Creepy Kitty Strikes Again

On this blog I like to give lots of little quips and tips for making your life funnier. Are they always relevant or useful? Heck no. But if you've got some time to kill, I promise that you'll be left laughing. Today is going to be no exception. And since it's getting closer to Halloween, I thought I'd throw in some tips on how to nicely frighten someone. Yes, folks, it can be done. But first, I must set up this situation for you.

My mom is in real estate. One of the things she likes to do each time she acquires a property is make pamphlets for that property featuring pictures and important information. And by she likes to make pamphlets, I mean she wants me to make her pamphlets. If there is one thing that I utterly despite doing, it is these pamphlets. They're a time consuming pain in the butt. Plus, since I'm not her, I don't know the information about the house or what she wants me to put on the pamphlets, and she's often not around while I'm making them, which just causes a lot of debauchery and annoyance on my part.

Today, however, took my patience for these pamphlets to a new level. To begin with, the pictures had been taken off the camera and edited at my mom's office, but were never put onto a flash drive, so all of the pictures she wanted me to use were on the office computer. I'm at home. To offset this issue, I had to go into her MLS system and save every single one of the pictures off of her listing. That would have been the end of it, except that the MLS system puts these hideous white borders around all the pictures, so then I had to crop them out. I was over two hours in and all I had done was save and crop the pictures and open and begin to set up the template for the pamphlets. I won't get into details, but it just went downhill from there. Getting increasingly frustrated, I realized my urgent need for a laugh. A plot was born.

While I was going through the pictures on the camera and realizing they would do me no good since they weren't the edited versions, I found a picture of the homeowners' cat. Let me explain this one so it doesn't sound uber creepy. In this particular instance I had gone and taken the pictures at the homeowners' house along with my mom. It was more of one of those situations where we were on our way somewhere and she grabbed the camera on the way out the door and decided she wanted to stop. The homeowners' had a kitty that was sleeping in the middle of the bed while I was trying to take pictures. Being an animal person, I went over and started to talk to the kitty in all kinds of crazy baby talk that probably the cat didn't even understand. It eventually came over and hugged my hand...and then immediately took it back by trying to remove my hand from my body. It was a lovely kitty, really.

And that was the exact moment I realized that the kitty was just going to have to be in the pictures if I wanted to keep all limbs in tact, and then find a creative way to hide the kitty in the pictures. Therefore, I ended up with a picture of the kitty, a kitty that later tried to take my mom's hand off, so I didn't feel so singularly unloved.

The homeowner later told us that she had tried to take the kitty back to the where she had gotten it because it was so darn mean with her kids and such, but they wouldn't take it back without putting it down, so she kept it. That might have been important to know before we went in the room with the kitty. Either way, the kitty ended up being the talk of the day, and my mom said that she didn't enjoy how mean that kitty was whatsoever. The next time she turns her computer on she's going to wish she hadn't said that. Since I was annoyed with her pamphlets and had plenty of time to scheme, I figured the kitty was the perfect revenge since it also related to the house.

This is her usual desktop background. It's a picture of our beloved dog Leo, of whom she adores.

This is her new desktop background. Creepy Kitty is merely expressing its distaste for the way it was creatively left out of the pictures on the pamphlets.


I don't plan on telling her about the switch. Did I mention that she has a seventeen inch monitor?

You've Been Cat Dialed

So today I was in the grocery store shopping...while helping a demonologist with an exorcism by way of cell phone. How has your day been?

Yeah, guys, that happened. It's been an insane week. The demonologist that I regularly work with came to me for help with a case. Last night everything came to a head, and then unexpectedly had to be finished off today. While I was at the grocery store. Where people could hear me and I could get in their way. I just refused to let this stop me from grocery shopping. Luckily my demonologist and I both find it completely hilarious that stuff like this is just a mere mild inconvenience in our day. But I have to say, assisting with an exorcism from the grocery store was definitely a new one for me, and that was just part of my day.

Today, all of this happened and then some, but I can't remember the and then some part. That's probably a good thing.

