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Cat or Magpie? — Our Mixi, the Cat Burglar

13 March 2013 in Animals, Behaviour, Journal | Comment

Miklos was out for a bike ride in the woods when he happened upon two men playing with a little tortoiseshell kitten. They jokingly asked him, “You want a cat?” They didn’t know who they were dealing with obviously, because Miklos, being the kind-hearted guy he always has been, didn’t think it would be fair to leave a kitten in the woods just before a big thunderstorm. Sure enough, that cat came into our lives and was named Mixi.

Soon, I would find kitty jingle balls or unlikely items such as Miklos’s violin chin rest in my purse when I got to work. I caught Mixi a few times running down the hall of our apartment with a (new) tampon in her mouth. Beneath the oven, we found a treasure trove of bobby pins, feminine products, elastic bands, twist-ties and other things Mixi had procured from their appropriately kept places around the house. We had a helium balloon in the house and were surprised one night while watching television to see it floating past the bathroom by itself; we found Mixi in the kitchen once the light was on, holding the balloon by its ribbon.

So yes, we have a character on our hands.

After walking the dogs yesterday, we came back to our front yard and found a Mixicat peeking out the curtains of the bay window with a brand new white pencil in her mouth.

“Esscuse me, how does you sharping?”

She peeped out a few more times, but since camera phones suck and I didn’t think to bring a camera along for our normally eventless dog walks, we missed out. If it happens again, we will be at the ready. There’s a good chance it will happen again, as she seems obsessed with the pencil again today. I had to throw it on the bed where she sleeps so that she’d stop meowing.

Yep, that’s my life. I’m pretty happy with it today.

I know dogs take things and hide them, but have you ever had this happen with a cat?

Lemons to Lemonade: From Flood to Ice Bucket

3 March 2013 in Animals, Journal, Seasonal | Comment

This past week with all the back-and-forth freeze-and-thaw (so many hyphens) a window well flooded in the back yard. The water then found its way into a crack in our foundation and into the laundry room, which I found Tuesday at midnight. There was a lot of water-bailing that happened that night (and a thank you goes out to Miklos’s dad for stopping by to help us out).

A couple of buckets were left full of water and froze over. Today I turned one over to see if we could get a puck out of it for the dogs to play with. (Note: More on ice pucks below the pictures.) After it thawed a bit, we had an ice bucket of water. Sometimes winter is really neat.

Dunk! Getting something out of the bucket, not drinking the water as you’d be inclined to believe.

What’s this then?

Hm, yep, yuckily tasty.

Clean! When it drains out like this it looks much better.

We didn’t let them actually drink the water, and the buckets have never had anything in them except water (no chemicals), in case there are any concerns.

How to make an ice puck:

We discovered the puck earlier this winter when one of our plant potters froze over. We turned it over, the puck fell out, and Casey loved pushing it around the yard and crunching on it. I’m going to make some in the spring and summer to help cool down our dogs while they play outside. A few points:

If you have a large box freezer and some room to spare in it, perfect! You might even be able to make a bucket.
Fill a bucket that’s never had chemicals in it with water, (uhhh preferably tap water and not ground water like our accidental bucket was made from). Freeze for a day or two. Bring it outside (careful — it’ll be heavy), turn it over and leave the water in for an icy cold dog drink until it melts.
If you have a fridge freezer (like us) or you just want to make the pucks, use tupperware containers to fill with water and freeze them. Wait about a day.
You don’t need to close them, but you can if you need to stack to save room.
You could also try freezing water in cleaned margarine or yogurt containers.
Make a few at a time.
Casey processes ice cubes quickly in the summer, so when I make these I plan to stock up. Apparently boxers don’t do well with heat, so we’ll do this for Junior if he wants to play outside with Casey in the summer months.
WARNING: Don’t do this if it’s still freezing cold out — your dog’s tongue could get stuck. We’re currently in yet another thaw day. (When will it end??)

Dogs aside, I kind of want to make a whole bunch of these fancy ice buckets to make an ice castle and live in it.

Think we have enough time left for that this winter?

Weaving an Old Lady Rug Out of Recycled T-Shirts

28 February 2013 in How to, Journal | Comment

It can be done!

