How to Cut an Angled Bob Haircut

Now you have cut your bangs all by yourself...how about giving yourself an entire haircut?

I've cut my hair for almost ten years now. That has included long hair, pixie cuts, and everything in between. Some haircuts have been huge fails, but you know what? I've paid for haircuts that have been huge fails before, too, so it happens to the best of us, I guess. While I've had stints in this time where I've paid for my haircuts, these days I mainly stick to cutting my hair myself. I can make the decision for the cut at the spur of the moment, I don't have to make an appointment, and I don't have to make sure someone else can watch the boys. It's free, and if it goes horribly wrong, I can always go the salon if needed.

So, not to say you need to give up your weekly/monthly/bimonthly appointment, but if you're interested in trying out a haircut on yourself, here's a good one to try. The Angled (or Wedged) Bob haircut. It's like a bob, only it angles up at the back.

Start with wet hair and pull it straight back into a tight pony tail. The higher your pony tail, the more layers you will have.

Pull the pony tail out away from your head to desired length. (If you want a very short wedge, and don't pull it out at all, this method will probably not work for you. It will cut too much off.)

Now cut off all the hair beyond the pony tail! Exciting!

Pull the holder out and admire your work so far. The hair at the back of my neck is usually a bit thick, so I hold the hair in my fingers (which are perpendicular to the ground) and trim. This would have been a good time for a picture, but it didn't happen.

It's almost right, but I've found that it helps to then cut off another inch or so straight off the bottom. I'm grabbing my chip clip from when I clipped my bangs to do this task. Clip and cut!

The chip clip wouldn't hold some of the hair up front, so I just pull that down with my fingers and snip it off.

Here it is air dried. Crazy hair and all it's flippy-ness.

And now I've told it who's boss. The flat-iron, THAT's who's boss!

From the side (that chunk of hair over my right shoulder is a reflection in the mirror, NOT an overlook on my part!).

You can see at the nape of my neck where the hair is still a bit thick and could use a little more trimming, but I've got to head out, so this is what it is for today. I can mess with it later, or just let it grow out a bit and no one will notice. *wink*

Obviously you can personalize this to your own taste! Leave it longer in front where I decided to cut it. Pull the ponytail higher for more layers in the back, or lower for less. Or, for an overall layered look with no angle, pull the hair up directly on top of your head! That's how my mom did it in college, which is where I got the idea in the first place to try it with an angle.

Have fun with it, and let me know if you try it!

How to Cut Bangs

Cutting bangs has always been a bit of a hassle to me. And considering I keep my bangs pretty long, I have to cut them often to keep them out of my eyes. A while back I saw an interesting idea about cutting hair using a special tool that looked a lot like a chip clip, and I thought it would be perfect for bangs! So...here it is! How to cut your bangs with a Pampered Chef chip clip.

The before:

Tools Needed: comb, sharp scissors, and a swing-arm chip clip (Pampered Chef was the first place I saw this kind, but they're at Kroger and other places now)

 Use the comb to section off the hair you want to cut. I sort of part mine in a wedge (think of the opposite of a widow's peak). Then clip your bangs with the chip clip. Slide the clip down the hair to the desired length. Clip with scissors.

Tada!

It's all cool

I'm loving my new deep freeze. We bought it on Craig's list for $50. When it came to us, it was black (someone had painted over the original white), it was dirty, and it was very very stinky.

So, I took the water hose to it and washed it three times with as many disinfecting products as I could. I also scrubbed off as much black paint as I could; some of it just peeled right up. Then onto painting it white again. I used Rustoleum Appliance Paint, and it took me almost 4 cans, 2 per coat (an additional $20). It was easy to apply, and the result is great! And I'm really enjoying all the room we have!
Caleb had mostly moved on to table food by the time we got the freezer in, but it would have been so nice with his frozen baby food that I made. Even now, I make up batches of cooked chicken and veggies and freeze those laid out flat. Once they're frozen, I break up the pieces and store them in a Ziploc, and I know I have a healthy meal on hand any time Jon and I are eating pizza or Chinese or something else that's hard to give to a baby.

Tonight I made up a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough and froze the preformed cookies on a cookie sheet. When they're frozen, I'll put them in a Ziploc and we'll have a sweet snack ready in no time! I prefer the cookie dough just as it is, but Jon might pull out a couple and bake them.

How much fun to have freezer room!

