Sing to the tune of  “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”:

Ew-ew-ew-ew
Ew-ew-ew-ew-ew
I think I’m gonna die!
Ew-ew-ew-ew
Ew-ew-ew-ew-ew
I think I’m gonna die!

It’s so stinky, it’s so stinky, it’s so stinky, it’s so stinky
This a-sucks-a, this a-sucks-a, this a-sucks-a, this a-sucks-a

In the kitchen, the Cathouse kitchen, the garbage stinks today.
On the curb, well, that’s where it should be, the garbage stinks today.

Get a ticket, get a ticket, get a ticket, get a ticket
If you put it out too soon-a, pay a fine-a, pay a fine-a

Where’s the Lysol, the mighty Lysol, I need a case of it!
It smells so badly, so very badly, much worse than lion shit!

Mayor Howard is a jerk-a, what a jerk-a, what a jerk-a
When he runs for re-election, I will write in Mickey Mouse-a!

I can’t stand it, I just can’t stand it, I think I’m gonna croak!
Stupid trash laws, those stupid trash laws, they’re all just one big joke!

It’s so stinky, it’s so stinky, it’s so stinky, it’s so stinky
This a-sucks-a, this a-sucks-a, this a-sucks-a, this a-sucks-a

Ew-ew-ew-ew
Ew-ew-ew-ew-ew
I think I’m gonna die!
Ew-ew-ew-ew
Ew-ew-ew-ew-ew
It’s too late now…I’m dead.

I am dead serious…one of the new trash rules is that we are not allowed to put ANY trash out until the night before garbage day.  The problem is that we have no place else to put it in the meantime, so it stays in the kitchen can.  If we put it in the basement, where we and the landladies have our washers and dryers, the landladies will complain of the stink while they are down there doing their laundry.  So what can we do, except buy stock in Febreze and Lysol?

This shit town claims that the purpose of the garbage tax is to encourage people to recycle more.  But why the rule about not being allowed to put it out until the night before garbage day?  Used to be, when I was getting rid of potentially stinky food waste, I’d tie it up in a bag and put it out right away, so it wouldn’t stink up the house.  Our outside cans all have lids that clamp on, so there is no worry of the stink getting out, or of animals getting into the trash and making a mess.

And we can’t recycle everything!  It’s meat bones and stuph that cause the serious stink, followed by vegetable waste.  And no, we have no place to put a compost bucket, and besides, what the hell would we do with it?  We live in a bloody APARTMENT, for fuck’s sake!  And a rather small one, at that.

You can’t compost meat bones, anyway.  And if anyone leaves a lame-assed comment telling me to not eat dead animals…well, YOU can try living with my carnivore husband for a week with him having no meat.  Assholes.

It’s bad enough that I actually have to do extra stuph now, like wash out empty cans of cat food, to get rid of that stink, because they have to stay inside until trash/recycling day.  Why is it now more work and misery for me, despite the fact that we are now forced to pay $20 for a box of ten garbage bags?  Can’t the dickheads just be happy to collect the damned money, and leave us alone as to when we put our stinky trash outside?

Am I now going to have to plan meals around fucking garbage day?  Say I want to have mussels…actually, I do, I saw them on a cooking show yesterday, and I’m drooling for them now.  They come in shells, which get stinky after a couple of days.  Can I only have mussels at home on Sunday or Monday, so I can get the shells out into the trash in time for garbage day (which is Tuesday)?  Or am I supposed to wash all of those damned shells to keep them from stinking up the house after being in the trash for almost a week?

Don’t even get me started about having to keep bags full of used cat litter, from six cats, inside for a week.  We used to take out bags of used litter every day after cleaning litter boxes, now we can’t.  We try to keep all stinky trash as enclosed in its container as possible, but sometimes that just isn’t enough.  Garbage belongs OUTSIDE, for fuck’s sake!

Just about everything I predicted would go wrong with this bullshit idea, has.  I wonder how things are going with that petition to repeal these rules is going?  I hope that this can somehow be repealed by summer time, or else we are really in for some serious stinkage!

Mayor Howard, BTW, is Richard Howard, mayor of this shit town.  He is a rich asshole who lives in a big house, and hasn’t a clue as to how regular people in this town live.  He probably has a shed or something in which he (or likely, his housekeeper) puts the trash so it doesn’t stink up his house all week.

Moe, Curly, or Shemp Howard would be a vast improvement over this jerk.

About those $20 boxes of garbage bags…the other day, I was in the local Stop & Schlop, and decided to use the self-check aisle.  The computer talks, when you scan something in, it says the price.  So this guy in front of me had a box of those garbage bags.  He scanned it in, and as the computer voice said “Twenty Dollars”, I could see him very visibly cringe.

Yep, dude, I know how you feel.  And I bet your kitchen stinks, too.

