Lazy Girls and Not So Great Dinner

This is the way Mimi and Bear spent most of their Sunday.

And this is what they are doing so far today.

Same bed, just a different spot.

They don't want to go outside today since we are actually getting a little rain and they don't like the way the rain drips on them from the eave of the house when they try to go out the kitty/doggy door. I'm thinking that most of their day will be spent napping on the bed again.

We went to get some Mexican food for dinner last night since the night before I tried a recipe for
'pan burritos' a recipe that got tossed in the trash after we tried eating the not so great concoction. Our dinner out wasn't much better.

We went to La Mina Cantina because Keith likes it, I prefer Mauricio's myself but whatever. I'm always a little worried when a waiter doesn't write down our order but just nods as we tell him what we want and it was with good reason last night. I ordered crispy chicken tacos and the plate they brought me didn't look like any crispy chicken tacos I'd ever seen before. There were two corn tortillas with some chicken on them and a slice of avocado on top and then a bowl with some beans in it. The description of the crispy tacos entree in the menu said chicken tacos in crispy shells with lettuce, cheese, pico de gallo and sour cream on them along with refried beans and spanish rice on the side. Hmmm...

So we called the waiter back over and he took the plate away and then brought me the correct tacos a little while later. They were okay, certainly not worth the $12.95 price tag and neither were the $14.95 shrimp tacos that Keith ordered. At least they brought him the correct shrimp tacos the first time around though.

Then we get our check and my eyes bugged out at the $51.00 total and wait a minute here, that sounds like a whole lot more than what we should be paying for our mediocre dinner. We called the waiter over again and he fixed the check, bringing it down to a more reasonable $25.00. Still a lot for not so great food and the wrong food at that. We should have just gone to Taco Bell and I don't think we'll be going back to La Mina anytime soon.

Bear and Mimi and MRI scans

Well, here we go with Keith having been bumped off of the yard job board. There really are no other options as far as traveling to another district for work, all the other districts doing their own cuts, so he will have to go onto the furlough board which is basically an unemployment board where you sit and wait and hope that in a few months they start recalling people to go back to work. He thinks you get a small amount in railroad unemployment, smaller than state unemployment pays, which as anyone whose been on unemployment knows is not much. Something like $1000.00 a month. We are not sure if he loses his benefits while on the board so we may not have any insurance for a while. We have our annual doctor visits coming up and some dental visits which will all have to be put off until he hopefully gets back to work.

I did go back to the urgent care doctor on Monday to see if results had come back as far as intestinal parasites go, and they had and I don't have any parasites but still having issues so they sent me to get a scan to see what the heck is going on with my digestive system. We think it may be diverticulitis which I was diagnosed with back in '07 when I had my colonoscopy. I have never had any real problems with it before unless you count occasional constipation, certainly nothing like I've been going through for the past 6 weeks or so.

I went yesterday for the scan which was no big deal except for no food or water for 4 hours beforehand, which was actually more like 12  hours since there wasn't enough time between waking up and going for the scan to have any food or water. They do tell you to drink 16 oz of water before you come for the appointment and then they give you a bottle of water when you get there. The actual scan only takes about 15 minutes, the checking in and getting your IV in for the contrast dye took longer than the actual scan. I should find out the results from that in a few days and then go from there. If nothing is conclusive the next step would be to see a gastro doctor but if we don't have insurance then that will get put on hold for a while along with the other doctor and dentist stuff.

Other than digestive issues, the two blood draws I've had done had good results, nothing going on with my liver or anything and my blood pressure has been really good too. And no weird parasites living in my body.

Millie is almost done with her antibiotics, she was getting to where she wouldn't eat all of the pill pocket treats so last night we tried some turkey lunch meat with the meds sprinkled on it and yum yum yum, she liked that a lot! It's not crappy lunch meat from Walmart but the good meat from Trader Joe's that is actually turkey cut from the breast in recognizable slices and without all the preservatives you find in regular lunch meat. She seems to be feeling much better and back to her barking at noises and tearing up her toys.

Bear and Mimi were sleeping together on the bed the other day, Mimi being a very convenient pillow for Bear's head.

Much Better Back And Some Cats Following The Rules Of Cuteness

My back is feeling much much better today, well enough so that I was able to ride the bike over to Walmart to get some shower gel since I ran out yesterday and wanted to be able to use soap in my shower today, and also drop a package off at Office Depot and get some free ink and photo paper.

Free ink and photo paper? Yes! The last time I got ink there they gave me a coupon on my receipt good for $10.00 off my next purchase of $20.00 or more and then yesterday my Rewards certificate came in the mail and it was for $50.00. So, ink and paper for free and I still have a few dollars left on my certificate. If you are wondering what a rewards certificate is and shop at Office Depot, you get a little card that you use on each purchase and you can also turn in up to ten used up ink cartridges per month for a credit of $3.00 a cartridge. Then, once a month they send you a gift certificate. Since I use a lot of ink, it's well worth it for me to recycle my cartridges there and do my ink buying there. Plus, it's about two blocks from the house.