Random Thoughts for the Day

1. My kitties are snuggled among the neatly folded stacks of laundry on my bed. They're so cute.
2. Today I scrubbed, sanded and painted a freezer we bought for $50 on Craig's list. I had to wait 'til evening when it was cool enough to paint. I got the first coat on before it was dark. It will definitely need another coat. Now I have a freezer with wet paint in my front yard. Didn't really think ahead on that one. I need to figure out a way to get it back in the garage before I go to bed, or someone else will have a freshly painted white freezer! Maybe everyone will realize it's wet paint and they won't touch it. The june bugs didn't get the memo, though. I had to pick two of them out of the paint already!
   
3. I've also been working on a ghetto cat scratcher. It's a revamp of the ghetto cat tree. Pictures to come!
4. Full-time-mom-hood has been a transition for sure, especially given the crazy last month. I'm hoping August is much calmer!
5. The beach was great. Definitely ended July on a high note.
6. Jon finally accepted the higher-pay position at his current job. He'll start a month of training in a couple of weeks. It's been kind of a disappointment for us; we were sure he would have found a job by now, and are confused about God's timing of things. However, we recognize the blessing of a job, and thank God for it.
7. Jon got pulled over on Saturday...and got off with a warning! The police officer asked him what he did for a job; Jon told him he was a security officer. The policeman told him he needed to be on the police force and even wrote down a web site for him to check out. As we drove off, we mused that perhaps this was the clear direction we'd been praying for. We'll ask God someday, "Why were You silent when we asked for Your will?" And He'll tell us, "I sent a cop and pulled you over to tell you what to do in life. What more did you need?" Despite that, we don't think the police force is in our future.
8. You cannot make chocolate milk by mixing hot chocolate mix with cold milk. The chocolate powder stays mysteriously on top of the milk, no matter how hard you stir.
9. When I was a kid I loved reading Nancy Drew books, but couldn't read them at night because they gave me bad dreams. I've been reading a mystery series lately, and found that I am still a weenie. Even my fairly docile mystery books are giving me bad dreams.
10. Nothing else to say, but couldn't leave it with just 9. Good night all!
    

There's a trick to it!

Jon and I are fans of natural peanut butter. But, if you've ever had natural peanut butter, you know our problem with it: by the time we've made it about a quarter way through the jar, the rest is a solid block, making it nearly impossible to get out and spread evenly on a piece of bread.

Well, I've figured out the solution! First, toast your bread. This is a yummy trick Jon taught me the first time he made me a PB&J. It tastes good, adds crunch to your sandwich, and, regarding the natural PB dilemma, makes your bread a little firmer.

Next, while you're toasting your bread, hold the PB jar over the toaster! When it's still pretty full, hold it up-side-down so the heat is caught in the jar. If it's almost empty, you can hold it right-side-up over the heat. By the time your bread is toasted, your PB is warmed up enough to be soft, making it easy to spread!



Tada!!

Showerhead Innovation

I ran across a new kind of showerhead today, and I thought I'd pass it on. There is a whole line of showerheads made by Evolve that preserve water when you're not using them. How many people (or people's spouses) turn on the hot water to the shower, then go off and do other things waiting for it to warm up? Shave, pick out clothes, check the mail.... When you get back, the water is nice and warm. But how long was it running nice and warm?

The Evolve showerheads have an auto-turnoff that reduce the flow of water to a trickle once the water hits 95 degrees. That will indicate that it's hot, and if you're in the middle of something, you don't waste any more water! Some people like water hotter than 95, and the showerhead does not prevent it from getting hotter; the designers evidently figured 95 was a comfortable temp to start, at least.

Check out the site! Only one of the showerheads is a low-flow design; the others are normal flow just like what you're used to. The cheapest one is $40, which is more expensive than the cheapest you can find at Wal-Mart, but really pretty on par with other showerheads. There's also an adapter which looks like it fits between your existing showerhead and shower arm, just in case you just bought your dream showerhead and are now finding it lacking. The site says the showerheads are available at The Home Depot, so we may go check them out. I know this would be useful at our house!

How I'm Doing: Organization

Two days ago I organized my jewelry. I have two jewelry cases, neither of which were used to their potential. One held the necklaces, but it's four drawers were empty or filled with stuff I never wore. The other held the earrings, all stuffed into one compartment. I was forever untangling necklaces and pulling out handfuls of earrings to find a matching pair. It also held all my rings, again jumbled into one spot.