Thank DOG tomorrow is garbage day, and we can take the stink out tonight!

Today is the day that many parents have been looking forward to…the kids are back in school.  In some parts of New England, kids have been out of school since December 12.  This was because many homes and businesses lost power due to The Great Ice Storm of ‘08.  And some of these people only just got their power back recently.  These were towns in north/central Massachusetts, along the Route 2 corridor, who are served by a company called Unitil.  I wrote a lot more about that clusterfuck HERE.

But the reason it’s quiet here today is that Mike is back at work.  He had taken off the whole week between Christmas and New Year’s, and his office was closed on Friday, Jan 2…so today is his first day back.  It was nice to have him home for a while, but he was starting to drive me nuts.  It’s time for him to go back to work and drive them nuts!

It’s hard for me to get things done when he is here.  Part of it is that on some of the days he was off, we went out, other times, I just can’t deal with the distraction.  I really need to FINALLY clean up my craft area, but when Mike is around, he is nosing into my business, and making annoying suggestions.  I work better ALONE.
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So now I am waiting for the damned oil man to get here and fill the tank…it is almost empty.  Mike got paid on Friday, despite the office being closed, so once we knew we had the money, I called for a fill, to be done today.  I don’t want to get too wrapped up in cleaning and organizing, only to be interrupted by the guy at the door.  I have to pay him after he fills the tank, he has a wireless credit card swiper whosit so I didn’t have to worry about having that much cash on hand.  I could have just given them my CC# over the phone when I called, but I don’t feel comfortable with that.  So I have to be here and wait for them to come.  I hope it’s soon, I have stuph to do!
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The kittehs are doing a lot better today, even more so than yesterday. Pumpkin, who was sicker than the rest, has been acting as if he were never sick at all.  Not a sneeze out of him today, plus, after Mike left, he was hanging out by the door, crying pitifully for his Daddy hoomin.  This is normal behavior for him.

I think the Vitamin C and the humidifier have really helped.  Now I don’t have to worry about having to take anyone to the vet, especially today when I need to stay home and wait for the stupid oil truck.

Any day now, oil guys!

I swear, I have the weirdest dreams.  Maybe I should start a dream blog.

Last night, I dreamt that I had a job at a 24-hour Dunkin’ Donuts.  I was angry with my boss because she was making me work on New Year’s Eve, and I wanted to go to First Night in Boston.

When I was working in restaurants, I had to work a couple of New Year’s Eves, and now I say NEVER AGAIN.  Just being out on that night sucks.  Besides, most Drunken Dognuts locations aren’t even 24 hours, I suppose a few are, because cops on the graveyard shift need their coffee and donuts.  But I would never sign on for such a gig, no way, no how!

And no way did I want to go to First Night.  It was friggin’ COLD here that night, wind chills were below zero.  I have never been to First Night, and have never had the desire to go, it’s almost always too cold, and then there’s the whole thing with just being out and dealing with drunks on the streets, on the T, and on the roads.  I much prefer to ring in the New Year at home, where it is safe and warm.

I don’t know why I have dreams like this!

The sneezies are going away.  Even Pumpkin is looking better today.  I had not been able to sneak him his doses of Vitamin C over the past few days, being that he refused to eat the canned food I was hiding it in.  He was only eating dry food.  But at least he was eating something, and drinking water, too.

Today I hid the ground-up Vitamin C in some canned 9-Lives Ocean Whitefish dinner.  Pumpkin did not like 9-Lives Turkey, and wasn’t too keen on Seafood Platter, either.  He liked the Tuna one day, but not the next.  I don’t know if it was because he wasn’t feeling well and didn’t want to eat it, or if he just didn’t like it.  He didn’t even eat any of the sardines yesterday.

But they all came out for the Ocean Whitefish Dinner, and Pumpkin actually ate more than anyone else.  He certainly got his dose of Vitamin C today!  Then he went and ate some crunchy food, and then went to the water dishes and drank.

I haven’t heard any sneezies from anyone in quite a few hours now.  Hopefully, we are coming to the end of this.

Well, Mike’s vacation is winding down, and he will be back to work on Monday.  Part of me is relieved to have some peace and quiet back, but a bigger part of me will miss getting to spend more time with him, going out and stuph.

At least he had time to get things done.  He has a whole bunch of clothes that he no longer wears, taking up precious space.  FINALLY, today, he gathered them all up to get ready for donation to the Salvation Army.  I had to leave this chore to him, because they are his clothes, and it’s not for me to decide what stays and what goes.

I just stayed out of the way, played on the computer, while watching the Jacques Pepin marathon on Create TV.  This ended up costing me a little bit of money, as Jacques has a new series, More Fast Food My Way, and of course, a new companion cookbook.  I have the book for the original Fast Food My Way series, and it’s awesome.

