No, It's NOT Time To Wake Up!

Sydney left a comment on yesterday's post and asked about the cats, who were on the outs a while back. After several days of lessening antagonism, things were finally back to normal with them.

But today's post isn't about the cats and their social habits. It's about the cats and their eating habits, and how that's now a problem for me. Even though both cats are from the same litter, they have very different body types. Pepper is svelte, while Jackson has always tended towards stout. When they were young, they ate food out of a communal bowl in the laundry room. One day I noticed the food bowl was always empty. Pepper looked a bit gaunt, while his brother looked even rounder than normal. The vet suggested we feed them in separate areas of the house, and take up the food in between mealtimes so Jackson couldn't eat more than his share.

Fast forward to today. The "princes" get fed three times a day--morning, afternoon, and bedtime. We've tried giving them fewer but larger meals, but it doesn't work. Pepper only eats a limited amount of food before he walks away from the bowl. (I wish I had his willpower!) As I mentioned yesterday, Tony gets up quite early, and the cats are used to eating then. He'd actually stopped setting an alarm most days, relying on Pepper to wake him up. I was the beneficiary of the Pepper alarm today, several hours before my alarm clock was supposed to go off. Although I knew I could go back to bed after cat duty, it was annoying to leave its comfy warmth.

The cats do their best work on Tony, but I've been awakened often enough to know there's a definite routine to the morning's actions. Pepper is always the instigator; Jackson is on the floor waiting in the wings. Pepper starts with a soft meow, and waits for a response. If he doesn't get one he cranks up the volume to MEOOOOWWWWWW! If that doesn't work, he moves to jumping on your body, or laying next to it and kicking with his feet. Sometimes he uses his tail as the tool, and whips it back and forth hitting everyone in his path. He keeps all this up until he gets the desired results.

Today I was able to buy myself 15 extra minutes by continually throwing Pepper off the bed, but I know I can't rely on that every morning. I decided to do a little Internet research to see what others in the same boat have come up with. Some ideas I can try:

• Close the bedroom door with the cats on the wrong side. Put a piece of bubble wrap at the bottom of the door for when the cats scratch on it!
  

• Keep a spray bottle filled with water near your bed, and use it to spray the offending animal. This is supposed to make the cat run away for an extended period of time while they groom themselves to remove all the water. It also supplies negative reinforcement; they don't like to get wet!
  

• Play vigorously with your cats in the evening. That should make them so tired they'll sleep later in the morning.

• Hiss at them when they try to wake you. That's like saying "back off" in cat-speak

I actually like having Pepper sleeping on the bed in the middle of the night, so I don't want to close them out of the bedroom. Besides, their main water bowl is in the master bathroom and I can't stand the thought of them being thirsty. I may try rousing them from their early-evening nap tonight for a game of "running around the house". That would be good exercise for them AND me. There's also a water bottle in the spare bathroom that may come in handy tomorrow morning...

He’s Leaving On A Jet Plane.

I dropped Tony off at the airport this morning, and he left for a multiple-week job training class. There are no convenient flights on the weekends to make it worth his while to come home, so it will be a while before I see him again. Every other time he was gone on a lengthy business trip there were kids in the house. Now there are none-just me.

This morning I rolled out of bed an hour early, threw on some clothes, and ate a quick breakfast before we were out the door. After I finished at the airport, I stopped at a different branch of my gym that was on my route home for a workout. It was still rush hour when I left the gym, so traffic was still pretty heavy, but I pulled into the garage just a little later than my usual wake up time!

Now that Tony's gone, some things will be the same. I'll still have go to work, eat, and do housework, although there won't be as much to cook or clean up with only one person in the house. The cats will still want their food three times a day, but they won't understand that early-rising "Dad" is gone, and I sleep later than he does.

However, a lot of things will be different. After 29 years of marriage, Tony and I have got things around the house divvied up pretty well. Now I'll be doing my tasks and his. I wonder if I'll run out of coffee cups and milk glasses before the dishwasher is filled up, and if I have enough socks and underwear to last me, since I won't be doing laundry as often.

I'll have a lot of time to fill up. I resurrected some ideas from my bucket list, but I'm still looking for suggestions. If you have any, please leave me a comment.

Repelling

This summer for some reason I'm a mosquito magnet! If I go outside to pick a few tomatoes--I have a bite. Five minutes deadheading flowers--four bites. Although the itch subsides quickly when I use After Bite treatment on the welts, it's annoying to have to go through the process again and again.

