More of the Same

Hey, Everyone!

I've got a whole bunch of "more of the same" to report at the moment. I want to keep you guys up to date though, especially on the kitten situation:
They're still adorable. And still looking for homes! We found a home for one of the tabbies, but there's still one left (female) and two black ones (sexes still unknown atm, though I think one of them is male).

Ramiro and I got the above tabby to come inside and were able to give her some wet "kitten formula" canned cat food. She gobbled it up. These guys are about 8 weeks now. According to the Internet, they should be more-or-less fully weaned by week 10. And once they're eating nothing but "real" food, Ramiro and I will no longer be able to take care of them. We already have two cats of our own and take care of Ramiro's sister's cat as well (so THREE cats total!) and we can barely afford those cats. So please, if you or anyone you know would like a kitten, contact me at littlezotz@gmail.com If not, in another 2-3 weeks, we're going to be looking for a nice "no kill" shelter to turn them in to...

In other news, I'm nearly done working in my parents bathroom. I cleaned their bathtub:I was going to post some "before" pictures so you could see the difference, but I thought that would probably embarrass my parents. And I didn't want to do that when things are finally going really well. So, you'll just have to take my word for it that I did a lot of work to get it to look that nice. :)

I was also working on turning the light pink areas (like the window frames) maroon:
BeforeAfter.

Unfortunately, while I was painting, I ended up having a very bad attack where my throat closed up and I couldn't breathe very well... I ended up having to use my inhaler (which I haven't had to use in over a year!). Turns out the paint had latex in it. Which I'm allergic to. I was totally taken by surprise! I always thought of latex as being something you paint on, due to my parents' work, and not something you paint with. I feel silly now, of course. Oh well. So, unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish the borders on my own. But, while my dad was finishing that up for me, Ramiro and I went in their back yard and tidied up the lawn.

Also, a few of you have been asking me about Ziggy and how she's doing. I guess I didn't make it clear in previous entries (or maybe I forgot to?) that she's all better now. :)

Here's a picture of her snuggled up with her catnip mouse:She loves that thing. She plays with it like crazy and then falls asleep pretty much immediately after. Speaking of sleepy kitties, the following are some of the most adorable pictures of our cats ever (taken last night at bedtime):Those two cats love each other more than some people we know! haha. They're so great.

I guess that's about it. It's Tuesday, so the latest update on my comic should be up soon. Drunk Duck is apparently having troubles or something, but I have confidence they'll be able to work it out. Check back on it periodically to see.

Also, tomorrow is Ramiro's birthday. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!

Until next time!

--Lauren*PS: One more picture of our kids...PPS: Last one, I swear! This is what Ringo, Robert, and Ziggy all looked like when they were just slightly older than the kittens we're currently trying to find homes for:

Ziggy Update & Odd Jobs

Hey, Everyone!

We took Ziggy to the vet yesterday (that was the soonest they were able to see us) and she's going to be just fine. We were doing everything right (we were using the right kind of ointment and all that), but they gave her an anti-biotic shot to help speed the process along. She already looks a TON better today. Thank you all for the best wishes & prayers. :)

I don't have an updated picture of Ziggy just yet, but here's one of Robert that Ramiro took the other day that cracks me up:Speaking of pictures, I took one of my mom's guinea pig Algernon the other day. I finally finished painting the green parts of my parents' bathroom (but I still have to do the cupboards & borders/molding) and we got the stuff to seal it in; however, the sealant made me feel really woozy after a while (I didn't notice it until I went to climb back up on the ladder & got dizzy) so my mom gave me some tasks to do outside. One of those odd jobs was to take a good picture of her guinea pig, Algernon:This picture has been causing quite a (good) stir over on the guinea pig forum that my mom goes to. In case you were wondering, Algernon is a hairless guinea pig. The breed is called a Skinny and my mom has had a bunch of them over the years. She's written a few articles on them and even helps to maintain the Wiki page on 'em. She currently has 4 of them, but until the other day had no good photos of Algernon (he's the least photogenic of the 4).

Anyway, nice picture I took, huh?

In other news, I've restarted my online comic strip (on drunkduck.com) The Greener Side and it's updating every Tuesday. If you'd like to start reading The Greener Side, click here. So far the response has been surprisingly good. I've been getting a lotta hits! For those of you who don't know, The Greener Side is pretty much the same as my blog (all about me) only in comic-strip form.

Guess that's about it for now. Hope you all have a Happy 4th of July! (I didn't say "Independence Day" because I know some of you aren't in America. HI, DAVID!!!)

Until next time.

--Lauren*

Sick Ziggy

Ziggy got beat up pretty badly by something the other day. When she came in Friday night for dinner, she was all sorts of messed up. Her eye, especially, was pretty gross, but she also had bloody spots all over her ear as well... She wasn't acting herself and didn't want to eat. And she wasn't yelling at any of us (very not herself!).

We think it may have been a "Mockingbird" that attacked her, but we're not sure. Ziggy likes to climb trees and there have been a lot of those birds around lately (and they've been making nests). Those birds have been known to be pretty vicious to cats in the past, especially when their nests are threatened, so it seems fairly likely. Also, we interrogated the other cats in the area about the incident and since none of them were scuffed up, we think they're in the clear. If Ziggy had been in a fight with another cat, she would have messed them up too, you know?

