It is mine.

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Maxine Monday

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My life

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You can't sit down around here without ending up with a cat on your lap.

This is my daughter Dani and Jake.  Apparently Dani sat down.

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I had no idea

THIS makes torturing my cat a little bit easier.

So crabby old man cat Riley gets thyroid meds in tablet form every day.  Actually it's only a quarter of a tablet, twice a day.  He also gets an oral stool softener twice a day.  I enjoy giving it to him SO much!  Not.  Now Jake needs the same thyroid meds, same amount, same form.  Thank God she doesn't need the stool softener too. I get that stuff on Canada's black market.  Don't want to break the law on a greater scale than I already am.


Riley is easy to give meds too.  He doesn't like it, that he makes clear.  But he knows food will follow so he doesn't fight.  Jake on the other hand is like a Pez dispenser.  I put that pill in her mouth, her head goes back and out pops the pill again, immediately.  It's kind of amazing really that she can do it every. single. time.  Brought her back to the vet today and she has only gained 1 oz since November.  Obviously more of the meds are ending up in the bathroom rug than down her gullet.

Enter the pill shooter.   


I'd never seen one before, much less used one.  But tonight I held Jake by the scruff - which for you non-cat people, reduces many cats to kittens responding to their mother holding them that way, they get calm and hold still.  Anyway, I held her still by the scruff, stuck the pill shooter (with pill inside) into the side of Jakes mouth and shot it!  She looked at me like - what was that??  And then proceeded to eat the food she had been waiting for.  


Oh please please PLEASE let this continue to work.  You really feel like a failure when an itty bitty kitty defeats you every. single. time.


I need my dignity back.
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Maxine Monday

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And they call this progress??

I don't usually copy articles onto my blog but I'm making an exception.

JANUARY 17, 2012 12:00 A.M. ‘Dude, Where’s My Lifeboat?’ In the Italian cruise-ship disaster, another death knell for the age of chivalry. By Rich Lowry When they make the movie about the Costa Concordia, the cruise ship that grounded off the coast of Tuscany, there won’t be romantic tales about its captain. Italian authorities immediately arrested him on suspicions of manslaughter and abandoning ship prematurely. He might have been the skipper of the ill-fated vessel in all senses of the word.  A century ago this spring, as the Titanic entered its death throes and all its lifeboats had been launched, Capt. Edward Smith told his crew: “Men, you have done your full duty. You can do no more. Now it’s every man for himself.” One witness recalled seeing him, probably washed overboard, clutching a child in the water as the Titanic disappeared. A member of the crew always believed it was Captain Smith’s voice he heard from the water after the Titanic was gone, urging him and others on: “Good boys! Good lads!” “Every man for himself” is a phrase associated with the deadly Costa Concordia disaster, but not as a last-minute expedient. It appears to have been the natural order of things. In the words of one newspaper account, “An Australian mother and her young daughter have described being pushed aside by hysterical men as they tried to board lifeboats.” If the men of theTitanic had lived to read such a thing, they would have recoiled in shame. TheTitanic’s crew surely would have thought the hysterics deserved to be shot on sight — and would have volunteered to perform the service. Women and children were given priority in theory, but not necessarily in practice. The Australian mother said of the scene, “We just couldn’t believe it — especially the men, they were worse than the women.” Another woman passenger agreed, “There were big men, crew members, pushing their way past us to get into the lifeboats.” Yet another, agrandmother, complained, “I was standing by the lifeboats and men, big men, were banging into me and knocking the girls.” Guys aboard the Costa Concordia apparently made sure the age of chivalry was good and dead by pushing it over and trampling on it in their heedless rush for the exits. The grounded cruise ship has its heroes, of course, just as the Titanic had its cowards. But the discipline of the Titanic’s crew and the self-enforced chivalric ethic that prevailed among its men largely trumped the natural urge toward panicked self-preservation. Women and children went first, and once the urgency of the situation became clear, breaches weren’t tolerated. The crew fired warning shots to keep men from rushing the lifeboats. In an instance Daniel Allen Butler recounts in his book, “Unsinkable,” a male passenger trying to make it on one lifeboat was rebuffed and then beaten for his offense. The survivor statistics tell the tale. More women from third class — deep in the bowels of the ship, where it was hard to escape and instructions were vague or nonexistent — survived than men from first class. Almost all of the women from first class (97 percent) and second class (84 percent) made it. As Butler notes, the men from first class who were lost stayed behind voluntarily, true to their Edwardian ideals. They can look faintly ridiculous from our vantage point. Benjamin Guggenheim changed into his evening clothes that night: “We’ve dressed in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.” Whom would you rather have around your wife or daughter, though, when there is only one slot left on the lifeboat? Old Guggenheim in his white tie and tails, or the contemporary slob in his Bermuda shorts and flip-flops? The Titanic went down, they say, to the strains of the hymn “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” as the band courageously played on. It lent a final grace note to the tragedy. Today, we don’t do grace notes. We’ve gone from “Women and children, first,” to “Dude, where’s my lifeboat?” As the women of the Costa Concordia can testify, that’s a long way down.

