Seven Quick Takes - Rotting beans, teenagers and tender mercies

Visit This Ain't the Lyceum

1.  If you read any of my other posts you will note that on Monday I proudly stated that I was soaking some beans and lentils for a homemade soup.  On Thursday I announced that on Wednesday I realised I'd forgotten that I was soaking the beans.  Thursday I went out to go give my Grandma a shower and clean her flat, on my return G announced that he had found the beans in the microwave and the slimey bean-water had overflowed all over the microwave.  He refused to throw the beans away, such was the smell.  And he was right - they smelled like feet and vomit.  How on earth did I manage to recount the beans tale and then forget to actually throw them away?  How?  It's a mystery to me to be sure.

I think I need to point out that I am not disgusting, we just don't use the microwave much and the beans were hidden. I do clean! :D

2.  My plans today are to do some cleaning and some ironing whilst I wait for a friend to let me know that she has the keys to their new house and then I'm going to go and help scrape some wallpaper for them.

3.  My eldest daughter has reached a peak of teenageryness.  Anyone who has teenagers will understand what this means.  But G and I mostly look like this:

Well, especially G what with him having a beard and all...and the fact that I would be wearing a top... haha

4.  I am waiting in trepidation for the washing machine to finish.  It has our bedding in and I just KNOW that it is not going to like it.  We got the washing machine with the house.  It's a small top-loading machine and for some reason, especially when it's doing our bedding it decides to announce that it needs servicing (well it doesn't announce it, a little red light comes on) and then it seizes up for half the day.

5.  We visited some friends at their caravan on Wednesday.  We had a lovely time chatting whilst the girls played with their daughter and some other kids from the campsite all day...well except for a time of teenageryness from Chatterbox who sat in the car for about three hours reading her book.  She did emerge when they announced they were going to play hide and seek.

6.  Whilst we were chatting we talked about various things and one of the things is forgiveness.  If Jesus died 'once for all' do we need to keep asking for forgiveness?  I say, "Yes".  I won't go into a big theological treatise as to why I believe this, because this is seven QUICK takes and would defeat the object of this meme.

7.  I've been thinking a lot about selfishness, self-less-ness, etc.  I read this Gentle Selfishness.  I'm not sure but they suggest that the Spiritual fruit of Gentleness can 'kill' gentle selfishness because it is 'not weakness but controlled strength'.  I always think of godly gentleness more like tender mercy, I think if I look at it like that, then mercy does kill selfishness.  Something to ponder.

Happy weekend!  

Poo covered cats and memory issues

I'll tell you about the poo covered cat in a minute.  But first my memory issues.  I noticed via email notification that I'd got a comment from the lovely Pom Pom on my Happy Homemaker post.  I logged in through my mobile phone and scrolled through the post to get to my comments.  It was there that I saw it,

"I am soaking some beans and lentils for a homemade soup though."

Oh cr*p, I said to hubster, my soup!  Yep, I'd forgotten. There they were, still soaking in the bowl, two days later.

I do not exaggerate when I say cooking isn't my thing.  Oh, I do try to cook decent meals for my family, but I just have some kind of brain 'off' switch when it comes to cooking.

I have sat in my living room and idly said, "What's that hissing noise?"  With the sudden realisation that I am cooking sausages!  If the smoke alarm goes off the family all shout, "Tea's* ready!" And they think that they are hilarious. Herumph.

[*Tea - northern English term for evening meal (as well as the leafy beverage)]

I have burned three lots of cheese-on-toast in a row, even setting fire to one set when I've sat staring at it under the grill, only to go off into a daydream and being brought-to by the smoke.

It's either that or I forget to defrost the meat.  So I'll decide in the morning that we will have say, a chicken curry.  Forget to take the meat out of the freezer and have to ring G on his way home from work to pick up something from the shop.  In fact G is so used to this that if I do ring him on the way home from work he immediately says, "What have you forgotten to take out of the freezer?"

And don't get me started on baking...

So, don't tell me to start a meal plan...because I forget to look at the plan...don't tell me to put reminders on my phone...because I see the reminder, look away from it and STILL FORGET!  What is that all about?