- I cleaned out the refrigerator and cabinets and found stuff I didn't even know I had. Then I was disappointed because it had gone bad before I ate it. Following that, I began to think about all the new stuff I was going to buy at the grocery store that would disappoint me in the same way.

- I visited (Let's use the term "visited," otherwise I'll end up angry.) the office of which holds my paperwork for my insurance. I was supposed to get new papers to fill out for the end of this month, and to have my doctors fill out, but they never came. Turns out they moved my renewal period back a month. No one thought it necessary to tell me, nor would anyone call me back when I called them to ask about it, so I got to waste my gas and time to go deal with stupid. I live a highly glamorous life.

- I visited my mom at her new job and realized her co-worker is way too friendly. I didn't think that was possible, but she even terrified me.

- While shopping, I nicely told anyone who got in line behind me that I had a lot of coupons. I wasn't the crazy coupon lady, but I'd be awhile. The first guy thanked me and got out of line. The second lady lied to me and said that was okay and she had plenty of time. I was almost done checking out when she lost her cool and started swearing and bitching me out under her breathe and moved to another register. The check out lady and myself bust out laughing. Hey, I warned her. And I was out of the store before she even got checked out in her brand spanking new line.

- I learned that I can use my clicker to lock my car from the dining room. Now that I know that, I can be completely lazy and never have to walk the whole way out on the porch again.

- I gave my cat an entire dramatic monologue. It was as follows. I encourage you to read this as if you were an actress or actor in a comedy where you were encouraged to be overly dramatic for the pure purpose of ridiculousness.

"You once were but a small, beautiful kitty who had it all. The world was in your hands. You had everything you wanted. Your life was beautiful. You were a princess, what with your fancy meowing and your special canned food."

I now encourage you to read this as if you were Miley Cyrus on Hannah Montana and trying to make a point while angry.

"And then you had to go and not chew your food."

Let me explain. Sophie kitty thinks she's a princess, so much so that she does not like hard cat food. She can eat it, her teeth are fine, she's lived on it for six years now, but she just doesn't particularly care for it. Since Sophie also happens to be the creepiest cat in the entire world and I am convinced she's plotting my murder, we decided to get her some canned food to make her happy. Things were going quite well, right up until the other night. When I went in the room to get her, I thought she had dumped her bowl. Then I realized what she had actually done was not chew any of her cat food and threw it up all over the entire room. Furniture had to be moved, sheets washed, the rug scrubber came out, and I pulled something in my back moving the bed just like any ninety year old would do. So needless to say, her days with canned food are over. All she had to do was chew her food. Now she's in there chewing hard food and giving me dirty looks. Look, Sophie, we all know your teeth and gums are fine, so don't even play it like that.

- I hand washed my bra in Woolite and was trying to spray some perfume on it so it could dry with the bra and make it smell yummy, since I hate the smell of Woolite. Someone, and we won't mention any names, but since I was the only one doing this you can guess who it was, didn't look to see what way the perfume bottle was pointing and sprayed herself in the nose. On the bright side, everything smells spectacular.

- I learned that I hate when you want one snack cake, but there's two in a package, so you have to pretend to be upset that you have to eat both just so you feel better about eating both.

I should have seen this ridiculousness coming. Last night I had that awkward moment where I was on the oval office and finished my book, and then wondered what I was supposed to read then. Hey, don't look at me like that. We all do it. If you say you don't read while on the potty, you are either lying or you are texting during your business.

But even with all of that craziness behind me, I do have some good news to report. I identified DJ VM$$. It's my cat Stitch. If he hadn't sat on my phone and managed to call my mom, I would have probably never known. Forget butt dialing. Mom, you've been cat dialed.

Also, tomorrow I'm hanging out with my mom and Aunt Bev. I better get some good stories from the blog or I think it's safe to say that we'll all be disappointed.

