This is Samantha getting a bath:
She looks adorable, right?
Why is Samantha getting a bath at 11pm on a Friday night? Because sometimes Samantha accidentally eats one of Tammy’s two foot long hairs, and when she goes to do her business, it turns into something like those edible strings of candy, but with poop, and they follow her around the house and you only notice them when she does something like jump up on the ottoman with a six inch strand of poop hair attached to her.
How is your evening.
Mary G
Looks like a good way for Samantha to cool off. Hope everyone in the heat wave is managing to stay comfortable.
Skepticat
Not an awful lot better, as the cats have decided to deposit disgusting things—but from the other end, fortunately. You have my empathy, however.
Duane
You came here to tell us that. Thanks for sharing.
Jay
Has Subaru Dianne checked in today?
Aleta
Is it possible to take a picture of her that *isn’t* cute. #Guinnessrecord
Steeplejack
@Mary G:
Lying low here in Threadkill Lane in NoVA. Still 86° at 11:30 p.m. Supposed to hit 100° tomorrow and Sunday. Might go out (very) early tomorrow to pick up a few things. All I’m worried about is the power going out, because then things indoors would get very hot very fast.
lamh36
(opening post) Awww…cute picture…
(reads post) uh… https://media.giphy.com/media/l3q2wMdhTXm84vbaw/giphy.gif
FYI, I finally started watching Schitt’s Creek, and I AM OBSESSED! Just finished season 1 and already I want Schitt’s Creek and Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy to win EVERYTHING!
Good luck at the Emmys to the show and O’Hara and Levy and thank you so much to whoever recommended the show!
Elizabelle
Samantha looks like a little otter.
Aleta
I feel pretty bad tonight, dismal news from friends about racism at a workplace and a proposed wildlands development, and the msm news is just not sane.
Mary G
Grumpy greedy Wilmer isn’t suffering these uppity employees:
He’s a millionaire and he can’t cough up overtime pay? Funny thing is that he wanted them to unionize.
Jay
@Aleta:
If you want to yell and rant, this is a good place to do it.
Peale
Gah. Catching up on Thai series and one of the characters drops “fake news” into the dialog. I watch these things to ESCAPE that.
Mel
The hair ingestion fiasco happens occasionally with cats as well.
It’s particularly disturbing when it happens with the cat that likes to climb into the bed at 2:30 a.m. in order to sleep on your pillow, curled around your head. Yes, indeedy. Not much outpaces the horror of awakening to find the equivalent of a cat poo add-a-bead necklace casually draped across one’s forehead.
Steeplejack
Scotian checked in downstairs a couple of hours ago.
Mary G
@Steeplejack: Thanks for putting that up. We should help with the costs, how?
I appreciate your efforts as Balloon Juice historian.
CaseyL
My god, I am sooo grateful all my cats do is vomit in bed and thoughtfully hide it under a pillow so I don’t notice until I’m on the verge of falling asleep and slide my arm under said pillow.
(Actually, that only happened once. More often, one of them will vomit somewhere between the bedroom and the bathroom so that I step in it, in the dark, in the middle of the night.)
Poop smell lingers longer than vomit smell. Ask me how I know this :)
sukabi
@Mary G: I suspect he’s fine with the theory of unions, but the reality – as it affects HIS bottom line – was something he hadn’t quite figured out yet. I suspect for Bernie it’s more about rainbow and unicorn sound bytes without a lot of thought or planning put into practical application.
eemom
The tongue.
That is all.
Steeplejack
@lamh36:
Schitt’s Creek is great, but my complaint is that my brother is also obsessed with it and always wants to binge-watch some episodes whenever I go over there.
Steeplejack
@Mary G:
We’ll kick it upstairs to a front-pager and, presumably, do a fund-raiser.
eemom
@Steeplejack:
Belated thanks for the info about Lost Dog Cafe. Ordered pizza from there for the first time last night and you were totally right!
As an expat new yorker who has lived almost 30 years in this godforsaken wasteland, my life has been a constant forlorn search for pizza that does not, at least, suck.
Major Major Major Major
Oh dear!
It is hot here in the northeast, too. So of course I’m going to a camping thing tomorrow ?
