I’m a terrible blogger - I avidly follow several blogs and get all bent out of shape when they haven’t updated for awhile and then I realised, the last time I wrote anything on here was the 18th June (I had to look that up) - can’t imagine how my 1 follower must feel…..

Figure the least I can do it write on my birthday…. yup… I’m now 39 (not 40!! as my dear sweet kids keep telling me) - I’m sure somewhere someone has written that life begins at 39. If not consider it written now.. feel free to use it, spread it around - have it tattooed in interesting places.

For those of you who weren’t aware of the recent drama in my life (for some reason drama follows me where ever I go - just when I’ve been lulled into a false sense of harmony, out comes drama and knocks me off my feet) I managed to drive over Bagheera whilst backing out the driveway one morning on my way to work. In case you’re the type who will read the last page of a book first because you can’t stand the suspense of not knowing the ending… Bagheera is fine…. over R7k worth of fine, but we do still have our beautiful kitty.

The knock from the car caused a hernia which the vet had to then operate on, she then spent several days there and was just coming right when she pulled all her stitches out and ended up with a very unseemly hole in her tummy, so back she went for more stitches another night in the hospital and an additional penance…. yup, having to wear the cone of shame for ANOTHER ten days.

She’s clever though - she has this habit of sitting by the food bowl and then makes feeble attempts to eat knowing that I’ll feel sorry for her and remove the cone. We then play this game whereby she eats a bit and then proceeds to try and pull her stitches out… so back on the cone goes, pathetic look and feeble eating attempt, cone comes off….. you get the picture.

Reincarnated as a cat. I’m dead serious.

Picture this… Fish Hoek, 2010.

Our heroine is sipping sparkling wine on the couch whilst watching the latest episode of CSI: Las Vegas, an episode filled with drama, angst and particularly creepy  music. She is alone (as is usually the case with these types of incidences) and blissfully unaware of her impending fate. Surprisingly there isn’t a storm raging outside.

She entices her somewhat erratic and notoriously neurotic cat onto her lap for a cuddle. Said neurotic cat, lets call him Gerald (names have been changed to protect the idiot) settles down in only the way a highly neurotic cat can, a mixture of half relaxed and half flee at the slightest provocation.

Our heroine feeling mellow and much love for the world around her reaches down to stroke her feline friend.

*gggggrrrrrwwww*

“Ok! You stupid moron I won’t stroke you” she mutters in dulcet tones whilst sipping slightly more nervously on her drink.

The tension is palpable…….. on CSI - the murderer is about to be revealed and the music grows increasingly more ominous.

Our heroine glances down at her lap and finds this.

His eyes are wild, his body begins to quiver… short shudders reverberate all down his spine. His claws extend and dig into her thighs. He sits up, staring maniacally at her and after a few tense moments where our heroine tries to calm him down by telling him how wonderful he is, he starts to arch his back. He appears to be growing before her eyes, expanding to twice his size, and not in the normal way of puffing up his fur. In a far more menacing - I’m about to leap at your throat - kind of way, and the look in his eye is murder!

In a dramatic bid to save herself from what she perceives as real danger our heroine pushes the wild eyed, crazy beyond a shadow of a doubt fiend off her lap. For the next ten minutes he continues to stare at her from the floor, eyes slightly cross-eyed leaving no doubt in her mind that he is biding his time and hatching another cunning plan to end her life.

I swear my cat hates me.

And lest you think I’m the one who should be called neurotic - this is not the first time Gymmie, erm Gerald has looked like he wants to attack me. For some reason it usually happens when we’re alone and he’s sitting on my lap. I attempt to stroke him - he growls, I leave him alone - something clicks inside his head (you can almost hear the click) and he starts to turn into a cat from hell.

I keep telling my dear, wonderful, thinks I’m paranoid and highly dramatic, husband that one day he’s going to come home to find me lying on the couch in tatters!

On a completely different note somehow I have managed to damage my Latissimus Dorsi Muscle - ‘cos I’m pretty sure when you sneeze or cough - your back shouldn’t feel like it is about to break in two.

<— feeling a little bit jaded this morning - for some reason we seem to believe partying over long weekends is a fun thing to do…our motto “sleep when you’re dead”. Contemplating enducing a cardiac arrest just to get a bit of shut eye. Nah, it wasn’t that bad - and hey, this coming weekend is a long one too - whoohoo… party on!

