The "What's on your mind?" Thread -2017

[Margret]

 

 
If anyone should find a variety of sweet chocolate that doesn't contain milk, I would greatly appreciate being told about it.  I'd still need to use diabetes meds, but at least I could handle it.

There are dairy-free chocolates available:

http://www.godairyfree.org/ask-alis...ate-do-you-recommend-for-dairy-free-consumers

http://www.avoidingmilkprotein.com/chocolate.htm

You can also look for vegan chocolate.

Thank you so much.  I'll give it a try.

Margret

 

[Margret]

@Tallyollyopia, what specifically is it that RB thinks doesn't match the backstory on Ueni?

Margret

 

[Alicia88]

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/332114/sudden-dominance

I can't remember the exact date, but he was around 5 months old.  He started pinning Murphy and acting dominant so I got it done right away instead of waiting until their appointment - they were scheduled to have it done right after turning 6 months old.  I wanted to get him neutered before he started spraying because I've heard plenty of stories about cats not stopping once they've started and that wasn't a risk I was willing to take.

 

[tallyollyopia]

 
@Tallyollyopia, what specifically is it that RB thinks doesn't match the backstory on Ueni?

Margret

RB says--and he makes some valid points that are all logical, thoughtful, and ignoring emotion entirely--that Ueni simply would have had too much self-control to attack Yarey like that, given that most of her background training would have encouraged and strengthened her self-control.

 
http://www.thecatsite.com/t/332114/sudden-dominance

I can't remember the exact date, but he was around 5 months old.  He started pinning Murphy and acting dominant so I got it done right away instead of waiting until their appointment - they were scheduled to have it done right after turning 6 months old.  I wanted to get him neutered before he started spraying because I've heard plenty of stories about cats not stopping once they've started and that wasn't a risk I was willing to take.

Ours were fixed at about seven months, except for Princess who was fixed at four. (It's not my fault we had to wait so long--the shelter clinic closed for three months after Princess was fixed, and everywhere else wanted to charge five hundred dollars per cat  for a pre-surgery examination--the actual procedure was much, much higher. As you can imagine, it was a tense three months. (I'm lucky that the girls were slower to mature than the boys, but then their mother didn't enter her first heat until she was ten months so--maybe genetic?)

 

[Alicia88]

Holy crap!!!  The vet who fixed Connor and Murphy charged $60 each.  Our regular vet fixed Mickey for $32.50.  Connor and Murphy were SUPPOSED to be neutered by our regular vet, but of course they decided to start puberty during the first vacation he took in almost 10 years.  Go figure.

Where do you live that you could buy a car (not a new car, but still a car) for less than it costs to desex a cat?

 

[muffy]

Tallyollyopia,

I really enjoyed your post about working in a store. I agree with someone else here that said you should write a book. I like to read about people working in grocery and convenience stores. Please write more.

Ellen

 

[tallyollyopia]

 
Holy crap!!!  The vet who fixed Connor and Murphy charged $60 each.  Our regular vet fixed Mickey for $32.50.  Connor and Murphy were SUPPOSED to be neutered by our regular vet, but of course they decided to start puberty during the first vacation he took in almost 10 years.  Go figure.

Where do you live that you could buy a car (not a new car, but still a car) for less than it costs to desex a cat?

I was shocked too. The shelter clinic only charges half a hundred per cat

 
Tallyollyopia,

I really enjoyed your post about working in a store. I agree with someone else here that said you should write a book. I like to read about people working in grocery and convenience stores. Please write more.

Ellen

All right, I'll try to post more stories about what happens there.

 

[handsome kitty]

I was looking forward to a day of cleaning litter boxes and cat fur off the rugs today.  Then a VET (voluntary extra time) notice text appeared so I am off to work in a couple of hours.  Which means quick shower, grocery store trip and oh no - I have no clean pants LOL.  procrastination consequences - I slept all day yesterday.  Don't have to leave for work for 4 hours, so laundry fist.

Have a good week everyone!

 

[Alicia88]

Woo-hoo!!!  Just got a "message request" on facebook.  That notification you get when someone you're not friends with sends you a message?  It was my ex.  Asking for my address.  So he could file divorce papers.  About damn time!!!  I told him 3 years ago that if he did it, I wouldn't ask for alimony or anything else.  He never did and I haven't had the money to do it.  But, if he does it now, I'll keep my promise.  I don't want anything from him - except a divorce.  I was just trying to use the alimony thing as leverage to get him to do it.

 

[Alicia88]

Connorcub knows he's handsome.  We usually keep the bathroom door closed because I have 3 brats who love to knock over and play with the bathroom trash, unravel toilet paper, etc.  Well, John left the door open and the light on because he's a nitwit.  I went in the bathroom and caught Connor sitting on the counter admiring himself from every angle.  It looked like he was trying to decide which was his good side.