So, Sunday afternoon, I pulled out all my jewelry, laid it on the floor (which Friday loved), and organized it by type: Earrings a) studs, b) small dangles, c) hoops, and d) large dangles; Necklaces a) silver, b) gold, c) other. I was surprised at how many bracelets I had as well. Now that I work on a laptop most days, and bracelets scrape against the keyboard, I don't wear many bracelets. But there they were.

I paired up all my earrings, then put each pair onto a button (the posts through the holes of the button). I'd started this method awhile back, but hadn't done it to all my earrings. When I use a pair, I leave the button on the dresser, then refasten the earrings onto the button at the end of the day. I did have to take off several of those clear plastic shields that are on lots of earring backs. They covered the buttonholes so I couldn't get the other earring in. And usually, they were small earrings that didn't need the shield anyway. For the few pairs of large earrings with shields, I left them off the buttons, but they are so few that it will be easy to pair them up when needed.

I put the four categories of earrings into the four unused drawers. I put my bracelets into another drawer and separated my rings out into the two ring holders, one in each case. That left the necklaces.

I spent quite a bit of time untangling necklaces. Then I paired up chains with some leftover pendants I had. Any other pendants left over, I put into a compartment in my jewelry case. Total, I have almost 50 necklaces, all of which I like and would wear if they were available. I couldn't imagine fitting them back into the small hooks for necklaces in my jewelry case. There had to be another option.

I remembered reading in a magazine about putting cork board on the wall with straight pins to hold each necklace. I mentioned that to Jon, and he thought it would look tacky. He offered to put something together with a wood board and pegs, but we just couldn't see where we could put it. So...I started searching online. My friend The Container Store didn't offer a whole lot of help, nor did a "how to make necklace holder" google search. Hm.... I realized I was coming to a time crunch (almost time for evening service), and I could only keep the cat out of the bedroom so long. The necklaces were nicely organized, but still on the floor. What to do.... Well, I decided what would work in a pinch. I took a pants hanger (the kind with the cardboard rod), pulled the wire out of one end of the cardboard, slid each necklace on, keeping them in their categories, and put the wire back in. Voila! Only one of my necklaces does not have a clasp; all the others can easily be taken off and put back on by unclasping them. The other, I'll move toward the end where I can pull the wire out and get the necklace off that way. I have a decorative thing hanging above the dresser, so I pulled it off, hung the hanger over the nail, then put the decoration back.


Sure, it's ghetto, but I was actually surprised that it didn't look TOO bad. (And yes, you can laugh at my obvious low standards.) And it was free! So I'm thinking I'll see if I can make it look a little better. Wrapping it in something...painting it.... We'll see what happens.

Random Thursday

I learned something new yesterday. When it's below freezing outside, don't try to clean your windshield at the gas station. I successfully coated my windshield with a nice coating of ice and had to scrape it off. That was a dumb idea!

So Friday barely made it through a week without us. When we got home, he'd barely eaten in 5 days, his fur was kinda gooky like he hadn't been bathing, and he was hiding in the bathtub when we finally found him. After he realized who we were, though, he purred like crazy and dug into his food. Maybe he was fasting like Gandhi. We came home, so he could eat again. Needless to say, we're hoping Margie never goes out of town again while we're out of town, because she's the best babysitter. She will stay and play with Friday, whereas the people watching him this time just came in to fill his food bowl and leave. Thanks, Margie, for hanging out with my cat. I didn't realize he would decline so rapidly without his daily dose of love and attention!

I have an innovation for you, but you'll just have to remember it for next year. My Christmas tree is a hand-me-down from my parents. I'm not sure how old it is, but every year it loses more and more needles. And, just by being fake, it doesn't look as full as a real tree. A few years ago, my Grandma gave me green garlands to hang around the house. I put them over the doors the first year, but the next year I wondered if I could use them to supplement my tree. And it worked! The garlands look the same as the tree, with the green pine needles. So I put a garland in between each of the layers of my tree, and it gives it a much fuller look. So there you go. Maybe it's good timing for me to tell you now, so you can catch the after-Christmas sales and get you some garlands! :)

So it's the new year. 2008. Crazy. I'm still working on my resolutions. I usually don't make them, but I think this year I've decided they're important. Not that they're done at the beginning of the year, but that we have resolutions in general. If we don't have resolutions/goals toward improvement, we'll wake up five years from now and realize we're just the same (and the worse for it). My mom was telling me awhile back how she actually wrote her goals down where she could see them every day. You know, like the cheesy motivational speakers tell you to do. And I think she felt cheesy doing it, but the cool thing was that she reached her goals! Then after that, I had the opportunity to assess my work goals, and make specific directives that I would fulfill over the next year with the intent to improve myself to make me better at my job. It was nice to get some concrete goals on paper. So that's why I'm doing resolutions this year. It's good to assess where you've come, consider where you want to go, and come up with some good goals to get you there. I'm looking forward to it.