A Jacques Pepin book that I don’t have yet?  Well, we can’t have that, so I ordered the new one today.  No, not for full price…I ordered it through the WGBH website, where they are having a sale on all cookbooks.  Add my member discount to that, and that added up to substantial savings.  Plus, buying through them helps support my local PBS stations, and that is important to me.
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Yesterday, we went out to collect mail at the Good Post Office.  Then we had lunch at the 99 in Tewksbury.  After that, we drove up to New Hamster to buy some Powerball tickets for tonight’s drawing, the jackpot is up to $90 million.

We also stopped in that fancy French department store, Tar-jhay, where we bought a humidifier for the bedroom.  Although most of the kitties are getting over their sniffles, Pumpkin is still kind of stuffed up, and a humidifier may help.  Also, it will help US…the heat here is so dry, it’s uncomfortable.

I also got to check out the Michaels store in Salem, NH…they had what I was looking for in the local one…this Cricut Solutions Baseball cartridge, for half price.  The Sunday ad said that this and other Solutions cartridges were on sale at all stores…but when I went to the local one, on Sunday, the first day of the sale, they had not a one.  So I’m glad I found one at another Michaels, before the sale was over.

The Cricut is a computerized die-cutting machine used for scrapbooking and other paper crafting, you may have seen informercials for it.  I did not buy mine from an infomercial, nor did I pay $300 for it, I got it for far cheaper on special at Michaels.  They make a variety of cartridges that you insert into the machine, and keypad covers that coordinate with the cartridges.  Then you program it to cut out shapes or letters, and you can choose the size.  Very cool, and a lot of fun.  So of course I had to have this baseball cartridge!
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As I said above, Pumpkin is still stuffy, but the others are getting better. Poor little orange guy’s immune system may not be the best, due to the fact that he was living outside in the cold until October 2007.  I was worried that he wasn’t eating, since cats often don’t eat when they can’t smell their food.  I had been hiding ground up vitamin C in canned food for them (vet’s advice), and I worried when Pumpkin didn’t want to eat the 9-Lives tuna that he’d eaten the day before.

So I tried even stinkier food…sardines.  I found some at the supermarket that were packed in plain water.  I chopped one up and offered it to Puffball, but he didn’t want it.  But everyone else was all over it.

And then Puffball went over the the feeder with the kibble, and ate a whole bunch of that.  I guess that even though he can’t smell his food, he knows where it is, and looked for the familiar.

As long as he’s eating, and drinking water (I saw him at the water several times today).  That’s always a good sign.  And he’s not lethargic, he does sleep a little more than usual, but for the most part, he is still acting like the PunkinApple we know and love (and sometimes get annoyed by…LOL!).  Still, if this doesn’t clear up soon, he will have to go and see the vet.  This sort of thing really should not hang on for more than 10 days.  But it’s not been that long yet.

We’ll just keep an eye on him, and see how it goes.

Seriously…sometimes grown men can be just like little boys.  I was going through stuph in the fridge today, and I found this pan, which had been covered with aluminimun foil.  It used to be a scalloped potato casserole that I’d made for Christmas dinner.

Mike was the last one to dig into this when making himself plates of leftovers.  Is there really any reason WHY he could not have put this small amount into a smaller container?  It’s not as if I don’t have dozens of smaller Tupperware containers in plain sight!

This sort of thing drives me batshit insane. WHY do men always seem to always do stuph like this?

Anyhoo, this sorta reminded me of an Eric Idle song…Men, Men, Men. WARNING: NOT FAMILY-FRIENDLY! Download at your own risk!

Potatoes are in the oven for the Gorgonzola Stuft Potatoes; when they come out, they just need to cool down so I can hollow them out and stuff them.  And then I just have to cook the steaks (not the steaks on the Katie Brown website I just linked to, hell no, filet is too pricey!  I got some New York strip steaks for five bucks a pound, I’m making pepper steaks with Woostahshoostahshire-butter sauce.).  Green veggie will be leftover green bean casserole from Christmas, a lot of it left and still good, so why not?

By the time it’s all ready, it’ll be time for the Three Stooges Marathon on channel 38…a New Year’s Eve tradition here at Chez Ailurophile.  We’ll turn on the TV in the kitchen and watch it while we eat.

We’ll switch over to some channel that has the ball dropping and open up our Le Cheapeaux Champagne just before midnight.

The kittehs will get some more ‘nip…they already had some today, but hell, it’s New Year’s Eve.  If we can get drunk, then kittehs can get high on some ‘nip.

Steak, beer, Le Cheapeaux, ‘nip for the kittehs, and the Stooges…it doesn’t get better than that!  And best of all, we are home, safe and warm, away from the cold weather and the psycho drunks on the roads.