Maxine Monday

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Cuh-razy! It's official.

My laptop decided to give up the ghost a week ago, turning itself off for no apparent reason whenever it felt like it. Enter new laptop. It took me a week to transfer what I wanted to the new computer, moved some stuff to an external hard drive, took my time to get it all right.

This morning I pronounced it done. Being the geek I am, I thought I would try a restore on the old laptop which basically brought it back to Vista (shudder) and completely wiped out its memory of having a wireless card. Plugging into my access point was unsuccessful.

Oh well. Worth a try.

Played with the new laptop for a while and then went to do the dishes. When I came back to the living room maybe 15 minutes later - blue. Screen. Of. Death. On the NEW laptop! Rebooting didn't work, recovery disk didn't work - the only thing I can figure is that I am such a horrible user that in seeing what I did to the first laptop - this one killed itself before I could.

The cuh-raziest part? I feel immobilized without my computer. Like since it is not working, neither am I. I don't know what to do with myself. Apparently I need to know there is connectivity available to me - even if I'm not using it. I have to laundry tomorrow. How will I do it now?

Yep. Cuh-razy!

Posted from my iPhone.

Knew it was too good to be true!

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We've had spring-like temps for the last month, but this is the Chicago area, I knew it couldn't last.

I just hope that getting a late start on winter doesn't mean it's going to end that much later too!


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Blood is next I'm sure.

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There were thousands of people who were given home loans that shouldn't have been. Many were interest only loans, balloon mortgages, many were given to people with no established credit, etc.

I have worked very hard for the last several years making sure my credit is good, have been at the same place of employment for 24 years, have offered up my first born child and still I'm pretty sure that next they are going to want to know the amount and exact placement of the stitches I had with that first child, as well as asking for the CD from my colonoscopy from 5 years ago.

Just sayin'.

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Maxine Monday

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Can you say 'ANGRY'???

There is an entire group of business people I wish would just throw themselves into the nearest erupting volcano.  They are the weight loss vultures.


Don't you love the commercials that say "don't try our product unless you have more than 30 lbs to lose" as if it will be too strong for someone with a measly 10 lbs to shed?  So you know it has to be great stuff!  What about the ones where they say "all you women with muffin tops.." oh my gosh, why don't they just pick the thing we're really self conscious about and play on it!?  


My favorite?  Don't try our product unless you actually need to lose 'body fat'.  Um .. okay.  What else would I want to lose?  Couch fat?  Sidewalk fat?  Another example of some jerk-a-saurus company implying that their product might be so strong that if you don't really NEEEEEEEED it, you shouldn't use it.  Like - it might make you TOOOOO thin!  As if any person who has struggled with weight thinks there IS such a thing.


When I hear someone say "if you have __ lbs to lose you may qualify for our free trial .."  as if they care how much you have to lose and will evaluate your eligibility, I want to vomit on my shoes.  On THEIR shoes.  Puh-lease! 


And what about the images?  Women go from morbidly obese to slim and sexy (God forbid we forget the 'sexy' implication) with a 6 pack just by taking the pills, drinking the potion, whatever it happens to be.  Cause you know, all those people who have 6 packs now - haven't worked really hard to get them at all!


Oh and don't forget the speed all these products work with.  Overnight you will see the weight just falling off!

Unfortunately the weight loss industry is so huge simply because there are so many of us out here that are vulnerable to finding that key that's going to work for us.  But if any of those pills and powders worked it would be the breakthrough of the century and would be touted by every health care professional in the world so it would be really nice if the people pushing all the crap out there would just stop.


Too bad they aren't nice.

Self diagnose with Pooh!

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Maxine Monday

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