On Saturday, some strange urge built inside me to use up my old unused t-shirts for good instead of evil (err, or instead of giving them to Goodwill, but let’s face it, no one wants an old promotional Shoppers Drug Mart t-shirt from the Optimum card’s 10-year anniversary, and if they do, I won’t be party to it).

Upon searching Pinterest, it became apparent that there are about a million ways to recycle old shirts. I love this age we live in. Recycling, upcycling, whatever you want to call it, is the coolest thing there is, especially since today everything we buy is either disposable or regarded to be.

There are a billion rug tutorials but since I’m only good at sewing horribly, I chose a no-sew option.

ELP_7129

Before you begin, if you do choose to begin, a word of warning:

You wouldn’t think weaving old lady rugs is dangerous to your body, but if you have even the slightest weakness in your back and you plan for this rug to have no lumps or bumps, you’ll need to lay it flat on a table or floor. Even sitting on a dining room chair at the table was incredibly painful to my back, twisting it up real well. The first night (yes, this is a craft that will probably take you more than one night to complete, unless you’re a born weaver), I couldn’t sleep for two hours. Eventually I found my hot water bottle and after about a half hour of lying on it, I got some sleep. The next day, I had to actually work with the hot water bottle propped between the chair and my back if I didn’t want to cry out in pain every few seconds.

This weaving stuff is serious business. You really begin to feel for those Chinese workers who get paid about half a cent per Kathy Lee Gifford shirt or whatever the hell. I am not exaggerating, I thought I would need a doctor’s visit, and I’ve never known the true miracle of a hot water bottle until I tried weaving. Maybe work on your core muscles for a year before giving it a whirl.

[End warning.]

So before learning of the pain that would befall me, I had to make t-shirt yarn. What, you might ask, the hell is t-shirt yarn? It’s strips of t-shirts, about 1-3 inches wide and stretched out like crazy then balled up like yarn so that your cat doesn’t play with the mess of string resulting. You use this recycled yarn to weave your old lady rag rug.

Luckily, the love of my life (aw) had gotten me some crafting supplies for Christmas, so making t-shirt yarn was simple.

I used a rotary cutter, a giant self-healing cutting mat, and the giant ruler that came with the mat, but that’s not necessary.

Rather than duplicate someone else’s content, here is the tutorial I followed to make the yarn. It’s awesome.

Note: You can also use sleeves if you start to run out of a colour you like and you have long sleeves. I used short sleeves as well, and it gave me a fair amount, just make sure you’re cutting at a 90 degree angle to the crease for it to work.

Then I followed this wicked good tutorial to make my rug from the yarn. I’m so thankful to people who make instructional posts like this. It was much easier than it initially looked, although it did require some concentration and re-weaving at times.

When all was said and done (a day and a half and a lot of dedication later, interrupted many times over by laundry and puppy training), I had an ugly old lady rug that I now love.

Here are some glamour shots:

For ugliness sans-dirt purposes only. Wipe your feet on this rug and I will cry.

It looks great and it feels great. Like everything you ever wanted in a recycled t-shirt rug.

And it really works too! (Demonstrated in B&W because when these rugs were popular, this is how your grandmother would have shown it off on Instagram. They only had B&W filters then, and they weren’t even called Willow and Inkwell yet.)

So there you have it. Although it temporarily destroyed my back to make, maybe some Wii Fit will cure what ails me and I can crank out some more again soon.

Have you made one of these or anything similar? I’d love to see it.

Freewriting, or The Blessed Curse Of Backspace

21 December 2012 in How to, Writing | Comment

Imagine a world without a ‘backspace’ key. From 1808 until the advent of the computer, this was a reality. Typewriters are as cool as it gets for writers. We throw stamped images of them into every which graphic design we can, because they just look so neat. And oh, the nostalgia! They remind us of a time when distractions were fewer, where it may actually have been easy (or easier) to complete the book we always dreamed of writing. While the lower distraction-factor may have been true, imagine stamping an “X” over every mistake you made, and having to take the time to type slowly and with purpose in order to avoid doing so. I imagine my page would look something like this:

Mistakes on a typewriter

We are blessed to have a true, non-X-ifying backspace key at our disposal today. Think of all the stupid things you’ve said today. I vote when they insert computer chips into our bodies, we request a backspace of speech key as well. It’s the least our generous overlords can do.

