Happy Birthday to......ME!

So today was the big day, only it's not so big anymore.  Yes, another birthday.  I'm so not telling how old I am, but it's old enough to know better.  And no, I don't complain about them, I'd rather have another than not.


Oddly, I spent most of my day cleaning for company.  I did manage to tweak my layout here, so I'm happy with that finally, I sooo had to make myself go to bed last night because I had just gotten tired of fiddling with it and it looked awful when I left.  Needless to say between cleaning guest bathrooms and mopping the kitchen floor and cutting up onions and tomatoes and lettuce for burgers, I was taking breaks to work on the artwork for the background.  I just can't manage to stay away from the computer for too long or I start feeling like there's an electrical current whipping through the house pulling me backwards into my oh so uncomfortable chair.


Birthdays are no big deal around here anymore.  Gone are the days of going out and having a big fancy dinner or having huge cookouts with everyone I know in attendance.  Maybe it's age but I'm finding I prefer just my husband and daughter and maybe dinner or cake with my parents to the huge gatherings of the past.  We had hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill, the way me and my mom like them.  Hog dogs with mustard, onions, chili and cole slaw.  Redneck heaven right there.  I'm not sure anyone even knows about those unless you live south of Southwest Virginia.


We didn't do presents this year, finances have been well.....horrid and no matter the mother, we do tend to put our family ahead of ourselves.  Not bragging or being self serving, that's just the way it is.  The kiddo (Kitty) is 17 now and we're trying to get her driving, but she had a hard year at school, seven honors classes, two of which are college level art that encompass HUGE projects so her grades dropped a bit in Trig.  Enough that we can't get the insurance discount until she brings them up again, which should happen at the end of the year since she's been busting her booty and acing her tests recently.

I've got a good kid though, she did get me a pair of shoes for my b-day.  Granted it was one of those lucky days, we'd been prom shopping and the last stop was Charlotte Russe for shoes.  They had their good old buy one pair get one for ten bucks, so my babygirl got hers for prom and got me a pair for the extra ten.  It was more than I wanted, or needed, but I love them!  She knows her Mommy has a weak spot for shoes and chocolate so I couldn't have been happier!  Then there was the fact that it FINALLY ended the headache of prom preparations which made it even better though.  The best part was seeing my baby looking all gorgeous prom night.

Okay, so I got carried away with showing off my babygirl, it's my birthday after all right?  Anyway, it was a good day, good foods, good weather, good company, and better still no school tomorrow so I can spend the day at home with my lil bit and play video games and go tumble in the grass with the kittens and talk about life and love and everything in between.  It's a good day.

Catnip Lullabies - A Tale of Kittens

I don't know about you but I've never heard of communal kitten raising.  Until recently.

See, I have this problem.  I adore cats.  That's not really the problem though, how shall I put this....they love me?  No, that's not the problem either.  Hmmm.....let me think a moment....

Maybe it's writing about kittens on a writing blog, but that would a problem for you maybe it's my blog so I imagine I can write whatever I want.  The problem, I THINK....is that cats have a tendency to create these oh so cute little clones of themselves that you just want to hold onto and love and hug and kiss and snuggle.  I call these little clones kittens.  Cats are like liver.  There's no "eh".  You either love them or you just well don't.

My problem started, ooooh about three years ago.  His name is Eddie Vedder.  Honestly, he's not a pretty cat, but we love him.  Once upon a time he belonged to the postman.  The postman lives down the street from us.  Eddie doesn't like the postman.  So now he lives here.  Kinda.  He definitely bring his dates here, and Eddie?  He's a stud.  He has LOTS of dates.  Eddie's best side you see when he walks away.  The only truly remarkable thing about him is his balls.  Sorry, I said it.  They're cute.  One is black.  One is white.  Maybe it makes me crazy but it's absolutely adorable.

The problem though began to escalate.  Consider the layers of an onion if you will, and you might start to get the picture I'm painting somewhere along the line.  This is Half Tail.  Look closely and you'll see that I'm not subtle with coming up with names for stray toms.  How can you not love a big 'ol Tom with half a tail?  The other cat is one of his many progeny. 

Follow along now if you will.  Unfortunately I don't have pictures of Zombie or Gwenny, but this is Courage, their brother.  The problem with all of these cats is that they're very much feral.  They will sit in my doorway and coerce me with soft little noises to feed them, but will they reciprocate with allowing a pat to the head or a scratch behind the ears?  Not a chance.  Sooo, all of you people out there who are rabid supports of the spay and neuter program, catch these suckers and I'd be glad to have them denied future kitten bearing.