My Crafting Ensures I'm Forever Single

Because we know that my crafting brings no boys to the yard, I thought I would share with you my recent endeavors into ensuring that I was forever single. But first, let me tell you how this craft project came to be. One day I was sitting at home and minding my own business (I'd like to take a minute to point out that I always say I'm minding my own business, but it's usually not true. I'm usually minding my cat's business.) when I got an email from one of the craft sites I subscribe to. The email featured 31 fall wreaths to craft. As my mom and I got to talking, we realized we had no fall wreath. As I got to going through the email, I realized they didn't have any awesome fall wreaths either. An idea was born.

I had a wreath lying around and decided that I would make a much more awesome wreath all on my own, without their ideas. I also didn't have a lot of money to do it, so I went out bargain shopping at the Dollar Store and hoped an idea came to my mind. Before I went, I had gone through my crafting supplies and saw a few things for a Halloween wreath, so I thought I'd make one of them, too. The shopping trip was a success, and the following came from it.

First up, we have the fall wreath. For this wreath, I wanted something classy that was truly one of a kind, but had a bit of sparkle to it. I started out with a 9 inch wreath we already had, but normally only cost a few dollars, exactly like the one pictured below.

At the dollar store, I bought some beautiful ribbon and a string of glittered fall leaf garland. I already had some little pine cones that I had picked up for free out of boredom while waiting for my mom to get off the phone one day while we were at a butterfly release. My plan was to cover the wreath in the ribbon, but not overlap it. I would then take and fill in the spaces where the wreath stuck out with the leaves and place the pine cones over top.

Since the ribbon was the good kind with wire through the edges, it made it difficult to wrap the ribbon, as a whole, around the wreath to cover it. As a solution, I cut the ribbon into six five inch strips. I flipped the wreath upside down, put the middle of the ribbon around the part facing the table, and then put hot glue at one end of the ribbon and brought the other up to meet it. I also burned myself with the hot glue gun approximately 972 times because I had to push the ribbon against itself to make it stick, and the hot glue came through. I put each individual piece of ribbon up against each other in the center of the wreath, and left room at the bottom for the focal point.

I then cut a few of the leaves from the garland, which are sparkly, though it's hard to see, and positioned them over the gaps between the ribbon. I overlapped two leaves per gap, sometimes three if I was doing the overlapping on the outside of the wreath. To balance it all out and bring a bit of depth to the color, I took the baby pine cones and placed them over top of the leaves to get this effect.

At the bottom of the wreath, the part where I had not put any of the above things, I started on the focal point. This is a view from the inside out the wreath out.

And this is the head on view. What I did was take three big flowers from the Dollar Store and line them up side by side, cutting their stems to a half an inch and lathering them with hot glue to make sure they stayed, before sticking them into the wreath. To balance it out, I took some smaller flowers from the dollar store of a darker shade and lined the inside and the outside of the wreath just around the three flowers for balance. Because the flowers were from the Dollar Store, the centers of them were nothing to write home about, so I hot glued pine cones into the center to tie together the rest of the wreath.

This was the end product, and it only cost me a total of $4. Had I had to buy the wreath, it would have cost more like $7, but I still think that's a good price considering how much you would pay for an already finished, thousands-made wreath.

Up next was my Halloween wreath. I wanted this wreath to be a little more fun and not as busy. I bought the Dollar Store version of this wreath in a 9 inch, so it wasn't near as nice or as fancy, but that was okay, because it was just the base that I would be covering.

I spent around two hours hot gluing moss onto the wreath and burning my fingers. It wasn't as hard to do as one would think. The moss went right on. When I got the first layer done, I shook the wreath and pulled off the pieces that weren't glued on, and then repeated the process a second and third time. I love how it came out and it was totally worth it, though I do warn that this makes a heck of a mess. After doing that, I took one of the Halloween items I had found and glued it onto the left side of the wreath like so.

I then went to the right side and glued another little kitten I had lying around onto the wreath directly across from the Boo kitty above.



I also had a little witch's broom lying around, so I positioned it right in between where I knew my ribbon would fall, so when the ribbon fell, it looked like this.

One thing that was a must have with this wreath was a really awesome, slightly over-sized ribbon on the top. I got one at the Dollar Store that matched my kitties perfectly, and then tied it and hot glued it on. I wasn't happy with how the center knot looked, so I took a black button and hot glued it to the center of the ribbon, and then glued an orange one in the middle of it to give it flair.

