Alvin or Simon he's not.

My garden, my house, and my cat are under attack.

He is evil. He is fast. He is focused, and he might be a she.

The little terror has torn up all of my flower beds in search of delicious tulip bulbs.

He had made my cat go insane with rage and hunting desires.

He is pissing me off.


But what do you do with a chipmunk when you feel horrible about killing other living creatures?

I am aware that I eat meat, but I do that for sustenance. Killing something so I can have pretty flowers next Spring just seems mean.

I let my cat out this morning so she could have at it. She mostly peed on it's tunnels and stuck her arm fruitlessly down the holes. I am thinking of renaming her Elmer Fudd.

What We Fight About

Me: I think the cat is jealous that you take the dog for walks. You should probably sneak out when she's not looking.

Mr. Hobbitfeet: I'm not sneaking out!

Me: You're hurting her feelings! She thinks you don't love her!

Mr. H.: She's a cat. She doesn't get jealous.

Me: She just gets so sad. Maybe if she doesn't see you go out that wouldn't happen!

Mr. H.: Will you stop giving the pets human emotions!!! They don't think like that! All they think is "Feed Me," "Pet Me!"

Me: You're wrong.

Mr. H.: (Puts the dog on leash and slams out of the house)

Willow (the cat): (Jumping up on the back of the couch and looking pathetically out the window)Mwrooow! Mwrooow! Mwroooow!

Me: (muttering to self) Don't tell me the cat's not jealous.

The following are pictures of the cat watching the dog in the back yard.

Tell me she doesn't look jealous!

In Which I Am Willing to Trade My Kids and Pets For One Night of 8 Hour Sleep

I have this goal that I am going to get up at 6 a.m. and make my husband and kids a nice healthy breakfast in the morning. A breakfast that isn't a bagel or a bowl of cereal, which is all the kids get when Mr. Hobbitfeet makes breakfast. Well, sometimes he makes instant oatmeal. I really would love to make them scrambled egg whites.
So every night I go to bed thinking, "Tomorrow, I'll do it." Then the night hits me. No matter what time I physically go to bed, I cannot fall asleep until at least 12:30 a.m. (if I'm lucky). I just lie there thinking, completely unable to turn my brain off no matter what I do.
Mr. H. can lay down no matter what time of day or night and instantly be in a deep sleep, and once he's there nothing, NOTHING can wake him up (short of a high pitched scream directly in his ear or possibly a blow job, but who wants to go there?). I hate him.
The slightest thing wakes me up, a loud owl, a weird breeze. Sometimes, absolutely nothing will wake me up. I'll be asleep having nice dreams, and BAM! I am wide awake for no discernible reason. Every now and again (though much less if I take a sleep aid) I'll wake myself up as I am running screaming down the hall turning on every light in the house. Why do I do that? I never have any knowledge.
Then there are nights like last night. The dog, the cat, and Girl all decided that they needed to sleep with us. Despite being a queen-sized bed, there is no room for that shit. Of course, since Mr. H's feet go all the way to the bottom of the bed, they are all on my side. At first it was okay. Everyone took up some space, but we were all feeling cozy, but at 3 a.m. the cat and the dog remembered they hate each other and start brawling and I am trapped between Girl and Mr. H.
So everyone is kicked out. Girl is pt back in her own bed, which makes her cry for hours and the cat and dog are thrown out.
Of course, this isn't the end of it. I have to leave the door open in case one of my kids needs me, and the cat and t he dog aren't fooled for a second by my closing it most of the way, but leaving it open a crack. They keep pawing the door so it opens and then staring at me from the doorway before resuming their brawl.
Finally, I can't take it anymore. Even though it is a chilly night, I turn on my two fans for the white noise and dig myself deep into the covers. 4 a.m. and I am back asleep. Then 7:30 a.m. rolls around and I am awakened by Girl, once again in my bed, wanting me to tell her how many days it is until she can sleep over at my mom's farm, how many days until school starts, how to spell this and that, until I am fully awake with a pounding, not-enough-sleep-for-the fifth-night-in-a-row headache and every muscle sore from last night's battle with kids to big to carry and stupid pets.
"Go watch t.v. with your brother," I mumble, very much aware of the shitty parenting I am doing.
Five more minutes and I am wide awake because the dog is barking his "someone's here bark" which is much, much louder than his "there's a deer in our driveway" bark or his "there's a dog being walked and I can see it" bark. So I get up to make sure my kids aren't going to allow a religious nut into the house. But it is just Blondie, the kid whose is Boy's age and gets babysat by his Grandma who lives across the street. Luckily, Boy sends him away. Knowing I won't let him out until breakfast has been eaten and Mama is awake. Good ole Boy. He sure takes care of his Mom!
Maybe when I sell the pets and Girl (to the gypsies as my dad always said), I'll keep him around.

