciate small donations made to charity in his name/honor on special occasions? This site has many different “Gifts That Give More” and even provides a printable card showing which cause the money went to…
https://thehungersite.greatergood.com/store/
Nice suggestion, and welcome to the comments section! (sorry I was a bit slow approving this, but future comments will be auto-approved.)
Water dragon, are you a paddler?
Not entirely sure what you’re referring to by “paddler,” so probably not. LOL (My screen-name comes from my astrological affiliations; I’m a Pisces in the Western scheme–a water sign–and born in a Year of the Dragon according to assorted Asian traditions.)
I thought you might be a Dragon Boat paddler. The boats are like big canoes with a dragon’s head on the prow. There are about 10 paddlers on each side, port and starboard, and there’s a drummer in the bow, facing the paddlers, beating out the cadence.
New Hope PA and Lambertville NJ just had
dragon boat races on the Delaware. Fun.
We have the International Competition this Autumn down here at Lake Lanier.
I am seriously considering trucking up there to see the professionals bang a gong.
Kick the gong around????
My Mom was like this in her last years. My solution was services.
Stuff like haircuts, backrubs, special dvd tv stuff. Maybe there’s
something needs doing that you could do yourself or hire someone
to do. Trying to find a “thing” is frustrating and useless, since they
don’t want or need “stuff” any longer at this stage of their lives.
Don’t give yourself impossible tasks, you deserve better.
I wish your search for something was as easy as mine. My dad likes tiny electronics. The only issue is that he likes to take them apart to see how they work, especially solar powered things. So when I find something I know he’d like, I make sure I get two of them. One to use, and one to take apart.
I love it – he’s still got his intellectual curiosity, and you’ve figured out how to work with it (by buying everything in twos). Nicely done!
My dad is 93 and in quite good health and is mentally sharp. He has said doesn’t want or need more stuff at this point in his life. He is also about 400 miles away so maybe just a phone call.
And oh yes…this kitty is gorgeous and she knows it!
Me too. He said not to buy him stuff and he wants dinner at home. My brother is a pain in the ass when it comes to planning stuff. Neither of us really cooks, but he said maybe we could order something (though we did make breakfast for dinner for Mother’s Day). I figure I’ll make dessert if he wants to order dinner.
So any suggestions for yummy, easy-to-make desserts? I was thinking maybe apple crisp and ice cream. I might get him some obscure beer and wrap it in some creative fashion…
This is Coby the Cat! I follow her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cobythecat/?hl=en
I’ve purposely left my weekend wide open due to a head cold. I weeded the garden for a few hours last night and need to grocery shop today. Other than that, I’m couch-bound with tissue, DayQuil, and some good books. Rest is best and the last way I want to express my love for my dad and f-i-l is by showing up and spreading germs.
Monday we drive up Nawth to New Hampshire and Maine.
I am yearning for lobster. Mr. Wonderful is hoping for
moose. Not to eat, but to view. We may even venture
further into Canada, so we are bringing our passports along .
This is the first year we have not gone to Europe for a long
time. I think it’s high time we see more of the U S of A,
goldurnit!
If you miss Europe to much you can drive up to Québec, the old parts of Montreal and Québec city are are often said to remind people of Europe.
Any recommendations on things to do in Quebec City? I am thinking about that as my next vacation. I am obsessed with Loise Penny’s books, and one of them took place there. Wanted to go after reading all of her charming description!
I love just to walk in the Vieille ville (old town) here is a site that will give you some ideas, there’s lots of things to see and lots of food to try.
http://www.quebecregion.com/en/what-to-do/activities-attractions/must-see-attractions/
Merci, Gigi. That is a very good link.
Inspiring.
Great link– lovely photos. I want to stay at the ice hotel :). Definitely enough to do to fill a week or more!