And baking shortbread right now, so maybe I’m just weird.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
I sent Anne Laurie an email about Scotian.
John Revolta
@Mary G:
Bernie thought of it. He also knows that, as election day approaches, he’s gonna be sitting in Vermont, bitching to anyone who’ll listen about how he wuz robbed.
Mnemosyne
Yesterday I discovered that when one of the cats had horked up a hairball on the bed, he strained so hard that he left a poop behind, too.
Fortunately I heard it happen and we were able to wash everything right away. It’s actually worse when they do it when we’re at work because then we don’t find it until we’re getting into bed.
Steeplejack
@eemom:
Glad you liked it! The pizza is especially amazing since it’s a place that doesn’t feel like pizza is a specialty. Lately I’ve been getting sausage, black olives and feta cheese.
The Lost Dog Lager on tap is good too, if you like beer.
Juju
Poor Samantha. She looks very concerned. All I have to say is Schitt happens.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
ETA: Not an ex-pat New Yorker, but I feel you on the hunt for pizza. I’m the same way about Mexican food, i.e., true Tex-Mex. Most places around here are Mexican/something else. Can be a little inconsistent: good on some items, not on others.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jay:
I’m here, and doing much better! Thank you for asking.
Jay
https://freethoughtblogs.com/stderr/2019/07/19/more-about-notre-dame/
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
I am lucky in that the housecat does a little preliminary audible heaving before she throws up, so I can get to her and put her on the floor. Actually, at night she does that herself. She has never thrown up on the bed, but occasionally I have awakened to the sound of her throwing up on the floor beside the bed. Good times.
Jay
@SiubhanDuinne:
Good, if you have the shakes, it goes away after a couple of days.
Sleeping is harder.
Doug R
Boy, that Wilmer sure sounds like management, and not in a good way.
Major Major Major Major
@SiubhanDuinne: I saw your post this morning. Welcome aboard the wagon!
Roger Moore
@Mel:
How about being awakened by having the cat drop a half-dead animal on you?
Major Major Major Major
I just watched the Cats trailer and I don’t see what got everybody worked into a tizzy. It’s exactly what you’d expect a movie version of Cats to be like.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mary G: It would be kind of embarrassing if they went on strike.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: Tex-Mex isn’t Mexican Food.
Mike in NC
@lamh36: I watched half of Season 1 of Schitt’s Creek last year and loved it. Talked the wife into watching from the beginning today and now we’re bingeing it.
Jay
Mellow, who’s not, horks up water, in two chunks,
Lil’Bit, who’s not, eats a full belly of dry food, horks it up partially digested in three piles, huge to small.
Hairballs arn’t an issue, because they get half a teaspoon of Vasaline once every two weeks.
Steeplejack
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Die, heretic!
Aleta
@SiubhanDuinne: Hey there. Been thinking about you today.
Read what you want to. If you like to read Hallmark greetings cards, then read lots of Hallmark greeting cards.
W.S. Merwin
The earth is leaning sideways
And a song is emerging from the floods
And fires. Urgent tendrils lift toward the sun.
You must be friends with silence to hear.
The songs of the guardians of silence are the most powerful —
They are the most rare.
From “Singing Everything” copyright © 2019 by Joy Harjo. To be published in “An American Sunrise,” by Joy Harjo
From John Cage’s rules for students
RULE ONE: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for a while.
RULE FOUR: Consider everything an experiment.
RULE FIVE: Be self-disciplined: this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.
RULE SIX: Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.
RULE EIGHT: Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time. They’re different processes.
RULE NINE: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.
ljt
@SiubhanDuinne: Missed the thread earlier. Someone here back in January mentioned Holly Whitaker and Hip Sobriety, an online/virtual 2 month ‘school’ which has now become Tempest. I’m now 6 months sober–I highly recommend the program. Wishing you all the best.
Aleta
I really really terribly miss my cat who used to throw up.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: You first, heretic. Tex-Mex is Tex-Mex. Mexican Food is very different(and better in my and the kid’s opinion).
Aleta
@?BillinGlendaleCA: @?BillinGlendaleCA: New Mexican food is in its own realm, and I’ve never found it even in NYC like it is in NM. I haven’t tried for quite awhile though, so that could be wrong.
jl
Thanks for very cute Samantha pic.