A Post Without Direction

I recently switched from yahoo to gmail, and I gotta tell you, I really love it. I've had a Yahoo account since 2000 and I used to be very satisfied with it and then slowly more and more spam kept slipping through and more and more of the mail I actually wanted was going into the spam folder. But so far all my gmail has gotten are warm fuzzies from my friends and family. I also like how it stacks up all the replies into one conversation so you can keep track of everything that was said without even leaving the current email. Small things make me happy.

And speaking of small things, I want to talk about my weirdo son. If you've met Boy you'd know that in preschool he could name every car on the street. Then he got sick of cars and started liking animals. It was because of him that I discovered one of my favorite creatures the Axolotl, which often looks like a happy little clown (and not an evil, scary clown, but one you would really like to know). Had it not been for Boy, I would have utterly missed the existence of these wonderful creatures and would have been a less happy person. My point though is that, despite his love for looking at the animals in the zoo, Boy was really pretty afraid of animals.

Then we got Mr. Giles and Boy suddenly believed that dogs were okay really, but he still believed that cats were the spawn of Satan and he didn't want anything to do with him. For the most part I really get that. He spent most of his life horribly allergic to cats. When Mr. Hobbitfeet and I got engaged, and I finally allowed them to spend time together, Boy stepped into Mr. Hobbitfeet's condo with its eleven-year-old, elephant-sized cat and immediately turned into a red, puffy, snot ball. So when Mr. Hobbitfeet moved in with us, Gracie had to go.
But after two and a half years of allergy shots, I thought he'd be okay giving it a go. I was dealing with some hardcore baby fever that wasn't likely to be sated, and damn it I wanted a kitten. So we got one. When I told Boy we were getting a kitten, he freaked out. He was mad. He absolutely did not want it.
Guess how Boy spends his day now. Following that cat around, picking it up whenever he can. He puts it on his head and says, "Do you like my hat?" He puts it on his face and says, "Do you like my moustache?" He videotapes it sleeping. He is nuts about our little Willow, and he hasn't had a single problem with his allergies.

The Many Random Things That Make Up My Day

Boy and I went to the library yesterday and got some books. Today, while waiting the requisite half hour in the doctor's office after his allergy shots, (and because we were once again Girl-less) Boy and I were each reading our books. We both went into such deep book comas that neither one of us heard his name called (several times) and the nurse had to come tap us on the heads. What is it that they say about apples and trees?

Boy has decided that he likes Suzanne Vega (of Tom's Diner fame). So we were listening to the song Luka, and I found myself babbling about what it was about and I guess I don't really know. Is it child abuse? Is it about some one getting beat up by their boyfriend? Why was I talking about this with and 11 year-old?

My cat likes to ride around on our shoulders like a parrot, which makes my husband happy because he likes to pretend he's a pirate, a weird pirate with a kitten instead of parrot, but then again Mr. Hobbitfeet can't swim so he would never make a good pirate.

Sometimes (like right now) when I am laying on the couch the cat curls up on my shoulder. Only, since I am laying down, she's more on my chest than my shoulder so she looks like a furry flower accessory that Sarah Jessica Parker would wear in Sex and the City. So which is weirder, pretending you are a cat pirate or that you're starting a new trend of wearing giant cat flowers on your chest.

I should probably go to bed.

Some Pictures

Boy with his ribbons from his last swim meet with the "Nads"





And look, they're friends now . . .





. . . sort of . . .

Why I Haven't Been Posting More

You may have noticed that I've really slacked off on the posting lately.

Honestly, it is not my fault.

Meet Willow!

For reasons too numerous to go into here, we got a cat. A six-week old kitten to be exact.
We decided to ignore my son's hatred of all things feline (and also his allergy-after all he's been getting shots for almost two years now) and buy a cat; and I have to say he's really taken to her.

Girl wanted to name her Sandy (after the dog in Annie) and Boy wanted to name her Miss Kitty Fantastico (which is from Buffy). To compromise we all agreed on Willow to keep with the Buffy theme (my dog is named Mr. Giles) and not end up naming our gray cat "Sandy." Plus Girl likes Willow (especially when she's on How I Met Your Mother, Girl says she's really funny then- she doesn't understand about acting).

Anyway Giles is jealous, and eats her food, and they fight (like cats and dogs-sorry), but I think they'll warm up to each other eventually.