A Trivial Buttonhole: 12/10/10

Friday, December 10, 2010

Kitty Torture

The fun thing about Minion is that she enjoys almost any toy, so I'm more willing to take a risk buying more expensive ones.

For example, I bought a little tunnel from Canadian Tire and she's in there ALL the time. I'll post pics later.

I finally caved and bought the puzzle box. You're supposed to put balls in it, and the cat tries to hunt them out. Well Minion got out the balls that came with it in about 2 minutes. (I'll try rollier ones next time.) Since she and Haley are both highly-food-motivated I put in her daily tooth-cleaning crunchies instead, and that took her more time to get through.

But now I alternate, and some days put Haley's tooth crunchies in it. Haley's not a dumb cat, but Minion seems to be above-average in intelligence, so it took Haley a little longer to get the right paw technique down. But she seems to have the hang of it.

Why do I torture my kitties so? Well I figure an indoor cat needs her share of challenges, if only to fend off dementia. Plus they eat slower! (Which doesn't stop Haley from puking up her meal anyway. She has the tiniest stomach! But hey, at least the meal is easier to catch the second time round.)

loo loo part too

Well that wasn't so hard. Last time I'd filled out Gail Vaz-Oxlade's budget sheet, so all I had to do was enter a new (lower) income for myself and then play with the categories until I balanced.

Now I have to make the little jars, because Fernando is demanding jars. To my credit we had something like the jar system many moons ago, only without actual jars. Fernando insists it's the only system he's willing to follow. ;-) Gail must have won over his heart.

Looo looo looooooo

Ohhh budget-making. Yuck!

Don't get me wrong--I like making spreadsheets and such. But if I spend a few years figuring out what we spent last year, figuring out categories, budgets for this year etc., and then don't use the information right away... when I return to my sheets a couple months later I have to comb through and figure out how I calculated it all. I guess I just make them too complicated, because I like lots of detail.

Mehhh. So when I know I need to return to my budget sheet, I procrastinate. Like I'm doing right now.

I went to the health food store for more winter vegan supplies today. It must be the Prairie girl in me, stocking up for the long winter. (Then again, real Prairie girls probably don't mind a 10 minute walk to the store in -15 Celcius.) My ice box is filled with vegan cheese and Tofurkey sandwich slices. But they didn't have soy nog this year! Can you believe that? It was the main reason I went. But to be safe I bought silk tofu in case I have to make my own.

Christmas Unpicks: It'll make you ho ho ho

I'm looking through the Christmas albums on sale in iTunes. I see Bob Dylan's masterful comedic work Christmas in the Heart is listed. It's become a warm holiday tradition of mine to sample this album once per year and have a nice laugh. What joy Dylan brings.

Only one song's been uploaded to iTunes, which means it's either heavily protected, or so Blatantly Wrong that no one dares post it. I only found this video of a guy playing "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" to people on the street.