To balance out the large ribbon, I bought a sign at the Dollar Store that went with the theme of the wreath and attached it to the back of the wreath and hung it from the wreath, having the ribbon just skim the top of it so that it all tied in together. The end result was as follows. This wreath also cost $4 for everything you see, aside from the kitties and the broom, but including the sign.

I wish these pictures made them look at cute as they are in real life. I look at the pictures and wonder if I enjoy how they came out, but when I actually look at the wreaths, I love them. I guess maybe it's one of those things where if you make it, you always see the flaws.

Caution: White, Sober Girl Walking

I know I've been promising you all part two of the plumbing story for exactly a month now, so I've decided to stop being lame and write it. But before I do, I have a few things I want to share with you all.

First, for those of you who were following the LMCP story, I have an update. LMCP has crossed over. I'm sure this isn't the end of the saga with her, as she left quite a legacy behind, but I had finally succumbed to the fact that she was with me for life. However, her person and herself really stepped up last week and dealt with what they needed to deal with. In doing that, they figured out how to let each other go, and it was a really beautiful thing. Before she left, I promised her that I would make sure to always keep an eye on her person. Normally, when my spirit girls are not helping someone, they stay with me. Now, when they don't have a greater purpose at the moment, they stay with her person and not only keep him safe, but keep his stuff from bothering anyone else. Although it's quiet around here because my one girl that is always with me is now taking care of him, I know it's for a bigger purpose. Everything that needed to be taken care of around him was, and everything she needed, she got closure on. Although taking care of her person is going to be a life long job and entails more than just having my girls keep an eye on him, I am much less stressed without her seventeen and pregnant self hanging around. A lot of things are changing and rearranging, but I think it's a good change.

Second, my cat now has a rapper name. It's VM Double Dollar, but is shortened to be ever so fashionable at VM$$. Let me explain. The other day I left my phone lying on the coffee table. I thought it was safe. When I came back to it, my red light was going off. I looked at my phone, and it was a text from my friend asking what VM$$ meant. I never texted her that, so I was confused, until I looked at the previous text. It was indeed from me and had indeed said VM$$. The only reasonable solution was that a cat stepped on my phone and sent that. The only reasonable explanation for a name that fly was that it was my cat's DJ name. The problem is, I don't know which cat did it.

With that said, I want you all to know that I wasn't initially going to tell part two of the crazy plumbing story. But I decided I'm going to go for it full force. My mom called a plumber the same night as we found there was water leaking into my vent, and he promised to send someone out the next day. My mom chose a plumber that her clients had used. In the business she's in, she sees all the bills for the work that is done for her clients. She knew his rates and knew he had done good work. She had told the plumber that it had been the reason she had chosen him. You can see this is going to go wrong somewhere, yeah? Long story short, the plumber decided to completely rip us off and charge us a much, much higher price than he charged her clients for labor. Our job was about a sixth of a job that theirs was, too.  He also charged us for times they weren't here, the plumbers' lunch hours, and two hours in travel time a day when they're only coming from twenty minutes away in bad traffic. This is now an ongoing dispute, but I digress.

Day one started off fine. I was up way earlier than I wanted to be with some strange guy in my house. Since I was the only one home, the day soon became like a Nancy Drew novel, only the mystery was where the leak was coming from. The first assumption was that it was coming from under the house. The poor plumber crawled his bad self under there, couldn't get the whole way back, but couldn't see anything either. That led to some hemming and hawing, and finally the realization that there was going to have to be some cutting into the walls. I'm not going to lie, Plumber 1 and myself had some awesome adventures and laughs while trying to find this leak. He was kind of awesome.

By the end of the day, we had found the problem, the plumber had fixed it, we had a hole in our wall and floor, our washer and dryer pulled out, but we were gleeful. And then we realized we had more leaks. This apparently was a two plumber job for the following day. That was gauranteed to be debauchery filled.

