Not quite the evil genius she thinks she is…
My younger cat, who is an evil genius, hates water.
Like all cats, you say? Of course.
She also hates hair ties. She thinks they need to die. She has made eradicating them her mission in life. I am not sure why she wants them gone, or if I should worry about it, but there you have it. Hair ties are evil, and she will save the whole world from them.
This means that if I drop a hair tie into a tub full of water, she experiences an existential crisis. She must kill the hair tie, but she has to touch the water to get the hair tie. Hair tie. Water. Hair tie. Water.
For the record, so far she’s figured out that she can’t drink all the water out of the tub and the water is still wet no matter what paw she uses. She has not figured out how to get the hair tie.
The water is winning right now. She is not amused, partly because she really wants the hair tie, and partly because she really hates water.
Which makes yesterday the most awesome episode of self-inflicted torture I have ever seen.
I’d tossed a hair tie in the tub after my bath to amuse her (or me, whatever). She was sitting on the edge of the tub and turned around to yell at me. The water is my fault. She’s sure of that.
She didn’t notice that her tail fell in the tub.
It got soaked.
Eventually, she gave up yelling at me and jumped on the floor.
She immediately froze in place.
There was water on her. Water!
She tried to walk, and the water followed her.
She tried to spin around to find out where the water was coming from, and the water not only followed her, it also suddenly hit her back and head as her tail whipped around and sprayed droplets everywhere. She slowed down, taking one cautious step after another until she completed a full circle.
Source of the water: unknown.
Attempt to walk forward: water dripping on her feet!
Slow motion spin: source of the water still unknown.
Attempt to walk forward: water dripping on her feet!
It took her five minutes to get out of the bathroom. She collapsed in the living room and thumped her tail once, which just got more water on her. She tried to bolt off, realized that wouldn’t work, and went back to step - circle - step - circle.
She spent all night yelling at me, but it was worth it. She bit her tail at one point. That didn’t work out so well for her, either.
It was absolutely worth dealing with her yelling.
Holy Crap—It’s winter!
As someone who suffered through more years in Alaska than any sane person should, I have very definite understandings of the seasons.
There’s Road Construction, that season when the weather is pretty decent and the days are long and the roads are full of orange cones.
There’s Winter, when the weather is very cold and everything, including my eyeballs, is frozen or freezing, and the roads are full of ice and snow.
There’s Breakup, when the weather is above freezing and everyone is wearing t-shirts because 40 degrees is t-shirt weather, and the roads are full of the sludge.
And then there’s Summer. It’s a brief Thursday in June or July. No one is sure what happens on it, because it comes and goes so quickly.
Now that I’m in Texas, I’ve had to revise my understanding of the seasons.
There is Spring, where the world is green and beautiful.
There is Hell, where the world is hot and humid, except when it’s hotter and more humid.
There is Fall, where the world is cool and kind of rainy, and we love it because it’s not Hell.
And there’s Winter, which happens on one night in December of January. It drops below freezing for a period of hours, and stuff freezes.
We had Winter last night.
But before we had Winter, we had a couple weeks of generally manky weather. Ro hasn’t really been worked since mid-December, with one thing and another, and I was scrambling to find a way to fit her up despite the mud that rendered the arena and nightly turnout generally unusable. We spent a lot of time in the round pen, to neither of our pleasure. I’m glad it’s there, but it’s small.
Whenever I could, I’d leave Ro in the roundpen while I mucked her stall and did other stuff at the barn. The round pen isn’t necessarily bigger than Ro’s stall/run, but it’s a change of scenery. Plus, it’s amusing to see her trying to look over the top of the solid walls. It’s like watching a kid jumping up and down by the candy counter.
Ro was not nearly as amused as I was, and would remind me every time I walked by that she was in there and her food was most certainly not.
Still, we were making what progress we could.
And then, last night, everything was finally dried out just enough that turnout would have been ok—still muddy and mucky, but not horse-eating muddy and mucky.
That, no doubt, is why an Arctic cold front swept through. I swear the world is conspiring to make my life difficult.
There was still enough puddles in the paddocks to make turnout on a night with a hard freeze ill-advised, especially given the lack of turnout the horses had had up to that point. So I pulled up to the barn, resigned to yet another round pen session, when I realized—I could turn Ro out in the largest turn out paddock and go eat dinner. She’d get a couple hours to stretch and run around a bit. That would be much better than the round pen.
When I let her loose, I was sure she’d go galloping off. I would have.
But no. She sniffted the ground, looked at me, then wandered over to the fenceline by her buddies, who were hanging out in their paddocks.
And she stood there.
Power to the Ponies! Equine Solidarity!
She wasn’t going to have fun if they weren’t going to have fun.
I gave her the evil eye—so much for my brilliant plan—and went to muck her stall. As soon as I was out of sight, I heard her galloping across the paddock.
So much for the Equine Solidarity Movement.
Before I headed out to dinner, I went over to make sure everything was ok. She was standing by the gate at that point, but for all her I’m-not-having-fun posturing, she sure didn’t want to come in—as soon as she saw me coming, she turned and walked off across the paddock.
At least she got a couple hours out, though. And she’s out tonight, up to her hocks in hay. It’ll get cold again, but there was no standing water in the paddocks to worry about. Hopefully this means the arena will be ridable tomorrow.
