Mark got me a 90 minute deep tissue massage Saturday for my birthday and now that the initial bruising from some crazy massage therapist’s elbows and fingers has worn off, my back feels maaaaaaahvelous. Except last night I slept funny and now I have a crick in my neck. Damn.

But before that, these were waiting for me on the c

offee table Friday evening when I got in from Athens…

Daawwwwww. And in his best handwriting too.

And between the flowers and the massage, someone left us a present outside the walk of our apartment!

Still haven’t figured that out.

And then by Sunday they were gone.

And then…

Sunday, Mark and Zac left me another birthday hairball! One that’d been growing for months!

..

2:51 a.m. 7/23 BIG FAT EDIT: [DELETED]

3:45 a.m. 7/23 BIG FAT EDIT #2: I have made the decision to remove previous rather passive-aggressive editors note and replace it with this:

The photos of Mark getting a haircut in the kitchen have been removed due to Mark calling me at a ridiculous hour of the night/morning, during which he may or may not have been intoxicated, and during said phone call he may or may not have said a variety of mean, buttheadish things and hurt my feelings and badgered me non-stop for a good 45 minutes.

I’ll leave it at that. So reduced photos for you tonight. Management apologizes for any inconvenience.

L.

..

Yaaaaay.

It’s more of a hair pile than a hairball, I guess. Whatever.

And that in the picture is only like, half of it! And it’s all over the new kitchen and the vacuum cleaner is in Athens helping me clean the house before I turn the key into our landlord and it’s hair and it’s all over everywhere. Yay.

I mean, who needs a full head of curly luscious hair for his own wedding, anyway.

We will, now, be needing a crash cart for my grandmother when she sees the wedding pictures. Or we could just Photoshop in some hair. Her vision isn’t too good. Doubt she’d notice the difference. And methinks photojournalism ethics don’t apply to life-threatening wedding photos of your youngest granddaughter.

Over and out.

Today I would like to address a topic that really has nothing to do with this blog, other than I have a cat and I run this blog, and it is relatively important to me and I could use some suggestions.

New And Exciting Ways To Sedate Your Cat!

As many of you know, I’m in the process of moving across the state. You might also be aware I have a cat, Peanut, a young stray who decided to move in with me about a year ago. She has become quite attached to me, and much to my dismay, I can’t keep her at my new place (and also Mark is allergic to cat hair). As I have been unable to find her a suitable home in Athens and refuse to just leave her, my sympathetic parents volunteered to take her at their farm. This is problematic in two ways:

1. My parents place is about 20 minutes away from my new place - and all the way across the state. Long drive.
2. Peanut is TERRIFIED of cars and car rides. Also does not like cat crate.

Years ago in a similar cat-moving situation, I went to the vet (without the cat), get a light sedative for the ride and everything went smoothly(ish). Apparently, with the new epidemic of people abusing sedatives intended for 6 pound critters, vets are no longer able to distribute medications without actually examining the pet -  which is problematic if they won’t get near a car without clawing you to shit and making a scene in front of the neighbors.

As I am moving next week I needed alternative suggestions, pronto. I had a finance exam this morning, so my mother did me the favor of talking to the family vet, who generally I hold in high regard. Dr. Vet suggested this instead (paraphrased):

1. Roll cat up in towel
2. Put towel cat inside pillow case
3. Tie up pillow case
4. Put pillow case towel cat on pillow (etc.) inside box
5. Put pillow case towel box cat in car

The way I understand it, the dark will calm the cat down, and no worries, the cat can breathe through the pillow case. Yay it’s a hunky dory car ride.

WHAT.

Anyone here who can take their young, fiesty, incredibly fit, full-grown, possibly not vaccinated and most certainly not declawed cat and roll it into a towel, gingerly stuff it into a pillow case and then into a box and then into a car, please raise your bloody, shredded hand.

Also, that just seems… mean. And rather uncomfortable.

So, in the interest of not making a 4-hour drive with a hysterical cat in the cab of my truck or turning Peanut into Towel Pillow Case Box Cat, I have done some some research this afternoon for some alternatives:

1. Non-prescription remedies you can purchase at pet stores or online. Including but not limited to chews, sprays, powers and whatever. Who knows if they work. Probably expensive.
2. Get cat stoned on that funky stuff. This is highly inadvisable as it is unhealthy, expensive and illegal. Also, I do not smoke weed. But it would probably work.
3. Benadryl. Prescribed for non-allergy purposes for my large dogs by my vet, worked wonders. Better to use pet benadryl for a cat. (source) and (source). I’ve seen varying opinions on this. Consult vet first.
4. Get cat stoned on catnip.  Lots and lots of catnip. Put toys and catnip in kitty crate, wait for cat to go in, close door. Might want to put towel over crate to help reduce anxiety.
5. Dramamine. Can sedate your cat during a car ride and may keep them from barfing all over your precious upholstery. Not FDA approved for use in veterinary medicine, but widely accepted practice by most vets. (source). Consult vet first.
6. Hypnotize cat with thermal mug on head.
   

   

   Ha. Kidding. That doesn’t work.

