Jul

27

Updates and Volcano Cake

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It came to my attention that I’ve left some loose ends on the ol’ El Blog De Kalin. I tend to do that a lot, I think. I always mention things and never say how they turned out, or I promise to write about something later and then I break my promises and go back on my word and never write so much as a peep about whatever it is I said I’d write.

So I figured I would wrap a few loose ends up, along with any others about which you guys ask me, just to show that I appreciate you sticking it out.

#1) The Eyeball
My eyeball is no longer trying to escape from its socket. I’m not sure what exactly was going on with it, but I think it may have something to do with the fact that I sleep with my contacts in (which is bad, or so they tell you, but hey, I like to be able to see when I wake up). It was entirely bloodshot and red and weepy, which meant that the only thing I did last Sunday was rest it (aka sleep). It was all watery through that, too, which led to it being very puffy. I should have taken pictures, because obviously it was a thing of beauty.

All in all, though, it’s better. I stopped wearing my contact to bed (for a few days) and it decided that life was not so terrible in my face and that maybe it was a bit hasty in deciding to leave.

Numero Dos, Los Perros
The grooming salon at school quit putting dogs out in crates, probably because I wrote them a note asking them as much. It said, “Please don’t leave dogs out in crates during the night. They bark and howl continually.” I penned it on a disgustingly bright notecard, trapsed across the parking lot in barefeet at approximately 2AM and taped it to the front door of their shop at eye level. Then I went back to bed and tossed and turned all night. No, not because the dogs were barking, but rather because I was worried that “continuously” would have been a more appropriate choice than “continually.” I googled it in the morning and I was totally right with my initial choice, which made me feel pretty good… also like a nerd… but a good nerd.

Letter C, Daily Photo
The Daily Photo section of my blog still exists, but it has been renamed to “Kinda Sorta Semi-Daily Photo.” That pretty much sums it up. I’m pretty terrible at maintaining good habits, so photos will be uploaded as I get around to them (though I’ll TRY to keep it around a daily schedule). Keep an eye on the thumbnail to see if it changes!

In other news, we had Cleya’s birthday party at my house the other day. She has apparently been planning a Hawaii-themed party for several months, so she had cake in the shape of a volcano, complete with lava ice cream. It was pretty delicious, even though I was a little suspicious while eating it since her sickly mother was serving. We don’t call her Typhoid Lil behind her back for nothing.


Here’s Cleya with her volcano cake and candle.


And here she is doing a hula dance pose to add some authenticity to our Midwestern shindig.

Jul

22

Bad Neighbors

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I’ve taken a brief sabbatical across the Ol’ Mississippi in order to come back to my apartment and get some stuff I need as well as clean it up.

Upon my glorious return to my wood sided palace of an apartment, I noticed a disturbing trend: The pet grooming salon next door (which used to be a human salon filled with older ladies who loved both Bradley and I) has started leaving dogs in crates in the small grassy stretch between their shop and my apartment. This area is probably less than 10 feet wide from wall to wall.

Last night there was a tiny little dog in a crate huddled against a bad storm that blew through. I went out and looked at it and found that whoever had put it out there had probably put something on top of the crate to shelter it, but those things had blown off (because of the TERRIBLE WIND AND RAIN), so I readjusted a towel to give it a little shelter. The dog started barking and howling sometime during the early morning and only took a few breaks from then until I left to go to dinner with some sorority sisters.

And some point, that dog was removed and replaced with two pups in separate crates. I went over after getting home and noticed that, once again, one of them did not have any shelter and had tipped over its water. These dogs are barking and howling continually.

I called the police since the dog doesn’t have water and they told me they can’t do anything until 7:30AM when animal control begins their day. This actually does not surprise me in any way shape or form. I mentioned the fact that the dogs had been barking all night and the lady at dispatch said she’d call the officers and see what they could do. She sounded like she was pretty bored with talking with me, which is a shame. I bet the person who is about to start continually pelting the police station with used ferret litter as they drive by finds doing so a little boring at times, but that’s when a little something called PERSEVERANCE steps in.