Day two got a little hinky. Plumber 1 came back with Plumber 3. I could call him Plumber 2, but that just seems unoriginal. I open the door to greet the strange men into my house earlier in the morning than I care to be up, when Plumber 3 says to me: "I swear I didn't pee my pants. My wife didn't put the lid on my coffee the whole way this morning." And then he walks away. He didn't even see hi. Immediately, I knew I was going to like Plumber 3 just fine.

Because the plumbers didn't want to tear up more floor, they decided to see if they could get far enough under our house to find the leak. This didn't seem feasible seeing as the leak couldn't be found from under there the day before, but Plumber 3 was feeling particularly bold and decided to try it. While standing outside of the entrance to the crawl space under our house and having Plumber 1 ask me a question, me answer it, and him yell the answer to plumber 3, I was stung by a bee. It wasn't even ten am. It was going to be one of those days. For the record, I've never been stung by a bee in my life, but it was good to know I wasn't allergic to them. Because we all know there's no better time to find out if you're allergic to bees or not than when you're alone with two strange men in your home.

They finally surmised they had no choice but to make another hole in the floor in another room. The problem was that it was a ninety something degree day, and the room they had to work in was land locked by other rooms. The tiny window it did have in the one open wall didn't open anymore. The way the room was facing, there was no way to get air into it. I was afraid they were going to die, but Plumber 3 assured me they would be okay with some fans. I still started coming up with stories to tell the police just in case, and realized the truth was really the only thing that wasn't going to make me sound suspicious.

I went into the living room and decided to send incredibly funny emails to everyone I knew, because I didn't know what else to do with myself. You know how it is, the second you start a project, they need your help, so there was no use in starting anything. If you don't start anything serious, they don't need your help. Guess which rule this day followed. If you guessed one, you would be wrong.

As I'm really into my emails, minding my own business and what not, the plumbers suddenly start making a loud noise. I wasn't too concerned about it, however, I happened to catch my cat out of the corner of my eye. Slowly, I looked up at her and immediately regretted it. Just a mere foot from me on the corner of the couch, my kitty was giving me a look as if the say, "make that noise stop or I will murder you in your sleep." I didn't even know she was there until that very second, but now that I was aware, I couldn't be unaware. I was practicing my ninja skills in my head and slowly moving over while giggling nervously, when the noise stopped and she left the couch arm. It was a close one.

At the end of the day, all I was right with the zoo again, we had water pressure we had never had, were wondering how long these pipes had been leaking, and bid the plumbers adieu. By this time my mom had come home to monitor the debauchery. We were just so wiped out from all that plumbing they did in the ninety degree weather that we ended up sitting on the couch for over an hour and a half just so we could see this.

Let me just ask you something. What is it about three minute interviews on television shows you don't like or watch that make you want to sit down an hour early just to make sure you catch it? We all do it, especially with those dang morning shows. And did you ever notice that if it's something educational, you find something else to do right up until the very last second it comes on, and then you plant your butt in front of the television, missing the first minute of the show and not caring? What is up with that? And why is it that once you've sat on the couch forever and a Christmas to watch some three minute segment that you suddenly think your day is shot and decide to sit and watch television for the rest of the day? And in doing that, you end up watching a bunch of things you don't actually want to watch just because you still swear the day has been wasted by your acedia. There needs to be therapy for this.

But two days of sitting around, writing awesome emails, and making friends with plumbers who say odd things, I learned two things that I'd like to pass on. 

At one point in the day, someone texted me and asked me how I was enjoying the plumber's crack. I texted them back and told that that though it seemed impossible, our plumbers didn't have crack. They tucked their shirts into their underwear. Not that I was looking, but when you have to move around them in your own house, your eyes see things you're not trying to focus on. So take that, plumbers. It IS possible to not have plumber's crack. I know this is shocking news, so take a minute, breathe, take your medications; there's no need to get worked up. You have to look like Napoleon Dynamite to do it, but it's so worth it.