I went to Canada with my HS senior class on our class trip. We stayed at the Chateau Frontenac – imagine, about 30 girls, two nuns – and there was a medical convention concurrent to our visit. Hilarity ensued, let me tell you – lovely young women and drunken doctors. Wheeee! Quel combinacion
I know, right? What would I give to walk around the village of Three Pines? Those books are SO GOOD.
Some of my favorite! I always get the audio versions from my local library. When I have a Three Pines mystery, I can almost look forward to chores.
Many moons ago we spent a lot of time in Quebec province,
wandering around and eating too much. It would be fun to
do this again. J’aime Canada.
Oh my, what a stunning cat!
Today it’s going to be 95 degrees and I get to spend most of the day standing in the sun judging a semi truck rodeo. Yes that is a thing. But then later I have a date for the first time in nine months!
Enjoy that date! Hope it lives up to
expectations. Have a good time, regardless.
My kind of rodeo! If no animals are harmed, it’s all good. 🙂
Hope the date went well.
I agree, a semi truck rodeo sounds cool – I haven’t seen one, but I’ve seen video of ‘combine square dancing’ (with those giant harvester machines) and it was pretty impressive – I imagine this is similar.
Raining cats and dogs here in Austria this evening. My unbelievably stressful and exam-packed week is over and both my students and I survived (even the one who didn’t pass her orals). I am trying to tidy away the aftermath and calculate final grades. On Thursday I leave with my junior class for language week — in Ireland!
Very nice – sounds like you earned it!
So glad you survived that stressful exam week! Even though I teach elementary, I know how relieved I am after 2 weeks of standardized state exams! ?Have great fun in Ireland!? (Btw, juniors in college or juniors in high school? From what you’ve written before I was assuming college level.)
I just discovered this. I have spent the last few minutes pretending to be a cat.
http://garyc.me/bring/
Well, I had a lot planned for this weekend but that got blown out of the water as Thurs night I came down with a bad case of stomach flu. Can’t remember the last time I was so sick so slept most of yesterday and today I’m just relaxing on the couch. Plus it’s supposed to be hot as h e double hockey sticks here for the rest of the weekend, barely noon and already mid-80s. Hope I feel better tomorrow as I got to do laundry and pack. Tuesday I head out to CO for my dad’s memorial service and family reunion. Time to go see if I can manage to eat something.
That’s so wonderful!do you have the app for Epicurious? I love their desserts – and other recipes, too. I’ve made their pecan pie bars about 4 times in the last 2 months.
That’s so wonderful!do you have the app for Epicurious? I love their desserts – and other recipes, too. I’ve made their pecan pie bars about 4 times in the last 2 months.
Allein, this was a reply to you but somehow ended up down here – sorry!
I’m using a recipe from The Kitchn but my peaches don’t want to cooperate (in part because the girl who rang me up put them at the bottom of the bag, under plastic containers of strawberries and rasperries, which cut/gouged three of the peaches). Hope it turns out okay in the end! If not, my mother has Carvel ice cream cupcakes, apparently.
Still don’t know what we’re doing for dinner, because my brother never answered my text last night.
Not in a very good mood right now.
Sorry, AJ, that’s brutal. I surely hope you’re on the mend, especially since you have to attend such an important event.
Hey, AJ, how are you feeling?
Went to the hardware store and bought paint to repaint the outside of the house, actual painting to be done sometime this summer. Also we just finished washing all the windows. Now for a bit of relaxing.
We’re having a totally lazy weekend. We did nearly end up with a second dog this week, but things worked out the way they were supposed to in the end. My husband saw a post from a friend of someone on his therapy dog group who needs to rehome her little black cocker spaniel — she’s young, single, has a busy career, and simply can’t give him as much time as she wants to — and he wanted to meet Sebastian and see if he and Melody would have fun together.
But not three hours later, he was down at the VA hospital talking to the lady in charge of recreational/rehab services, and she mentioned a vet with PTSD who had just lost his little dog and was looking for another small dog because it helps so much. Dogs are becoming very popular with folks with PTSD; as long as it’s a calm dog that isn’t excitable, it really works wonders for the vet. Yet more proof that dogs are wonderful!