I went to the scrapbook convention on Saturday, been eagerly anticipating it for months (literally) - they had organised two international people to come out and teach us, Tim Holtz and Jayme Shepherd. If I’m brutally honest and compare it to last year’s….it wasn’t quite as good, but was still a helluva lot of fun. Mind you, the woman that won the A3 photo printer, plus a die-cut machine - probably figured it was the best event ever. They had a lot of give aways, some really awesome stuff, sadly I didn’t get anything, not even the tiniest thing. Probably bad karma or something. ‘Course I’m not bitter about it, *bloodypeoplethatgetnotoneprizebuttwo!*

Tim Holtz is a lot of fun and everyone at my table thoroughly enjoyed his class - we ended up elbow deep in ink, glue and his amazing product called grunge board. Came home with this little beauty for my efforts.

Jayme’s classes proved to be a little stressful for a lot of people (present company excluded - naturally) - she kept having to convert inches to cm’s and there was quite a bit of cutting and putting of pages together. A shame really because the products she provided us with we really very pretty.

Even though I didn’t manage to win anything *stillbittteraboutthat* I came away with a lot of stash to add to the ever growing pile. I was so inspired by all that I’d seen and made that I decided to create these…I think they’re terribly cute. Wouter’s response… they’re cute but what are they for? Men!

For those of you who think like him - they’re a way for me to display my ribbons. This way I actually use them instead of them skulking away in a dark corner for years.

Bagheera had a fun weekend too, we came home Sunday afternoon to a lounge full of feathers, and a very proud looking kitty lurking near her kill. I did ask her very nicely to please keep the next one outside. She has also agreed to stay in her dedicated spot in my room when I’m busy creating…..

Although the ribbon did prove too much for her and she tried to start a ribbon collection of her own.

All in all - a lovely weekend

<— been feeling decidedly grotty last few days - and as I don’t get ill often I tend to over dramatise things when I do so I initially figured I had a stomach ulcer, then moved onto acute appendicitis but alas nothing as dramatic as that… just a common garden variety stomach bug. Wouter very sweetly told me to drink Jigsimur

OVERDOSE:

Excessive use may cause severe stomach cramps. These problems are symptomatic.

Blimey probably should have read the warnings before taking the stuff, after all it’s because of stomach cramps that I took it in the first place! As an aside, the stuff tastes vile, we’re talking more vile than even the vilest medicines, now that’s vile!

Speaking of the man he’s been busy in the kitchen again we now have our cupboard above the sink - looks damn fine.

Try to ignore the messy sink.

What else? Well Gymmie is now officially being labelled a disturber of the peace and I’ve told Wouter he needs to be incarcerated every night for the sake of everyone’s sanity (mainly mine). Not only was I outside in the middle of the night hissing ‘Gymmie’ at a loud whisper, but the next door neighbours were also out mumbling choice phrases under their breath - it got so bad at one point that the other neighbours let their dogs out…. effective I have to say…. not one but two cats came catapaulting (hehehe) over the fence and streaked off into the darkness.  He doesn’t look like he could disturb anyone, does he?

Bagheera on the other hand  is a pain in the toosh if you’re trying to scrapbook when she wants to play, in desperation I kept throwing things onto the floor for her to chase around. Turns out all I really needed was a bunny. Awhile back Wouter found a bunny (stuffed, as in toy not as in something someone might have shot, stuffed and placed on a shelf) in our room and I couldn’t figure out how it got there. I thought perhaps Tamsyn had brought it - but no turns out Bagheera has claimed him as her toy and carries him around all over the show.  She also enjoys sitting on ones chest.

 

I decided to take a trip down memory lane and looked at some of my old report cards - oddly enough, I didn’t seem to do too well in school (could be because I didn’t really try all that hard.. *gasp*) what is amazing though is Tamsyn’s teacher appears to have been my teacher too when I was in Grade 4 (Std 2 in my day) - which must make her at least 104. I gave my report card to Tamsyn to find out if it is her, ‘cos golly that means the woman has been at that school a helluva long time.

Bagheera assisted by pointing out all the crummy results I got.

I really thought now that my kids are older I would no longer find myself with company whilst in the lavatory.  I was wrong… only this time my company insists on sitting on my lap whilst I’m, how shall I put this delicately, busy doing my thing. Bagheera (no great surprise here) has decided that joining me in the loo is the in thing to do, especially after a long nights sleep. She also purrs louder than a Harley Davidson and well.. it’s moderately off putting to say the least. We have come up with the solution to the early morning romps the two of them get up to….. as soon as they start their nonsense….. Gymmie gets ‘accidentally’ locked in the garage…. ah… silence… bliss.

