Connected By Kittehs and Toilets

One of the nicest things about being a blogger is making blogging friends. Kate of High Altitude Gardening instigated my blogging. We'd been friends for several years before the rise of the blogs.

Then I met Cicada, who now goes by her real name Jess, the Bioephemera art and science blogger. I love her artwork and her sense of humor. Her blog can really make me think. She is one smart lady.

Now Kate and I have made e-friends with Iron Needles, who gardens and knits -- and spins and hikes and reads some of my favorite books and has similar views about politics. Today I visited her blog and saw a picture of her cat drinking from the dog's favorite water supply. It's always a shock when one catches the cat in such a position. Cats are supposed to be much too fastidious to drink from toilets. That's the dog's job.

The picture did, however, bring brightly to my mind memories of Brianna and her training of the Engineer.

Brianna came home with me from the pound as an orphan feral kitten. She was frightened of almost everything, especially shoes, but accepted me as her Mommy almost immediately. Perhaps the fact that I was barefoot most of the time helped. The Engineer is also a barefoot person when in the house, so he soon gained her trust and love as well.
Brianna quickly decided upon our sleeping arrangements; she demanded her own pillow laid longwise at the head of the bed between her two humans. If the bed was not made properly, she would pester me until I fixed it to her satisfaction.

She was a kitty who was fascinated by water from the get-go, She loved any flowing faucet, she supervised me in the shower and would hop on in after the water was turned off and the glass doors opened. She had a water fountain drinking dish. When she grew a little bigger and developed into a better jumper, she discovered toilets. They were such lovely large reservoirs of water. I didn't appreciate how much she liked toilets until the day I walked into my bathroom and her little head popped up over the rim. Yes, she was perched inside of the bowl, playing in the water.

That was the day my toilet lid closed forever (unless, of course, the toilet was being put to its intended use.)

The Engineer is a male who, like most males, has a Y-chromosomal aversion to shutting a toilet lid.

Often, during the night, when Bri decided she needed a little exercise, she would play in the Engineer's toilet. When she was done, she would come running back into the bedroom. leap up on the bed on the Engineer's side, and lovingly pat his face on her way back to her own pillow.

This tended to wake him up. So he would wake me up, "The cat got my face wet!"

I would laugh at him and tell him I was glad she'd wiped her paws on him before she got to me.

The Engineer would tell me to make her stop getting him wet.

I told him many, many times that if he shut the lid, he would no longer get his face painted with toilet water in the night.

It took about three months before he internalized that, but his toilet lid remains shut when not in use to this day.

I guess even PhD's can eventually learn new things.

Trash and Testosterone

Every year the city has Big Trash Day. They will pick up and take away pretty much anything you can haul to the curb. It's kinda cool to watch. A huge dump truck and a somewhat smaller truck with a set of Tyrannosaurus rex jaws work together. The T.rex bites up the trash and spits it into the dump truck, then the humans who follow after take brooms to the scattered remains of the heaps.

Big Trash Day isn't on the same calendar date every year. Some years it's in June, sometimes July or August, once in September. You never know from one year to the next.

I think Big Trash Day is the Engineer's favorite day of the year. He dreams about it all year long. By January, he can't stand it any more and I am assigned to call the city and find out when. This year it's supposed to be the week of July 21st -- next week.

The Engineer and I were sitting at the picnic table eating dinner last Sunday and he was talking about Big Trash Day. He was feeling a little distressed that our across the street neighbor had already started on his heap, whereas the Engineer had nothing on the curb yet. He was working out his strategy for a giant heap, when I asked him, "Aren't you leaving for Canada Sunday?"

He replied, "No, no, I'm not going to Venezuela until the first of August."

"But aren't you going to Canada next week?"

He turned and looked at me in astonishment. His jaw fell open. He said something I'm not going to quote on my P.G.13 rated blog. I felt like I'd just stabbed an ice pick into his balloon.

I tried to convince him that having the biggest heap in the neighborhood for Big Trash Day did not reflect upon his manhood, but he wasn't buying it.

He's been scheming harder than ever all week. He is determined.

I just hope he doesn't do anything drastic.

Last year's heap.

The Ice Maker

The ice maker started acting up in November. By the first of the year, it was only putting out ice intermittently. It stopped entirely the middle of January.

The Engineer, being an engineer, wants to think that he is in control of all household devices, so I have been asking him to fix it from the get-go. When it stopped entirely, I told him I wanted to get an appliance repair man out, but he told me he'd fix it.

I finally got tired of waiting and took the problem into my own hands. When he got home tonight, I announced that I'd fixed the ice machine.

"Oh, how?" he asked.

"Take a look," I replied.

For some reason, he didn't think it was funny.

The Y Chromosome

First we need to get the vocabulary straight. The hoo-hoo, as I found out about a week ago, is the female particular part. That means that the male particular part must be the ha-ha, because when you put the hoo-hoo and the ha-ha together you get a whole lot of hooha.

Now that we have our terms of reference, let's get on with the story.

I was in a hardware store this afternoon to buy some paint. As I was reading the back of the label, the good ol' boy clerk came up to me. "What can I help you with, little lady," he asked.

I said, "I need to paint my office. I'd like one gallon of flat latex and one gallon of gloss oil in Dove White and two gallons of eggshell latex in Bird's Egg."

"Mmm, hmmm," he said, "did you have someone measure your office for you."

I said, "The can says it covers 400 square feet, so that should be about right."

"Well, now, you really should have someone measure that office for you and figure out just how much you need because when you're getting custom colors you should get it all mixed at once."

"Yes sir, I know that, that's what I'm asking for."

"You really should have someone measure it for you, then we can figure out how much you need here."

I said, "I need four gallons, two white, two blue."

He raised a superior male eyebrow at me as if to say, "yeah, right."

Why is it that some men think a Y chromosome is required to do anything that doesn't involve kitchens, bare feet or kids? Why do they think with their ha-ha's? We women certainly don't think with our hoo-hoo's (at least not usually and not past a certain age.) I know which end of a hammer to hold onto and I know how to figure paint. Sometimes I forget how to hold on to my temper, however.

I looked him straight in the eye and said, "The office is approximately 12 feet by twelve feet, which means the ceiling is 144 square feet. If a can of paint covers 400 square feet it will do two coats on the ceiling.

"There are four walls, each approximately 12 feet by 8 feet high. Two doors, a six foot closet and a six by four foot window, which, all together, I figure equals about one wall.

"Each wall is 96 square feet, I need to paint three walls, that makes 288 square feet. Let's round that up to 300 square feet to be on the safe side. Two coats makes 600 square feet. A can covers 400 square feet, I need one and a half gallons of blue paint. You sell paint in gallons, so I need two gallons. With that much paint, I can repaint the inside of the closet too if I so choose.

"The oil base gloss is for the trim. The doors are varnished wood.

"I need two gallons of eggshell latex in Bird's Egg, one gallon of flat latex in Dove White and one gallon of gloss oil in Dove White."

I leaned forward and raised my eyebrows right back at him.

He stood there gaping at me for a minute, then gave a shake of his head that said, "Women!" but he mixed my paint without further argument.

Men of the world, I am making an announcement. A ha-ha is not required to paint a room. You can't hold the brush with it. You can't think any logical thoughts with it. Frankly, I'm glad I don't have one, I much prefer having a hoo-hoo.

And that's enough hooha for today.


Writing the blog entry was a challenge tonight. The power kept going off. Not just my house, the whole neighborhood. But having a hoo-hoo, I took the easy way out and saved frequently so I didn't have to start from scratch each time.