Day Six-Fifty-Nine - Karaoke!

Yesterday I inadvertently stumbled across an idea for what I think is a great non-travel blog topic.  I don't come up with many non-travel blog topics these days.  So I thought, while it was top of mind, I should go ahead and blog about it.  So, today's topic is Karaoke!

Those of you who have spent much time around me already know that I can't sing.  I don't "get a little pitchy" at the far ends of the register or anything like that.  I really cannot sing at all, much to my dismay.  My 6 month old kitten Mrs. Beasley went into heat a few weeks ago just before I took her in to get her spayed. When she went into heat, she did this crazy yowling thing that sounded freakish.  Yet compared to me trying to sing anything she sounded like a gifted soprano opera star.

The problem is that it took me a lot of years to realize that I couldn't sing through nobody's fault but my own. My parents were never like the crazy parents of today that are afraid to tell their kids that they aren't gifted in a particular area resulting in the kid who can barely comprehend 2nd grade math but believes he will build a rocket that will get man to Mars in just a few years.  I mean, they weren't cruel, but if our abilities were limited in an area, they found a nice way to redirect us and maybe say that the previous direction shouldn't be our chosen path. It's something that a loving parent should do for their kids.  Otherwise, they grow up believing that they are the next Jennifer Hudson and they just end up making a total fool of themselves on a Karaoke stage, believe me, I've seen it happen.

Before I realized that I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, I joined a cappella choir during my senior year of high school.  My good friend Irma Quintinilla kind of talked me into it and Irma could sing so I thought, she was probably a good judge of who should be in choir and who shouldn't.  But my first indication of my gross inability to sing was when Mrs. Littlefield, the choir director, would be conducting us in a song and look directly in my eyes, mouth "Susan" and then close her index finger and thumb together indicating that I shouldn't be singing so loudly. At first I thought my strong alto voice was just over powering some of the less fortunate untalented singers in the group.  But as the pattern continued and I complained to my mother about it, one evening, I came to realize that it could have something to do with my ability or inability, as it were. Apparently, Mrs. Littlefield, in her generosity as a high school choir director, was willing to allow someone with my talent, or lack there of, to fill a seat in the choir, as long as she and I both understood that I would not be heard above the others around me at any cost.  I came to like Mrs. Littlefield a lot.  She was a smart woman and over the years, I have used this technique she taught me of blending into a crowd to my advantage. Now as a 50 year old woman, I know just how wise it is not to stand out in most crowds. I used to have a poster hanging in my office at work that I think says it very well.  Here's a copy....

I think if more people had been made to understand this concept when they were younger, the world would be a much better place with a lot fewer people believing that they should be the next American Idol. However, if that were the case, Karaoke would totally suck!

There are two types of people I like watching sing Karaoke.  There is the person who sings about like me but is convinced that there's a record producer in the audience and that she is the next Mariah Carey and just wails out Vision of Love at the top of her lungs. To me, this is fun to watch. If I thought there was any chance that the girl would open her eyes midway through the song and suddenly realize that she has no talent and run crying from the stage, I couldn't enjoy it.  It would be heart breaking.  I don't want to see the oblivious suffer.  But this girl has made it through the first 30 years or so of her life always believing that she has major talent just waiting to be discovered and no two bit Karaoke audience is going to convince her otherwise.  She's fun to watch because she has no inhabitions. She just lays it all out there for her audience and that record producer who will one day show up to hear her perform.

The other type of people I like to watch sing Karaoke are the ones who are well aware of their inability to sing, but they also realize that Karaoke is just fun and they probably aren't any worse than the Mariah Carey wannabe who will be performing a little later so why not get up and just belt one out.  I admire their courage. These people usually travel in groups and go up on stage in pairs.  They always require a certain amount of alcohol (or what you might refer to as "liquid courage") while they browse through the song list looking for just the right Bon Jovi song to sing so that people will know that they don't take themselves too seriously. These people are fun and they keep going back for more and that's why I like them.  They truly entertain me.
 