There was some excitement on my bike ride this morning, when I woke up today the alarm clock was flashing which told me that the power had gone out sometime during the night. I went around and fixed all the flashing clocks and didn't think a whole lot else about it, just glad that the power was on so I could make my coffee (and peruse the internet of course). Then, as I'm riding off to Walmart first, I decided to go out the other entrance to our neighborhood and ride along the street behind Walmart and cross over in the middle of the street. Which usually is not a problem at about 8:30 in the morning, most of the rush hour going to work people having already gotten to work, and the going shopping people not out and about yet. Today, though, the traffic was crazy busy along that street, the busiest I've ever seen it. I was thinking that maybe they were doing some road work and had a detour going, so I rode along down the street to where the light is and I could cross in the crosswalk. The light was flashing red and down the street at the big intersection of Rosedale Hwy and Coffee Road I see police cars and fire engines, so, okay, some kind of accident down there.

I rode along down Coffee to the intersection because might as well be a lookie lou since I've gotten this far and here is a tanker trunk that had gone off the road and crashed into some power poles on the corner. The truck was still smoldering and I see a news guy with his cameraman on the corner doing a newscast. They aren't allowing any traffic on one side of the road and are diverting all the traffic that would normally be going down Rosedale up Coffee and onto the road behind Walmart.

I went around behind the news guy, not wanting to disturb his newscast or have my big bike riding bottom be on the news, and went on around to Walmart. I went online after I got home and found out that the accident happened at like 3 in the morning and would probably be hours and hours before it was all cleaned up.

So, that was my excitement for the day. I did also do the yard work this morning, it doesn't take as long to mow the yard when half of the grass is dead because we aren't supposed to be watering it. There is always a plus side!

One of my favorite websites is CuteOverload, which features cute animal pictures and videos. They have rules of cuteness, two of which are crossed paws are cute and animals laying in sunbeams is cute. I got both rules today when Bear and Mimi were laying by the back door and double crossed paws to boot!

Handy Dandy Pillow

I'm so glad that Bear and Mimi still seem so attached to one another, all of the other cats lead their solitary lives, only interacting on rare occasions and that interaction is usually (at least in Buddy's case) to pick on the more timid cats. While we love Buddy, we should have named him Bully, because that's what he does when he gets in a mood, picks on Mimi until she cries, chases after Bear and Harri, and he and Pepper bat at each other on a regular basis. Bully, I mean Buddy, is always the instigator.

Mimi has been mean to Bear a few times, and Bear has been impatient with Mimi a few times, batting at her if she really doesn't feel like having another cat squeeze in next to her, but for the most part she is patient and loving and still thinks Mimi is her baby.

She makes for a good pillow, too.

Today's Cute

Here is Mimi trying to squish herself into the basket with Bear again. She's kind of sitting right on top of Bear.



Bear is so patient most of the time. Occasionally she will have just had enough and either swat Mimi or just get out of the basket and kind of sigh.

What else? We saw Joe on his birthday, which was a big surprise! We took him over to Chili's for dinner since it was his birthday and all. Our waitress's name was Jennifer and Keith couldn't remember her name. What's up with that, anyway? He wanted to call her Jessica which is what our neighbor's name was, the neighbor that he called Jennifer for about 3 years. Sometimes his mind works in rather weird ways.

I'm busy busy working on new stuff for the shops and trying to keep up with the house that seems to constantly need cleaning even though there are only 2 of us living here, and the cat boxes that also seem to constantly need cleaning. And then there is the trying to figure out healthy low carb meals thing, and then the cleaning up after the healthy low carb meal. I've stopped using the dishwasher, it never has worked all that well and you would have to sort of pre-wash everything you put in there, but the last straws were the fork that came out of there with cheese still on it and the plate with butter still on it. So now I'm hand washing dishes which doesn't bother me all that much since I never had dishwashers that worked before moving here and I was pretty much resigned to hand washing dishes for the rest of my life anyway. It is one of those chores that is actually kind of soothing and calming, the water and the suds and all, but my problem is with putting away the clean dishes so usually they just dry themselves in the drainer and maybe get put away hours later.

The Daily Cuteness

I decided to start a new daily feature, The Daily Cuteness, that is if I even remember to do this every day.

Today's cuteness is Bear and Mimi in the basket. Bear was sleeping by herself in her favorite basket and Mimi decided she could squeeze herself in there, too. Bear always gives Mimi a little hug.

Synchronized Sleeping