I keep a bottle of repellent in the pantry so that when we want to eat dinner outside I can spray myself before I go out on the deck, but it makes me feel sticky, and I don't want to use it if I'm just spending a couple of minutes in the garden.

Other than bug spray, I've heard of a lot of alternate ideas for keeping yourself bite-free. A friend swears by fabric softener sheets. She ties one to the belt loop of her shorts and says that keeps the mosquitoes away. Even though Snopes pooh-poohs the idea, today I used a dryer sheet to try to keep mosquitoes away.

My project was a perennial bed in the back yard. It's been neglected for the last month and there was quite a bit of misplaced grass, dandelions, and other weeds to remove. I grabbed my trowel and bucket, accessorized my outfit with a Bounce sheet, and walked out to the offending area.

I was outside for about 20 minutes, and was pleased to find out the dryer sheet worked pretty well. Based on my recent track record, I should have been covered in bites, but I only had one on my leg. I suspect this technique wouldn't work for an extended period of time, but I'm certainly using it again tomorrow when I tackle the bird seed that's sprouted under the deck.

What A Tangled Web We Weave

When I went out to the back yard this morning after breakfast, I saw dozens of webs like this one:


Some of the webs were large, and some were small, but they were all covered with dew and glistened in the sun. Each one of them had an open hole in the middle. I assumed they were made by a spider, but wanted to know what type. After a little research, I learned that I was seeing the handiwork of funnel web spiders, sometimes called grass spiders.

Funnel web spiders can make a sheet web as large as three feet wide. The web, with its funnel (the hole in he middle), is more often noticed than the spider itself. The funnel portion of the web leads to shelter in a rock crevice or dense vegetation. Funnel web spiders typically build webs several inches above the ground in short grasses and in window wells. The spider hides in the concealed area of the funnel and then dashes out onto the sheet portion of the web to capture an insect caught in or walking across the silk platform.

The female spiders are responsible for the webs I saw. Male grass spiders spend most of their life wandering in search of a mate. Females don't move from their web unless they need to find a new location to build a new one. They spend most of their time capturing and eating prey, building up their strength to mate and lay eggs. In the fall, after mating, the females will deposit a disc-shaped egg sac in a crevice. Both males and females are dead by the first frost.

I was glad to find out that unlike some funnel web spiders, our indigenous ones are harmless. Unless you're a bug!

Oh Nine, Oh Nine, Oh Nine

Today is September 9, 2009, or 09/09/09. It's the last set of single-digit, repeating dates for many years, and the last one I'll see, as the next one won't be until January 1, 2101.

There's really nothing special about today's symmetrical date, but some people and cultures ascribe powerful significance to the number nine. To them today's date is much-anticipated (or feared):

• Chinese culture considers the number nine auspicious. In the major Chinese dialects, the word for "nine" sounds similar to long-lasting.

• Hindus revere the number nine because it's considered a complete number that represents the end of a cycle in the decimal system.

• In Japanese, the word for nine is a homophone for the word for suffering, so the number is considered unlucky.

• In numerology, the number nine is associated with tolerance, generosity, forgiveness, benevolence, passion, romance, creative energy, and success.

Today I got up, ate breakfast, did a little Web surfing, and went to work. After work I came home, changed my clothes, read the newspaper, and ate dinner. Did a little Internet reading and watched a little TV. In other words, today was a completely normal day.

How about you? Any adventures associated with the unusual date?

A Pint Of Ice Cream Can Speak Gallons About Your Character

A while back a friend sent me a link that sounded fun, so today I took the What Ice Cream Flavor Are You? quiz.

The quiz introduction said it was loosely based on the science of "flavorology". Much to my surprise, there is real science behind it. A little research on my part found out that a survey conducted for Edy's by the Smell and Taste Treatment Research Foundation in 2005 determined personality characteristics that go along with a person's favorite flavor of ice cream.

The quiz had nine questions; each question had five answers to choose from. When my scores were calculated, I was a tie between Butter Pecan and Vanilla, although I had a bit of Strawberry mixed in too. In a nutshell, this is what those flavors say about me:

• Butter Pecan: I am devoted, conscientious, respectful, fiscally conservative, and show integrity in all I do.
  

• Vanilla: I am a colorful, dramatic risk taker who relies more on intuition than logic. I am emotionally expressive and idealistic.

• Strawberry: I am a thoughtful, logical person who weighs each option before making decisions. In relationships, I am loyal and supportive.