I have a low tolerance for everyone else at a Karaoke bar.  The people who show up before the stage is set up and have already chosen their "playlist" of 10 songs before the music starts and are only drinking tepid water with honey because they don't want to damage their vocal chords, need to realize this isn't an audition for a Broadway show.  It's Saturday night in Plano.  Get over yourselves people.  Here's another clue, no one has ever gone to a Karaoke bar hoping to hear some crazy woman in an evening gown sing opera.

Finally, contrary to what my leader Jimmy Buffett and his friend Toby Keith would have you believe, there is no such thing as Too Drunk to Karaoke. If anything there is "Not Drunk Enough to Karaoke".  I think that is the category I would fall into since there isn't enough tequila in Texas to ever get me on a Karaoke stage. But it doesn't change the fact that I'm glad other people seem able to do it after half a Margarita.  Have a great weekend!

Day Six-Eighteen - Cousins

Yesterday was my Uncle Gene's funeral.  He had a long life full of changes.  He spent time in the army before marrying my Aunt Miggie then held various jobs. Most of my memories are during the years he was a dairy farmer. They lived those years in East Texas.  Since we also lived in East Texas, our family visited Aunt Miggie, Uncle Gene and my cousin Duane a little more often than some of our other family who lived further away.  Uncle Gene was a soft spoken man.  I don't know if that came from working with cows who he didn't want to spook or if he was just born that way.  But I can only remember seeing him angry once or twice and even then, he still seemed very quiet.  Later in life, he got out of the dairy business and opened a convenience store which he ran until a few years ago.

His funeral, yesterday, was nice and attended by several family members, some of whom I had not seen in several years.  I drove to Jacksonville for the funeral yesterday with two cousins.  Cindy who flew in from Oregon and Terry who lives in McKinney drove down with me. We chatted all the way to Jacksonville. Once there, we went to the family room at the funeral home where my parents, one brother and a number of other cousins and aunts were waiting for the service to begin along with Duane and Aunt Miggie.

We had about 20 minutes to greet everyone and chat before the service.  Some of the cousins present yesterday I have caught up with recently on Facebook.  Others I had not communicated with in more than 20 years and it was good to see them all.  I think that you have a different sort of relationship with your cousins than anyone else.  You all share family and I like that relationship.  There aren't many people in the world who I can talk about my grandmother with who really understand what she was like other than those 16 cousins.  Sure, I can talk to my parents about my grandparents.  But that is a different relationship than grandchildren have with their grandparents.

When you're a kid, if you are lucky, you start life out with cousins who are like ready made friends. Sometimes, they don't like you or you don't like them.  But most of the time you get over your differences and you can get along just fine.  After all, you see each other at every family function.  It ensures that you always have someone to play with at all the holidays, barbecues, fish fries and get togethers.  As time goes by and you grow up you begin to go to fewer and fewer of those get togethers.  In high school, you might chose to stay home and go out with friends instead.  Then you go off to college and can't come home for all of those events.  Eventually, most of us start families of our own and have other commitments that begin to take precedent.

I must say that my Mom has always been pretty good at trying to get me and my brothers to attend some of those events even into adulthood.  They would be having a crawfish boil or Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Johnny were having a fish fry and Mom would practically demand that we drop everything and commit to being there.  At the time, I must admit, I didn't understand what the big deal was and why I needed to attend a random family get together.  Over the years, those occasions have become more few and far between.  But after this weekend, I'm starting to get it why Mom thought it was so important for us to attend back in the day.

Cindy stayed at Aunt Miggie's house yesterday.  She'll stay there a few days and then I'll go down and pick her up to bring her back to Dallas and she'll fly back home the middle of the week. So Terry and I drove back here yesterday afternoon together and had another few hours to chat during the drive home.  It was so nice.  Either Terry or Cindy suggested sometime yesterday that we need a family reunion and I couldn't agree more.  The other side of my family has family reunions periodically.  But I have to say that the Meyers side of my family has only had a few and I don't think it has ever happened since my grandmothers death when I was in middle school.  I have 16 cousins on the Meyers side of my family and I think it's time we all get together again.  None of us are getting any younger!

