reya -> mia?

So, last night I was watching the kitten play, and quite often she'll prop herself up on her back legs with her fat little buddha belly sticking out, and wave her paws around in the air. The pose reminds me of a meerkat.
And I said:
"Awwww. We should have called her Mia and then she could have been Mia-cat". Now, remember I'm Australian. My number one tip for imitating an Australian accent is to drop the 'unnecessary' r's out of words (unless followed by a vowel. Sort of like the French and when their words end in 's'). Here are some examples: Sweater -> sweata. Words -> weuds (wow, this is haada (harder) than I would have thought)
Hea's (here's) another (keep the r here) example:
Meerkat -> Meea-cat.
See where I'm going with this?
Meea-cat -> MIA CAT.

So now we're seriously considering changing her name to Mia. It's not like she knows Reya- we always call her 'Miss' anyway.
But think of the possibilities. Not only can she bee Mia-cat (Meerkat, remember), she can also be Miss Mia Meow (gotta love alliteration) and she can also be M.I.A, for when she disappears in the house somewhere. Right? Right?! Nobody remembers we've called her Reya anyway so people we know aren't going to be confused or think we're (more) weird...

What do you think?

Reya, or Mia? Or Miya!?

99 bottles of beer

My next post will be my 100th on this blog!
I feel like making this one a write-off so that I can get to 100, but I'll try not to.
Consequently, it probably will end up being a write-off, but not intentionally.

This is not my cat. This cat is too smart to be my cat. This cat could take on Dr. Mallei*. {via}

Have you ever seen a completely blissed-out kitten? (Or cat?). I mean, a kitten (or cat) that is in so much luxury that it doesn't know what to do with itself?
I think it's hilarious.
Since the nights recently started getting a little chilly, now that it's officially autumn here, it was cool enough to pull out a blanket Dad gave me when I was much younger. We called it a "mink blanket", because it feels like faux-mink fur, I guess. Super soft on one side, a bit longer but less velvety on the other side. It's blue, and has dolphins on it. It's crazy warm and great for couch cuddles. Anyway, we pulled this out the other night, and I put Reya on it.
I think her brain exploded a little.
Instantly, her eyes glazed over, half-closing in ecstasy as she starts working her little feet in that kitteny-kneading motion. Pad pad pad. The same one that she does to my throat every single morning at 5.30am (not kidding.) The purr starts - nobody's patting her, this is self induced pleasure. Sometimes it gets too much for her and she wants her whole self to be enveloped by this soft luxury and so tries to find a fold in the blanket, into which she rams her head. She can't make herself comfortable lying on it though, because she wants every part of her to be one with the blankety goodness, and so kind of lounges back and forth, unsettled, still kneading away with her paws, face being mushed into the blanket, eyes closing. Sometimes she springs onto it accidentially, on the way to somewhere else, and it stops her dead in her tracks, like:
"HOLY CRAP, THE SOFTNESS!!!" And her brain explodes a little again, and she starts the purr, and can't bring herself to continue on to where ever she was going before she was trapped by the blanket.

I realize I'm about to make this post all about the two furkids, but there's one other funny thing.

Mr. Sensitive-Sooky-Trouble-Face is so... well, sensitive. He'll be lying, sleeping, next to me on the couch. Reya will be doing something naughty, I dunno, chewing a plant, or playing with the computer cords, or finding another one of my hair-ties somewhere ("Didn't I put this away 5 minutes ago!? In a closed cupbpard!?!"), and I'll give her a bit of a hiss, to get her to stop. Or go: "Oi!"
And Mallei, thinking he's, for some reason, in trouble for sleeping, gets up all of a sudden and runs off. Ok, so he can't differentiate between when I'm telling her off, or him off, though I never hissed at him, he still seems affected by it, but still, seriously? You're sleeping here, I'm not that bad at yelling at you.
But then we get to kiss (figuratively), and make up. And have happy couch cuddle times.

And now the two of them are having mutual lick sessions, whereby the kitten grooms Mallei's face, cos it has short fur, and he just licks her everywhere until she's slobbery. It's very cute, and kind of funny.