And hopefully this means Winter—or what passes for Winter here—is over. We’ve had our day or two of freezing—now it’s time for Spring!
Remedial Shopping
There is one cardinal rule of shopping: if there are lots of an item, and the item is on Super Duper Saver Sale, do not, under any circumstances, buy that item.
Items do not make Super Duper Saver Sale in large quantities unless no one, anywhere, in any circumstances, wants to buy them. Not even Great Aunt Edna out Christmas Eve shopping for her distant, half-remembered relatives.
I forget this rule a lot. It’s surprising, because I actually have very expensive taste and am naturally suspicious of anything that is cheap.
Unfortunately, if a retailer makes it cheap enough, it triggers something else in me. Insanity, perhaps.
This is how I left the grocery store tonight with three plastic tubs.
I walked past them, you see, and saw their Super Duper Saver Sale price and thought OMG! That’s cheap! Super cheap! I need one for leg wraps and one for saddle pads and one for other stuff and one in case I have more stuff and want a matching plastic tub!
The fact that the tubs will reside in my closet where no one except the cats will know if they match or not is irrelevant. The fact that I am concerned about matching plastic tubs when my silverware drawer has three mismatched sets in it and I have plates from two different sets that do not match any bowls I own… you see the pattern? Someone eating at my house will get a hodgepodge of dishes, and that’s ok, but god forbid my storage containers don’t match.
I twigged to that inconsistency and decided I only needed two tubs. They went into the cart and I went off to get milk.
Not once did it occur to me to wonder why the grocery store was stocking storage tubs or whether I should trust the storage tub purchasing decision of someone who, theoretically, is very knowledgeable about fruits and vegetables but perhaps not quite so much about household goods.
One might think, for example, that if the purchasing director understood household goods, they would not have a jillion storage tubs left over to put on Super Duper Saver Sale. If they were good tubs, people would have bought them already.
“One” might think that, but I am not that one.
As I was putting my milk in my cart, I decided I really did need three tubs. Surely. Certainly.
I added a third to my cart and went to check out before I could reconsider.
No, that happened after I got home and unloaded my truck. I carried the stacked tubs into my closet, cheerfully dumped some legs wraps in the top tub, and went to pull it out of the stack.
Apparently, Super Duper Saver Sale tubs, when stacked, create the sort of vacuum that a black hole would envy.
I couldn’t pull the tubs apart. I dumped the wraps out, turned the tubs upside down, and tried to shake them apart. I turned them rightside up again and tried pulling once more. I broke a handle.
Seriously. I’d owned them for less than five minutes, and I managed to break a handle.
I stared at the cracked plastic and I realized that this, no doubt, was why they were on Super Duper Saver Sale.
Every shopper in the world except me had managed to look at the tubs and conclude they were cheap pieces of crap. I looked from these tubs to my other tubs, which are all sturdy plastic things that have stoically stood the test of time and, sometimes, elements.
There’s a reason they cost more, each, than my three sale tubs cost in total.
To be honest, I think it would cost me more in gas and time to return the tubs than they are worth.
So - now I own three cheap plastic tubs. One has leg wraps in it, one has saddle pads in it, and one has Stuff that Ro Disdains in it, like the bareback pad that I bought and she rejected as a torture device.
And one has a broken handle.
Welcome to 2011: I may have gained some organization in my life, but I clearly need to work on my common sense.
Life Gets Sparkly (and planning help needed)
Now that the holidays are over and I’m too bloated to do more than sit on the couch, a little catch-up:
Ro was nursing an abscess for the last couple weeks, so she hasn’t had to do anything besides eat and sleep. This is ok with her, but I’m planning to ruin her vacation and put her back in work this week.
Our ramp up into work will be helped by the shiny new surcingle I received for my birthday. I think Ro will be less excited about that gift than I am.
Hopefully, her shiny new browband will pacify her a bit. That’s right: I got a bling browband. I hear they are going out of fashion, so the timing seemed about right. But this isn’t crystals, so it’s probably ok. This is a combination of navy bluestones and some white something-or-others. It looks fabulous on her, and the navy stones stand out from the black leather more than I thought; it should look absolutely stunning in sunlight.
I took pictures tonight, in the barn, when it was dark. Ro looks a bit… evil… due to the flash. I’ll try again tomorrow, when I may be able to get out to the barn while it’s still sunny. If that doesn’t work, you’ll have to take my word on how great it looks and wait for spring to actually see pictures.
Other shiny news: my brother, the one person in the world whom I would have said was even less likely than me to get married, got engaged. The wedding will be in Oregon sometime later this year. According to my rather liberal grasp of geography, that puts me in driving distance of the Redwoods (note: I live in Texas and am pretty sure Colorado is in “driving distance.” When I lived in Ohio, New Orleans was in “driving distance.” For that matter, when I lived in Ohio, I thought going to Virginia was a good weekend trip. Like I said: liberal grasp of geography.)
So an early planning plea for anyone who lives in “driving distance” of Portland: where would you recommend I go (or not) during the two or three weeks I plan to be driving around that area? “That area” isn’t too well defined—but probably western Oregon and northern California. I miss scenery desperately (Houston, which may have a redeeming quality or two, deep down where no one is sure it exists, has a negative scenery quotient). I do not drink wine. I do like micro brews. I don’t particularly want to do big-city stuff. Redwoods, beaches, mountains?
Ideas?