Our guest today is Mrs. Hattie Perkins, the star of our tall tale from earlier this week. Reader JEC says Hattie is enjoying her new-found fame: “Thank you, thank very much… please send the bouquets to my dressing room.”
Weekend Open Thread
59 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread”
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Just a quick word before leaving for the hospital, my mother-in-law had another vein that blocked in the same leg and she also caught some kind of virus so food goes right through her and she has lost a lot of weight. We’re still hoping that she’ll get better but it’s touch and go for the moment.
Hope everyone is doing good and has a good weekend.
Good luck! Very worrisome at her age.
Fingers crossed for some good news.
Sending strong wishes for a good recovery for her. It is
very worrying when older folks are ill, their strength isn’t
what it once was nor is their resistance. Gigi, give her
hugs from all of us here.
Sending best wishes for your MIL and whole family.
Sending you all some healing purrs. Keep us posted.
Thinking good thoughts for all of you.
Good morning, fellow Cutetropolians! It’s going to be a warm and sunny spring day in SoCal. Starting my day off with a cuppa of hot tea with honey and lemon while admiring the gorgeous Hattie. And don’t worry sweetie, I wouldn’t be comfortable with that thing hovering over my shoulder.
And talking about kitties, I have a very sweet foster kitty boy that (hallelujah!!) has finally decided being out of my linen closet and in the living area isn’t such a bad thing. Only took Kemuri about 2 weeks but he’s very skittish. As long as my hubby sits still and doesn’t move, he’s fine but as soon as he gets up, Kemuri bolts back to his safe spot. I sent some pics to Mike to post so maybe you’ll see him later.
Not too much happening this weekend. Going to get garden supplies to redo part of the built in planter box by the front door. I’ll do one section first, see how it goes and then may redo the rest. My property manager is finally getting all the to-do jobs I requested knocked off her list so this place is finally coming together. Took a year, but hey, better late than never. Then have all the usual stuff that I don’t get to during the week and later today, a meeting for all the neighborhood block captains.
Hope everyone has a beautiful spring day and can spend it outside, especially after the winter some have had.
Oooh, I can’t wait to see Kemuri! Glad he came out of the closet.
Here are the pics that AJ sent me of the cute foster kitty! (
They appear to be sideways at the moment, which is odd because I rotated them before posting. Stand by.UPDATE: Fixed.)A very striking tuxedo (as was my Wacket), even if he is sideways!
Thank you Mike!!
I’d rub noses with that handsome guy.
Tuxedo kitties are the best! My
Ben-Him was a tuxedo.
Having a bit of company today, MyMike’s daughter and her
family. We took them all to Italy a few years ago and had a
wonderful time showing them their heritage.
Sounds lovely – the visit and the trip. Enjoy!
Hello Mrs. Hattie Perkins – very pleased to make your acquaintance! I hope we see a lot of your on the Cutetropolis.
Thank you Mike and the Cutetroplis world for being here. I don’t know if I could have made it through this horrible week without you. We came to you for a lot of animal therapy and it helped. We were blind-sided on Monday by the CEO laying off 10 coworkers, 30% of our staff, due to lack of money in the operating budget. Most of them were good, hard-working people who loved and were dedicated to the institution despite it’s chronic problems. So it is an extra bitter pill that some of the old, sour, bad apples are still there and were not asked to retire. The anger and sadness lasted all week. I am so specialized in my field there are not a lot of jobs available (in the entire country), and even then, I am so specialized it’s not quite a fit. I’m stuck and I’m terrified that the institution (an almost 200 year old institution) will close. This would be a tragedy on the scale of the Brazilian National Museum fire from few years back for US History. The rest of the week was rough and concluded last night with not being able to see my therapist (last minute cancelation), and a punch in the gut from someone considered a friend. I’m also losing a dear friend and co-worker at the end of the month who is moving with her boyfriend to Wisconsin. I’d like to pull the covers over my head and hibernate but there is too much to do. Again, thank you all for making this a loving safe space and to Mr. Mike for providing continuous joy. I sent the Cutetropolis link out to coworkers on Friday and one of them replied, “Oh my gosh, Cutetropolis is HEAVEN!”
I agree. xotara
I’m sorry Tara about the wretched week that you had. I’ve been a similar position with a company laying off people and wondering why some of the better people were gone and the cranky do nothings were kept. Hope things get better.
So so sorry about your week. It sounds ghastly. Sending you purrs from all my kitties, who know how to comfort people.
Deeply unsettling week. Cutetropolis is definitely a comfort and something of a refuge.
Tara,
Sorry that you’re having an awful week. I hope that next week is better and that you begin to see good things pop up, not just these awful ones.
Have a hug, Tara.
Come back for more, as needed.
Earlier this week I had to cancel a couple of visits to Stratford-upon-Avon to see five productions – my father can’t be left alone overnight any more – but compared to some of you I have NOTHING to complain about.
