A Cat's Life

Oh, to be able to find a sunbeam when ever you wanted...

...stretch out...

...and soak it all in.

Nekkid Fajitas

When I started this little adventure, one of my thoughts would be to add recipes and such to it, in addition to my little tidbits. I promise to add pictures as I go along...'cause dammit, sometimes food is just pretty.

So, being that I just typed this up for Mo for our Deepher alumnae newsletter, I thought I'd also post it here. Enjoy!

Nekkid Fajitas
(So named because they're made without tortillas!)

Ingredients:
1lb thin sliced (or pounded flat) boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 tsp Fajita seasoning
1/4 cup 1/3 Less Fat Philly Cream Cheese
1/2 cup diced red onions
1 cup diced bell peppers
1 cup 2% Milk shredded cheese
1 cup Salsa
1/2 cup Reduced fat sour cream

If the low fat thing, isn't your thing, feel free to substitute the real stuff! :)

Supplies:
Aluminum foil
Cooking spray
Cooking twine or toothpicks
9"x9" baking pan - preferably glass

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Tear off enough foil to make individual pieces for each piece of chicken, spray with cooking spray.

Place one piece of chicken on one piece of foil, and sprinkle with fajita seasoning.

Spread cream cheese on each piece of chicken, then add onions and peppers. Add shredded cheese.

Now comes the messy part: roll the pieces of chicken up, and secure with toothpicks or cooking twine. Top with salsa.

Wrap the foil around the chicken rolls, so that they are completely covered, and secured. Place each little foil package in the baking pan.

Bake for 30 minutes.

Remove from oven and unwrap from foil. (Caution: this will be very hot.) Serve with dollop of sour cream.

Nutritional information per serving (calculated on 4 servings, using sparkpeople.com's recipe calculator): 288.6 Calories/12.6g Fat/11.1g Carbs/33.8g Protein

Now taking applications for the Queen of Procrastination...

So as I sit here, typing this lovely little entry, I should be upstairs doing something, anything, with the mound of laundry that's sitting on my couch.

You see, Dad will be here in about 45 minutes to help me tile a backsplash in the kitchen. (Yay! First major home improvement project!) Yet, here I sit.

It's not that I don't know that I need to get my tookus up and moving, it's just really, it's a gloriously sunny day out, the windows are open, tunes are cranked, and I'm really not sure that I want to do much more than soak it in. So again, here I sit.

This is not a new thing for me. All through school, I was the one notoriously waiting till the absolute last minute to do every project, every report, or to study for every exam. There are times that I really don't know how the hell I made it through college. I'm a big fan of the cross-your-fingers-pray-that-this-goes-as-well-as-you-think-it-should method of pretty much anything. Not as much as I used to be, but still.

This is why I am the poster child for things like direct deposit and automatic withdrawal. It's not that I don't have the means to pay the bills...it's that I forget to do some part of the process, usually either depositing the check, or sending the bill in. The day that direct deposit became an option at work, it was as if the heavens parted and a chorus of angels began to sing. And what is this? I can set up all of my bills online through my bank to just get sucked out of my account? I kid you not, I wept tears of joy.

I want to say that I'm getting better with it as I get older, and supposedly wiser, but my friends and family would let out a mighty guffaw at that one. I have all the best intentions. I talk a big game. And then...yeah...well? Hmmm.

My proverbial to-do list is in volumes, and yet I always find something else to do rather than what I'm supposed to be. Why do you think it took me three days to tape off and prep the kitchen and dining room for painting? How was I supposed to know there was going to be a Law and Order Marathon on?

While I was off for a week between jobs, I had it all plotted out. I was going to get up early (well, semi-early) and tackle a room a day. I was going to get more organized! I was going to hang all my clothes up in some sort of order! The laundry room was going to get purged of half empty cleaning products and wiped down! I was finally going to finish setting up my home office and all my networking crap! The laundry would be done, folded, and ironed! The kitchen and dining room would be painted! Slipcovers would be put on my couches! The wine rack would be stained!

Of that list, I got two things kinda done: the painting, and half the laundry. I also went to lunch with my uncle, over to visit a sorority sister, picked out tile, knitted, had Burleywoman over for dinner, went shopping, got a mani and pedi, and went grocery shopping. So it's not like I was totally unproductive.

I can say, that as I get older, I am finding that life is too short to live it by a to-do list. My procrastination is a part of who I am.

I'll get around to everything.

Eventually.

Where has Hoppy gone?

When I first moved into the condo back in October, Joe discovered a small frog living in the egress of the basement. He proclaimed his name to be Hoppy, and that he was going to start feeding him.

I looked at Joe, one eye brow cocked and asked, "And just what are you going to feed him?"

The answer was simple and matter of fact: "Crickets."

I laughed, shook my head, and said, "No. Noooooo way. You are not willingly introducing crickets to my ecosystem."

"But he'll starve! How does he get food?"

"How do you even know that he eats crickets?" I asked.

"He's a frog," Joe replied, "What else would he eat?"

We went back and forth for days on whether or not to feed Hoppy. Every time Joe would come over, and we would head to the basement to watch TV or a movie, the first thing he did was go to the window.

