Sometimes, the Holidays...

... are meant for snuggling with your favorite pal.

Our cats are also guinea pigs

One of the fun parts of preparing for Baby D's arrival has been testing out all the baby products.












Apart from some slight shredding, I think the Moby Wrap is good to go.

A Brief Life Update

I'm back! Wow, life has been crazy for the past few weeks, and I apologize for being such a blog slacker. So here's what's been going on in a nutshell:

~Adam got sick. And then I got sick. It was some sort of nasty respiratory sickness, which I'm still recovering from as far as sniffling and congestion. Since I'm exceptionally loathe to take medication, being pregnant and all, I tried a device called a Neti pot. It's like a small teapot that you fill with a saline solution and use to rinse your sinuses out. Go here if you'd like to see a weird lady demonstrate it on Youtube. I do not recommend those bending exercises, though, unless you want boogers all over your floor!!! Just sayin'. I'm not entirely sure how effective the Neti pot was for me, but it was nice to feel like I was doing something about my cold.

~My work replacement started with the company last week, so I've been training her. And by "training", I mean playing solitaire while she does my job. Ahhhh, these will be a glorious last few weeks at work.

~My sister's birthday was on Tuesday. Since our birthdays are so close together, she made the three-hour drive down here so we could celebrate it together! Our cake was INSANE. She wanted a raw cookie dough cake, and I wanted an ice cream cake. So we combined and made a ridiculous double-layer chocolate chip cookie dough cake with a full carton of ice cream spread over the top. Calories don't count on your birthday, right? Right?? Oh yeah, and since my sister was turning twenty, and I'm turning twenty-four, we put forty-four candles on the cake. I dare you to find a more ridiculous cake (and one that makes a bigger cloud of smoke).

~So what am I doing on my actual birthday, which happens to be tomorrow? Well, not much-- I'll be spending most of the day at work. I'll also be celebrating Arnold Schwartzenegger's birthday, as well as National Cheesecake Day!!! This is probably going to involve me bringing some sort of cheesecake dish to work tomorrow. Adam probably has some special plan up his sleeve because he's sweet like that, but otherwise, that's what my day looks like.

~Today, we went to the local water park for free, courtesy of Adam's workplace. Since I can't really go on any of the slides, and Adam's favorite ride was closed for maintenance, we hung out there for a couple hours, said, "Well, this is lame," and went home. I am SO glad that we got in for free, because they way overcharge for everything there!!! I highly encourage any readers in the area to find alternative means of entertainment, because you will be charged theme park prices for a less-than-memorable experience.

~We are watching a dog for some friends who are currently out of town. The household menagerie score: DOG +1, extremely happy and excited to see our cats. CATS -2, throwing literal hissy fits and spending the past approximate 36 hours under our bed. ADAM AND MARIA +5, extremely entertained by how much the dog still loves the cats anyway.

~My midwife appointment on Tuesday actually took place at our apartment, so that they could scope things out and not worry about finding the place when B-Day actually arrives. Luckily for me. they did not take one look at my apartment and shriek, "NO WAY are you having a baby in this MESS!!!!" which is probably because I spent the two days before doing some hard-core cleaning. Not surprisingly, my blood pressure was high. Of course I wasn't going to tell them, "Yeah, I was under stress to get the house clean!!!" so now I have to actually formally exercise and eat more protein. Oy veh. On a more positive note, tomorrow marks nine months!

So that's what's going on at the Downright Domicile. Hope you all are beating the heat just fine and enjoying the rest of your summer!

Survival of the Kittest-- Er, Fittest

Meow! THE TERROR... it comes around this time every week.

I have a bad feeling about this! I can't let it get me!!

I'll just hide under the dresser.

OH NO! HERE IT COMES! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!

I'm too scared to stay under the dresser, so I'm moving. It'll never find me in the closet.

Uh oh! I've been caught!

I'll hide under the bed with Mel. If luck is with me, THE TERROR will take him first.

Wait.... did someone say dinner?

I guess I'm not so scared after all.

Failure

Well, I didn't write my post yesterday. The magic of NaBloPoMo is broken! I had a good excuse, though. For some reason, I was dog tired when I came home from work, so I lay down and took a nap. Next thing you know, it wast 10 PM, so I puttered around for a couple hours before going back to bed and getting a full eight more hours of sleep!!! I'd say someone was tired! When I woke up this morning, I realized that there was no post for yesterday. Whoops.