Not quite as dramatic as this. {via}

Also, in other news, I had a maths class this morning.
Maths, you guys.
Not that we did any actual maths.
Then I cycled home.
It took me 10 minutes more to get home via bike than it does to drive in and park (have I said this already? If so, sorry). I think if I don't take the dirt trail through the nice park but instead stick to a small sort of side road, it'll be quicker still since my bike + roads = awesome, bike + dirt bikepaths = not so hot. (See, maths.)
And, FYI, in Australia, maths is plural (mathematics anyone?), so I will be writing maths, not 'math', cos that's what makes sense to me.

Possibly not the right attitude to bring into the classroom. Mantra this semester: Maths is good. Maths is good. Maths is good. {via}

And now I'm going to sit around in my underwear for 3 hours (did you need to know this? Possibly not), and then I'm going to cycle the 9km back to Uni for my 3pm class. Joy! It'll be super good for me though. I figure, people say interval training is the best cardio way of losing fat. What's cycling, but extended, random intervals? You cycle up-hill, get puffed, cruise down the other side while you have a rest, maybe go on flat, resting, go fast to beat traffic, get puffed, rest... etc. It is, I suppose, a much more 'natural' form of interval training than sprinting for 30 seconds, jogging for 2 mins, sprinting for 30 secs, jogging for 2 mins.  Plus it'll be less evil on my knees. Bonus.
And that's all.


What should I do for my 100th post!? I feel like it should be something interesting or special or awesome or different, or all 3. Ideas?


*Which, yes, he was meant to write on Saturday (thanks Nic), and I/he will get to soon.

to scare a mockingbird...

The other day I had two raspberries and a strawberry in my garden that were all about a day or two off being ripe.
I left in the morning, came home in the evening, went out to water the plants and... my berries were gone.
DAMNED BIRDS.
So today, on my day off, I decided to do something about it. After spraying my raspberries with some pesticides for the little moths I'm convinced are evil, they seem to be doing a little better. There are about 3 or 4 berries left to ripen on the big plant. The little one has had a tough time of it and didn't get any berries, but since their packaging said they wouldn't get anything for a year or 2, I'm amazed I had any berries at all. GO BIG PLANT! Anyhoo.

I googled what to do about birds. Some sort of silver tape seemed to be effective. Or hanging CDs. I didn't want to buy any silver tape, I already had silver -stuff-.... So I made my own Bird-Repellent System*

In a lot of ways it reminds me, weirdly, of Camelot. Flags fluttering in the breeze, castle-shaped pot... and.. that's about all, really. Mostly it's about the flags.

*Not guaranteed to survive wind, rain, or weather.**
**Also not guaranteed to repel birds.

kittens are cheap.

I went to a petstore the other day.
Wait, with that title, this is a bad way to start. We didn't get another kitten. Keep reading.

Reya previously had an 'evil mouse'. It was just a small black and white toy mouse covered in rabbit (?) fur, with a little ball or something in it, so it rattled, and it had a feather tail. Mallei, instantly, decided it was evil. Every opportunity he got, the mouse would be in his mouth. Which, as it was a small mouse, and he has a large, dog-sized mouth, I was a little concerned about. Eventually he ended up leaving the mouse alone a bit more, though it was slobbery and horrible and every now and then when Reya was particularly interested in playing with it, he'd swoop in and carry it off. Jealous pup.

Dear God, a whole SWARM of evil mice!

Then, inevitably, she lost it. Yes, I've looked under the couch.
So I went to the petstore the other day, and bought 2 new evil mice $2.00 each, and also a mouse that is sort of knitted and makes a mechanical squeak noise that almost sounds like a baby bird. That was about $8. So I spent about $12 on this trip. I don't like that particular pet store because they sell puppies and kittens, but that's a rant for another day. Anyway, I get home and triumphantly give Reya one of the new evil mice. She goes bonkers, and plays with it for a few hours. Nic and I go out, somewhere.

The mechanical squeaking evil mouse.

Coming home, I can't find the mouse. I do find a mutilated bit of plastic with some pink felt stuck to either side and a feeble rattle coming from within. I originally pass it off as just another bit of rubbish that the kitten managed to find and turn into a toy. She often does this, and as such, Nic and I look like absolute slobs as we have used Christmas wrapping paper lying around, usually scrunched into balls. The fronts of envelopes with the plastic window, also scrunched into balls. We have odd socks all over the place because as she channels her inner puppy, she steals socks from the washing basket and carries them about the house in her mouth.
Anyway, it wasn't rubbish. It was the new evil mouse which Mallei had kindly de-furred and chewed up. It's a sad sight.
So I gave her another evil mouse, which she lost.