I asked him once what the hell he was doing, and he replied simply, "Checking on my little man."

Without fail, every time I came downstairs, I checked the window to see where Hoppy was. Sometimes he was on the left side, sometimes the right, sometimes he was hanging out in the middle. Oddly, he never hung out in the back of the egress next to the little tree that is growing there. He did seem to be annoyed when we would take the flashlight to look for him when it was dark.

I had to laugh at the two of us and this frog. Here we were, two adults, glued to the window, looking like two kids waiting for Santa on Christmas Eve.

Shortly there after, I discovered that Hoppy had a sense of humor. Sitting on the couch one Saturday, I heard much commotion out in Hoppy's little aluminum abode, and saw that Killian and Sophia were intently stalking something. I looked to see what all the noise was, and it was Hoppy, hopping back and forth, teasing the cats.

He got quite close that day (as you can see from the above picture), and Sophia lunged at the window, ricocheting herself off the glass and landing on the loveseat, annoyed that she hadn't been able to catch him. Both cats soon lost interest, being that they couldn't get at him, and went to find a sunbeam to sleep in.

However, Hoppy remained at the window, watching me, watching TV.

The next weekend, I took off to Shreveport for work for three weeks. When I returned on Thanksgiving, it was cold and snowy. I went downstairs to the window, to check on Hoppy. He was there, huddled in a little hole under the side of the aluminum wall, he looked cold and skinny. For the first time, I had a twinge of guilt, that maybe we should have brought him inside when I first moved in, and maybe I shouldn't have been so adamant about Joe not feeding him crickets. After all, he was our little man!

I checked on him again before I went back to Shreveport, and he was still in his little hole, and when I came back 5 days later, he was still there. Tears welled up in my eyes as I thought, "What if Hoppy's dead?" Who would think that a person could become so attached to a little frog living outside their window? However, here I was teary eyed over this little amphibian.

I text messaged Joe and reported that Hoppy was still in his little hole, that he hadn't moved in at least 3 weeks, and I feared for the worst. A sadness fell over me, as I thought about poor Hoppy. More importantly, what was I going to do if he was dead? I certainly wasn't going to look at him for the rest of the winter.

I then set to Googling everything I could about frogs and what they do in the wintertime. I asked the Google "Do frogs hibernate?" Like a magic 8 ball, this was the first site I was pointed to.

Q. How do frogs survive the winter in cold places?
A. The frogs hibernate in burrows or bury themselves in mud. Toads and frogs are cold-blooded and their body processes slow down as the outside temperature drops. This is why you sometimes find frogs sunning themselves in the spring. Their body temp needs to rise for them to move well. Frogs' bodies have some natural antifreeze chemicals built into them, but a few kinds of frogs who live in especially cold climates can even survive being frozen solid.

Before Joe could reply to my original text message, I texted him again: "FROGS HIBERNATE!!" He replied, "I KNOW!" Hmm.

After that, whenever this crazy weather here in Michigan warmed up a bit, Hoppy would thaw out and come out into the sun. When it got cold, he'd go back into hiding. Seeing Hoppy out of his little hole, no matter how skinny he was, always made me smile, and usually warranted a very excited text message to Joe saying, "Hoppy's out!"

I stopped seeing Hoppy in his little hole sometime in January, I figured that with it being as cold as it has, he'd gone deeper into the ground.

However, it's warming up again, but there's still no Hoppy. Joe and I have surmised that he has found a Hoppette, and found another egress to live in, but still I wonder where Hoppy as gone to.

Every time I come downstairs, I still check the egress for Hoppy, hoping he's there.

After all, he is our little man.

The Things That Go Through My Head...

I think...a lot. I don't think about anything in particular, but there is always something going on in my noggin. Some nights, it's hard to shut it off and actually sleep.

My thoughts can range from practical, logical things, to certain things that get that quizzical dog look if I choose to verbalize them. On more than one occasion, my father has looked at me, and in only that tone that a loving father could, has said, "You are so strange..." I just smile. It doesn't really matter to me, because they're my thoughts.

And tonight, I choose to share some of them, and some may make repeat performances as later entries.

• Why can't I dice an onion? I try and I try, but I fail...miserably.
  
• How do my cats know which laundry to lay in? Sophia always finds the dark clothes, yet Killian always finds the light ones. Regardless, I usually end up having to do more laundry.
• I should probably find and pay that ticket that's due on Saturday.
• I'd really like to have my living room back from the 8' folding table that's been there since January 25.
  
• Do you think that professional sports players hear all the noise that goes on when the score board says, "MAKE SOME NOISE!" or is it just background...noise?
• I'm going to get up with the alarm at 5:15 tomorrow...okay, I'm going to try to get up with the alarm at 5:15 tomorrow.
• I should really start sorting my socks...which means I need to get some drawer separators...oooh...I could make drawer separators.
• I wonder if there's an episode of any Law and Order I haven't seen.
• I need to take cans back this weekend.
• *sings* "All the lonely people/Where do they all come from..."
• Why isn't there a bra out there that wont poke me in the armpits after repeated wear?