Alrighty, that's my post for the day. :) More to come!

Fan Innovation

Have you ever had a ceiling fan that made lots of noise, wobbling back and forth, especially when on high? The problem was probably an unbalanced fan. There are many ways to combat an unbalanced fan, but I will tell you what we did.

First, I tested the fan to see if the fan blades were unbalanced (one might be higher than the others, etc). I clipped a clothespin to one fan blade at a time, turned the fan on high, and watched for changes. Most times, the fan wobbled even worse. Only on one blade did the wobbling seem to get a little better. So I tried two clothespins on that blade, only to see that it made it worse. Evidently the blades were not the problem.

Next, Jon took the fan down from the ceiling. This isn't the most fun task in the world, and make sure you have someone nearby to hold screws and be of general help. He tightened the metal mounting into the ceiling. It was loose, so we presumed it to be the problem. However, even then, he could still rock the mounting back and forth. Hm...

So, Jon took a couple of small blocks of foam and stuffed them in the areas where the mounting was rocking on the ceiling (picture a see-saw, only upside-down with the ceiling as the ground). That did the trick! Once the fan was reassembled, we cranked it up and enjoyed a much more pleasant sound: air whooshing around the fan blades and onto our faces. No more banging and fear that the entire contraption might fall off and attack me in the night. Hooray!

So, sometimes Google searches are all you need to get the job done; other times, you gotta add in a little ingenuity and innovation.

The CatGenie

I got an e-mail from Petco today with a new product highlighted: the CatGenie. One reviewer equated it to the move from bedpans to today's toilets. As I sit here, my nose reminds me that today is the day to change Friday's litter. Ugh. If it weren't for the cost--$279.99 (and that's with a $90-off sale)--I think this might be a great idea. Get it while it's hot; the sale ends tomorrow!

The best spot in the house

It's funny how smart cats are. What seems to be an idiosyncrasy can end up being something very intelligent. Take, for example, where Friday sleeps. In the winter, he sleeps on the bed--day and night. He doesn't ever curl up with us, but he likes the cushy mattress and the warmth it holds. In the summer, he sleeps on the tile, where it's nice and cool. He also sleeps on the carpet right next to the tile. This didn't make sense to me for awhile, until I realized that he's actually choosing the spot not for it's fuzzy nature, but because it's next to the air intake for the air conditioner. The air intake creates a breeze, much like a fan, which we all know makes it easier to sleep. So, I'll label this with the "innovation" label, so that one day, when you're in a place with no fan, you can make sure you nap next to the air intake!

Let's Goog it

I like to check out Google Labs every once in awhile. You can find some really neat stuff that will be coming soon. And Google is happy for you to try out the new things.

One thing I've tried lately is Goog-411. It's a free phone service that will connect you to the business of your choice. It uses the Google search engine and database, which works just as quickly on the phone as on the web. I've used it twice, and you simply dial 1.800.GOOG.411. Then state the city and state, then the name of the business. An automated voice repeats back what you say. When you've confirmed that Goog 411 has found the business you need, you say, "Connect," and voila! Your phone is ringing, and the business of choice is on the other side.

This is really handy for people who have cell phones, but don't have internet access on their phones. We've used it on the way to a movie place, to check on times before we got there. It would also be good to order your food at Chili's or Applebees, who both offer curbside service. Order while you're on your way there, and pick it up on arrival. Or if you're out running errands, and need to find out if your dry cleaning is ready before wasting a detour over there. The possibilities are endless!

"Google" has become a verb. And I think "Goog" just might as well. Next time you're out and about, try Googing something, just for the heck of it.

Fireplace Innovation

The fireplace is the least energy-efficient part of most homes. Our fireplace leaks when it's raining, so we guessed that our heat and cool air whoosh in and out as well. We decided to make an insulating board to cover up the fireplace. Jon took some measurements, we made a couple trips to Home Depot, put on a couple layers of paint and some glue, added insulation on the back and weather-stripping around the side, and voila! A pretty, yet efficient, fireplace cover.