Then there was Whole Tail, Day, Dawn and Diary.  Yes my daughter has a fixation with zombie movies.  I don't know what ever happened to Day and Dawn but Diary......oh Diary......she stayed around to play games and mooch off the huge hearts of people who cannot stand to think of a creature going hungry.  And of course to use my deck as a nursery.  Below are Lucifer, Bear and Ugly Betty, delivered to us on Halloween night.  Thank GOD, they're not knocked up.  Yet.

This is Mia and Muffin.  They're sisters and this is how you see them.  If there's one.  There's the other.  They got knocked up the same night.  They got huge together.  They ate me out of house and home together, and eventually they had their kittens together.  Eight of them.  

Meanwhile, Diary, yes, she's still here, had her own little bundle of adorableness.  Four more kittens who are currently residing under my riding lawn mower.  Not fun I assure you.  Whenever I have to cut the grass, I have to take an extra ten minutes to clear them out from under it.  This was one of the rare times they held still to be photographed, obviously they were distracted.

So count with me now, eight and four.  Yes.  I have twelve little bundles of cuteness distributed in various locations around my yard.  All was well until last Sunday.  Muffin and Mia had hidden their babies in a copse of thick bushes at the corner of our yard.  My daughter had prom Saturday and in all the preparations, I didn't have time to check on the kittens like we had been.  Sunday, there were two missing.  Couldn't find them anywhere, and I feared the worst.  Of course one of my favorites was missing too.  The following day five of them were missing.  Of course, where they're hidden is very close to the road and the dog walkers, so I figured that they'd run into an untimely end and yes, my little heart was breaking a little bit.  Well a lot actually.

We were down to three kittens for DAYS.  I checked all over the yard for the others, watched the mama cats religiously to see if they led me to the others but nothing, they seemed only interested in the three.  

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I go outside this morning to check on the three and alas.....there are once more eight.  Have no idea where they were or what they were doing, but I'm soooo glad their back, regardless of my grumbling about how much it's costing to feed them all.  So that's my writing adventure for today, I leave you with......

Cuteness.

How do you do that?

I can't tell you how many people have asked me that question.  "How do you write like that?"

Simply put.  It's easy.

Okay, so maybe not EASY, but you know what I mean.  Chase told me once that "If life is a highway, I'm a passenger in the back seat, without a seat belt, having to listen to crappy music."  Chase talks to me a lot these days, Alex has piped down a bit, but Donna (aha!) is starting to take over where she left off.

NOTE:  If you're allergic to rambling, please proceed to GO, and sorry....there's no $200.00.

You see I'm a narcoleptic.  Not like the "Oh yes, I'd be gla.....zzzzzzzzzzz" variety, I just require about 15 to 18 hours of sleep a day or it's not pretty.  Between that and my life lately, suffice it to say it hasn't been all rainbows and butterflies, writing is the best part of my day.  Writing is where I'm in complete control of what happens and how it happens and when it happens.

You're probably wondering about the (aha!) earlier now right?  If you're not, well I'm writing it anyway.  My newest book project is about a narcoleptic named Donna.  Ironically that's my name!  Wait, that's not ironic is it?  Oh well, I started a project on another writing site called "The Diary of a Narcoleptic".  It was intended to be a place for me to vent, and maybe give people a chuckle or two at my expense.  I added a little "Please Read First" saying that the project wasn't a work for publication, it was more just me.  Rambling.  Oddly enough, I got about seven messages telling me I should rethink the publishing thing.  Ugh.  Okay I get that other narcoleptics or sleep disordered individuals might be interested, but really?  Having my life on display like that doesn't so much appeal to me.

This is where the inspiration kicked in.  There is a little part of my life (a prior job) that I would loooove to get out to the general public, and well, I got the idea to mish-mash my life with a characters life and off we went with "The Lion, the Bitch and the Carnivale of Freaks and Frills"  It's still very much a work in progress as are my other two novels, but I'll get there.

But back to the "How do you do that?" question.  It's like this.  In a life where I'm losing more and more control not only over my health, but income, emotions, finances, bills, etc., it's all too easy to fall into a world where everything turns out right in the end and if it doesn't there's no one to blame but myself.