I shan’t bore you with the details of yet another of my forays into the culinary world.. suffice to say - despite the recipe saying it was tomato soup - it came out as orange tasting gloop.

I have also decided to create a seperate blog for my scrapbooking - figure this way I can pontificate about cardstock/elements/brads/gadgets etc. without fear of losing my audience.

Over the weekend Wouter pointed Jessica and me to lolcats which has pictures of cats and other animals with funny captions. A real feel good site. Here are my first attempts… (not brave enough to submit them for all the world to see).

Two cats (3 years/3 months) - tabbys, oodles of personality, okay one might have a slight brain malfunction every now and then - but the other one’s cuteness makes up for it tenfold. Guaranteed to give you hours of fun and excitement.

They come completely house trained - able to use a catflap (albeit only one way); have boundless energy (think of the weight you could lose chasing playing with them) and are very affectionate (those scratches on my arms… they’re love bites).

Please……I’ll pay you!!!

One thing… you can only have them daily between the hours of 02:00am and 05:00am - the rest of the time I want them back.

(As an aside, my in-laws gently chided [aka full on nagged] me for shirking my blog responsibilities - so I thought I’d best put finger to keyboard and write something. The fact that they already know everything I’m about to write is tough - they can read it all again)

Saturday night Gymmie decided he was tired of having 7 lives left, and figured he’d take a walk on the wild side and lose another one. We live on a very busy road with cars hurtling down at break neck speed most of the time. We’d decided to invite a few friends round for a braai and were happily chatting, quaffing and generally ejoying ourselves when there was a screech of brakes and a very loud thud. Next moment a cat streaks across the garden almost at the speed of light and disappears. We all thought the car  had either hit another car or a pedestrian, it was only when the woman from across the road came over to ask if I’d seen my cat that it dawned on me the thud we’d heard was Gymmie. ‘Course we couldn’t find him, which then led to much snot and trane on my part. Eventually he surfaced, limping slightly and looking decidedly sorry for himself. There doesn’t seem to be any obvious damage and the fact that he was once more chasing after Bagheera at 5 this morning must mean something. Fool of a cat.

As for the other one, well she’s had a few adventures of her own, ranging from trying to drown herself in the bath… to deciding our bedroom needed a little bit of additional decorating.

One has to love her though, ‘cos she is so damn cuuuuuuuuuuuute.

And even though they’d like us to believe they hate each other…..

  

They really don’t.

Although I suspect our two cats need about 149 lives. Jessica has been away since Wednesday evening at a guide camp and so Bagheera has been sleeping in our room. Picture it - one very small cat sleeping at the head of the bed and one somewhat larger cat sleeping at the foot, this in itself is not a problem, the problem comes when they both decide it is time to get up. Somewhere between 5:00 and 5:30 the games begin.

Thumpitty, thumpitty, thump…. one cat streaks across the wooden floor - followed shortly by - thumpty, thumpty, thump…. crash. Then Gymmie starts his… meeeuw, meeuw, chirrup, meeuw. Then more galloping, only now they’ve switched places - more thumpitty’s and thumpty’s - more crashes, wallops, scratching of furniture and meeeuw’s. This goes on for as long as it takes for me to get out of bed - yell at them and figure if I don’t get up - they’re just going to get worse. So I get up and suddenly all is quiet and they disappear somewhere.

I’m going to bliksem them.

Meet Sophie Bagheera, having had her for a few days it was obvious that Sophie wasn’t going to cut it. We needed a name with heaps of potential, a name that would symbolise great things to come, a name that would strike fear into the bravest of cats…Rudyard Kipling sums it up best…

“Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody cared to cross his path; for he was as cunning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down.” Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

She’s already living up to her name - then again Gymmie isn’t exactly the bravest of cats.

He’s trying really hard to ignore her in the vain hope that she’ll just disappear one day soon. In a way it’s a bit of poetic justice - when we had to relocate Gymmie to Bellville (for health reasons - both Gymmie’s and Tamsyn’s) he became the thorn in Wouter’s cats sides - so much so, that Benny packed his bags and moved in with Wouter’s Mom almost immediately - it took another year for Joon to follow. Not that Gymmie remembers any of that - all he knows is there is this upstart, this pipsqueak of a cat who scares the bajeesus out of him. It’s driving him to *drink*.

We reckon she’s going to grow up to be a cat to be reckoned with.

Although how anything this cute could be so scary is anyone’s guess.