In other news, the funniest thing happened today! When our cat Meatloaf enters the bathroom, usually he will head straight for the bathtub and jump in. I don't know why he does that, but it's really cute. Except usually it's empty. However, our tub has had some drainage problems lately and thus drains veeeeery slooooooowly. This morning, after taking a longer-than-usual shower, I opened the bathroom door. In bounded Meatloaf, and before I knew what was happening, Meatloaf dove head first into the half-full bathtub!

I am telling you, I did not know that a cat could run that fast to the other end of a house.

And Meatloaf was just fine, except for maybe his pride.

An Angry Cat

Holding the cats too long like this...

...Leads to this.

They're just so cute when they're annoyed, that it's hard not to purposefully annoy them.

By the way, doesn't Meatloaf just have the most fabulous whiskers?

Cat's in the Can!

I am convinced that there is such thing as a cat sin nature. I think this because I live with two cats who have their favorite "pet" sins.

Mel loooooves to sharpen his claws... on our nice couch. No other item, not even the entire cushy $5 Goodwill chair that we designated as the Scratching Post, will do. But I can live with that, because it's really easy to catch Mel in the act and bring him to The Chair.

Meatloaf, however, has discovered the bathroom garbage can. Or, to be precise, he has discovered how much fun it is to knock the trash can over and spread the contents out all over the floor! It's hard to catch him in the act because when I finally get to the scene of the crime, Meatloaf is sitting in the bedroom, innocently licking himself.

Ooooooooooooooh!!

Spraying him with a water bottle when I do catch him doesn't seem to be too effective, and the internet is strangely silent about this sort of menace, so I'm going to try the one piece of advice I did find on the web: putting a wet paper towel sprinkled with cayenne pepper in the trash.

Hope this works!

Kitty Trouble: Part 2, and Other Things

I have been AWOL from cyberspace this week because my laptop decided it would be fun to play dead. I'll go get that fixed sometime, but for now, I'm stuck with snatching time on the "family" computer when DH is otherwise occupied (I just hate asking other people to get off the computer! So I wait. And wait).

I should have known the rest of this week would be weird when I got out of bed and stepped on a kitten's head, which probably ranks in my Top 3 Most Horrifying Experiences. Between wiping up blood and earnestly beseeching God for some divine intervention in the kitty's life, I didn't do too much.

Turns out, after a couple precarious days of listlessness and being fed from an eyedropper (he wasn't eating or drinking anything), he perked up! In fact, I think he's forgiven me, because he's contentedly sleeping on my lap as I type right now.

Or he might be plotting his revenge. You never can tell with cats.

Cat Attack!

Yesterday, I mentioned an event that pretty much turned the entire Downright Domestic household upside-down.

We began Friday with a trip to the beach with a friend who will be leaving town soon; we ended the day by taking these home:

Please don't tell our landlord.

We were ecstatic because we both love kitties and have been considering getting one for a while. This could be an opportunity for a free kitten! we thought.

Ever hear of Baby Think-It-Over? It is a life-like baby doll with real-life crying intervals and care needs that high schools programs will give to teenagers for a few weeks to convince them that having babies in high school isn't such a good idea.

More than once, I have turned the kitties upside-down and checked for batteries.

They are incredibly cute and fun to play with, but we are realizing quickly that we simply don't have the room for a cat. There isn't any good spot for a litter box or food.

I have boarded up and stuck more towels in nooks and crannies than I can remember (just how did I find out about these secret passages? Guess). Last night, I rounded up all the kitties to put them in the bathroom for the night, as usual. After much time spent fruitlessly searching for one lost kitten, I decided to just leave him out for the night. Maybe then he'd learn his lesson!

I woke up at four this morning to ear-splitting screeching from the kitchen. Where did I find this lost kitty? Inside my closed table-linen drawer. Don't ask me how. I'm still scratching my head over that one.

In spite of all the kitten adventures, Mama cat has proven to be the worst of the bunch. We have been the lucky recipients of a non-stop monologue from the cat. When one of moves to the other room to get away from the noise, she follows us, meowing all the way. We go to sleep listening to her vocalize. Come to think of it, this cat may be a perfect specimen to try this hilarious idea.

So, all in all, I'm having fun with the kitties, but I will be even better when my friend returns in a couple weeks to get his cats back!