Things I do to amuse myself

Yesterday I did not have a good day. It seemed like it took me forever to drive in to work. I honestly thought, "I've been driving so long, I must have passed it up altogether!" But no, it just felt long. Then, I got to work and realized that my lunch plans had been canceled, and I would be eating lunch by myself. "Fine," I thought. "I'll just catch up on blogs during lunch."

But no, my internet wasn't working. Apparently my floor's wireless internet decided not to let me play. So, unless I spent the entire day in my brother's office on another floor (where the wireless did work), I would have no internet. "Fine," I thought. "I've got the desktop computer that stays in my cubicle. I'll just use that for internet." But no, that computer decided to commit suicide before my very eyes. I've never seen it happen before, but there it was. Everything was lost, and it took the entire day just to restore the operating system. No internet there, either.

"Fine," I thought. "I'll just call Jon during lunch, and maybe he won't be busy, and we'll have a good conversation." But no. A misunderstanding led to a frustrating and much-abbreviated phonecall. So by the time I hung up, I decided I was having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

So, instead of moving to Australia (click link above to understand), I decided to vent with some creativity. And it really did make me feel better. It wasted about 30 minutes, but I figure it was time well-wasted to get my attitude back where it should be.

Without the internet, I couldn't search through stock photography for the perfect photo for our next magazine ad. The theme for it would be, "Working with Texas Life is as easy as..." and my assignment was to find something that denoted "easy." I had decided on, "Working with Texas Life is a walk in the park." To really catch attention, I wanted the park walker to be something unique. Without the ability to search for photography, I decided to do what I haven't done in a long time--sketch the idea out.

Here is the setting:

And here are my different park inhabitants:

I cut each of them out, and placed them in the park. My favorite is the elephant. One, because it's the only one that really fits proportionally, and two, because I just like elephants.
Although the skipping penguin really makes me laugh, too.

The idea didn't go over so well with the rest of the team. They decided it was creative and funny, but not in the normal vein of Texas Life's ads. We decided on something more sedate, most likely, "Working with Texas Life is as easy as child's play" with a photo of children playing. No, it won't catch people's attention as much, but it won't be vastly different from the previous ads, either.

But that's okay. The therapeutic value of these drawings vastly outweighs my coworkers opinion of them. And my day turned out just fine.

Innovation #14

Situation: The cars ahead of you on the road are kicking up lots of dirty water, which is instantly drying on your car windshield, obscuring your view.

Problem: Your windshield wiper fluid seems to be frozen, or empty, or something. At any rate, it's not coming out to clean your windshield.

Solution: Get behind the vehicle kicking up the most water (in my case, a semi), and use that water to clean your windshield. Yeah, it's still dirty, but it's enough liquid for your wipers to work with to get the rest of the dirt off.

I know. I'm a genius.

A Texas Winter Innovation

*Well, I'm making a habit of writing time-specific posts and not posting them. Here is a post I wrote yesterday in regards to the crazy weather.
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Today was a snow day! The office was closed, so I had a day off, and Jon's work is also closed this evening! What a great day!

I was especially excited because I had a new recipe I was going to try today, and it was perfect for such a cold day. I invited my neighbor over for lunch, then busied myself with preparations. I put in Garlic and Herb bread into our bread machine (yummy!) and then proceeded to cut the items necessary for my new recipe: Golden Potato Soup. Then I realized I had no potatoes.

Well, that would not do. I needed potatoes. I had forgotten I told Jon to throw out the ones we had before we left for our trip. They were getting a little questionable, and who knows how they would have fared over our week away. However, I had forgotten all that, and in my mind, there were six perfect potatoes in the fridge. In reality, there were none.

Jon, my knight in shining armor, volunteered to brave the roads to Kroger. Elated, I set out to ready the car for his mission. I opened the house door, and was met with a sea of snow. Hm...I've never needed a snow shovel before, but it sure would be handy.

*light bulb!*

Ah ha! I could use a cutting board! I have several flexible cutting boards from IKEA. I use two for food, and two are for craft projects. I grabbed one from my craft pile, snatched my hat from my closet, pulled on my mittens, and was ready to go...still in my pyjamas and robe, but quite toasty warm.