Going out for NYE is so overrated, anyway.

Happy MEW Year to all!

I received the funniest email forward from my friend Nicole.  It was written by someone who found an old JC Penney catalog from 1977, and proceeded to make snarky comments about some of the goods therein.

Check it out here.  It’s a .pdf file, so you will need Adobe Reader in order to see it.  If you are having trouble seeing it, you can download the latest version of Adobe Reader HERE…it’s free and safe.  Most computers come with it, though.

I was 17 back in 1977, and I remember well all of those tacky clothes and furniture.  What WERE we all smoking back then?  No, don’t answer that one…LOL!

Of course, back then, nobody got their asses kicked for wearing any of that stuph, because this was what everyone wore.  The seventies have definitely gone down in history as “The Decade of Bad Taste”.

But you’d never see stuph like that in a current JCP catalog, or at the JCP store at the local Westgate mall.  Not unless some lame-brained fashion designers decided that it is time to bring back the 70’s.

No thanks.  Once was enough, thank you very much!

Enjoy!  And thanks, Nicole!

It was a busy day today.  First we had to go to the Good Post Office to collect mail.  Then we decided to head up to Kittery, Maine, to have lunch at Robert’s Maine Grill.  We hadn’t been there in eons, and we missed it.  Since Mike is off from work all week, we could do this.

We got kind of a late start, though.  I really wish we had a tankless water heater…I showered first today, and poor Mike had to wait for the hot water to come back so he could shower.  But no way would the landladies pony up for one of those.  When our hot water heater died several years ago (on a Christmas Day, of all days!), they replaced it with the cheapest one they could find.

So I didn’t get to go to Maine-ly Stamps, the rubber stamp store in Kittery.  She closes at 4PM, and it was almost that time by the time we finished up at Robert’s.

I did get to go to the Corningware-Corelle-Revere kitchen store at the Kittery Outlets.  I bought a Baker’s Secret bundt pan, an Oxo Good Grips potato ricer, a couple of lids to fit our larger Corelle bowls, and a small serving platter to match our Corelle dishes.

Then we stopped at Shaw’s to pick up some groceries.  It’s supposed to snow tomorrow, and we want to stay in anyway, due to it being New Year’s Eve.  Don’t want to risk being out when all of the drunks start coming out!

And now I’m tired…see ya later!

Kind of a dank, depressing day today.  Kitties have been sneezing on and off.  Not all of them…Allegra was sneezing for a few days, but it seems to have gone away for her.  But Pumpkin, Little Mitty, Junior, and Sabby have been sneezing a bit now.  Allegra probably caught it first and gave it to the others.  Only Dusty has not been sneezing, but she tends to stay away from the others…she’s an old geezer kitty who wants to be left alone…except for following us into the bathroom to demand “brushies”.

No other symptoms that we can see, it’s probably just a cold that will go away soon enough on its own, just like a human cold.  Vet said to try giving them small doses of Vitamin C in their food for a few days, see how that goes.  If sneezing doesn’t go away, or gets worse, then I’d have to bring them in.

The cats here eat mostly dry food, so there’s no way I could sneak anything into that.  The Vitamin C tablets that I take taste kind of nasty, I know this because I can’t swallow pills, I HAVE to chew them.  But I take them religiously each day, right along with my calcium/Vitamin D supplement (which tastes like chalk).  I just wash it all down with my morning diet Pepsi.

But we do keep canned food around, so I decided to hide the Vitamin C in that.  I took some of my tablets and used my mortar & pestle to grind them into a powder.  Then I opened a few cans, portioned out a small portion for each cat, and mixed a pinch of the ground Vitamin C in each.  The kitties all scarfed it down, they thought it was a special treat, and not *medicine*.

I also was told that it’s important to keep the kitties eating and hydrated during a cold, and the wet food does that better than the dry food does.  But I have been seeing them going to the water dishes, so that’s good.  Hopefully, they will be okay in a few days.  Other than the sneezing, they don’t seem sick at all, they are all acting purrfectly normal.

But unlike with humans, it is not good to give cats Vitamin C as a regular dietary supplement, it is only good when they actually do have colds.  Too much can cause other problems.

I had not known that you could give Vitamin C to cats.  I know it works well for me…I had gotten a free sample of it from that fancy French department store, Tar-jhay, when I went to get my flu shot.  They gave me two week’s worth, and I started taking them; when that ran out, I went back and got a Hugh Jass bottle of more.

And so far this cold/flu season, no serious illnesses.  I was getting very tired of getting violently ill each year, and having Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas ruined over this crap.

But Vitamin C works for kitties?  Apparently, many veterinarians say it does, so it’s worth a try.  And at least they are enjoying their dosages more than I am…maybe I should grind mine up and mix it in some tuna or something, to disguise the nasty taste!