I would be a little more tolerant of this situation if my first meeting with the new owners of the salon had been different. That was when the groomer’s husband came over when I was getting out of my car and requested that I not use their dumpster (which, by the way, is currently resting on a portion of my driveway). He said that someone had put lamps or something in the dumpster and the trash company hadn’t like it.

Since he is apparently a detective along with being a grooming salon owner, he noted that there were footprints in the snow coming from my apartment and leading to his dumpster. So he told me not to use it any more, because they rent it so it’s theirs to use, not mine. I stared at him. Then I looked down at my garbage can. Then I looked back at him. Then down at my garbage can, which was approximately 2 inches to the left of his precious dumpster. I wondered if maybe it had occurred to him that the footprints from my door were going to (I don’t know, I’m just throwing ideas out here) my garbage can. So I assured him I wouldn’t use his dumpster while denying placing the offending lamps in it. They’ve been friendly to me since, but jeez, talk about a nice introduction.

I feel like calling them up and explaining to them that I’m currently renting this apartment, which means that I would like to use it to sleep in not to listen to their dogs howl all night.

Jul

20

Back in a Bit

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I had all sorts of fun and charming and witty and deep and meaningful posts in my head, ready to type up and entertain you all.

But currently, one of my eyeballs is attempting to secede from the rest of my face.

Stories, charm and wit will come later. Also maybe a pictures of The Stink Eye aka The Evil Eye aka The Eye That Looks Like a Bright Red Fireworks Display.

Jul

16

The Perils of Summer

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It is definitely summer outside. Something about this year is making it so much more summery than others. Maybe all the nice weather we’ve had (high of 80 degrees F, sunny, breezy, angels singing from the heavens, etc) has us spoiled. Maybe it has us wussified. I mean shoot, just look at Lil. Back in the day, we used to devour deliciously spicy Thai food from our favorite restaurant in Saint Louis. But these days, Lil has but a little bit of a delicious Pad Thai/Lemongrass Chicken mixture before she wilts and gets all pukey for a few days.

Anyhoo. Summer has arrived. It’s getting into the nineties and I’m all hot and I feel gross because unless I quit “glowing” at the rapid pace I’m setting, I’m going to dehydrate into a shriveled strip of Kalin jerky, despite the fact that I drink what feels like several gallons of water each day.

This picture of my foot sums up a couple of the other perils of summer.
1) Dirty feet from mowing the lawn in questionable footwear.
2) Unfortunate tan lines.
3) Large self-inflicted wounds from when I was casually scratching a mosquito bite and I just kept scratching because it felt sooooo goooood. The next day my foot kind of ached, and I looked down to find that I had gouged out a considerable tract of skin. Oops.

Cleya (who turned five today! FIVE. It seems like just yesterday she was known as Fetie the Fetus!) has been hanging out at our house the last couple of days while her dad’s at work, due to the aforementioned pukiness of her mother.

Back when I was a youngster myself, I liked to hang out with babies and such. I babysat Rhys on many occasions, which included such adventures as diaper changing and bathing and playing and I enjoyed it all. Even that one time when Rhys was a toddler and I had to pull the urine-soaked onesie over his head. It got stuck and I tried to cheerfully tell him that he was just like Spider Man, pulling off his mask, but Rhys informed me through sobs that NO, that was PETER PARKER! And I refrained from mimicking the sound of a siren and going, “Wah wah! Nerd alert! Nerd alert! Wah wah!” But probably only because I was too busy reading a comic book myself.

So I liked babies and hung out with them. Then one day Lil handed a tiny Cleya over to me and Cleya started shrieking like a possessed banshee who had just been tossed to a velociraptor. And from then on, I’ve steered clear of babies. My sisters now know that all they have to do in order to get me to do their bidding is to offer me the choice of doing what they ask, or hold the baby while they go do it and I will go sprinting in the direction of whatever task they have.

The point of that whole story is to say that even though Cleya permanently scarred me and scared me away from babies forever, now that she’s older she likes spending time with me and screams a whole lot less. She asked me yesterday if we could go out in the yard and lay on a yard blanket like we’d done earlier in the year, so I agreed.


We spread out the blanket in a nice shady spot of the yard and Olio immediately came over and rolled all over it.


He was ecstatic that there was a blanket in the yard.


