A Life in Cakes, or Happy Birthday Ernest

Since Ernest won't be home for his birthday, I won't be making a cake. This makes me a little misty. I promise there will be a belated cake when he is back in May.

To tide me over, here are his birthday cakes back to before there were digital cameras number one.

Countdown!

18

17

16 The cake is not a lie.

15 (Three cakes! How lucky!)

14



13

12

11

10 Another three cake year! Well, two and a pie. Those candles got a workout.

9 The year of the Magic Show.

8 The masterpiece for the family party.

And for the big outdoor party, Looney Tunes.

7  I copied this cake from the Birthday Express Catalog.

6 The infamous Harry Potter cake.

5 Scooby-Doo

4 Nananana Batman!

3 Curious George celebrates #3.

2 A pretty cake for #2. Yes you can touch the frosting.

1 Not so fancy, but it was only the first birthday.

(Too) Hot and (Not) Sour Soup

I was craving Hot and Sour soup so I picked up a container at a local restaurant. As I was trying to pour it in a bowl, I splashed my finger. Yowtch! I dropped the container like a hot potato and was lucky it landed upright.

After seeing to my finger, I thought, "Damn! That soup seemed extra hot." So I took its temperature.

195°! OMG! And that was after the journey home and the finger cooling.  Does it have to be that hot? No. 

Here's our food safety lesson for the day. 

(Guidelines from Profoodsafety.com)

Heat to 165°, hold at 135°. 

 (Quote from Accurate Building Inspectors)

But what about 195°?

(Graph from Accurate Building Inspectors)

Pretty much instantly. I was very lucky. 

The funny thing is, when the soup had cooled enough to eat it, it wasn't even sour. I had to add some vinegar and soy sauce. 

If you're eating soup today, please be careful!

Call Me Frankie

The Physician's Assistant said it wasn't shingles. But I do not have much confidence there since I spied him checking a pocket-sized flip book. The spots were painful for much of the week but the smaller ones have dried and stopped hurting.

The Frankenstein Monster bolt on my neck continues to bother me, although the swelling has reduced in size, from a silver dollar to a dime. It continues to give me random stabby pains as does the spot on the back of my head. 

Frankie and I do not like going out in public, for fear the villagers will come at us with torches and pitchforks. 

Aaaaargh. 

Library Workers Day

Time to celebrate some of my favorite people.  Today is Library Workers Day. Where would I be without the library? Broke! And nowhere near my goodreads reading goal.

Homer Does Not Like Weekends

On a weekday Homer gets breakfast around 7:15. That's just fine with him. Often he's still busy on the night shift, i.e. sleeping on the couch. 

Weekends are tough though. Around 8 or 9 his internal alarm goes off and sad meows echo throughout the house. He often comes looking for me. 

However, the weekend still has a few advantages. The Levi's lap, for one. 

Laps seemed to be popular this weekend.

I really could have enjoyed the comfort of a lap myself but for me that would be lying on the couch and it was usually occupied. 

Could I at least cuddle with my favorite blanket? Guess not. 

What Is This?

[WARNING: Grossness alert! You may not want to look at the second picture.]

I woke up Thursday morning with a few red spots. I checked the bed for bugs and spiders. Nothing. I slept in a different bed that night. More spots the next morning. This was the biggest.

I had additional spots by Saturday, and all the other spots had spread. They are all running in a line from my hair, down my neck, across my shoulder and on to my upper arm. Seems like a pattern, there? Of course, I thought I probably had shingles! Because they hurt, not itch.

I was sleepless and hurty all weekend and fortunately got a doctor's appointment this morning. The P.A. thought the one on my arm did look a bit like shingles, but not the big nasty one on my neck. So he doesn't think it's shingles. But what? Well, maybe the biggun is infected. (I swear I never ever scratched it.) So I have some antibiotics and some vicodin because the ibuprofen is doing nothing.

The vicodin doesn't seem to be helping the pain but it's only been an hour.  Ouch ouch. I am just miserable right now.