Animal People seem to get particularly testy about this sort of stuff, so, of course, these are in no way official endorsements or opinions of anything about anything by anyone including me or anyone related to me or who employs me. I am merely compiling some information I have found for entertainment and informative purposes. Only your licensed veterinatry practitioner can tell you anything about animals, unless you are a self-described Animal People, in which you probably already know everything yourself. Please don’t hate. Kthx.

Peanut gets to go on the big adventure next weekend. I’m still considering what to do. I am very much open to any other suggestions. Please help. I’m pretty sure, though, that I’m not going to go with Pillow Case Towel Box Cat treatment.

To conlcude, on traveling with kitties and all other things in life, the words of a wise paper salesman…

“Whenever I’m about to do something, I think, ‘Would an idiot do that?’ And if they would, I do NOT do that thing.”
                          -Dwight Schrute

Happy birthday to me.

Actually it was yesterday. I almost missed it but Mark and his dad and my dad and my brother all called to remind me. You see, I’ve apparently been a day behind all week and it turns out I’m a dingbat and yesterday was Thursday and not Wednesday. Surprise!

It didn’t really feel like my birthday. My grandmother never called to sing me happy birthday, as she’s done for the past 22 years. I’m kind of worried about her. She’s not all there anymore, maybe she got her days of the week mixed up too. First thing on the to-do list in the morning - call Nanny.

Kelly and I chose to celebrate by Kelly buying me lots of food (Cuban and Chinese all in one day… spoil me) and then spent the rest of the day together packing and cleaning. Wine was supposed to be involved, but we were just having so much fun sorting through all my crap we forgot all about it.

I sense a yardsale in the future.

And the only picture we took was of the outrageous, perfectly cone shaped hairball my new superawesome bagless vacuum cleaner made from all the Lindy and cat hair it sucked up in the small portion of living room floor that wasn’t covered in boxes. Per Kelly’s request…

Tada!

I swear, I’m not as nasty as this seems. And there is a lot of air and dirt in there, it’s not just hair (no, really, we poked it, and it was… fluffy…). But, as we see here, when you have big hair like me and a long-haired cat, a $35 Dirt Devil just isn’t going to do the trick.

Huh. Well. Happy birthday to me. Happy Friday, also.

My parents threw Mark and I a wedding shower last weekend. We got there pretty early and forgot the chairs we said we’d bring. Gas is expensive and it’s a 25-minute drive, so instead of going back to get them, my darling fiancé and my brother gave me an impromptu rock and roll concert and later some people at the shower had to sit on the floor.

Yep. Hook a solid body European Spector 5-string bass and a B.C. Rich Warlock up to the closest amp…

…and promptly blow mom’s poor ol’ ear drums to pieces.

Silly mom. That amp wasn’t even close to eleven.

They turned it down, Mom went back to making noodle salad and meatballs, and about 7 hours later the Dugger house cat menagerie came out from hiding. Yessss. Punk rock.

See what you missed, Kelly? Pssh. Gatlinburg. Whatever.

Just so you know, though, Jason Voorhees must have worn contacts.

Hockey masks and glasses just don’t mix. Neither do hockey masks and July Georgia heat in a not-so-well air conditioned farmhouse, but… sometimes you just have to make sacrifices for increased awesome.

Back off ladies and homosexual men, he’s mine. All mine. Rawr.

I just want to take a quick moment to address the issue of comments on this blog.

I get all sorts of comments on this blog, and I appreciate every one of them, from the gushing flattery to the not so positive but constructive criticism. Even the flaming hate comments.

Ah, yes. Hate comments. Occasionally I get them. I don’t delete them. I respect your right to free speech, even though this is a privately owned blog and technically you do not have any in my comment forum.

And as much fun as it might be, I typically don’t respond either. I have better things to do with my time, such as arranging the canned goods in my pantry into order by food group and then alphabetically or watching funny YouTube videos involving llamas. Secretly, though, I’m hoping a crazy, unhampered flame war will break out one day. Wouldn’t that be special.

I’m moderately amused that my terrible photographs and unnerving wit could so infuriate someone that they feel the need to take enough time out of their busy internet surfing, Hot Pocket eating, nut juggling schedule* to actually relinquish grip of either the Hot Pocket or private parts, sit up straight in their bean bag chairs and alert me of all my absolute sucktasticness. I’m especially flattered when they take the extra time to embellish said comments WITH arbitrarily capitalization and large amounts!!!1!11!! of unnecessary PUNC!TUATION ?!?!!?!?!!!?!?!?!!!! XD LOL etc.

I considered making a video of a dramatic reading of some of these comments, but as I’m mostly boxed up and in the process of moving my stuff across the state, equipment for such a video is not readily available. Instead, how about a dramatic reading of an in-kind Flying Spaghetti Monster forum comment (nsfw language)?

Fair warning, though, people leaving hate comments will not be invited to my birthday party and will be immediately added to my Christmas form letter mailing list.

Thank you, and have a nice day.