Oli is a sucker for novelty.


Despite what it looks like, Cleya didn’t club him.


When Olio ran off, we spent a short while doing some cloud watching. We must have been a little short of the imagination, because our conversation went something like this:
CLEYA: What do you see in that cloud?
KALIN: Hm. I don’t know. What do you see?
CLEYA: I see a… Well, I don’t know. Hey, look at that big bug!


Luckily, this snap dragon kept us entertained.
(Also, how is it that this 5 year old doesn’t chew her fingernails, yet her 22 year old aunt can regularly be seen gnawing on her own fingers?)


Unfortunately, Bradley thought the snap dragon was food and didn’t believe me when I told him it wasn’t until he’d tasted it for himself. That’s another common danger of life on our farm in the summertime.

Jul

13

It’s Not What You Think!

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Sometimes I like to check my stats counter to see how many people are coming to my blog, through what links they get here and what terms bring up my site in search engines.

I’ve noticed an increasingly large number of people being brought to my site while searching for recycling tips. I did a little research, and found that the following instance was not uncommon:

My site popped up within the top 5 results for “My Recycling Blog,” and the little blurb looked like this:

For those of you who read this blog often, you are no doubt thinking, “That doesn’t seem quite…right.” That description doesn’t seem like Typical El Blog De Kalin, eh?

But if you actually go to that entry, you will see that I was using recycling as a ruse to complain about something and then segue into a (charming) tale about one of my pets. If that’s not Typical El Blog De Kalin, I don’t know what is!

When I first noticed these hits coming in from recycling search words, I was amused. Then they increased, and I started to feel a little guilty. It’s probably one of the most common search terms to bring people to my site. Some part of me thought that hey, people are not exactly finding my site while looking for “(charming) Stories About Ferrets,” so maybe I should throw my recycling friends a bone.

And so I ventured forth and started compiling research on my latest recycling tip: How To Turn an Ordinary Newspaper Sheet into a Hat for Your Dog Using Origami.

But my story, set to rock the world of recycling, came to a grinding halt. As you may have noticed, I obviously ran into some problems. They involved the hat’s inability to stay on the dog’s head, probably in part due to that fact that the dog was using his paws to remove it. So I had to tape it on. And then a certain model I know kept using his paws to remove it, despite scolding, and I had to retape it.

I saved 1 small sheet of newspaper and wasted 7 pieces of tape. And, come to think of it, I think I ended up crumpling the whole hat up and throwing it into the garbage.

I’m going to leave the recycling tips to someone else.

Jul

7

Da Fo’th

Filed Under family, sisters | 4 Comments

I hope all my American compatriots enjoyed a fantastic Fourth of July holiday weekend. I know I did.

We had our usual parade breakfast on Friday morning, but this one was different.

For the first time, I contributed with food that I actually had to bake. Usually I just deliver a fruit salad. Sometimes Lil gives me credit for food which she makes but thinks might get a poor reception. One time she made a weird-looking jello salad that (visually) resembled something your car might leave on the floor of the garage following a high speed impact. She told people that I’d brought it.

But this year I slaved and planned and slaved a little more to make these delicious biscuits. I had to roll out of bed at 7AM in order to get my biscuits mixed up and baked in time for breakfast. I was still 20 minutes late, but I want it on record that I (and my biscuits) were ready and waiting to leave right on time, and that my tardiness was due to an escape attempt by a certain pair of hounds.


I chose to make garlic cheddar and bacon cheddar biscuits, and they were a big hit. Duh, anything involving garlic and/or cheese and/or bacon is automatically a big hit with my family.


This was the whole spread. Coffee, orange juice, donuts, grapes, melon, more melon, more donuts, hard boiled eggs, DELICIOUS BISCUITS and muffins.


These are Marissa’s fabulous 4th of July shoes.


Here, Marissa and Lil show the contrast of special 4th of July shoes (complete with patriotic pinwheel) and Lil’s hippie clodhoppers. Also, I feel like I should clarify that Lil was pulling up the legs of her pants… they are not normally that high. Even if that was actually the way her pants were, I would probably create an elaborate lie in order to assure you otherwise, because that would be kind of embarassing.


