Pickles & Dimes

I forgot to post this at the beginning of the month. Oops. This was another Buffalo Wild Wings-inspired masthead. Plus, working with free clip art instead of real photos is so much easier (not that I have real photos of aliens) (that you KNOW of).

Anyway, I’m looking for some fun suggestions for future mastheads. I have another two I’m working on, but neither of them are floating my boat (ooh, a boat theme!), so if you have any ideas, shoot them here. (Keep in mind that my Photoshop skills are about a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10.)

Behold the creepy results from less than 5 minutes of Jason brushing short-haired Sunny:

Largest fur tumbleweed in the world or a cute, headless kitten?

Here’s Sunny basking on the warm countertop and begging for attention.

Pet my giant fluffy belly. I command you. Fool, you are too late! I have now perished and am stricken with Back Paw Rigor Mortis.

You know, I believe that if you sincerely want something, and you visualize it happening, it’ll happen.
 
That’s a lie.
 
Jason got laid off on Thursday. His boss was so upset about it he teared up a little as he told Jason, and said he hopes to hire him back as soon as things improve.
 
That’s a nice sentiment, but it means nothing right now. We’ll be OK financially (with unemployment and a decent emergency savings fund), but this is really crappy timing, universe.
 
We don’t live beyond our means. I drive a 13-year-old car. We live in a small (and perfect for us) house. We don’t spend frivolously. And yet it always seems that as soon as we’re entering a stage where things are going our way, something comes along to kick us down.
 
It’s frustrating. I can Pollyanna the situation all I want, but it sucks.
 
I don’t want to hear that things will be fine; that this is just temporary; it’s the economy; it sucks for everyone. We know this is just temporary; we know things will be OK. But we don’t want to hear any of that. The truth is that this sucks. For us. Right now.

We’re doing OK. We seem to take turns feeling down, and we’re prepared for this lasting a while. He’s already applied for unemployment and has several résumés out (he was looking before he got laid off). We have a fun weekend planned soon where we’re going on a wild spending spree (using only gift cards), and our Valentine’s Day trip (planned months in advance) was a weekend at a casino in Wisconsin to play roulette (which they don’t have in Minnesota, probably a good thing). We considered not going, but our trip was funded by our spare change jar and my fantasy football winnings. Plus, we each started with $100 and I came out $40 ahead with $140, while Jason won $130 and brought back $230. So that was nice.

But on Day 2 of unemployment, Jason is already bored. Whereas I would be knitting and reading and writing and scrapbooking and organizing, Jason wants stuff to do other than watching movies or reading books. It’s not warm out enough to start doing stuff outside (other than walking Shorty), so what would be some good chores/things for Jason to do?

Our days lately have been spent on running toilets, mystery pee odors and a poop swamp in our backyard. We are living the high life.

A few days ago, after masses of snow melted from our backyard, I figured I would start removing the piles of dog poop. I grabbed a bag, the scooper and set out to work. Forty-five piles later, I stopped. The light was poor, Shorty was waaay too interested in what I was doing, the remaining snow was rock-hard, the poop was resisting containment, and I had probably only removed 8% of the piles.

There are brackish-colored puddles of unknown depth in our yard surrounded by slippery ice floes. Basically our backyard is a bizarre obstacle course: avoid the puddles and fall on the ice, as I did last weekend (landing on my right side and doing what I always do when I hurt myself: immediately shouting the f-word), or avoid the ice and succumb to some flesh-eating bacteria that is no doubt lingering in Feces Pond.

The inside of our house is no better. While eating dinner a few nights ago, the unmistakable scent of cat urine permeated the air. We checked the litterbox. We checked the cats. Remembering the horror of once eating dinner while a cat turd sat 10 inches from my leg, we checked the floor. Nothing. Only as I headed upstairs to bed did I see our small basement window. Reflected in the moonlight were the telltale spray markings from a neighbor cat. A quick whiff (and resulting gagging) confirmed it. Much scrubbing ensued.

Yesterday, Jason called me downstairs to look at the toilet. It was running continuously, with the water overflowing into the overflow valve. I spent a good chunk of my morning Googling toilets and familiarizing myself with toiletry terms like float cap, refill tube and flapper. I even drew a diagram so I knew which parts to fiddle with (that’s what she said!). I came home, we investigated together (me: this water is ice cold, man!), I adjusted the float clip and all seemed well.

Today it’s not working again. Looks like it’s time to fix it – with my mind.

Backyard no good for me now. Better suited for the Duckster.