Why the speech about backspacing? I tried freewriting for the first time yesterday. You never truly know what crap your mind and fingers will combine to produce until you try a good old-fashioned free-write. I’d post mine, but I think I’d have to create my own apocalypse if you saw the amount of times I should’ve backspaced and was not allowed to (even if I accidentally did so a few times anyway). In a way, backspace is a curse as well as a blessing. When you are constantly monitoring your mistakes, you are not allowing yourself to write as freely as you can. Would you like to see what I mean? Good!

Here are the steps I took to freewrite:

1. Open a blank document. I used Google Drive.

2. If you don’t know your WPM, use Google to find a good site to determine it. My WPM is 84, so I multiplied this by 10, determining that in 10 minutes I would strive to write 840 words.

3. Open another tab with a timer and alarm clock. Set timer to 10 minutes.

4. Write for 10 minutes. NO backspacing, because if you backspace, it’s not fair to me or to baby Jesus. You’re allowed a few slip-ups the first couple of sessions, but try to be conscious only of not hitting the backspace key. Let your words flow. If you get stuck, type something like “blah blah blah blah blah blah BLAH BLAH BLAH”. You’ll find your brain hates that and switches over to a different gear. You may even produce a gem within this heaping pile of cow dung. That should be encouragement enough to stick it out, always typing, no breaks or distractions within these set 10 minutes.
I repeat: NO distractions. Turn off your messengers and phone alerts, close all unnecessary tabs, lock your partner or roommate out of the house; if your stove catches fire, the extinguishing of such is the only interference you may readily accept. After that, it’s back to the computer to start over again.

5. After the alarm sounds, save and close the document.

6. Review after a good night’s rest. You can review a few hours later but it’s best to be fresh of mind when you read the clump of text you created. You may find it’s easier to pull ideas from this heaping mess this way.

7. Extract! If you truly get nothing out of the exercise, repeat freewriting.

8. Bonus: Try while drunk, only if you don’t have an alcohol problem you’re trying to cure. If you’re trying to cure alcoholism, DO NOT EVER try this bonus. Your bonus is that you’re going to be a happier person one day for not making yourself consistently miserable.

[Aside: I did not make it to 840 words, but rather to 790. Close. I will try to type even more next try.]

You’re bound to pull something of value out of your randomizing brain if you let it flow enough. It’s great mental stimulation. Often times, the best ideas come when we’re not concentrating on thoughts at all (E.g.: showering, cleaning, cooking, etc.). What if you come up with your first book idea thanks to freewriting? You’ll have to come back and comment on this post because I will want to know all about it.

Speaking of which, try this exercise and let me know how it went. I welcome bravely-posted links to garbled text and funny documents full of mistakes. That’s what freewriting is all about.

How to Fix Dog-Eared Canvas on Foam Core

3 December 2012 in How to, Journal | Comment

I was digging for wrapping paper in our junk room (i.e., our need to throw out a lot of stuff soon before I go crazy room) when I found four of Miklos‘s old canvas prints mounted on foam core. They’re very nice and I would love to hang them up, but it turns out the fact that we never framed them left them open to the elements. The corners were dog-eared and sad looking.

They’d been like this a while. I’d never known how to fix them any other time I’d found them.

Luckily I’ve been a Pinterest addict for a few months and I’ve since discovered Mod Podge.

If you don’t know what Mod Podge is yet, it’s a thinned out, super-good liquid adhesive that comes in a variety of types, such as matte, glossy, glitter, etc. You can glue with it and also design collages or otherwise mount photos, papers, buttons etc. to many different surfaces, as well as to each other. It has so many uses in crafting, and it’s definitely worth picking up at Michaels on one of their coupon days.

Although sometimes, things don’t turn out the way we wanted, this canvas thing worked great. To fix this canvas mount, I spread the Mod Podge lightly with a clean foam brush onto the back of the loose canvas and onto the foam core underneath. I pressed the canvas down firmly with one hand, wiping lightly around the edges with my other hand at any extra that came out the sides. I only had to hold it about 30 seconds.

When it dried, it looked like this:

“Thank you for saving my life.”
- Canvas

No more flip-floppy corners. I fixed the other three canvases the same way. We should probably get these foam-mounted canvases custom-framed on yet another Michaels coupon day. Apparently that’s what you’re supposed to do to keep the canvas in shape. Whoops!