So I think that I am going to begin plotting and planning very soon.  If you have any relationship to Eddie and Elizabeth Meyers, prepare yourselves, because this thing is going to happen.  If I can force a family photo of my family on the day after Christmas this year, I can make this happen too.  None of you may like me when this is over.  But you'll all be happy we did it.

Happy Sunday!

Day Six-Oh-Four - A Thanksgiving Recap

Hi Friends!
Long time, no hear, right?

I just got back from a long Thanksgiving weekend in Nacogdoches a few hours ago.  It didn't feel particularly long.  By that I mean that I wasn't sitting at Mom and Dad's house wishing I could leave.  I always have a great time at my parents house.  I think I must have a lot in common with them.  For Thanksgiving itself, the entire family was there except for Matt, Melissa and Oliver.  Oliver is only a few weeks old, so he is just too young to do a lot of traveling yet.  I haven't been able to see him in person yet. But the pictures are adorable.

Jacob and Jeni were there with little Joseph Tex Meyers their newest addition.  He is adorable and probably still seeing blue spots from all the flashes that were going off in his proximity.  He is just a little over 2 months old and the "new" hasn't wore off of him yet.  He's still of an age where you just want to smell his head and squeeze him when you hold him. Although his Mom and Dad would probably not approve of the squeezing part.

After Thanksgiving, Mom and I put their Christmas tree up on Friday.  Then Saturday we did a little shopping followed by a rousing game of Moon at the kitchen table for me, Mom and Dad.  Then I came on back home Sunday.  Before I even came back to my house Sunday I went to Lowe's to purchase a new refrigerator.  I have been pricing them and reading reviews for weeks.  I got what I think was a good deal on one from Lowe's.  It won't be delivered for a few weeks.  But I'm in no hurry.  I need to find a new home for my current refrigerator in the meantime.  I'm hoping that a nephew will take it.  But if that doesn't happen, perhaps one of my faithful readers is in need of a beer fridge.  It's a good one!  It has never given me any trouble in 17 years!  It's nothing fancy.  Just a bottom fridge with a top freezer and an icemaker in the freezer if you have a hook up.  It's a Magic Chef.  Back when I bought it in 1996 it was the cheapest one they had with an icemaker at Circuit City in Tyler.

The cats are happy to see me home.  Although, I don't know if they missed me too much while I was gone. Their catsitter plays all kinds of game with them.  Then just to keep me buttered up so that I wouldn't be too upset about not being missed, she got me a plant and planted it in an empty flower pot on my front porch! I spent half an hour looking for something that had been broken. But no breakage, just a really nice petsitter. Maybe I've been tipping her too much....

My new project is going to be scheduling a family photographer for the day after Christmas.  We are going to have the entire Meyers clan here in Dallas on the day after Christmas for a big family photo and it would seem that I am in charge of the picture.  I will tell you that this has not been easy for anyone.  My sister-in-law, Eileen and I have been trying to arrange this for a while.  We have differing opinions on what makes a good family photo. She seems to feel that everyone should be dressed similarly.  I think that if we do that, in 10 years strangers will be passing our photo around on the internet laughing their butts off at us.  (When the people being photographed range in weight from 10 lbs to 300 lbs, the attire that makes them look good, or even presentable, can be quite different.) Otherwise, we agree on most aspects of this.

Going forward, I have Donny and Marie tickets for this Wednesday night and my friend who was supposed to go had to cancel on me.  So, we'll see if I end up at a Donny and Marie concert alone on Wednesday. I'm thinking the kind of single man I meet at this concert won't be one that I am interested in a long term relationship with. (Don't start with me, Katherine!)  Well you guys have a great week and I'll try to be in touch a little more often in the next few weeks.

Day Five-Forty-Four - Cigar Boxes

Where I grew up there were three elementary schools.  I went to Raguet Elementary in first grade.  Then we moved to the other side of town so I went to Fredonia Elementary in second through fifth grade.  At Fredonia, there was a pencil machine.