Now for this week’s extract from ‘The Golden Age of Pantomime’: a brief account of the 1853 pantomime at London’s National Standard Theatre:
“THE new Christmas Pantomime here, of which, by-the-way, two representations are to be given on the first three days of Christmas week, bears the agreeable, though eccentric title of ‘Plum Pudding and Roast Beef; or, Harlequin Nine Pins and the Card King of the Island of Games.’
In the opening we are introduced to a view of Card Castle and the City of Topsy Turvey, near the Park of Roast Beef. Here we find, as in some other regions, folly engaged leading her votaries on by means of card, dice, dominoes, and other games. Roast Beef wishes to negotiate a marriage between his son, Young Holly, and Margery, Plum Puddingʼs daughter, which is somewhat interrupted by the appearance of fair Margery herself, who is strongly attached to susceptibility, sentiment, and sleepwalking. Their happiness is interrupted by the inopportune arrival of King Poodle, of the Island of Games, who has himself been smitten by the damselʼs charms, and is attended by a grand retinue of followers and guards, representing an almost innumerable number of games, and amid which figure conspicuously dice-boxes, dominoes, the fifty-two cards, skittles, nine-pins, racquets, &c., &c., all represented by living persons, of whom, it is said, upwards of 150 are engaged. The ingenuity and novelty of all this reflects very great credit upon Mr John Douglass, by whom the whole has been designed.”
Having become a vegetarian in October, I am mesmerized by the Park of Roast Beef.
Gigi and Tara, I’m hoping things get better for you soon. Sometimes life throws things at us that we find it hard to deal with, but the fact is, we usually manage to survive.
My husband is doing much better, his back is mostly pain free after the bone cementing. His IV antibiotics are done, the wounds on his foot are healing nicely. He had his phone interview with disability, and since he is close to retirement age, they may just let him have his SS retirement early. The one drawback this week is his wrist. Between the infection in the pin site, and having to wear a splint instead of a cast for a couple of months, it has healed really crookedly. They took the cast off Thursday, and all of us could see in the xray that the upper portion has healed off to the left, which means a lot of pain, and issues for the future. Surgery to correct it was advised, and we should be hearing from the hand specialist (yeah, that is a thing, apparently) on Monday. It means another couple of months of healing, but we figured it’s better to get it over with, rather than dealing with the pain and still having to get it fixed down the road. He seems to have developed some anxiety about going anywhere without me, even if it’s just going upstairs to sleep (I guess he sees me as the person who has saved his life, which I suppose is somewhat true). That makes him going back to work a bit difficult, so getting on disability, or Social Security would really help.
Patty, I’m so glad you’re seeing light at the end of the tunnel and that hubby is doing better. We’ve been worried about you both. Keep up the good fight.
It’s so great that your husband is recovering medically, and no surprise that he’s clinging to you. You have been heroic in your support of him. He is a very lucky man and it is to his credit that he seems to know it. Here’s hoping the financial happy ending works out too.
Patty, you have indeed been his lifesaver. He knows this. You
deserve all kinds of credit for your hard work. If the Social security
or Disability comes through now, what a blessing! We are thinking
of you and wishing you good, good stuff to come in the next week
and beyond.
My problems have dwindled in comparison.
Sending prayers and gentle feathered hugs to all who need… no, to everyone.
How’s the pneumonia doing? Hope you’re recovering quickly and completely.
Pneumonia recovery going slowly but surely. It’s just that there’s so much more…gah, you guys don’t need to hear me whine.
I’ll do for now.
Just glad that you’re improving.
Go ahead and whine, Duckie. Now, there’s something to ponder, a whining duck.
No, go ahead, whine at us. We are here to listen and to try to boost your spirits.
To use Frasier’s line, I’m listening.
Sending good juju to Tara and Patty and all in our community who are in need of better luck. Alice Shortcake, I hope you are able to get to Stratford and see your shows!
I’m watching an old episode of Antiques Roadshow (original version), and there’s a Steiff giraffe there that looks exactly like mine, only it’s in much better condition. There’s also a much larger one.
Best regards to the lovely Mrs Hattie Perkins and Zarafa!
The giraffe isn’t quite so scary in the daylight. Glad Miss Hattie survived her night of terror. 😉
I need to clean some stuff and change a light bulb in my bathroom (which is a pain to get to). The dryer vent cleaner guy is coming Wednesday. I have to work Monday and Tuesday and then I’m off the rest of the week. I have to use my vacation time by the end of September. I usually take a week in April but we’re down a person still and it just won’t work for me to be off on a Monday. They’re still looking to hire someone and I know the’ve had some interviews, but I suspect it won’t happen before the end of the fiscal year (which is the end of the month). I have a feeling I’ll be taking a bunch of long weekends this summer.
Big hugs to everyone having a rough week. I hope things start looking up.