Just like in most quizzes, there are no negative character traits represented, so I'm taking my answers with a big grain of salt. However, the quiz was a pleasant was to spend the end of a holiday weekend.

What Are The Chances?

Do you know what a theremin is? I didn't until this week, when I heard a reference to the obscure instrument not once, not twice, but THREE different times!

In case you're as unfamiliar with the instrument as I was, a theremin is one of the first electronic instruments, invented in the 1920s. It produces the eerie flying saucer sound effect in 1950s B-movies, and is the high-pitched electronic effect in the chorus of the song Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys. According to Wikipedia:

[it] consists of two metal antennas which sense the position of the player's hands and control oscillators for frequency with one hand, and amplitude (volume) with the other. The electric signals from the theremin are amplified and sent to a loudspeaker.

Tuesday night was the first time I'd heard of the instrument. There was a story on KWMU (our local NPR station) about Imogen Heap, a musician that uses a lot of social networking sites to help her write her songs. She said that based on a tweet from one of her fans she added a theremin to one of the songs on her new album. The story was interesting, but uneventful.

The next day I read an update from one of my Facebook friends, who wrote (tongue in cheek) that "it should be required by law to include, in every folk album henceforth released, a theremin." I was sure he said that because he had heard the radio broadcast, but turns out he had not. I passed a link to the story on to him, and thought how strange it was that two people were independently thinking about the same little-known topic.

This afternoon I was driving home from the store, again listening to KWMU. The show this time was Studio 360, and during a station identification break the announcer told me to stay tuned because [playing eerie 50s sci-fi music] they were going to be discussing the theremin later in the show. Holy cow! I made it home before the segment came on, so I rushed in, turned the radio on, and tuned it to the station. Sure enough, about ten minutes later Kurt Andersen, the host of the show, was talking with Pamelia Kurstin, a theremin virtuoso:

I wonder if the third time is the charm and the theremin will now drop off my radar, or if I should continue to be on the lookout.

Your Opinion Is Important

In honor of the beginning of the holiday weekend, Tony and I took a walk after dinner to get shave ice. The stand we went to is located in a trailer in the middle of a small parking lot. There are some picnic tables under a large shade tent next to the stand. The atmosphere there may leave something to be desired, but it doesn't matter, because the ice product is so good. It's shaved so fine it looks like snow, and they pour on the flavors liberally.

There are about 70 flavors to choose from, or you can combine more than one flavor. They actually list some popular combinations to make it easier. For example, a fuzzy navel is a mixture of peach and orange, tiger's blood combines strawberry and coconut, and you can mix any flavor plus pineapple to make a daiquiri.

All the choices can be a little intimidating, but there's usually a line of people waiting to order, and I can have it figured out by time I get to the front. However, today there was no line, and Tony knew exactly what he wanted, so there was no reason to wait. I was still undecided when I walked up to the counter and asked the clerk what HIS favorite flavor was. When he said that he really liked piña colada with peach, I told him I'd take that in a small.

It turned out to be a really good choice. So was Tony's lime and cherry. After we were all sugared up, the walk home was easy.

Create A Breakfast Muffin

Back in the 1990s, I used to read a newsletter (which was eventually compiled into book form) called The Tightwad Gazette. Amy Dacyczyn, the author, promoted thrift as a viable alternative lifestyle in an entertaining, easy-to-read fashion. Over the years I've gone back to my dog-eared volumes many times to find ideas for economizing.

One of the greatest ideas I gleaned from The Tightwad Gazette is the principles for creating a homemade muffin. Not a recipe, but rather a formula. You can use whatever ingredients you have around the house or whatever is cheap. When the boys were young I used the "recipe" out of necessity, but now I'm using it as a template to make healthy food that tastes great, although it doesn't hurt that healthy also equals cheap.

The quantities listed are for a single batch of muffins. I always double the recipe and freeze the extras. They've turned into our go-to breakfast (and sometimes snacks), and two dozen last a little over a week in our house. I've made these so many times it takes me about 15 minutes to mix the batter and fill the pans. They never take more than 15 minutes to cook in my oven, and I let them cool in the pan for 10 minutes before I remove them to cooling racks. That means in a little over a half-hour I have a big Ziploc bag full of healthy muffins.

The original directions are below. I've added comments in orange. Hope you get a chance to try this!

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To make muffins, combine dry ingredients, and then mix in wet ingredients until just combined; the batter should be lumpy. Grease muffin tin and fill cups two thirds full. Bake in a preheated oven at 400 degrees for 15-25 minutes.