So we invited everyone over to our house the other evening. The vet and his wife were delightful people, as was the young woman, who has done wonders with the pup she’d adopted a couple years ago after he was rescued from some kind of awful breeding operation, and he fell in love with Sebastian immediately, who’s a lovely calm, sweet puppy. His wife thought Sebastian was too big; she wanted another Yorkie, like the one they lost. But she agreed that they would “discuss” it. We both figured that if we had to put our money on one of them, we’d put it on him in a heartbeat — she didn’t stand a chance, the way her husband fell for Sebastian so fast and so hard!
To wrap up a long story, it only took him a few hours to convince his wife to adopt Sebastian — on the condition that “if it doesn’t work out,” we’ll take him. Needless to say, we figure it will take 15 minutes in their house and that dog will never be going anywhere else again!
And now my husband, having worked one miracle, is the VA hospital lady’s new contact to help vets find dogs. Especially the ones with severe PTSD who simply can’t face dealing with the noise and commotion of the SPCA, but who really want a dog to help with their PTSD. That’s what he gets for doing such a great job with Sebastian!
Oh, and Sebastian’s soon-to-be-former-owner is thrilled that she was able to find not just one but two possible good homes for her pup. So it all works out in the end just the way it’s supposed to.
That’s a great story! Congrats to everyone.
Yes, that is wonderful! Thanks for sharing such a happy story with us!
Amazing story. ??
That’s terrific! What a great outcome.
So happy that the situation worked out for everyone! I think it would be very hard to give up a pet unless you knew for sure he’d be okay. Sebastian sounds like a lucky pup!
Well, the big excitement at my abode tonight is the empty dvd box. I had to buy a new one as the ‘Fonz’ technique of banging the old one ’til it played, grew old, according to the previous player. So, yelly, flappy-lipped orange cat is splendidly silent as I have sprinkled cat nip in it throughout the day. He has had several encounters with it (with naps and resulting dry mouth) and now he is incubating the cat nip. Just sitting there. Opa! He is box break dancing. Yes peeps, my life is non-stop thrilling moments.
Awakened at around 5:30 this morning *gah* by something walking
across my face *double gah* and in my somnolent state simply reached
up and grabbed it, squooshed it and threw it on the floor. Then the
yuckiness hit me and I was fully alert and horrified at myself. I think
it was a spider. They seem to hang out around me a lot, so I have taken
the spider as my totem. No trace on the floor by my bed, so maybe he/she
was only wounded and slunk away. I need coffee.
Arrrrg! Ewwww! OMG!! I would have been in hysterics, crying and screaming, I have a phobia of insects . And I do mean a phobia not just that I don’t like them or that I’m afraid but an uncontrollable abject terror. It makes life difficult sometimes.
Here, this won’t help: woke up from sleeping on the couch in my Grandmother’s old Victorian house. I had my hands crossed on my chest on top of the blanket. My fingers felt stiff. Look down. My fingers are swollen. Bitten by Tiny Spiders on my hand in the night!!! Thank goodness my face was left untouched!!!
They found you yummy.
Phred’s Mom! Holy smokes, I have the same ‘problem’ with centipedes! Ugghh and gah I hate them but they always come to me. There are so many encounters, too many to note here so here is the icing on the cake– I was at a pub with my sister and her new partner at the time and we were explaining how centipedes are always attracted to me, relating the stories when no guff, I fricken centipede crawls out from below on the wall behind me and just stays there. I couldn’t see what they were gaping about as I had my back to it. So now, begrudgingly I accept them as my totem and receive centipede themed gifts. *oh boy*
Thousand-leggers, aka racing false eyelashes, give me the big time
creeps. Does any other oldtimer remember the Honeymooners
episode where Ralph is stomping at the floor to kill the bug that
is, after all, Alice’s false eyelash?