And right now, her favourite toy is the little plastic circle from the top of a jug of milk. She chews it, bats it across the floor, holds it up in her paws, carries it around in her mouth. And it was free. Well, apart from the milk, but we drank that anyway.
Do I need to bother buying her mouse-shaped toys?
Probably not.
Is she so darn cute trying to attack a toy mouse?
Definitely.


I have a habit in my blog posts where I start with a thought. Then I realize that that thought it going to make no sense without a backstory. Rather than edit the post (I like authenticity- ie: I don't like 'altering' the way things came out. I think it makes things more organic? Spelling mistakes I'll change, but the flow? Not so much) I continue on, and try and tie it together. Does this annoy anyone? Nobody's probably noticed. Just that I did right now, because I find myself writing the first line, then saying: wait, this is only half a story!

...

If you didn't notice it before, you certainly will now!!!

chaps 'n hats...

This is a trilby hat (apparently.).



And I must say, Nic looks unbearably adorable (and sexy) in one of these hats.
Though, thinking about it, I'd almost need some sort of 20's Glamour dress for the 'theme' to work, but whatever, I don't care. Oh. I was meant to preface this with:
Nic may will be wearing one of these hats to our wedding.

The kitten woke me up at 5.30am this morning. And my elbow joints ache from the pump class I did friday night (wtf?). Most of the rest of me is feeling better, although I got on the scales this morning and that particularly depressing. That being said, the kitten (who weighed 1.3kg a week ago) also got on the scales, and it said she weighed 3.5kg, so I can probably subtract 2kg from her weight, and therefore, from my weight. Our scales lie. Which is somewhat inconvenient. Regardless, I'd quite like to loose about 9kg at some point. Or not even. Because weight is a tricky thing, what with muscles being heavy and so on. So, I shall revise that to: "I'd quite like to fit into the jeans I bought in Paris", as that was the lightest I've ever been. And I love those jeans.
So elbow pain or no, I'm going for a run this afternoon.
Wait, that doesn't make any sense.
The kitten's constant disruption of my sleep is really messing with me (and Nic).
The problem is that she's so fricken adorable. I mean, who wouldn't want to be woken up by a purring, soft, head-bumping love machine of joy and adorability?
Which is fine, until she settles in on my chest, across my face. Causing me to twist my head to an awkward angle so I can breathe without sucking in mouthfuls of fur and getting it up my nose. Since I'm especially comfortable, she shows her gratitude by kneading my windpipe.
With claws.
Which, at first, is ok. Her claws are trimmed. But after a while, the pad-pad-pad-pad of soft and clawy, turns into rasp-rasp-grate-grate-bleeding.
It feels like that anyway.
BUT SHE'S NOT COMFORTABLE! So she tries a different tactic, and goes under the covers.
Where her tail tickles my stomach. And that's not comfortable either so she comes back up. I'm doing my best not to move, because that will start the whole process again. My arms are usually in some ridiculous pretzel up near my head, and she decides that this=kitten basket, and curls her way into the pretzel, cutting off the circulation to my hands. The purring, louder than any cat I've ever known, continues on. And I've been on one side for long enough now that I'm uncomfortable.
She begins to drift off, eyes closing lazily, purr fading a little.
I try not to think of how uncomfortable I am. How much I hate my bodyparts being numb. How my legs feel crooked, and my back is twisted, which probably isn't good for my spine, and oh my god what if I'm giving myself body issues and a bad back because of this damn kitten.
And she's asleep now, a warming ball of downy fluff, little kitten smile on her kitteny face. Which is adorable, but my hands are in agony, my arms are pretzels, my feet feel weird, and my back is twisted dangerously, I'm sure of it.
So, I try and roll over, to the other side.
The purr starts up again!!!
And so the cycle begins anew.

The point of all that, which I seemed to have missed, is that I'm feeling particularly fuzzy in the head, dead tired, and not able to concentrate too well. Plus my elbows are sore. Which is just me complaining. But really, who gets sore elbows? You go to the gym to work out your shoulders, but they're really the only 'joints' you try and beef up. Nobody says:
"Hey Joe, check out my beefing elbows! They're totally ripped."
"They've got nothing on my ankles. Look at these bad boys..."