Poo covered cat...

Onto the delightful story of our poo covered cat in a moment, but first a bit of back-story.

So, our cat is possessed.

We got her from a cat rescue place in a nearby town in 2006.  She was so friendly and that's why we chose her, she came to us rubbing up, etc.  Her sister was also in the rescue shelter, so we offered to take her too because we didn't want to split them up.  I should have discerned a potential problem when the nice shelter lady said violently, "NO!...ahem...no, they don't get on".  I should have thought, "These two cats have such issues that even an overcrowded shelter won't release them together".

Anyway, we got her home and put her in the kitchen to get her used to one room before introducing her to the rest of the house.  And she disappeared.

She disappeared for 3 days!  Just vanished.  I had floor boards up and everything.  Tins of tuna left here there and everywhere.

When on the the third day I found her [it obviously has deep theological spiritual significance that I found her on the the this day], I pulled a plinth off the bottom of a cupboard that was next to our tall fridge-freezer and I saw a foot.  Yes, for three days she had been wedged upside down behind the fridge-freezer - back legs and tail pointing to the ceiling, forelegs and head stretched to the floor.

And she hadn't even meowed once.

She did finally settle in and we discovered two things:

1) She will snuggle down on your knee, purr, enjoy being fussed, then this wild look will take over her and she'll attack you for no reason.  (It was after she attacked my Bible that I asked G to get a priest in.  He thought I was going over the top, but I'm not sure. Ha.)

2) Then the fighting started.  Her paw was against every paw in the neighbourhood.  Her ears are a mess of scars.  Her back legs have been ripped open twice.

Remember I said I chose her because she was so friendly, rubbing up against me at the cat shelter?  When the vet saw her his first words were, "This cat is very territorial".  The rubbing is not friendliness, it's Boots saying, "This is mine. This is mine.  This is mine.  This is mine.  All this is mine. DON'T TOUCH".

When we moved house we hoped she'd settle down.

But no.

We've had another ripped back leg followed by hideous infection.  A split tongue.  I opened the curtains the other day to see blood splattered all up the window.  The window cleaner spent the following morning surreptitiously looking for bodies in the back garden...haha I jest, I jest.

It's always at night.  My new neighbours regularly see me running around the street in my jammies yelling, "Get inside you stupid cat!" and then chasing other people's cats up the road hissing like a maniac.

We've tried to make her a house cat, but she goes literally insane trying to get outside.  We've tried a Feliway plugin that supposedly gives off happy-cat smells - it failed.  She'd been prescribed cat-valium - failed.

An aside:  Boots has just appeared on the windowsill staring at G and he has just made a rude gesture at her.  I do so love her despite it all. Ha.

So, Tuesday night, G and I were just settling down for the night, it was about midnight and we hear it. YOWLOWLWOWOOWOWOWYOWLEEEEMEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWW!!!! And the sound of the bins in the back garden being knocked over.

So I run outside in my jammies - and I'm wearing my old jammies that have shrunk in the wash so that the trousers flap at half-mast between ankle and knee - calling quietly because I don't want the neighbours looking at me: "Boooooots!  Bootssssssss!"  Then Boots suddenly careers past me wildly followed by a stripey cat, which I chase off up the street hissing at it like a wild woman.

Boots has gone into the back garden and is sat on the outside kitchen windowsill looking at me.

I pick her up with "You bad cat, what's wrong with you".  I get inside and I smell it.

Poo.

In the light I see it.  She is covered head to tail in poo -  with blood gently dripping from her ear for dramatic effect.

What is this?  Some kind of cat self-defence reaction?  Like an octopus squirts ink, is she now squirting poo at her enemies?

What do I do?  If I put her down she'll run off into the house trailing cat-poo everywhere.

"G!"

Right now I don't care if she fights every single cat in the neighbourhood and keeps us awake til two.  I am not letting a wild-eyed poo-covered cat in my house.  So, I check that her ear is OK, it is - just a tiny scratch - and G opens the door again and I deposit her unceremoniously outside.

I think I need to burn those jammies.