Probably all schools had them but I really liked getting pencils out of that pencil machine.  They cost a nickle and they had different NFL teams names on them.  Anytime a kid got lucky enough to get a Cowboys pencil they held onto it like it was gold.  If you were lucky enough to have a Cowboys pencil, you only sharpened it when you had to so that you wouldn't sharpen it down past the silver lettering that spelled out Dallas Cowboys. When I put my nickle in the machine it always dispensed a stupid Cincinnati Bengals pencil.  You never had to worry about your Bengals pencil getting stolen out of your cigar box, it was always safe.  We didn't have backpacks back then. Some kids had book bags. But usually only girls had them.  I had a couple of different book bags over the years.  But I never really liked carrying one.  Even then, I knew it was a little dorky to carry a book bag.

But we did have cigar boxes.  The week before school started we would always go down to Community Grocery and ask Mr. Hucklebee for a school box.  He'd have a stack of them under the counter that he would pull out and we would choose the one we liked the best.  They were all the same, so I'm not sure why it mattered.  But it did.  The key to finding a good cigar box was to open it up and smell it. A really good cigar box would keep that cigar scent all year long no matter how much glue spilled in it or was intentionally squirted inside.


On the first day of school you'd arrive with your cigar box, filled with pencils, crayons, scissors and various other supplies.  It would then be stowed in your assigned desk for the remainder of the year. When the teacher said "get your pencils out", 30 cigar boxes would be pulled out of the desks storage areas and open up.  Once a pencil was found, the cigar box would go back where it belonged and we would get to work.

The first few weeks of school, the crayons were stored in their own little box neatly and possibly even in order based on color and placed in the cigar box.  But by October, they were rolling around in the cigar box and the crayon box was a distant memory.  Then when it was time to color something, your entire cigar box had to sit out on your desk with the lid open so that you could chose colors to use.  If you were trying to decide which color to use, you might color on the inside of the lid to see what it looked like.  But that never really worked that well since the lid had a glossy sheen to it and the wax of the crayons didn't do well on a surface like that.

By the end of the school year the cigar box had been colored all over, the lid was probably missing and there were pools of glue in various spots inside.  But surprisingly, it usually lasted the entire year without any need to replace it.  There were a couple of kids at my school who had store bought cigar boxes that they called pencil boxes (snobs).  I'm sure their mom paid a dollar or two for them.  What a waste!  And they didn't even have a picture of King Edward to draw an eye patch on!

I can't remember if my mom had to pay for our cigar boxes.  If she did it was probably a nickle.  Back then everything was a nickle.  I think I had the same cigar box for 1st and 2nd grade.  In those early years, it just sat in your desk all year long.  But in 4th grade, we began changing classrooms for some classes so you carried some of your stuff with you.  The cigar box took a beating when you moved from classroom to classroom.  So in 5th grade the cigar box was replaced with one of those notebook zipper bags.  I hated those things.  It was plastic and went inside a 3 ring binder and all of your pencils, map colors (because by then you were too grown up for crayons), scissors, glue, erasers and even pens went in there.  A few months into the year, the holes would tear and it would start falling out of your notebook as you walked, or it would get a hole in it and you'd be dropping pencils as you walked down the hall.  Then you'd have to go to the office to buy a new pencil and you'd end up with a crummy Bengals pencil.  The only chance you had of someone picking your pencil up in the hallway and returning it to you was if the one you dropped was a Bengals pencil.

The bad thing about having to buy a pencil that you hadn't counted on needing to buy was that you had to do without milk that day since you had to use a nickle of your milk money which was 6 cents for the pencil! There was no disposable income back in the day.  If you needed 6 cents for milk each day, your mom didn't send you to school with a dime.  You went to school with 6 cents.  So there was no saving that 4 cents a couple days in a row so that you could roll the dice on the pencil machine in hopes of getting a coveted Cowboys pencil.  Some kids came to school each day with milk money AND ice cream money.  Lucky bastards!  Mom gave us ice cream money some days.  But that was pretty limited.  Now that I think about it, the fat kids were the ones that usually had ice cream money every day.  If you had to buy a pencil that meant that you had a penny of your milk money left over.  I always saved my penny in my cigar box.  So there were usually a couple of pennies sliding around in there by the end of the year.  They were in there next to the the two inch long former Cincinnati Benagls pencil that had been sharpened so much that it now only read "gals".