I love that astonished and bereft look on his face! MOM!!!!
Puppy eyes to the max!
Naah, that’s a Pusky!
I am still playing the Simon’s Cat Pop Time game. As you go through the levels you follow along a path and there’s all this stuff going on in the background. I’ve been through fairgrounds, gardens, parks, a cemetery, and I just got to the zoo. When there is a hippo. And Simon’s cat is tossing apples into the hippo’s mouth.
I love this game and thank you to whoever it was who mentioned it a few weeks ago. I have no idea how many levels there are but I am up to level 697.
Darn you, Allein, you got me hooked on that game! I am at level 370 something. My favorite scene so far is the hedgehog in the birdbath with a martini and snail garnish!
It’s so cute!
I was wrong, though, it’s one of the helper cats throwing apples to the hippo (Jazz, I think? The green one). Simon’s cat is just up a bit looking at the leopard, who is doing SC’s signature “feed me!” gesture of pointing at his mouth. Just past the leopard is a giraffe eating tree leaves. 🙂
I’m coming up on a pond in a few levels, but my battery is dying so I won’t get there until later.
Okay, I’m stuck at a gate and have to wait a few hours to play for the last key, so I scrolled a bit to see what’s coming up. There’s the pond, where one of the kitties is fishing, and SC and an otter are sitting on the bank eating fish, then a little garden with a koi pond which leads to one of those zen sand gardens (SC is, um, using it as a cat would use a giant sandbox…) with a kittty-buddha statue, and a cherry tree with blossoms blowing in the breeze, a yard with SC in a pair of underpants on the clothesline trying to grab a bird, and an old greenhouse…then you cross a street into a grocery store where a bunny is tossing all the carrots into a shopping cart while another bunny sits on a pile of carrots eating a cucumber, and out the back door is two more full carts and another bunny looking impatiently at his watch. There is a crowbar near the broken door frame. I stopped there but I feel like this game will go on forever and I am very impressed by whoever designed it with all the these fun little details.
Are you sure this isn’t Cluedo? A martini and snail garnish could be lethal in the wrong hands!
I was thinking as I wrote “Mr Hedgehog in the birdbath with a snail martini” sounded like a Clue(do) solution. Is Cluedo pronounced clue-dough or clue-due? American English speakers want to know!
Clue-dough. I think it’s a nod to the game of Ludo.
Hugs and comforting happy purrs to everybody! Like Tara, I consider Cutetropolis to be heaven, filled with supportive friends along with cute and funny animals.
Finally got some of the accent tile done in my shower! The hardest part has to wait until next weekend, after more supplies get here, but it’s looking as good as I hoped (if not better). I also put down the flooring last weekend, and it looks amazing after staring at a paint-spattered subfloor for months.
I’m off to pick up more mortar and grout, scope out shower curtains, and hunt down some good chocolate at the local Sprouts, which is kind of a Trader Joe’s for smaller towns. Normally I hate shopping on Saturday afternoon, but today it will be good to get out of the house and take my brain away from all these projects. Plus the snow is melting quickly after another bomb cyclone, and I enjoy the sound of dripping water.
I hope we get to see pictures of this project when it’s done. I continue to marvel at your abilities.
I had a ridiculous dream last night in which I got home after a very late night out only to find that I’d lost my front door key. The house was empty because my dad was in hospital. So I went round the corner to the security gate blocking the alley between two rows of houses…but couldn’t remember the access code. Next step: clambering over the wall, finding that the back yard gate was locked, climbing over the garden wall ( all this performed in an ankle-length skirt, and the walls are five feet high), and finally smashing a window to get into the house. I was exhausted when I woke up!
You’re too kind. And of course you’ll see pictures–I can never resist showing off.
Mrs. Hattie Perkins looks ADORABLE, and I like how she’s situated herself in her “beauty spot” . I hope we see more of her!
Gigi, Tara, Patty and Duckie…hugs and purrs. Wish I could offer you a real paw instead of a virtual one. Hope you all feel better soon. 💖
Forgot to mention that Ms. Hattie fully deserves her accolades! What a beauty! And so brave to conquer her cameleopardophobia.
…aand one cartoon sums up the whole steaming mess.
Hello. Murray C. asked me to share this picture and some sad news: “My computer issue isn’t fixed yet but I wanted the gang to know that we had to put down our beloved Purdita this afternoon and we are bereft. She was closing in on the end of her 20th year and arthritis was ravaging her little frame. Of course, we’re a mess. This photo was taken in far happier times, 10 years ago, high as a kite on catnip.”
Oh no Murray! My sincerest condolences; ughhh what sadness. Look at those (despite been stoned) bright eyes and such a lovely coat. You both were lucky to have each other. *big hug*
So sorry, Murray! 🙁
I’m so sorry Murray. You were together a long time. It’s a big loss. And she was a beauty.