 

[LTS3]

Well the cookies were a hit

My vegetarian co-worker immediately helped herself to a few cookies right away. There's a few leftovers in the box tomorrow for snacking on

 

[tallyollyopia]

 
I was looking forward to a day of cleaning litter boxes and cat fur off the rugs today.  Then a VET (voluntary extra time) notice text appeared so I am off to work in a couple of hours.  Which means quick shower, grocery store trip and oh no - I have no clean pants LOL.  procrastination consequences - I slept all day yesterday.  Don't have to leave for work for 4 hours, so laundry fist.

Have a good week everyone!

Hope you do the same! 

 
Woo-hoo!!!  Just got a "message request" on facebook.  That notification you get when someone you're not friends with sends you a message?  It was my ex.  Asking for my address.  So he could file divorce papers.  About damn time!!!  I told him 3 years ago that if he did it, I wouldn't ask for alimony or anything else.  He never did and I haven't had the money to do it.  But, if he does it now, I'll keep my promise.  I don't want anything from him - except a divorce.  I was just trying to use the alimony thing as leverage to get him to do it.

Congratulations! 

Well, earlier AWM and I were talking about car trips, and there was something interesting that happened on one of them that was funny. (Please bear in mind, we were not a wealthy family.) Anyway, we were driving down this old country road (AWM hates the interstate--she says it's boring) and we saw a pristine book in the middle of the road. (I should mention that I was an insatiable reader.) So, AWM stopped the car (we were the only ones on the road) grabbed the book, and handed it to me. She said, "I can't believe someone would just leave a perfectly good book in the middle of the road." (I should mention that I was twelve when this happened.) "Tally, what's the title?"

So, I read the title out loud. "True Confessions of a Courtesan."

"What?"

Taking this to mean she wanted to hear more (at the time I had no idea what a courtesan was), I began reading the firs sentence. "No one becomes a courtesan because they want to, but because they are forced into it by circumstances and, of course, once a woman has become a courtesan she cannot become anything else."

"What?"

I kept reading (and I can't remember what the next bit said), and AWM reached over, ripped the book from my hands, and threw it out the window. I watched the book fly into the road through the side-view mirror and calmly commented, "Well, now we know how it ended up in the middle of the road in the first place."

AWM nodded and said, "That we do."

 

[segelkatt]

 
I just finished stuffing the last of the Christmas cards in envelopes.

I started some Turkey bone broth in my pressure cooker.  I hope there are enough bones in it.  I used two turkey necks and the legs and wings from our Christmas turkey and some chicken thigh skin. Fingers crossed.    I never knew you could use the pressure cooker to make broth from bones and all the other stuff we don't eat. I just left  a pot sitting on the stove overnight at low heat, just simmering away.

Earlier this morning when I was catching up on TCS I heard a sound like a cat playing with a box in the other room.  Not unusual.  It happens a lot.  It went on for quite a while.  When I went in the kitchen to check on things I saw Eclipse locked outside the cat flap in the tunnel banging on the cat flap.  He managed to move the tab that locks going out but not coming in.  He was pretty cold when I let him in.  There was a reason the flap was not opened this morning.

  I did feel bad for not checking on the noise earlier though.

 

[Margret]

 
http://www.thecatsite.com/t/332114/sudden-dominance

I can't remember the exact date, but he was around 5 months old.  He started pinning Murphy and acting dominant so I got it done right away instead of waiting until their appointment - they were scheduled to have it done right after turning 6 months old.  I wanted to get him neutered before he started spraying because I've heard plenty of stories about cats not stopping once they've started and that wasn't a risk I was willing to take.

That part, at least, of puberty had already taken hold of Connor before he was neutered.  I doubt that there's anything you can do about it.

On the other hand, I'm not an expert.  If there's a better answer available anywhere, someone here on TCS will have it for you.

Margret

 

[segelkatt]

 
Well, that's my motto anyway.

Hope so. Those things are expensive.

Well, in honor of the New Year, I have a few stories to share that took place over the last month (and today), and I thought I'd share them in order of most recent to oldest.

IB brought his stepkids over to play (two five-year old twins, a ten year-old, and two year-old), and I slept through most of their visit. There was this one moment when they were racing through the house trying to find the cats (who, not being used to strangers, especially not strange children, hid) and in looking for the cats one of them turned on the light in my room. I, who had been sleeping at that point, thought it was AWM making sure I was getting up for work. (She does that if we have a power outage.) So I called out that it wasn't time for me to get up for work yet, rolled over, and the light went out. Princess raced into the room, jumped on the bed (waking me up) and I sat up as I tried to figure out what was wrong. (She has a bed on the top bunk, so she almost never gets on my bed.) The light turned on again and this little girl's voice hissed, "Not that room! There's an ogre in there!" LOL!

