Homework: A Household Meme current questions...
Pets: are they worth the added housework? How much extra work around the house (besides the work required for their regular care) do your pets create for you? Do, or did, you factor in housework when deciding to get a pet? Do the benefits outweigh the headaches, at least on most days?
They do create more housework, especially dogs, but the rest of the physical upkeep is one of the things that's making us really think hard about getting another dog. My health is unstable and my husband wants another big dog, we had two dogs (9 years and 16 years) and are kind of taking a break right now. I worry that I won't be able to keep up with a dog and a cat, because we spoil our pets rotten and proper care of a large dog is a lot of work. Our cat sheds amazingly little (she's a short-haired Burmese) and the main effort required with her is keeping her occupied and exercised, she's as hyper as a Border Collie and wants to play 24/7, she brings toys into the bedroom while I sleep in hope.
We had two outdoor dogs for nine years till one passed and the other (a black Lab) gradually became an indoor dog. She shed like crazy and we had another cat at the time also who also shed, so black & white hairs were floating around the house and my husband was vacuuming daily (he's a vacuuming fanatic so I let him). As our dog got older and it was harder for her to get up and down we had a LOT more housework for the last year or two (and were constantly worried about leaving the house even to go eat dinner) so it was a lot of stress but of course it was worth it. (See Furry Family Members for more info and photos of our pets)
I actually read on the internet that Labs are very heavy shedders and silkier haired Golden Retrievers shed less. My parents had Goldens, but they were always outside so I don't know it that's true or not. But Labs shed a lot more than you'd imagine.
us other pets that come and go so compared to her I've got it really easy.
The kitty knocks some of the litter out of her box, and occasionally throws up somewhere but is not bad at all compared to our last cat who we sometimes referred to as Exorcist Kitty and had a preference for sofas and beds. She is the first cat we've had that has her claws but she's very good about using her post except when she gets bored and wants attention. We keep a throw on the sofa for her to climb and to catch any hair.
The handiest tool I've found is a battery-operated kitty scoop that makes cleaning the litterbox much faster (it vibrates and shakes itself). I know it sounds weird, but it really works.
And then there's always the pest-control advantage of having a cat, especially in the swampy South.
But the main stress of owning a pet for me has always been the fact that I worry about them constantly. Yes, even the cat. I could never have children, I'd never let them leave the house...
Homework: A Household Meme Week 27 questions...
(I'm on a roll... and avoiding work ;-)
Which are your preferences? What do you actually have?
Carpet or hardwood floors? Carpet is comfier but hardwoods are prettier. Hardwoods with rugs on them? Most of our house is hardwoods, just the den and hall are carpeted.
Blinds or curtains? I like to use both together, but I like the way curtains look. Especially curtains with sheers. We have both blinds and curtains in the bedroom to block the light, and the cheesy blinds that were in the house when we bought it up everywhere else but the living room picture window which has a really old curtain. I'd like to get new everything in the house, some nice blinds that actually block the light. And get rid of our horrid vertical blinds in the den!
Tiles or sheet linoleum? Don't like either. Linoleum is ugly and tile is too hard (and hard to keep clean). Our kitchen has linoleum, I want to replace it with Pergo or wood actually.
Paint or wallpaper? Paint, I hate wallpaper. We have one wall in our living room with flowery paper that needs to be torn off, but most of it is covered with bookshelves. And the bathroom has a sloppy wallpaper job the previous owners did that's coming undone now.
Even more word association games, actually done on time, Wednesday Mind Hump
Unconscious Mutterings for this week
Haven't done a meme in a long time...
The final episode for awhile? I hope so (as does Sparky), but I'm supposed to give the mystery tooth another month and check back in if it's still hurting. (And the crown still has temporary cement on it) I got my final crown put on today, ouch. I was worried when I went in because I had such a bad reaction last time to the shot, so we tried pulling the temporary crown off without any anesthesia, which I wouldn't recommend.
So he gave me a lightweight shot, which didn't do a damn thing, it still hurt like hell. It's all metal sensitivity, I wouldn't mind having root canals on all of my molars just to kill all of the over sensitivity in my teeth. It's throbbing even now. Looks pretty, though, it's porcelain over gold. So now you can only see like four gold crowns when I open my mouth, three are all on one side which looks kind of strange but oh well. For some reason my front teeth have been really sensitive the last few days, just to air and cold, I may have to get some Sensodyne to use for a little while.