So there I was, bent over at the waist, scooping a path out of the snow from our door to the car door, and to my neighbor's house, since she would need to walk over for lunch. Then I scooped all the snow off the car, which was pretty exciting. That was a lot of snow. And it turns out my car doesn't look very white next to snow. More of a grey. Kinda sad, really.

With that accomplished (quite quickly, I might add), I dropped my hat, mittens, and house shoes, all now quite soaked with melting snow, into the washing machine and proceeded to get ready for the day. By the time I was done, Jon was back with my potatoes! On with the soup-making!

My friend, Teresa, recently posted about allrecipes.com. My recipe today is from there. One of the greatest things about the site is all the reviews. If you're ever interested in a certain recipe, be sure and read the reviews. Because of them, I adjusted the original soup recipe to use 1/2 and 1/2, and chicken broth, as many others had done. I also didn't use any meat, when it calls for ham.

Teresa's blog also brought up a conversation of protecting recipe cards. Some people use page protectors, some have special recipe holders with guards on them. I use a clothes pin. I simply take my recipe page and pin it up to my cabinet. It's at eye-level, well above all the action, and easy to read. Anyway, it works if you don't have protectors handy, and you're more of a spontaneous, not-so-organized person like me. (If you look closely at the picture, you'll get my mom's recipe for roast!)

Anyway, the soup recipe turned out great. I would highly recommend it. I doubled the recipe, and I'm glad I did. Now we have leftovers for tonight! It took about an hour to prepare and cook (not counting the trip to Kroger), and was very simple. Paired with the herb bread, lunch was excellent.

Then Holly and I spent the rest of the afternoon playing Phase 10. What a great game.

All in all, a wonderful snow day! The sun's going down now, and it's starting to get really chilly again. We'll see what tomorrow brings us!

How to Bathe a Cat

First of all, this topic is not for the faint of heart. You have to know your own cat, and each one will act differently. As a matter of fact, each one may act a different way each time. So always stay on your toes. Reading this and following these directions will in no way hold me liable to any injury caused in the process of bathing a cat. Proceed with caution.

1. Find a partner in crime. It takes two people to wash a cat.
2. Gather your materials before getting the cat. These are: cat shampoo (not people shampoo), an old bath towel, a sink with a spray nozzle attachment.
3. Turn the water on in the sink to start warming it up. Warm it to where it feels neutral to your hand or slightly warmer. Cats are warmer than humans, and it will feel colder to them.
4. Find the cat. Suggestions: under the bed, back corner of the closet, the mystery place you haven't yet found, but he always seems to disappear to.
   
5. One person needs to hold the cat with two hands under the cat's armpits. Let the cat's back feet rest on the floor of the sink. Be sure and stop up the sink drain so the cat doesn't accidentally slip and get a foot stuck in it. You may have to pause the process and drain the sink periodically.
6. The other person needs to quickly wet down the cat with the sprayer. Wet everything but the cat's head. Ignore the yowling that may commence. The cat is not in pain; it just thinks it is. If the cat begins to resist and struggle, have the holder restrain any part that is trying to move, or lift the cat above the sink, so he has no leverage. Do not bring the cat near your shirt, or you will most likely receive several new unneccessary buttonholes.
7. After the cat is sufficiently wet, squirt a fair amount of shampoo all over the cat (again avoiding the head).
8. Vigorously scrub the cat, making sure you get soap all the way through the thick coat. Concentrate on areas that attract dirt, like paws.
9. Again use the sprayer to hose down the cat. Start at the top, and rinse all the way down. Be sure to get as much soap off as possible. Even though it is pet soap, it's not good to ingest too much.
10. Apologize when you accidentally hose down the holder, as well.
11. At this point, use your wet hands to gently wipe down your cat's face. Only do what it necessary to clean your cat's head. You don't want water going in their ears or eyes.
12. Drape a bath towel over both arms, covering your chest.
13. Have the holder place the cat in the towel hammock you've created.
14. Immediately wrap the cat tightly in the towel. The cat will not be happy, and will want to use his claws for evil, as well as jump as far away as he can. By wrapping up both back and front legs, you can keep this from happening.
15. While keeping the towel tight, vigorously rub the cat down. Cats get cold easily, and you don't want excess water in their fur. (Do not give a cat a bath during winter.) While it seems like a good idea, a hair dryer usually doesn't go over too well with cats.
    