Grammy and Gramps were out in full patriotic garb.


Lirah spent some time looking “like a weird model baby,” as I so eloquently put it. I don’t know what she’s eating, but it sure looks like a DELICIOUS BISCUIT.


Marissa and Geoff give us a fine example of wedded bliss. They did actually smile for a normal picture, after much harassment from April, but that one’s not nearly as entertaining.


I hadn’t realized that Lil was dressed completely unpatriotically until now. Jeez. I should have pinched her for that. Who wears brown on the 4th of July?! Especially when it’s your mom’s birthday! Anyway, obviously this is Lil & Jake’s family.


April and Dennis’s brood. If you go to April’s site, you’ve probably seen this picture. She didn’t give me photographer’s credit, but it’s ok. I’ve contacted my lawyer.


Marissa and Rhys laughing about something. Probably something charming and witty that I said, but I don’t remember.


A politician handed out these balloons during the parade. This one almost got away, but luckily Jake leaped onto the railing of the porch and plucked it from the sky while April looked on, shocked and ready to grab Jake’s foot if he started to float away. Also lucky was the fact that I was nearby with my camera to catch this completely genuine and unstaged photo. That, my friends, is talent.

Jul

3

Wrongly Accused

Filed Under dogs | 4 Comments

In the recent past, I’ve made some not-so-subtle accusations that Olio is approximately the approximate size and shape of a loaf of bread.

This, while not entirely inaccurate, has turned out to be a gross exaggeration. We wouldn’t have known that except for the grace, talent, beauty, charm, athleticism and wit of one tool:

The Furminator

I’d read all sorts of good reviews on all sorts of popular blogs about this handy-dandy little dog grooming brush. Then I went to the website, found an online retailer, saw the price, and spent a while lying on the floor gagging.

A few weeks later, things started to become clear:
1) Olio is small, so I didn’t need to buy the largest size available,
2) The fact that I had recently started using an oxygen tank after being diagnosed with The White Lung (a disease where Olio fur coats your lungs so thoroughly that the doctor who initially looks at your x-rays will accuse you, voice hard and eyes narrow, of having swallowed a couple baby Persian cats),
3) Holy crap, eBay has cheap stuff!

And so I bought a small Furminator and only dry heaved a little at the thought of paying $20 (including shipping) for a dog brush. After my stomach settled, I anxiously checked the mail every day, checked the United States Postal Service website to see if my tracking number information would tell me anything new, and tried (unsuccessfully) not to share my excitement regarding the impending arrival of The Furminator with anyone who would sit still for longer than two seconds.

My Furminator arrived today, the third of July in the year of our Lord two thousand eight. I practically ripped the packaging open with my teeth, and went on the search for Olio. He was no where to be found, but I saw that my mom’s van was gone, which meant that she and Olio were probably out gallivanting around the countryside and having all sorts of fun. I paced back and forth, Furminator in hand, until I saw Mom drive up the driveway and out to the barn.

I strolled out, trying to act casual, and trapped Olio, putting him up on a rolling garden cart. I took a few tentative swipes with the Furminator. The fur rolled off of him as though I was slicing through butter with a hot knife. Huge chunks of fur were coming out and laying on the ground like recently-clubbed Harp Seal pups.

Something miraculous started to happen… Olio started to take shape. He had a waist and shoulder and even a little bit of muscle. I mean, he had a little bit of muscle that didn’t include his ham butt. His neck rolls smoothed out into one singular neck roll.

So yes, I would recommend the Furminator. Whole-heartedly. It’s even bringing our family together. I spent quality time with both Mom and Marissa while we took turns Furminating Olio. Initially I invited them over to see how awesomely it was working, but then they demanded turns, and Olio was happy to oblige. He especially liked it when Mom and Rissy Furminated him, as he demonastrated by rolling over so that they could Furminator his tender underbelly regions.

I’m thinking of taking him to the local park tomorrow night and setting up a booth where people can watch Olio being Furminated and perhaps (for a small fee), Furminate him a little themselves. I think this would work especially well since he would be so terrified by the people and fireworks that he would empty his anal glands.

I mean shoot, if we’re getting rid of his excess baggage, we might as well get it all.

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