Have a happy Wednesday!  I'm going to spend the rest of the day on a Royal Caribbean webinar.

Day Five-Thirty-Five - Talk Like an American Damn It!

Hi peeps!  Yesterday I ended the blog pretty abruptly and I wanted to apologize for that in case any of you got whiplash from the sudden stop.  I was thoroughly enjoying the perfect morning and writing away when I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to meet my friend Mary at 11 a.m. so that we could go to this cooking show at the Dallas Convention Center.  So, I had to hurry up and get dressed and head out.  The cooking show was terrific.  I had a lot of fun and I bought some amazing chefs knives that have to be shipped to me.  I can't wait to get them.

Paula Deen was the headliner for this show.  I've never been much of a Paul Deen fan but I sort of became one yesterday.  Here's my deal.  I have low or no tolerance for people with heavy accents. Okay, if you just entered the country and have a fresh visa or foreign passport, it's ok to have an accent.  If you live in a small rural area and you never leave that area, then it is also ok to have an accent.  But if you have been on national TV, exposed to people without heavy accents on a normal basis and travel all over the country speaking to others who speak normally, wouldn't some of that heavy accent just sort of naturally go away?  I mean, is it just me or does her accent seem to get thicker?

I know people who have lived almost their entire lives in Dallas suburbs and they speak like the just fell off a turnip truck.  If someone asks where you are from and you respond "Play-noe-ah" literally adding syllables to the word, there is something wrong.  Plano is not in the boonies.  The six people who are actually from Plano do not have thick rural Texas accents.  They speak with practically no accent at all.  The other 269,770 people who live in Plano are actually all from some place else.  The majority are from foreign countries.  Several thousand of them are from the northeast, which is sort of a foreign country on it's own.  Many others are from the midwest.  But I can't tell you how often I talk to someone with a thick Texas accent and find out that they are from Carrollton, Lewisville or Farmers Branch.  The thick Texas accent is not a result of listening to others around you speaking that way on a daily basis since most of the people in this part of the Metroplex seem to be from some place other than Texas.

If you sound like Gomer Pyle you are not from Carrollton. But here's my theory.  Those people who have lived most of their lives in whatever North American urban area that they live in and still carry a serious accent do so by choice.  It's their way of standing out, of being an individual.  They are no different than a 16 year old girl dressed in goth clothing or a high school boy with a bright green mohawk.  It is just a cry for attention.  And that's why it bothers me.  Do you want to stand out?  Then do something worthy of garnering some attention!

I am sure that Paula Deen really did grow up in a place where everybody talks like she does.  But she perpetuates the accent.  At this point it has become part of her shtick.  If some blond lady with a gigantic smile walked into a crowded room and just began talking with no accent and cooking shrimp and grits, we probably wouldn't pay much attention.  But when the same blond lady with a crazy thick accent does it, she's recognizable and for some people easy to identify with.  It's endearing on her.

Don't even get me started on the accents of our foreign neighbors to the south.  If your family has lived in Texas for more than one generation, then you need to stop rolling your rrrrrrrrrrrrrr's when you say your name.  We all get that you are Hispanic and proud of that.  The fact that you name is Maria Garcia is sufficient evidence of your heritage.  You do not need to extend the pronunciation of your name by thirty seconds making it Marrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrria Garrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrcia to prove that you are Hispanic.  I get that 37.6% of Texas' population is Hispanic so you are trying to make yourself stand out. But really, it's not necessary.

My worst pet peeve in the world is people who talk completely normally but when they come to one particular word, they feel the need to pronounce the word in a foreign language.  This is Texas people.  We pronounce the word crow-sant.  Don't go getting all uppity and french on us and do that quwaaaaa-sancht thing that makes it sound like you have a french pastry stuck in the back of your throat. When I hear croissant pronounced that way, I get a sudden urge to perform the Heimlich maneuver on the speaker.  It's okay to sound like an American even when you are using a foreign word if you are indeed IN America.