So other than the aching mystery tooth, the only thing I'd like to get done to my teeth is filling in some gaps in the front teeth that I've acquired from grinding. Besides sucking in air when I drink it looks a little too Madonna-esque. I really need to get my teeth re-straightened but after spending all of my teens in braces just to have them all move back forward it hardly seems worth it. Damn, I forgot to take my old nightguard in to show him. It's very close to fitting even though it's like five years old, except for one crown my last dentist put on a cuspid that made it bigger "to make my smile look better", which I didn't know till after he'd done it. (His work is what I've been having repaired and redone the last few months) But I've had several nightguards and can't keep any of them in, they drive me nuts but it's getting expensive replacing my crowns every 4 or 5 years from the grinding.
I was looking at websites recently and came across b4rb.com (ooh, she's changed her webdesign again, here is the very cool pic she had up last time), which has a very busy but interesting design, it's hard to load in some of my browsers. Opera is not loading the new design (though it worked with the last one), Netscape is loading it OK, now defunct Explorer for Mac won't load it at all. But the reference I'm trying to make is she has a problem with having a smaller than normal lower jaw (which gives her problems such as sleep apnea, see her June 16th entry, can't link to it for some reason) and after reading it and looking at some of her photos I realized I have that problem also. She does have me beat, though. I always thought it was just my overbite but I actually do have a small mouth and small lower jaw also. I also have TMJ so I can't open my mouth very wide (no jokes please, Sparky makes enough already). I think she's British, again no jokes please, I'm Irish-British-German and have the teeth and thin skin to prove it also ;-)
I remember when I was a teen and we'd have family photos done I'd always try and slide my lower jaw forward for the photos to try and look a little better, which actually made for a few very odd looking photos. I was editing some photos from one of our parties this weekend and noticed all of the photogenic girls have wide mouths and big smiles with lots of teeth, I have neither (sigh). At least I have cheekbones still.. I wonder if I have sleep apnea? I've never slept worth a damn in my life, and my husband claims I do snore some. Now he actually DOES have sleep apnea, I listen to him snore until he wakes himself up each night. He has to sleep most of the night sitting up, I can't sleep like that...
I need a caricature, though I really like my angel and spooky little girl logos I'm using on my site now a lot. I used to be an artist, you'd think I could do that sort of thing easily enough myself... Sparky just snored himself awake. Usually about this time of night he'll talk in his sleep, which is always unnerving. I used to sleepwalk as a kid but I've never talked in my sleep. I haven't been able to afford my Ambien the last week, so my sleep has suffered, though I've done better the last two days because Sparky has deliberately been keeping my bedroom doors closed (they're usually cracked to let the cat in and out), and he's been trying to restrain himself from coming in and telling me things when I'm sound asleep. He's actually brought newspaper articles in and read them off to me with a flashlight. I keep telling him besides waking me up, I don't remember anything he told me later. He went off to see a movie today (AVP) and the kitty woke me up at noon scratching at the door. I like having her in the bedroom when she'll lay down and sleep with me, but when she's hyper she tries to get in the blinds and plays with the cords for the draperies.
Not that I mind typing in the nice little boxes on my Movable Type menu, but I thought it would be nice to be able to make notes and type really long entries offline in Appleworks. Then I pasted it, previewed, all good... went back to save and ackk!! All my quotes and apostrophe's had turned into this:
& # 8 2 1 7 ; (without the spaces, of course)
It displayed correctly, apparently being HTML, but it looked awful on my end. And who knows if it looks OK on PCs, etc., I can't test for all platforms, I'm on a Mac.
So I tried saving it as plain text, RTF, in Word, in TextEdit... they all copied and pasted just the same. I could save it as HTML and it seemed to work, but only the stuff newly typed, and I got to look at the formatting which is distracting.
Finally found in the prefs "use smart quotes" and it seems to have solved the problem. It didn't convert my existing document, but it let me go in and retype the apostrophe's on Appleworks then pasted them correctly into MT.
Just a ramble, I'm tired tonight. Here's hoping that when I close and reopen the document, and restart the program that it stays nice for me.