All right, thanks for listening to me complain. In return, you're welcome to complain about anything that's bothering you.

April 1

I am not a big fan of April Fool's pranks, but this is cat related. 

Is there a button for: squirm out of the vet's grasp while getting one's shots? Fifi and Tiny would like to know as they squirmed their hardest but couldn't quite get away. Homer just lay there and took it like a man. Or more accurately, a marshmallow. 

I've Just Seen A Face

Caught this on the wall one morning... (morning sun shining through the glass on the front door)

That's just a little bit creepy, don't you think?

Evidence

Tiny has a new spot. "I own this car," she purrs. 

It's not like I didn't know about it earlier. There were many tiny paw prints on the windshield, most noticeable while driving west as the sun sets. But this is the first photographic proof I've gotten. M-I-L says Tiny also likes to get IN the car so I better keep my windows up. 

And here's Homer, caught in the act stealing Francine's food. 

No wonder he's plateaued on his diet. 

Scam

I recently got one of those IRS scam calls. Yes, there's a warrant out for my arrest and so on and so forth.

© aihumnoi – Fotolia.com

These make me so angry. I can imagine there are some people who would believe them. Case in point, my late aunt. Every time she did her taxes she would say, "the sheriffs are coming to get me." Note she used the plural. She was a feisty bitch and more than one sheriff would be needed to take her down.

As an adult, I can see that she was a paranoid old biddy. But in my childhood, I was really worried. Not that they'd take her away, no I would have been delighted about that! But I always worried that my mother would be taken, too. We moved several times when I was very young, I spent a lot of time being shuttled back and forth to my dad's house, and my mom was the only person I felt secure with. I was terrified at the thought of her being taken away and me having to live with one of the aunts.

So thanks, scammers, for bringing back unhappy childhood memories.

I Should Have Known Better

Don't go to the store when you're hungry. This was on sale for 99 cents. How bad could it be, I wondered.

I should have known better. 

Things That Go Bump in the Night

It's been refreshing to have the windows open at night but then there is often some external noise that wakes me up.

One night I heard something of the wild animal variety walking around in the creek. Tromp stomp clomp, nuffle rustle scuffle shuffle. It scared the birds roosting in the trees and they started to squawk. They are some kind of egret, but I call them pooping cranes because they leave such a mess on the ground. I think they literally had the sh!t scared out of them that night.

Another night it was a broken sprinkler. I got up and went outside at 3 a.m. to make sure it wasn't in our yard.  We've had all the sprinklers in the back yard turned off at the valves for over a year, but you never know if a pipe has burst. Luckily, it wasn't us, it was from the apartment buildings behind us, those water wasters.

After that, I decided to close the windows.

Of course the cats are active, so I can't eliminate the noises inside the house.

Signs of Spring 2015

I didn't intend to stay away so long.

Nothing really exciting has been happening until yesterday, when PLOP I dropped my phone in Homer's water dish. That's not as embarrassing as if it had been the toilet. I was so lucky! It is still working! I am not good at doing backups so I guess that should be my next goal.

It is definitely spring here and various things are sprouting.  These popped up in the middle of the library's lawn.

My wisteria bloomed ferociously but now much of it is on the ground. Why yes, that is a hobbit house.

Spring Break has come and gone.  Of the four students from Hogwarts who went on to the same eastern college, (should I call it the Auror's Academy?) the three that are not my children returned home for spring break and enjoyed our unseasonably warm weather.  But not our Ernest. At first he was planning to go rock climbing somewhere in West Virginia but then it was too wet so they went somewhere closer in New Hampshire.  They had a few days camping and climbing but then it got too wet there, also. Snow melts. Who knew?

There is evidence that Ernest went skiing. Oh yes, he did tell me he did but did he take any pictures? No. Thank goodness for his reliable Facebook friends, from whom I shamelessly steal photos.

Happy Spring, everyone.

Where are you, rain?

Where is our rain? It was supposed to be a blustery weekend. I am waiting.  

Oh. There is is. 

Still waiting.