Now, with all this said, I must admit that when I go to East Texas, my accent suddenly becomes thicker. You see, living in Dallas, I make a serious effort to hide my East Texas accent.  But when you are around other people with the same accent, it just creeps out!  I lose all control of my accent as soon as my car crosses the Nacogdoches county line.  The weirdest thing is that I don't necessarily have to go to Nacogdoches for this phenomenon to occur.  If my family members from there come to visit me, it happens also.  So I won't judge anybody if they suddenly start speaking in Wisconsonese when their family comes to visit.  But once they go back home, talk like an American damn it!

Day Five-Thirty-Four - What's in a Name?

Good morning friends!  It's been brought to my attention that I should probably change the name of this blog from Unemployment 101 to anything else since after all, I'm not technically unemployed.  I'm self employed. It makes sense to change the name.  But it just seems like an unnecessary action to take.  If you know me, and most of you do, I don't take unnecessary actions.... EVER!  I barely take necessary actions. Nevertheless, let's kick around this name change idea.

It would be kind of fun to come up with a new name for the personal blog. But I'm not all that creative when it comes to titling things.  I recently finished writing a book and need to distribute a couple of copies to a few friends to preview before I send it off to publishers but after spending a year and a half writing it and sitting on it for the last 2 months, I am totally unable to title the darn thing.  Who would have thought that this would be the most difficult part of writing a book?  I probably just place way too much importance on a title.  But when I'm at Barnes & Noble browsing through the available romances, I look at two things, the title and the picture on the front.  If the title isn't worthy, nothing about the picture will make me even pick up the book to read the jacket or back.  Life is too short to read books with less than clever titles.  I want there to be wit and substance in the books I read even if they are just cheesy romances and the title should reflect that.

It's the same with a blog. Granted, when I came up with Unemployment 101, it was pretty spur of the moment and apparently wasn't the most original title ever.  I think there are several hundred blogs out there with the same title. (But the economy's fine, right Barack?)  It expressed what I needed for it to say.  This blog was originally created as a method of lighting a fire under myself.  On the day I started this, which was day 7 of my unemployment, I had already sat on my couch and read 5 trashy romance novels and done little else.  I needed something to make me accountable.  So I created a blog and each day I posted a task list of the things I needed to accomplish.  I was pretty good at it for a while.  But I have to say that the task list hasn't been updated in months now.  Even when I do post on this blog, I totally forget about it.  Currently, I keep my to do list in a spiral notebook.  The list du jours consists of 13 items that I must complete prior to my cruise night which is now less than 3 weeks away.  As of this moment, two of the 13 items have been marked off of the list.  One was marked off during the day yesterday and then added back on when Zazzle canceled my order because my artwork was incomplete.  It has since been re-done and marked off again. Maybe a good new name for this blog should be Holy CRAP! Who Knew Running a Business Was So Much Work?  A little wordy, right?  But again, it says what I need for it to say....

Most of the items on my to do list really should have already been completed.  But I only came up with the list yesterday.  That was when I realized with the assistance of the receptionist at my vets office that my cruise night is only three weeks away and I still hadn't even completed the order for the snail mail invitations much less addressed them and gotten them in the mail!  Yikes!!!!  You might be relieved to know that this is one of the two things I was able to mark off the list yesterday.  The invitations will be in my hot little hands in less than a week.  Door prizes have also been ordered.  That is the order that Zazzle kicked back.  Beyond that, the venue was settled on a few weeks ago and I am on their calendar.  And I've posted an invite on Facebook that I apparently need to re-post regularly so that people who don't live their lives on FB like a certain travel agent we all know and love does, will see it.  Again, Who Knew It Was This Complicated???  Maybe a good working title would be Complications because really, isn't that what it's all about?

