Remote Control

A remote control for your cat is available at ThinkGeek. 

“Simply point at your cat, press buttons on the remote and hope for the best.”

Alas this is not a miracle device.  The website says, “No batteries required – powered by wishful thinking.”

I sent this to my husband for a bit of a laugh.  He sent back this:

It’s the Slosydney remote control!  All the middle buttons are unnecessary of course because I’m programmed to do them anyway.  They are an insight into my daily life.  Except the drink champagne button.  That’s a weekend thing.  

My favourite button:  Get off Crack.  Ha!

I Am Gonna to Make it Through This Year if it Kills Me.

We’ve been going through a lot of changes at work lately.  Redundancies, acquisitions, outsourcing, organisational structure changes…needless to say things are pretty tense and hectic.  Fortunately – or unfortunately, I haven’t figured out which yet - I still have a job.  And for the same amount of pay, my workload has tripled.  Woohoo!  Your sarcasm meter should be going off the charts at that exclamation. 

Although I’ve known about my new responsibilities for about a month now, it’s only just hit me how much work I have to do this year.  And when I say just hit me, I mean that about 30 minutes ago I woke up, came to this realisation, booted up my laptop, did a half an hour of work and am now blogging about it.  It’s 2:30AM. 

As if the increased work load weren’t enough to keep my busy, I’m also doing two masters courses at uni next semester instead of the usual one.  So two nights a week I’ll be attending lectures and the other nights I’ll slogging through the reading and working on assignments.

Ever the optimist, I can see one bright spot in this year that will help ease the pressure of all this hard work: our honeymoon.  If I manage to survive until June I will be rewarded with 4 romantic weeks in France.  When my eyes have turned rectangular from staring at spreadsheet after spreadsheet or when I’m pulling an all-nighter to finish an assignment, I can take a moment to daydream about wine, patisseries, chateaus and museums and maybe, just maybe, I’ll make it through the year.

Slosydney needs…

I typed my (real) name into Google followed by the word ‘needs’ and these are the results:

Slosydney needs…

1. to have a good reason or incentive to participate
2. your help!
3. plenty of exercise
4. to come to Illinois
5. a temporary foster home
6. open space and a friend
7. a little introduction
8. another rock
9. some washing powder
10. some buddies

This is more accurate than most horoscopes.  Try it.  What do you need?

Tough Love

Whenever parents smack their children they always say, “This hurts me more than it hurts you.”  Having never been a parent, I always considered this statement bullshit.

Today I think I can understand.  Sometime last night our naughty Boy Dog tipped over the rubbish bin, scattered its contents across the house and then peed on said contents.  I was already in a bad mood because I was running late for work, so I was supremely displeased to discover that the downstairs resembled a landfill.  

Ordinarily Boy Dog’s punishment for this offence is to be banished to the courtyard until I leave for work.  However, while I was cleaning up and ranting like a lunatic (what must the neighbours have thought?), boy dog peed on the clean laundry in our bedroom!  This called for a more drastic punishment. 

I decided to lock him outside for the whole day.  This may not sound too harsh but I should explain that my doggies are pampered house dogs.  They sleep in our bed and spend their days lounging on the sofa.  Girl Dog hates rain and Boy Dog is terrified of the wind.  They are wusses and we spoil them rotten.  But Boy Dog needs a little tough love, right?  When I left for work he was pressed against the dog door feeling sorry for himself.  I could hear his cries as I slammed the front door.

Any other day I wouldn’t feel too guilty about leaving him in the yard but my co-worker informed me that Sydney is expecting 50mm of rain this afternoon.  There’s no shelter in the back yard and he’ll get soaked.

It hasn’t started raining yet but already the guilt is killing me.  But while I’m ringing my hands and gritting my teeth, he’s probably having a grand ole’ time.  I imagine he’s barking at cats and birds or soaking up heat from the bricks, like a lizard.  This probably does hurt me more than him…until it starts pouring.

I’ve decided that at the first drop of rain I’m racing home and letting him in.  I’m just no good at tough love.

I’m Not Dead

After a lengthy blogging hiatus, I’m back and more married than ever before.  More posts to come when I get around to cataloguing the best summer in the history of ever.