Plumber 3 cracked what I thought was a joke at one point in the day, and then I realized that not only was it not a joke, he had a point. He said that back in the day it was his dream to own a plumbing company. He decided that when he did so, he was going to hire one really tall guy and one midget. The tall guy, obviously, could reach all the things the normal sized guys couldn't without ladders. As for the midget, he could finagle himself into every situation that regular sized men couldn't. He'd be like the super ninja of plumbing. Plumber 3 said that the tall guy was negotiable, but the midget wasn't. I mean no disrespect to midgets, but Plumber 3 totally had a point with that.

2 AM; Who Do You Love?

I wasn't going to post tonight, but I'm feeling all kinds of sentimental tonight. I'd like to think that it's the medication I was put on for the current catastrophe of a health problem I'm having, but it's probably just me. I prefer to be funny, good story telling Cass. Sometimes I'm life lesson Cass. But there's other times where I just need an outlet and feel like if I don't speak now, I might explode. I don't think anyone would glue me back together, so it's probably better if I stay in one piece.

Tonight I found myself in a situation that honestly frightened me more than the stories my spirits tell me of their deaths, spiders or birds ever could. If you know me, you'd know that the mere sight of a bird makes me scream and run like a little girl who was just offered candy from a stranger. It's completely ridiculous, but I digress. A very dear friend of mine was in need of help and was having an impossibly tough time, and I didn't know what to say to her to help her. I kept trying to say the right thing, and then wondered if I said the wrong thing, what would happen to her and how it would make her feel. And, for a brief moment, I saw myself seven years ago. It was a moment too long, and I became more afraid that nothing I said was going to help, only make things worse.

She is an amazing girl who deserves a beautiful life, yet no one's ever told her that. No one's ever treated her like it was okay to be who she was. I remembered the times that I sat in my room and wondered if I'd ever have a chance to fly, and I looked at where I am now and still found no answers for her. Luckily, she is an incredible girl who is smart and funny and found a solution for herself. And I told her I'd always be here for her, but that I would probably never know the right thing to say, and we talked about some things. And it brought up a lot of stuff.

I grew up enchanted with everything, especially shiny things and love. But my environment shattered my enchantment of love before I was five, although it never ruined the fascination of shiny things for me. I'm twenty five and should still never drive in Vegas, but that's beyond the point. I want to have a perfectly imperfect love story with someone. I want to savor the times when things suck and you're confused, but still know you're with the right person. I've never had the stability to say that anyone would stick around. And, as much as I hate to admit it, my spirits don't help. Most of them are young girls whose lives were taken far too soon, and I know how easily that could have been me. To hear their stories, it scares me away from relationships and becoming close to anyone even more, seeing how easily a life can change; how quickly. I've watched as a relationship changed in front of my own eyes because of someone trying to do the right thing, and having someone else lie to them and have it almost end in their death. Then they drowned themselves in alcohol, and I never got the person I loved back. So shit happens, and sometimes it's no one's fault.

But I'm not good with the unknown, and I've never trusted myself so much either with knowing how to handle keeping someone or something for myself. My first reaction is always flight. And then I realized that for a girl who is afraid to trust herself, I'm in a pretty unusual situation. I help spirits on a regular basis, and they come to me for help because they trust me. They see something in me, and there's a reason each medium gets a specific spirit. I've always helped and I've always sat passively and wondered why they trusted me so much and why I could dedicate my life to them, but never be able to have any kind of life for myself. And now I know that I've been blaming them when it's never been their fault.

Sometimes life isn't about you, though. And maybe sometimes you're not meant to have what you want. And sometimes what you want and what you need aren't the same things. There's always going to be someone that knows what you need, though. In my line of work, I get it all too often, but I believe the same goes for anyone in any situation. There's always someone on the outside looking in. And maybe that person is right. If you push them away to protect yourself, you'll never know. You can say you can control your life all you want, and you can put up every wall in the world, but then you forget to give yourself a chance. Maybe that someone who knows what you don't is just trying to give you that chance to fly.

A Very Greta Picture

Hi! Greta Hayley here!  I'm posting for mommy because she has a sick! I don't have a whole lot to say, so I just thought I'd share my picture with you.