And thanks I guess, for more proof this is America’s premier pet poop blog (that used to be a rotating header, I think)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Aleta: I’ve not been to NM since I was 4, I don’t remember the food. I have been to Texas as an adult and have had Tex-Mex, I’ve also been to several parts of Mexico as an adult, Tex-Mex ain’t Mexican Food.
Mnemosyne
There was a “help wanted” sign at the Habit when I stopped to grab a quick dinner and they’re offering starting pay of $14.75 to $16.25 an hour for cashiers and cooks.
For non-Californians, the Habit is good quality fast food — more In N Out than McDonalds.
Suzanne
@SiubhanDuinne: I hear the first day is the hardest, so there you go—the hard part is over!
Just finally checking in for the first time today. Spawn the Youngest has been keeping us busy. And Spawn the Elder is going to start medical transition (hormones) in October, so I had to take him early this morning to the doctor who is the transition specialist. If there is a fund for Scotian, I am in. I hope front-pagers can put up a link.
smike
@Steeplejack:
Same about texmex here, and I live near Austin. Rarely go there anymore, but even around here the food varies. Nice to have options, though.
Aleta
@?BillinGlendaleCA: To me Mexican food (not Tex Mex) is the food where it’s not called “Mexican food” or a “Mexican restaurant,” it’s just the food there. They have that in NM too.
Mel
@Roger Moore: You’ve had the “Bon appetit, human!” delight as well?
Stunned, saliva drenched mouse, dropped square on the mouth. There’s no amount of Listerine / Lysol/ horrified leaping and flailing about that can turn that moment around!
Suzanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I’m with you here. Tex-Mex isn’t Mexican. Arizona mostly has Sonoran food, though there is some Baja and Chihuahuan here. Even some Oaxacan. But Tex-Mex is wholly other, and not as good, IMO.
Aleta
Yes i have thought many a time of leaving this place
but like the love in my heart
its memory always stays
And if the sky can be
as beautiful as it was today
then I will surely stay
living here in The Pass
Mario Otero “The Pass”
(His hometown El Paso)
BR
Why haven’t we seen the video of Chairman Cummings grilling DHS everywhere? That was the most clear I’ve seen this situation laid out.
Luciamia
One heat-wave soaked July night, my dog decided to kill a skunk. That was the reason for her 11 p.m. bath. And two more after that.
Aleta
I had a white cat with a red tail, very territorial. One night late (also in July) she got hit by a skunk. We washed her in the only thing we had, tomato paste. It didn’t work, but she turned pink and it lasted past Halloween.
smike
@Suzanne:
Yes, Tex-Mex is its own thing, hence the qualifier in the name. I prefer it to many of the other genres that I have tried throughout the southern US. Tex-Mex cheese enchiladas w/chili gravy, refried beans, rice, and lettuce/tomato salad all mixed together and splashed with salsa… I mean, come on…
Fair Economist
All these dog and cat bodily excretion stories are making me happy my hubby and I can’t have dogs or cats due to allergies. We have a rabbit, and he pees on the furniture now and again (less and less often, though) but no horror stories. One rabbit owner won a “nastiest rabbit pee episode” thread with “he peed in my mouth” but I don’t think mine would ever do that.
Luciamia
@Aleta: Funny, anything helps, regular soap, tomato juice, vinegar. Anything to counteract the sky skunk chemical. But the next day she came in from outside reeking again. She must have been rolling skunk drenched grass.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Aleta: One place I really liked back when I worked for Satan was a place in LA’s Grand Central Market called “Mexican Food”, they had the best tortas. Unfortunately they’re no longer there.
Jay
Jay
@Luciamia:
@Aleta:
Hydrogen peroxide works best.
When skunks were a possibility, we always kept a gallon of Nature Clean, a hydrogen peroxide bleach alternative handy,
Now getting out rotten, decayed salmon, that’s a different kettle of fish.
?BillinGlendaleCA
I went on an adventure today, Pasadena and DTLA. Here’s a shot of Pasadena’s City Hall in IR.