Lindy

*This is not a direct attack at web-surfers, Hot Pocket eaters or people who play with their parts, or anyone who does any combination of the three, independently or otherwise. Also not a personal attack on bean bag chairs.

Hi, I’m Lindy. I’m doing a spectacular juggling act right now with moving out and across the state, finishing classes and graduating, working part-time and starting a new full-time job. And planning a wedding and that whole getting married part. I’m swamped.

So here’s a picture of my mom’s cat.

This is Condoleezza.

(Yep. Figured the occasional token cat picture was about overdue.)

She’s completely white. Mom really likes all-white cats. Condi here is the one that peed on the Christmas presents that time - probably just paying Dad back for naming her that after he found her tied up in a pillow case and thrown in a muddy ditch when she was a kitten. She likes to chase her tail and sleep on her back with her feet in the air. She will only eat Friskies brand cat food. Sometimes she sits on this wooden thing behind my mom’s old silk bridal bouquet and watches everyone.  All the other cats beat her up.

The end.

Saturday afternoon amped up my photojournalist superpowers and I drove down to Lake Weiss in Centre, Alabama for Lauren and Chant’s wedding. I guess you could call it a small country wedding. The location was beautiful, the weather was beautiful, the people were beautiful, everything was just dang beautiful and I’m excited I got to be a part of it.

I’ve got quite a lot of images to sort through and obviously am still processing them, but I thought I’d go ahead a put up a few images from what I’ve gotten through, since everyone keeps asking. Weddings aren’t my forte so any feedback is greatly appreciated…

Attention all underpaid, overworked, frustrated, pissed off and ignored media professionals who need a place to publicly and anonymously vent your anger:

http://www.angryjournalist.com/

Saw the link mentioned in Brian McDermott’s article about young journalists staying (or not) in the profession in this month’s issue of News Photographer magazine. The article is an interesting read, too.

Figured I’d pass the 31 percent of journalists under age 34 who want to leave the profession and the additional 43.5 percent who don’t know if they want to stay (numbers from McDermott).

Cheers.

(Oh, and they’ve got t-shirts too)

Saturday I made Mark suck it up and drug him down to the Men’s Warehouse in Kennesaw to get him a suit for the wedding.

This was a very traumatic experience for him, you see, since he is delusional and lives in some Redneck Man World or another where you can buy everything you could possibly need at either Walmart or the Tractor Supply Company (which are conveniently right across the street from each other).

Because, you know, in Redneck Man World, even though you’ve got a 34 inch waist and a 52 inch chest, you have no problem finding a suit off the rack.

He also doesn’t like spending money, and these days everything costs money, including suits.

He’d probably get married in his birthday suit if I’d let him, but, since Mark’s mohawk nearly gave my grandmother cardiac arrest when she met him… I think butt nekkid wedding pictures might just do her in, even if the ‘hawk is gone now…

Anyway, when you’re measured for a suit, they fit you in the shoulders, then re-cut the rest of the suit to fit. For Mark, this means they take a suit big enough for Shaquille O’Neil and make a new suit out of it.

You know you’re in trouble though when the Guillermo the tailor takes one look at your fiance, “¡Ay, caramba!” and starts to cry and the salesman tells him in Spanish, “It’s ok, you’ve got until August!

In reality (and in Redneck Man World) a man needs a suit for only two things - marrying and burying. We spent more money than even I expected and we’ll probably eating Ramen forever, but Mark is going to look damn good for both those occasions.

I’m back from NYC, and let me tell you, this just ain’t been Air Tran’s week.

I’m not going waste any more of my time with them to go into details, but they just felt so bad about my flight experience they gave me a free one-way ticket! So I can go through all that crap all over again! For half price, basically.

However, just so you know, if your flight is canceled and then new flight delayed and delayed again and you’re “misinformed” about it all a number of times and spend over seven hours in La Guardia airport dicking around so you decide to get a puzzle book from the bookstore, unless you really really like Sudoku, you’re totally screwed.

You don’t want know how long it took me to find a crossword puzzle book. I don’t know which is more stupid - how long it took me to find one, or that I refused to give up and just read a Cosmo.

At least this time I wasn’t told I couldn’t take my camera on board the plane (that’s a whole ‘nother story). I was just told it counted as an entire carry-on item in itself. ‘Scuse me for packing light.

somewhere over somewhere

to baggage claim

BLAH.

I barely took any photos in NYC. This was my fifth visit there. I took my camera almost everywhere, but was burned out on the typical lights and glamor Times Square photo op. Add that to being exhausted the entire trip and that family trips aren’t always conducive to my way of photo operation, it just didn’t happen.

It was nice to have a break for it all. The two-pound chicken salad sandwich at the famous Carnegie Deli was also nice.

I really, really should have had some pie too. My wedding dress would disagree though.

I’m glad to be back. I love my family, but when you’ve been moved out as long as I have, suddenly being forced to spend nearly a week with them with no break can be rather… traumatic.

I’m in the Rome, Georgia area for a about a week straightening out details for my new job, getting Mark a suit for the wedding and getting read to move us into the new place, etc. If anyone is in the area and wants to grab a beer or something, give me a shout.