Just checking that just because I've not been paying attention, LIFE on LJ still goes one. I'd like that.

(Plus, dayum, they've changed the way this looks. I'll have to figure out how to do things all over again. Um . . . don't hold your breath.)

One of my fav lazy charities to click on once a day -- and learn something about cats or dogs -- is FREEKIBBLE. Mimi Ausland, a 12 year old girl from Bend, Oregon, wanted to help feed the hungry animals at her local animal shelter. She came up with the idea of freekibble.com for dogs/freekibblekat.com for cats -- with kibble donated by Castor and Pollux cat/dog food. Since it's beginning in April 2008, nearly 27 million pieces of kibble -- @ 925,000 meals -- have been donated because of internet clicks.

Freekibble.com's primary mission is to provide good, healthy food to dogs and cats to those shelters who are working so hard to see that none of them go hungry - they need our help. In addition to providing free kibble to the Humane Society of Central Oregon, we've added 11 new shelters to the program (from Oregon to Florida!) and plan to expand the program to many more! Thanks to everyone for supporting freekibble by playing the trivia game - every piece of kibble counts!

ANOTHER lazy click in a few seconds place that donates to more than a few causes is:


Save The World - One Click At A Time!

On each of these websites, you can click a button to support the cause -- each click creates funding, and COSTS YOU NOTHING. You will not be spammed with email ads, and it's easy to ignore the ads for things you don't want to buy on the site. (Yes, advertizers pay a small price for being on this site, that's what generates the funding.

Bookmark these sites -- or sign up to have them send an email reminder with a link -- and click once a day!





Click here to post this on your page or 'blog

SNOPES confirms that YES, you really can just click and MAKE SOMETHING REAL and GOOD HAPPEN on the other end.

( Detailed Info Under Cut.Collapse )

that show that people in pain perceive the degree to be less when they are instructed to/allowed to curse out loud. Those who were instructed to grin and bear it perceived more pain level. (a/k/a "Troubles shared are troubles halved.")

Right now, I've got a couple of people in my life I would give anything to punt. Soooo tired of accommodating their personality quirks, turning myself into a pretzel to not discomfit them. My comfort? Doesn't count as much.

So weary of being A Nice Person when I just want to scream "YOU ARE THE WEAKEST LINK FUCK OFF!!!!!!!!!!!"

Anyone want to give me lessons in Bitch 101?

(This is a recurring theme with me. Ignore if you've been this route before.)

Went out the back door just now to bring out garbage/recycling, and there was a HUGE FAT raccoon sniffing around for the cat kibble I leave out for a cat that keeps coming around late at night. (Can't tell if the cat is feral or owned: no collar and it runs when it sees me, which doesn't prove anything.) S/he looks up at me expectantly, not at all afraid of me. I hated to do it but I scared it off by stamping my feet and making barking noises at it. Me? I'd love to have him hang out there, unafraid of me. But not being afraid of people is really bad for *them,* so I consider I'm doing them a favor, much as I loathe to. Rather than learn to live with them, my neighbors would rather exterminate them. Nevermind that this was their land before we took it over.

In other news, the plan for cutting down on feeding the skunks and raccoons in the yard continues. Not every day, less and less, so that by spring they will come to the restaurant to find it NOT open for business. The vet at New England Wildlife assures me that I haven't retrained their instincts out of them, and they'll move on to where the food is.

My big question for me, that no one so far can answer, is: exactly WHAT food is there, and WHERE? We've paved Paradise, pesticided all the lots. I live in the town between Lexington and Cambridge, not sure it can even call itself "suburbia" really. So they'll garbage- and restaurant dumpster-dive instead? I don't see that as an improvement to getting healthy scraps and kitty kibble in my fenced in yard. (sigh) But I do understand and even agree with the advice that wild things should stay wild. (Unless they can't, and then we have angels like Vinnie and Kindra Mammone and their family.)

I'm a hoarder. (I excuse myself with the rationalization that you can see my floor, use the bathroom, there's no keeping of garbage or recycling, etc. And I'm not keeping broken, unuseable things.) And I used to watch the Lifetime series Hoarders. And I identified with their rationalizations for keeping what they kept. I'm not the first to say "One person's trash is another person's treasure.") But I'm so against the set-up of the show because of the manipulated DRAHMAH! (Duh, like I should be surprised?)