It's time for a nap. Will they give me sick pay because I had to go home tired??

my kitten is certainly not a princess...

Today I made a video:

on being normal... or why I don't get smashed at work parties.

Just before Christmas there were two Christmas parties for work- one for the whole company, so where a couple of hundred people I don't know would have gone to get drunk and try and sleep with one another.
The other party was just for our section of the company, so Nic wouldn't have been allowed to come. There was two hours of free drinks provided.

The first, people didn't mind so much that I didn't go, because hardly anyone from our team went. The second, I'd given an indication that I might go, but only until finished work (so I'd be there from about 4.30 to 6ish, then we'd leave. We were driving home together). I don't really drink. They tend to have 'drinks runs' at work on Friday arvo, where people spend their pay on a 6 pack (or whatever), drink it at work, then go home. I don't think I've ever bought drinks in a drinks run. I don't go out, and I never really have. So I'm getting pressure from co-workers to go to this party, get smashed, go crazy. I go, I'll say, but not for long. To which they give me a look. Like I'm being deprived.
When I said I didn't think I'd go to one girl, she looks astonished and says: "Just come out and be SOCIAL!"
And I think about the coffee I'd had with a friend the evening before and wonder how or why that is any less social than going out, getting so intoxicated that you don't make any sense, make a fool of yourself, fall asleep in a pile of drool, and wake up not remembering a thing. Because let's face it, that's what they're taking about. It's not a sophisticated wine at a clean bar somewhere- it's a divey pub with sticky floors.
Maybe I should have gone and said hello, but then as soon as I said I was leaving, I would have gotten the same treatment.
In the end, I was watching people getting ready- a flurry of activity as girls madly straightened their hair in the bathroom, boys smoked outside and cracked open their third can of JD and coke (at 4.30pm, mind you)... and then girls started applying concealer to mosquito bites on their legs. These girls are married and engaged. And they're worried about a couple of red spots on their legs. For a party in a room with minimal lighting where nobody could care less. This was the point I decided 'enough is enough', and very quietly made my exit.

Because here's the thing. By leaving early, my life could continue like this:

Nic drives me home, we have a chat about our day, some nice time with just the two of us (not having to shout over music or getting drinks spilled on us), as we ponder over dinner and miss our furkids.
We get home, greeted happily by Mallei who has been inside all day and is just mega-stoked to see us, but really needs to pee. The kitten hasn't figured out how the front door yet, so gets stuck behind it again, and we have a laugh. We bustle inside and head out almost immediately to take Mal for a walk in the last of the sunshine for the day. This is another nice time for just the two of us to talk and relax and unwind. We head home. Nic starts on dinner while I feed the animals, then spend some time playing with Reya and Mal. We eat, relax, watch an episode of one of our tv shows, then head to bed at about 10 or 10.30 where we cuddle up and talk about nothing for another half an hour as the kitten races around and plays in the bath, skidding around corners and 'glomping' up and down the hall. Mal sighs from his bed, like he's too old for this crap, but is secretly fascinated by Reya's antics. And then we go to sleep. If it's a friday night, we have a sleep in till about 8, and then have the whole day to get out and about, to run or cycle or paddle, to cook or garden or go shopping, or whatever we want...

I think the alternative- of succumbing to pressure and 'getting smashed' at the party- would have been much less enjoyable. I'm just sick of that being the norm, and for me being weird or unsociable for not wanting to go down that route. Were it not for work, I wouldn't speak to or socialize with any of those people, so why is making a fool of myself in front of them apparently a prerequisite for a harmonious work environment? I know, I could go out and only have a drink or two, but then there's still the 'party-pooper' mentality if I try and leave before I'm completely off my face.

Grow up, people. There's more to life than that.
 (and I'm not just saying that because I'm a soon-to-be-grumpy-old-wife ;) )

imaginary conversations.

Nic is in the kitchen with Reya on his shoulder, making coffee.
He says: "No, you can't go down, benchtops aren't for kittens..." (my rule)
In a higher, squeaky voice: "But they might be!"
He says: "No. They're not."

It was just gloriously adorable.

[Edit again: Nic, opening the fridge and talking to the dog: "There's food coming out of everywhere Mal! It's packed to the gills!!"
Nic, in low grumbly, grumpy 'Mallei' voice: "You're packed to the gills, Nic."]

[Edit again with the addition of below movie: I love our kids...]