 (I guess I didn't sound too friendly. There's a reason I get up three hours before work.) Princess, meanwhile, pressed against my chest and looked at me with wide eyes, tense and purring madly. (I think she was saying, "Don't let them find me!) I pet her until she calmed down, and listed to the shrieking children in the house. (My first thought was: who gave them sugar? Which probably tells you more about my childhood than anything else.) Curious, I got up and went to the living room where they were playing. They all saw me at the same time and froze. (AWM said she thought it was because they were afraid of getting in trouble for waking me.) So, I handed out Christmas stars. (I had made them in anticipation of the tree we never got.) The children didn't know what to make of me, and IB's BB (best bud) handed me a seven month-old. I turned the baby around so that he could see what was going on and he got all excited at actually looking around instead of at a person. It was cute. I said nothing. The kids went back to playing, quieter this time. (I think it's because the ogre was up. Not sure.) Then IB's BB said it was time to go and the two year-old tried to put the toy (a large exercise ball) back up. He walked past an end table, knocked something off of it, turned (still holding the giant ball) to see what had happened, and ended up clearing the end table. IB's BB got up to interfere, but I stopped him. (I firmly believe that children should be encouraged to pick up after themselves, and the place to start is to not interfere when they're doing so.) It wasn't a long visit (they left shortly after I got up), but I enjoyed it. (The funny thing was that when the baby grabbed my hair all I could think was, "Oh, yeah--that's  why I used to have my hair up all the time.)

This is a heartwarming story that happened last night at the store. This woman came in with a baby and a toddler and went to buy a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, and a small cup of fruit with food stamps. (Nothing really unusual there.) Then, in the middle of ringing up her items my computer froze, and I had to shut down and restart the thing. (The problem with that is that it takes half an hour to come back up.) So the man behind her laid more than enough money down to cover her three items so that she could take her groceries and go. (I let her; we had duplicates of everything at the store and it wouldn't take that  long to round them up so I could scan stuff and finish her order.) The man waited and I duly rang the items up and gave him the change. I thought it was sweet.

This one (I found it hilarious, but I refrained from laughing about it until I was off the clock) happened on Christmas Eve. (I wanted to wait to post it until I was sure that enough time had passed that the trick either worked, or didn't, just in case anyone in the family was on the site.) Anyway, this one customer came in, out of breath, saw me at the register, and said, "I need you to write a note from Santa!" I, naturally, asked why. "I need you to say that the elves went on strike and that's why his presents aren't wrapped!" Still curious, I inquired as to why he couldn't write it, to which he replied, "He knows my handwriting!" 

 

[Alicia88]

 
That part, at least, of puberty had already taken hold of Connor before he was neutered.  I doubt that there's anything you can do about it.

On the other hand, I'm not an expert.  If there's a better answer available anywhere, someone here on TCS will have it for you.

Margret

He hasn't done anything like that since then, though.  Not for the next 5 months.  Until the other night.  That's what doesn't make sense to me.

 

[segelkatt]

 
Yeah, I thought it'd be good to share those. And DD didn't let me believe in Santa either, he said that Santa Claus was a "pagan god who taught children that bribery and greed are good." (Funnily enough, RB and LS2 were allowed to believe in Santa with no problem. 

)

The next part gets kind of ranty and whiny, so feel free to skip it.

Now last night was a weird one. It started out pretty good, the store was quiet and I was actually--for the first time in almost a month--ahead  of schedule. I cleaned the cappuccino machines, changed the chili and the cheese in the nacho machine, the roller grill, had gotten the pastry case ready for set-up--and then things began to go sour. On my way to clean the pastry trays I noticed that there was a small mountain of cheese beneath the cheese spout. I took the machine apart, saw that I had somehow screwed the spigot onto the new bag (each bag comes with a spigot so they're not getting re-used) wrong, so I unscrewed it, fixed it, put it back together, and thought nothing more of it for a while. Then after cleaning the bathrooms (almost an hour and a half early!!) a customer came in asking for my help finding something. I asked him to wait while I washed my hands--and the shelf above the sink fell on me. (I wasn't even touching it!) I looked at the mess--and then went to help the customer. (After all, I only asked for the time to wash my hands.) Well, I helped the customer and got him out of the store, cleaned up the mess as best as possible, and went to help another customer. While I was helping another customer I noticed what looked like a blue splinter in my thumb. It wasn't a splinter--something from the shelf had cut into my thumb when I tried to grab the shelf as it fell and the cleaning supplies I had picked up later had dyed the flap of skin over the cut blue. No problem, I keep a first aid kit in my purse for that very reason. Well, I went to put the Neosporin on it--and the gel inside the tube was a chalky yellow-white, which is not the color that Neosporin is supposed to be. So I checked, and it turns out the tube expired back in 2002! 