Actually, I rather like spiders, they go after baddies like ticks and
ants, and such, so as long as they are not hanging down ogling me
in the shower, or eavesdroppng our lunch, I leave them unharmed.
I do have my limits, however.
I’m fairly easy in the face of creepy crawlers, have had a few instances of being bitten during the night, but nothing too bad. Once I was in an uneasy sleep and I felt a breeze across my face! A kind of fluttering. I thought, hmmm, could be a bat. Or a bird! I woke up rather completely at that point, realizing that if it were a bird it might crap all over my drafting table and whatever project I was working on. It was, however – of course, at 2am – a bat. I turned the light on and just watched in amazement as it flew around my tiny space that was full of impediments high and low and never touched a thing. Finally. I just opened the door to the outside, turned the light off and away it went.
Oh, Phred’s Mom, I’m old enough to remember but I missed that one.?
Good thing it left. We had one come down the chimney and immediately fly into my daughter’s room with my cat in hot
pursuit. I whipped in, opened her windows, grabbed the cat,
exited shutting the door. We slept in the sofa bed that night.
Darn thing never flew out. In the morning, it was no more,
expired, this was a late bat. Then he went out the window when I
flipped him into the bushes. Then there were the skunks
which snuck into the basement somehow in order to have
a warm place for a clandestine cuddle. The stink woke us
at 2 AM. Oh, and the possum. . .
Ah, the country life…
This was in Morris County NJ, up by Route I80.
Not country, just full of stubborn fauna.
I know wild creatures can be annoying but I admire their stick-to-itiveness given that we’re the ones who have encroached on their habitat. The ones who have learned to live with us are very clever – smarter than we are, I do believe.?
I used to work with a woman who lived out in the country outside Austin. They had to put mosquito netting under their AC vents because scorpions would crawl in and fall on their bed during the night. AAUGH! And we had wolf spiders who lived in our windows, around the edges. They’re about 1/2″ across and furry and don’t build webs, but they catch ALL the bugs that try to get into your house. Those I left alone, as long as they stayed in the windows! That was our agreement. Spiders in the house = fair game, but spiders on windowsills can stay there. As long as they aren’t stinging or biting ones.
And speaking of critters, I discovered a small gecko trapped in our bathtub last night. Apparently it was too slippery for him to climb out. I picked up to take him outside, but he twisted out of my grasp and took off on his own. Ah well, he eats the bugs that get in the house, right? We had a toad crawling on our bedroom wall one night recently, too. I was already in bed so played girly girl and let my husband take it outside, mostly because I didn’t want to get up. 😀
The creatures I cannot ABIDE are a) slugs and b) leeches. I stepped on one too many of the six-inch banana slugs that inhabit the Northwest. Ugh! And leeches just utterly freak me out. I got one on me while out digging wild shrubbery out of the yard in New Orleans, and when I found it, according to my family I screamed nonstop and danced around in a circle freaking out. Hey, I saw The African Queen on the big screen once! I’m with Mr. Olnutt!!!
Can’t blame you for being squeamish about the slimy beasties, tho’ I’ve become a grudging admirer of slugs and their place in the janitorial spectrum of keeping the planet tidy. And the leach dance must’ve been something to behold! I think I’d be right there with you.
I don’t know what the Lord was thinking when she put banana slugs on the earth. For me, they are the worst. Even the small mid-western slugs I come across in the Land of Lincoln are disgusting. I’m with Laura.
Ahahahhha ewwwww the slug skids! I forgot about them! We used to prop open the pool gate at night and take long running jumps into the pool on hot summer nights and oh man, inevitably you would skid barefoot on a slug. And then of course the plates of beer my mom would leave out around the tomato plants only to find them swollen, drunk and dead. ewwwwww
FKA, you’ve found the perfect dual-purpose gift – DVD player for you, box for Yelly Cat. Sounds like a win to me! 😀
Especially as Yelly Cat is temporarily silenced! 😀