HomeOctober 1, 1997
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bleaching the litterboxeswhere do they go?We were out of litterboxes and dishes the minute I walked in the door this morning. Where do they go? Chris had barely started cleaning cages and the new volunteer, Tony, was still having his orientation. Elliot had diarrhea, so Chris pulled out his litterbox first and wanted a clean one to replace it with. Duh, there weren't any. I washed that one with hot soapy water, rinsed with bleachy water, rinsed again with plain water, dried it, and handed it back to Chris. This is not very efficient. I struggled to keep up with litterboxes and dishes all morning. I thought I'd never be done. There seemed to be more litterboxes than ever, yet we had no clean ones. There seemed to be more dishes than ever, yet we had no clean ones. I washed and washed and washed. Chris, Tony, Dawna, Sheila, and Katrina grabbed them as soon as I washed 'em. It just kept going on like that. Just when I was sure I had finished, Sheila brought me the stuff from the rabies quarantine room. When I thought I'd finished that, Katrina brought me the stuff from the sick room. On and on. I ignored the washing machine and dryer and stayed focused on dishes. I got bleach in my eye again. It stung. I got my shirt wet. Totally wet. I splashed water everywhere. Each person who saw me after that felt they had to tell me I was wet. Umm, I knew that. Especially later when I went outside into the 56 degree day with a nice breeze blowing through me. don't drink that!For the rabies room dishes, I filled a dishpan with a solution of water and bleach to disinfect them - probably not one of these cats actually has rabies but we have to take precautions until the end of the quarantine period. I set the dishpan on the counter next to the sink and used it as a kind of dip after scrubbing with hot soapy water. This was working great until Jaguar decided to drink the bleach water! I shooed him away before he actually swallowed any but he came back and sniffed around it a few more times. Dawna put a towel over it so Jaguar wouldn't drink it. None of the other cats showed the slightest interest. Slinky's bad moodSlinky is in Roberta-withdrawal. Since Roberta has not been around, Slinky has regressed. He was being particularly nasty today, attacking Nina out of the blue snarling like a wildcat. There was lots of growling and snarling today. Most of it was initiated by Slinky, although Samantha got into it with Jaguar and ended up with a telltale tuft of Jaguar's long white fur caught in her claw contrasting nicely with her black coat. That settled the who attacked whom argument when folks were ready to blame Jaguar. The fact that Samantha was also after Calley, made the point that she was the one who was having an aggressive kind of day. Growl. Snarl. Yelp. It was a noisy day. Strawberry clawed Chris (human - the feline Chris has been adopted since last Wednesday) in the face when he tried to keep her from escaping out the door when one of the feral feeders came to pick up food. Right in the middle of his chin. It didn't look too bad, but it must've hurt. a steak and cheese sub?As I was finishing up the dishes, Roberta showed up after her computer class. She had stopped on the way and bought a steak and cheese sub for Slinky, his favorite kind. She didn't understand why Dawna had put Slinky back in his cage, but as soon as she let him out he went after Nina. She put him back in his cage while she scooped the community litterboxes and took over doing the laundry. I left before she fed him the sub. |
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wild harvest round 2Masculinatea?As if a day of bleach in the eye and Slinky in a bad mood was not enough stress, I decided to brave the new supermarket again.I still can't find anything but I got considerably more stuff for my $31.95 than I did last week. I suppose I should go straighten out last week's ripoff but I'd rather just forget it. Anyway, I think the reason I can't find anything is that the signs above the aisles are way too high up and they are white letters on pale green or beige backgrounds - not the most readable combinations. Also, in some but not all cases, the organic/politically correct/newage stuff is in a totally different aisle than the regular brands of the same category of stuff. So you have to know going in there whether you want a newage brand or a well known brand or the house brand - they're all in separate spots widely separated. There's a whole aisle of homeopathic remedies for conditions I can't imagine having. Not that I'm against homeopathy. It has worked for me in the past and I would try it again, but these remedies had names like "Masculinatea" and "Arth-right" or "Herb-o-Pause". I thought homeopathic medicine was prescribed according to the symptom not the "diagnosis". I can't help wondering what "Masculinatea" is for though. a manly manSpeaking of masculinity, the new volunteer, Tony, is built. I mean he has a bod that belongs on a billboard for Gold's Gym (actually - I think he works at Gold's Gym). His biceps won't fit in t-shirt sleeves. His chest is massive. He left before Roberta arrived. When she was asking about who was working today, Dawna told her there was a new guy. "A man?" asked Roberta. "A manly man" answered Dawna. "A really manly man," I chimed in, "you should see the biceps on this guy." Roberta asks me: "Is he married?" "How would I know? I didn't talk to him. I'm not interested in men." So Roberta is all bent out of shape that now that she's not around on Wednesday mornings there's a man working there. Is there a man shortage or something? shoot this Mac nowSo I go to upload this journal entry and discover the MacTCP settings are corrupted again. I use the clever tool provided by my ISP to reset them. Still broken. I go to shut down and the little Peter Norton face tells me there's a problem with my disk that can't be fixed unless I restart with the Norton disk as my startup disk. I do that. I run disk doctor. There's rampant disk corruption all over the damn place. So many messed up file pointers it can't give me a full report. I patiently hit return every time it asks me "Fix". I restart. I try again to connect. Still same problem with MacTCP. I try to reinstall it and realize for the second time that I don't have the media for this OS. I have 7.5 for my old Mac, which does a fat lot of good on the PowerMac. Curses=******* Wilbur just tried to shut down this computer, so I'll call it a night. Furry orange beasts have a way with the Mac. |