 (Good thing I haven't had to use it before!) So I used an alcohol wipe (found with the diabetic supplies in Wal-Mart, and a must for any first aid kit) to clean the cut (and boy, did I feel it when the alcohol hit it!) and then slapped a band-aid over it. Then I went to mop up the spilled chemicals and saw another  mountain under the cheese spigot. 

 So I pulled the whole thing apart--again--and discovered that the there was a crack in the spigot. Luckily we have extras, so I just grabbed another one and slapped it on there. (Lost almost half the bag though. 

) So then, after all that, I had to play catch-up and almost didn't make it.

Also, last night was the first time that I've ever told a customer that she (or he--I've never said this to a customer before) was full of bull. Here's what happened--she came in and told me that it was company policy that if someone needed to get to the other side of town and had no money for gas, the station would give the customer two dollars worth of gas. And as I stared at her, amazed at her gall, she started spinning this story involving a love triangle, a trampoline, cancer, and the hospital. (I can't repeat it. I'd bust a gut laughing it was so poorly done.) So I told her that she was full of bull, but I enjoyed her creativity and gave her two dollars for gas. She thanked me and then asked if the store takes food stamps and if fountain drinks are covered. (We do and they are.) So she gets a fountain drink, comes up to the counter, and makes a grand show of trying to find her food stamp card. 

 Then, then  she gave me the "sad puppy eyes". (Those didn't work for my dogs back when they were alive--and they certainly don't work for strangers.) I told her I didn't have the money for the drink (she took the last two dollars I had for gas), and she asked if I was going to pour out the drink. I said yes, since she couldn't pay for it, I was indeed going to pour it out. She said she'd spare me the trouble and pour it out for me--then grabbed both cup and straw and headed for the door. (Luckily, she was in stilettos and I had just mopped, so she couldn't move quickly.) So I called for her and ran to the door and intercepted her, taking the drink back. She looked me right in the eye and said, "I'm just going to dump it right outside. I didn't want to clog the drains under the soda fountain.) So I looked her right in the eye, smiled and said, "That's all right. We have a sink." 

  Some people!

To top that off, something's wrong with our water. The tap water has been visibly worsening since Friday night (to the point where there's no point in me taking a shower today), and the water company doesn't open until tomorrow. On top of that, I recently learned that SD is going to need back surgery and has to recuperate for a year and a half, which means he's going to have to go on disability. 

 Happy New year. 

DD is wrong - Santa Claus is named after St. Nicolas who was a bishop in Turkey who gave a dowry to 3 sisters who had none and thus would have ended up to be spinsters. That the 3 balls of silver hanging in front of pawn shops is another story. In any case it has nothing to do with "heathen gods".  DD should not be running his mouth about things of which he knows nothing.  

 

[Margret]

 

 
@Tallyollyopia, what specifically is it that RB thinks doesn't match the backstory on Ueni?

Margret

RB says--and he makes some valid points that are all logical, thoughtful, and ignoring emotion entirely--that Ueni simply would have had too much self-control to attack Yarey like that, given that most of her background training would have encouraged and strengthened her self-control.

Having read it, and with only the backstory you've published here, I think RB is mistaken.

Ueni has already made it quite plain that her entire self image is bound up in this horrible marriage contract.  She may have gotten into it in the first place for financial reasons, but the entire point of her training has been to prepare her for this marriage.  She has spent her entire life training for it, and suppressing any misgivings that she must have.  Now she's been told by her "fiancee" that he's fallen for someone else, that he cares nothing for her, and that he actually finds it funny that he's basically destroyed her life.  Her training has been enough to keep her from attacking the fiancee; I can't imagine that it would be enough to keep her from attacking another girl whom she considers to be both her social inferior (also a large part of her training) and the source of the setback she's just suffered.

Ueni has some real possibilities as a character.  If she passes the test and makes it into the school, she's going to discover other possibilities for herself.  And the major roadblocks she'll have to overcome are this false self image that's just messed her up, and almost all of the training she's been given.  If she has good teachers, her previous training can be integrated into her training here, but only once they've broken her of this illusion that she's better than everyone else.

Margret

 

[Margret]

 

 
That part, at least, of puberty had already taken hold of Connor before he was neutered.  I doubt that there's anything you can do about it.

On the other hand, I'm not an expert.  If there's a better answer available anywhere, someone here on TCS will have it for you.

Margret

He hasn't done anything like that since then, though.  Not for the next 5 months.  Until the other night.  That's what doesn't make sense to me.

Has he been continuing this behavior?

My guess is that he was waiting until he decided he could get away with it.  If the other cats can be persuaded to stand up to him, he may back down, but I don't know how to do that.

Margret

 

[Alicia88]

I haven't caught him doing it today at all.  Maybe keeping him shut in the bedroom away from the other 2 all last night convinced him that it was a bad idea?

I just caught him doing the pinning a couple of times Sunday and then more pinning and the humping incident on Monday.