16. Slow your rub-down to a pet, and speak soothingly to your cat. Try to calm him down before letting him go. If he'll take it, give him a treat.
17. Release the cat.
18. Go change your clothes, as, despite your efforts, you will now be soaking wet.
19. Watch as the cat proceeds to lick every clean part of him, undoing all your hard labor.

Friday has had this process periodically ever since he was small enough to bathe holding him in one hand, and it only took a hand towel to dry him off. Now he soaks a full-blown bath towel, and tries to make as much mess as he can. The first time we bathed Buddy, he went completely limp. Jon was holding him, and he was dead weight the whole time. He had no idea what we were doing to him, and I think he would have rather been dead. The next time, he was much wiser, and decided he didn't want any more of that. It turns out cats can be quite strong!

Cats don't really need baths unless they get into something. Most of the time, they clean themselves just fine (unless, like Jon, you think that cat spit could in no way be considered clean). Bathing a cat once a month helps control the amount of dried saliva on a cat's skin, which is what causes allergic reactions in people.

So there you have it. Nineteen steps to a clean cat, and a happier you. Okay, maybe you won't be too happy. And yes, I'll understand if you reconsider the importance of a clean cat after this.

But you now have a clean cat, and your cat feels he has taught you a valuable lesson. All in all, a worthwhile venture.

The Ghetto-Fabulous Cat Tree

Well, this blog is about innovations, so today I have a new one for you. What do you do with two boxes and one hyperactive kitty? You put the first two together and let the third climb in!

I cut a hole between the two boxes so Friday could climb between the two, and hung a string with a jingle ball on the end for him to play with.


Tada! A ghetto-fabulous cat tree! Who needs a hundred bucks? Just raid your trash can! And I've got one kitty that's happy from head to toe....



And if Friday ever decides he's going in and not coming out (if the cat carrier comes out to go to the vet, for example), we simply cut the tape on the box and pull him out! Then tape it back up again! This might be a little more complicated if I ever decided to paint it, but the idea would still work.

The jingle ball on the string was Jon's idea. We looked everywhere for Friday's jingle balls. He should have about 12 laying around the house, and we couldn't find any anywhere! I finally remembered that there was one behind the fridge that Friday tries to get at every once in awhile. Jon pulled the fridge back, and there was not one, but seven jingle balls! Friday thought it was Christmas all over again!

Possible improvements in the future:

• Paint it
• Add nubby fabric to one side for Friday to scratch
• Suspend a string on the outside of the box
• Put a carpet sample at the top entrance for Friday to scratch

So many possibilities....and to think: you, too, can own such an invention, for the low low price of a dumpster dive!

Weekend Project

This past weekend was the perfect weekend for a Spring Project. Anyone who's seen these benches before know they were grey, weathered and rickety. I sanded them down, tightened all the screws, and primed and painted Friday night and Saturday morning. On Saturday, I planted all my seeds in my new pots. Thank you, everyone, for the gardening things for my birthday!

Now this is the view I see from my window as I work. When the paint cures enough the long pots will go on the benches. I can't wait to see the plants start to come up!

Cool things I learned today

Today I have learned several (at least a couple) cool new things:


1) I have found a great way to hide those pesky bra straps when wearing a tank top. Simply slide a bobby pin onto your tank top strap and make sure the bra strap gets hooked in, too! I put the bobby pins about where my shoulder blades are, so they wouldn't be seen in the front. Worked like a charm. I think I'm going to start a trend. I wonder if I could market them in clear...The Bra Pin, The Strap Strapper, The Most Amazing Bobby Pin! Well, the name needs a little work, but I feel like a genius! :)



2) You can go to the front desk at the Student Center of Southwestern and they'll give you a little cup of fish food to feed the fish in the pond--for free! The only fish that ate were the little tiny ones, not the big koi that stayed down in the cooler water at the bottom. But there were tons of little fish. At one point, I had thrown food all over the pond, and there were bubbles everywhere from all the fish going for the food!




3) This one's still tentative; jury's out 'til suppertime. But I think I found a new way to cook chicken. I read a recipe and then thought I would sort of make a variation. I put hot water, butter, garlic, chicken buillion, and dill (left over from the pickles) in a casserole dish and then the chicken and I'm baking "at 350 until golden brown." :) Or at least until it's not pink in the middle. We'll see how it turns out in maybe another 20 or 30 minutes. I'm hoping the chicken buillion adds flavor and juiciness to the chicken, and the dill a little extra tang.

So those are my discoveries for today! Therefore, go ye out and change the world with what ye have learned herein! :)