We've been trying to treat Ziggy's eye with an antibacterial cat eye ointment that we got. We think it's helping a little. The swelling has gone down and she's no longer pussing green out her eye. We've been trying our best to keep the area clean. It's still very sore-looking and she's still very squinty (as you can see from the pic above) and it's still leaky (but clear fluids now!), but it isn't all swollen and totally nasty any more.

However, her appetite is still down (though she did eat a little more today than she did Friday or Saturday) and she's been very cold. She's also been making a burbling sound and has a very "wet" cough. We weren't sure she was going to make it through the night last night. We've been keeping her inside and have been trying our best to make sure she gets a little water & wet food into her and we even wrapped her in a towel to try to keep her body-heat up.

Our vet is closed on the weekends, so we've been having to wait it out a bit. We're going to call tomorrow and see if they can squeeze her in. They were very helpful when Robert was ill last October. Fortunately, my parents were kind enough to give me an advance on the money I earn from fixing their bathroom (which is looking great, by the way; Ramiro saw it in person for the first time today and was impressed). I just hope it's enough. :( I accept PayPal donations...

Please pray for our baby girl.
Hopefully I'll have happy updates soon.

--Lauren*

More Work In Progress

Hey, Everyone!

Those of you who read my last entry know that I've been picking up some food money (in my never-ending search for a "real" job) from my parents by re-doing their bathroom. Well, you lucky lucky people!--I have more pictures of the work in progress:Painting the area directly behind the toilet was really difficult. Also, please forgive my cell phone pictures, yet again. I tried to take some close-ups so you guys could see some of the textures though:A lighter section.A darker section.

I'm nearly finished painting the green parts of the bathroom. I just have to do the rest of the ceiling. I need to get more paints before I can do that. So, in the meantime, I've moved on to re-doing the pink cupboards/borders. My mom wants them to be white/wood with just "a little of the old pink to tie in the knobs & tile."
Here's what I've got so far:I've been using a razor to scrape off layers and layers of paint. There's the pink layer, a white layer, another pink, a cream... The pink areas in the bathroom are all very "thick." I think that my parents cupboards & drawers will probably close a bit better than they used to now that I'm stripping away all those layers.
While I'm working, I also get visitors coming in and out (mostly for their water bowl):Wolfgang and, of course:My darling Dorian.

Also, my pet rose-knee tarantula, Sabu, shed his/her skin the other day. He/she is still too young for me to sex (I'm sure a professional could, but I'm still unsure. I have my best educated guess...). I had to leave Sabu behind when I abruptly moved last December and so my mom's been taking care of him/her for me. She was very surprised/worried when she saw him/her shedding. haha. But doesn't he/she look gorgeous now???
Sabu is my second tarantula. I had a female rose-hair tarantula named Harriet when I was 5 years old until I was out of high school. She was nearly fully grown when I got her.

ON THE HOME FRONT

Back at home, things have been going fairly well. Ramiro and I are fine (knock wood!) and so are the cats. Robert's mom finally showed up again. Her nipples are all stretched out, so we know she had the kittens somewhere but we don't know where. We'll have to restart our efforts to capture her for neutering.

Lately, Ringo spends most of his time looking out the window (for hours!!) at the birds flying around outside. Ziggy was sick the other day when it was extra hot & gross, but has been just fine ever since. She's been alternating between running around & yelling at us and taking naps. And Robert has been enjoying coming in from the heat to get lots of loving and enjoy the air-conditioning.Unfortunately, the cats aren't the only "critters" who like to come in out of the heat...
Eww.

Oh, summertime...

Until next time.

--Lauren*

During...

Hey, Everyone!

Those of you who follow my Twitter know that I've been re-painting my parents' bathroom. And that I promised pics!

For those of you who just tuned in, I still have no job. My parents were nice enough to offer to pay me to paint their bathroom. So, for about 2 days a week for the past couple weeks, I've been painting their bathroom 4 different shades of green (my mom had done a small patch, trying to start this project, a couple years ago). These are the tools I've been using:I've been painting the walls with Liquitex paint. Due to the nature of acrylic paint, and also due to the bathroom being a hot box in the warmer weather, the paints dry very quickly, so I have to apply the paint in extremely small patches (which is part of why I'm using an itty-bitty half-inch brush instead of a "real" paintbrush for painting rooms). My process pretty much goes like this:

1. I apply a smallish area with paint, darker in the center and then fanning out lighter (so that the next green applied will have a little of this green underneath it).
2. I take a paper towel and blot most of the paint back off before it dries completely, and also make it look "cool." The paper towels, depending on how you do it, leave some fun textures.
   
3. I take the paper towel that I just blotted with, and use it to "stipple" paint onto other areas of green so that they too have that green in them. So they all sort of "blend."
4. Repeat

Here are some pictures of my work in progress:I'm going to have to redo parts of this wall, this was before I started to get my stride. This next picture is more what it's really going to look like:Please forgive my cell-phone pictures. You can't really see all the fun textures... I'm hoping that when the room is done I can get someone with a "real" camera to take some glamour shots for me.

I'm also going to be redoing the cupboards & borders in some way. They're pink right now and that doesn't really go with the green too well. My mom was thinking that maybe white with some of the wood showing through might look good.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a paint sealant?

In other news, here's Ringo playing in a paper bag:Until next time!

--Lauren*