The following ingredients are required:

Grain: Use 2 to 2 1/2 cups of white flour. Or substitute oatmeal, cornmeal, whole-wheat flour, rye flour, or flake cereal for 1 cup of the white flour. Or substitute 1 cup leftover cooked oatmeal, rice, or cornmeal for 1/2 cup of the white flour and decrease liquid to 1/2 cup. I've been using half whole wheat flour and half oatmeal. Surprisingly, they're not too dense.

Milk: Use 1 cup or substitute buttermilk. Or sour milk (add a tbsp. of vinegar to 1 cup milk). Or substitute fruit juice for part or all of the milk. I use dry milk powder, adding it to my liquid of choice. Leftover coffee works great. My last batch used a bit of orange juice in the refrigerator and some watermelon juice. The results were outstanding!

Fat: Use 1/4 cup vegetable oil or 4 tbsp. melted butter or margarine. Or substitute crunchy or regular peanut butter for part or all of the fat. The fat can be reduced or omitted with fair results if using a "wet addition."

Egg: Use 1 egg. Or substitute 1 heaping tbsp. of soy flour and 1 tbsp. of water. If using a cooked grain, separate the egg, add the yolk to the batter, beat the white until stiff, and fold into the batter.

Sweetener: Use between 2 tbsp. and 1/2 cup sugar. Or substitute up to 3/4 cup brown sugar. Or substitute up to 1/2 cup honey or molasses, and decrease milk to 3/4 cup. I've used maple syrup with good results.

Baking Powder: Use 2 tsp. If using whole or cooked grains or more than 1 cup of additions, increase to 3 tsp. If using buttermilk or sour milk, decrease to 1 tsp. and add 1/2 tsp baking soda. I use 4 tsp. for a double recipe.

Salt: Use 1/2 tsp., or omit if you have a salt-restricted diet.

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The following ingredients are optional. Additions can be used in any combination, up to 1 1/2 cups total. If using more than 1 cup of wet additions, decrease the milk to 1/2 cup:

Dry Additions: Nuts, sunflower seeds, raisins, coconut, and so on. The majority of the time I add a scoop of cocoa powder in with the dry ingredients. I figure these muffins are a pretty healthy way to get in my daily dose of chocolate!

Moist Additions: Blueberries, chopped apple, freshly shredded zucchini, shredded carrot, and so on.

Wet Additions: Pumpkin puree; applesauce; mashed, cooked sweet potato; mashed banana; mashed, cooked carrot, and so on. If using 1/2 cup drained, canned fruit or thawed shredded zucchini, substitute the syrup or zucchini liquid for all or part of the milk.

Spices: Use spices that complement the additions, such as 1 tsp. cinnamon with 1/4 tsp nutmeg or cloves. Try 2 tsp. grated orange or lemon peel.

Jellies and Jam: Fill cups half full with a plain batter. Add 1 tsp. jam or jelly and top with 2 more tbsp. batter.

Topping: Sprinkle cinnamon sugar on the batter in the tins.

Non-sweet Combinations: Use only 2 tbsp. sugar and no fruit. Add combinations of the following: 1/2 cup shredded cheese, 3 strips fried and crumbled bacon, 2 tbsp. grated onion, 1/2 cup shredded zucchini, 2 tbsp Parmesan cheese. Spices could include a tsp. of parsley and a pinch of marjoram.

Go Cards!

Baseball Cardinals, that is.

As of today, with 30 games left to play, the Cards have a 10 ½ game lead over the Chicago Cubs. The "magic number" of wins they need to clinch their division is somewhere in the mid-20s, so it didn't surprise me when the team announced the procedure for selling playoff tickets to non-season ticket holders. Today I registered for the chance to participate in a lottery for post-season baseball tickets.

The registration is only taking place online at the team's Website; you won't be able to get tickets at the stadium ticket office, any ticket outlets, or by phone. There's always more people who want tickets than the amount available, so this registration is just to participate in the opportunity to purchase. After the registration closes on September 18th, they'll have a random drawing. The people whose names are selected will have the opportunity to purchase up to four tickets for one game out of the seven possible National League Division and Championship series games.

In the past Tony has taken care of things like this, but this year I decided to take the lead. There's a good chance he won't be available to go to a game, and I didn't want to miss out on my chance to participate in the post-season game excitement. Besides, even if he also registers, that will increase the chances of getting chosen.