Aleta
@Jay: Yeah, it was around 1990. But a few years later a recipe was distributed, 1 container of h perox,+ 1/4 cup baking soda + a few drops of dish detergent, that worked like a charm on the next cat.
Ruckus
I was lucky when I had my bicycle shop. Next door was a great tacoria. Before the recession they would have a line out the door at lunch. After it hit and as it developed that line got shorter and shorter. The owners were a couple with 2 kids in college. But they were still there and doing better when I left. And they still are today. They have lasted because they are very good.
However, my taste may not be all it’s cracked up to be, I also liked a place east of downtown LA called Mike’s Hockey Burger. Second generation owner when I ate there in the 70s and 80s, with pictures on the wall of the original owner who played ice hockey with the Blackhawks. His son, who owned it by then was a ringer for his old man. So much so that it took me about 10 yrs to figure out that had been his dad. I went back in 2012 before it closed and the young girl who had worked as a casher was still there after over 35 yrs. The specialty was a cheeseburger/hot dog in the same sandwich called, you guessed it, a Hockey Burger. It was nasty good. And also often had a line out the door. It wasn’t the only sandwich.
Suzanne
@smike: Naw dog. Sonoran all the way. Tex-Mex has too much of the “Tex” for my liking.
Ruckus
@Aleta:
Had a golden retriever growing up, she liked to bring any stray animals that ventured in the back yard up on the back porch. Skunks were her favorite. They weren’t ours. Never seemed to hurt them or my sisters pet duck, a full grown mallard. The duck never learned how to do anything but bleat out when he was caught. The skunks? Nature made it impossible for them to not know how to get away.
mrmoshpotato
@lamh36:
My thoughts too, except I’m repeatedly saying “Ewww!” out loud.
This kind of sharing is NOT caring, Cole!
Ewww!
frosty
@eemom: I was just at a Lost Dog Cafe in Binghamton NY. Different place?
frosty
@Aleta: I got hit by a skunk many years ago late in the evening. Groceries were closed, liquor stores open … Bloody Mary Mix. LOL.
piratedan
@Suzanne: its like most things I guess, Mexico has its regional cooking just like the US does, I happen to agree that I think that the Sonoran style is the best (mostly beef, chicken, pork based with an emphasis on the sauces that are served as an accent) but there’s plenty of great Baja and Oaxacan choices here in AZ too. I think Tex-Mex is too focused on heat versus spice, but ymmv. So much of what you get is dependent on the quality of the chili used (shout out to the NM folks and their awesome Hatch chilis) in order to flavor the main dish but also the side quality is important as a compliment, be it beans, rice or calabacitas or what have you… We do have taco trucks and sonoran dog stands on quite a few corners here in Tucson, but like most locals around here, many of the best places are located in what looks like it used to be somebody’s house…
Steeplejack (phone)
@frosty:
Arlington, VA.
Amir Khalid
@Mel:
I have a cat, and your comment makes me glad that I wear a buzz cut.
Skepticat
@Aleta: The mental picture of a pink cat made my day—and made me drench my keyboard in coffee. (Thank goodness for silicone keyboard covers.)
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack:
Wow. I’m in to help Scotian.
lurker dean
@Steeplejack: thanks, i missed that. i’m in to help for whatever reason.
J R in WV
Best Mexican food in Tucson is actually in the little town of South Tucson, which is now surrounded by Tucson, but still apart from Tucson. I guess it was once the Mexican town next door? Great real food. Found it when I was buying cheap kitchen cabinets for the house in Gleeson. They’re all good, just get off at the correct exit on I-10.
Around here most of our local Mexican food is from Jalisco, and I prefer it a little bit to Sonoran. But it’s all good1
Ruckus
@smike:
I sort of agree. I’ve eaten “Mexican” food in many places and countries, including Mexico and New Zealand, and if it’s done right with good ingredients, it’s very good.
Two places I’ve liked a lot First, Ponchito’s in San Gabriel CA across the street from the mission. Dad was in the Shriners with the veg supplier, we ate there often over 3 decades. Amazing food, here’s a small obit about the owner. Second was in Monterey, CA. It’s also gone now. Ate there once or twice a year for probably 20 yrs. Also amazing food.
This getting old shit is getting old.