Addendum - Out of curiousity, I was flipping through some of my archive pages (I'm trying to figure out how to make some of them just quotes instead of the full entry), and found where I had some open italics, and lots of little diamonds with question marks in them where I had a space after a URL. Couldn't see those with IE, but Opera shows everything a little differently. Started correcting them but then my eyes gave out, more things for my to do list...
I often am not sure who I am. Online and in person. I've been married twice but never changed my name though the Social Security department so legally I've only actually had one name. But I've had bank accounts with three (actually four counting my business checking) names, driver's licenses with two names, my health insurance is in my married name, but my homeowner's and car insurance are in my maiden name still. So when people ask me my name, I'm sometimes not sure how to respond.
I also have a long first name and go by the diminutive, though I have always called my brother by his full name. Just to add to the confusion, my father goes by his middle name, which is also my brother's middle name. My husband also goes by his middle name. But with banks and ATM cards, etc., I use my full name. I don't really like my full name, but my middle name is very plain so I don't use it. Though when I was in trouble my dad would call me by both names (gulp). Or when I wasn't, he would often use the diminutive of BOTH names.
I have a confusing last name but I'm hesitant to give it up. It only has two syllables but has a lot of consonants in it, including an X, which for some reason blows people's minds and renders them unable to pronounce it without making it into three syllables. My husband's name only has one syllable, which seems easy enough, but it's plural and people tend to drop the S at the end. You should see the odd assortment of free labels I get in the mail. One actually had my husband's first name and my last name, which I still haven't figured out.
My husband has begun leaning on to me to legally change my name to his, even though I do go by it in most situations. I'm hesitant to lose it, though. I'm also not really fond of hyphenating it, which is what I did last time on my driver's license. It would be confusing for things like my medical and pharmacy records, which have been switched over to my married name in the last few years since we no longer have insurance through my last job. The doctor's office has enough trouble locating my records without giving them a different letter to file them under.
I tried to change my name this time on my TDL and the new rule is you have to go through Social Security first now. I think when I do go into the SS office, I'm just going to have them add my married name to the end of my name, with no hyphen, but I want to keep my maiden name in the fray also.
I began working at my last away from home job when I was married to my first husband. I had also worked at the company before I was married, as had my brother, and my dad had recently retired after 20+ years as an executive, so our family name was well known and loved. Everyone that had been there for more than about five years knew my dad, he was one of the good people, who had been there in the days before the mergers, layoffs and imported out-of-state executives. The tenured folks all knew him as a nice man who was also very fair and competent. Plus his name was on their checks for years. Since I had never changed my name through Social Security, I had to go to work under my maiden name. And that was fine with me, actually. Then I divorced, and transferred back to Houston and went to work at the corporate offices where my dad had worked and everyone knew me. And my husband waited seven years to propose, so I had almost 15 years of working under the same name and didn't really think about changing it while I was there.
I'm not having kids, and it's unlikely my brother will be either, so we're literally the last of our family name. It's very obscure nationwide, and I'm told it was Americanized upon immigrating from Ireland, and from what I've researched, it's also scarce overseas. The story is the boat sank on the way over, so many of our ancestors didn't make it across the ocean. My brother and I are adopted, but still, I used to actually have my name on my license plate out of pride. (Wouldn't do it now, though)
My husband is also the last of his line. His sister had two daughters, but they go by their father's name. My husband's middle name is actually his mother's family's last name, just to add to the confusion. But that line has continued on.
I have a business DBA. And for even more confusion, on the internet I really lose track of who I am. I have mine and my husband's names for eBay, several domains that I receive mail through, Yahoo and Gmail accounts (which I rarely check), and I'm alternately known to some of my online-only friends by my real name, and Morticia and sometimes Tish. All of my domain emails come through my cable modem account (which is in my maiden name as is the cable bill) and into one giant inbox. I get hundreds of emails a day, which are mostly spam. I get eBay emails for me and my husband (he buys things, I buy and sell), I get emails for each of my domains, emails for his business (I do all of the email and computer work for both of us). I have a home address and a PO Box. Our phone number is actually a forwarded number because my husband wanted to hold on to his old number when we moved. And we have a fax number. And a cell phone...
So if you ask me what my name is and I give you a blank stare for a moment, you'll know the reason why.