I've been kicking this one around for a few weeks....  tell me what you think....  A Day In The Life of A Stay At Home Cat Mom.  I know!  It's still wordy.  But you have to admit it's clever.  I mean other cat people would be all over that blog.  But they would probably expect daily cat videos and photos.That's a pretty big commitment when you consider that I still have to do all of this travel agent stuff to make a living and someone's got to load cats into carriers and drive them to the vet on a pretty regular basis.  This stuff doesn't do itself!  Besides, that title would really lend itself to the unsubstantiated but spreading rumors that I have become one of those crazy cat ladies and I don't want that.

I think that regardless of the title that I eventually come up with, I'll always keep the day count as part of each individual post.  I like that because it sort of represents the day that everything changed.  I mean 535 days ago, I still worked at the employer who shall not be named and went to work everyday doing a job that I hated. But hey, they paid me pretty good money to do it so it wasn't like I was going to quit or anything. Then it all changed and I've been pretty darn happy for the last 534 days.  Okay, I have to meet a friend in an hour so that we can attend a cooking show together, so we'll get back together soon to figure out this title thing.  If you have suggestions, feel free to share.  But don't get your feelings hurt if I say "uh, NO!"

Day Five-Fourteen - Cats Galore!

Good morning!  It's been so long since I updated this blog!  I'm not ignoring it.  I just haven't had time to post on this one.  I spend most weekday mornings with the other blog. The travel business is busy.  After all, if you want to go anywhere during the holidays this year, now is the time to book those reservations.  Call me....

Since the last time I posted on this blog I have gotten a new kitten.  Her name is Mrs. Beasley.  I was calling her a calico but the vet says that she is a tortie since she has very little to no white hair in her coat. Since he said that I have looked at pictures on the internet and I concur.  I have a tortie.  The first couple of days were pretty touch and go with her.  My two older cats didn't seem too happy to have a new baby sister who plays a LOT.  But things are finally beginning to settle down.

I think the biggest thing that happened to change things was that Shiner went to the vet for a teeth cleaning on Friday and ended up having 6 teeth extracted.  It turns out that he was in a lot of pain that he was not showing. So, he had become a lot less tolerant of everything including hyper little kittens who love to play.  Every time Mrs. Beasley got close to Shiner he hissed and ran away.  This is very out of character for him.  He is usually my very playful cat.  Meanwhile Jingle was making progress everyday getting closer and closer to Mrs. Beasley and even actually chasing her on one occasion Thursday when he lost himself and forgot that he was supposed to resent her.  Since then he has become almost completely comfortable with her and is playing with her this morning!

Shiner is currently heavily drugged but he has still given me reason to hope that things are getting better. His old personality is coming back and this morning Mrs. Beasley has gone up to him several times and they have touched noses.  When that happens he lays calmly as he has been all morning.  When she comes running up to him, he still gets up and moves but never hisses. As long as she is calm, he is tolerant.

Shiner will have to go back to the vet in 6 months since the doctor said he has other bad teeth but they aren't as bad as the ones that were extracted.  Hopefully, we can get the next ones taken care of before they begin to cause him pain.  Shiner got his most recent pain shot yesterday morning.  The vet says it will begin to wear off tomorrow.  So we'll see how he is feeling about Mrs. Beasley as that shot starts to wear off.  When he came home from the vet Friday evening he was very loopy and was apparently hallucinating.  He kept seeing things in the strangest places and was chasing them.  That's what is going on in the photo to the left.  He was certain there was something on that wall and was determined to catch it.  Later in the evening he started acting as though there was something under the couch while I was sitting on it.  He was so insistent that I eventually started thinking what if there really is something under this couch... and I had to get up and move it to inspect. Sure enough nothing was there.

Jingle and Mrs. Beasley have just spent the last thirty minutes chasing one another through the house.  Mrs. Beasley was doing most of the chasing.  But Jingle was a big participant.  So I'm thinking pretty soon I'll have three cats scampering around keeping each other busy and exercised so that I can write blogs and work on trips. This is good news for you guys because I'm going to start digging for some pretty big fall and winter discounts on cruise ships and all inclusive resorts.  You're going to love this.  But while I look, here are a few more photos of Mrs. Beasley to keep you entertained.


Have a happy Labor Day and I'll talk to you all soon!