1) They force hoarders to get rid of *everything* in a few days. Sometimes only one. They wipe the houses clean, down to nothing, no semblance of anything personal left -- and consider that a success. No wonder the hoarders end up feeling bereft and go out in a replacement frenzy afterwards.

2) Worse, they involve the hoarder's family! Bet anyone can predict what that causes: arguments, old family stuff revisited with a vengeance, buttons being pushed, near nervous breakdowns. And the alleged hoarding specialist psychologists watch it all go on. The hoarder is trapped, and set up to be tortured for our entertainment ‪#‎lions‬-vs-Christians.

Just sayin'. Since it showed up on the tv screen just now. Note to self: watch cute animal vids while you eat, not ANY "reality" show!

I read here every month or so. Posting less and less,* not feeling like being public about life and what's going on (no worries, mostly all is well: friends falling apart, but we're fine). Just don't have much oomph for it all lately. S.A.D. Low energy. A bit buffetted by everything thrown at me from all the media to the point of depression and learned helplessness. So I'm scaling down. Don't worry: you're not missing anything. :-)

*(well, except on FB, where it's sooo damn easy to just click "share" to have a conversation. No typing required. That's about my speed lately.)

But wow, I do miss being able to choose an icon to go with the emotion. Should really hang out here more. It's slower paced, I can keep up. Maybe.

I'm a city grrl, raised in Manhattan, moved to Boston in 1972, Cambridge in 1973, and then Arlington. When I moved to this house in 1990, with a big enclosed yard with lots of native plantings, blocks from more shelter and fresh water sources in a nearby park, I noticed urban wildlife, specifically skunks/raccoons/possums, would show up in the yard regularly. Probably on their way to the restaurant dumpsters on Mass Ave. (Where the kits might get trapped, or their tender paws cut on sharp edges of opened cans.) One bad winter I started feeding them (peanuts, raisins, apples, dry cat food). I've trained 23 years' worth of wild babies that my yard is the restaurant.

Not the brightest thing to do, but my heart was/is in the right place (compassion?), if not my brain.

And I'd keep doing it if I could, because we've paved paradise, put up a parking lot. I don't notice many natural fruit and nut trees here in pesticided urbia. Their other choices seem to me to be garbage, hit by cars, cut paws, etc. I worry. And I like them. In all this time, I've NEVER been skunked, or attacked. Maybe a mom will hiss at me if she's got babies nearby, but other than that we just leave eachother be. I move slowly near them, back off, don't startle them, and I especially don't impede their avenues of escape. I know to them *I'm* the Big Bad Scarey Monster, and they'd much prefer to avoid ANY confrontation with me.

I was warned years ago that I'd be inundated with far too many mouths to feed. Hasn't happened. Largest number of raccoons one year was 6: 4 kits, 2 adults. Before end of summer the older/more aggressive 'coons chase off the others, and I end up with 2-4 max.

My downstairs tenant built himself a shed in the yard. . . and the skunks soon took to living under it. No fools, they.

Recently, one of the neighbors has informed me that he doesn't like that they travel through his yard to get to and from mine. (So far, he's the ONLY one who's complained in all these years.) Last month he sent me a printout from the Audubon Society about a wild critter poop diseases, and we had a congenial chat about his concerns for his young daughter and his dog getting infected. He's now building a fence between our properties (as though THAT will keep them out of his yard, when for many years they've been traveling from the nearby park between the houses/in the backyards). AND his garage, where his garbage cans are kept, doesn't have doors. Good luck with that.

Even if I don't feed the critters, they WILL be here. Sure, they'll be here less often, and there will be less of them. But even neighbors far away who don't feed the animals see them regularly.

ANYWAY, since Tom and I hope to move further out in coming years, I agree that I need to stop training each new generation of critter kits that our yard is the restaurant of choice. So I've been cutting down on feeding: not every day, no human food anymore, scattered around the yard so they have to hunt for it, rather than in the usual feeding spots. Some night I hear them fighting frantically over the less and less that's there to share. I do still keep putting out fresh water. WHAT I'll do when the winter hits, I don't know. I like those guys, and I worry about them suffering. I don't know if the parents, once the kits who got taught our yard is the restaurant, have forgotten HOW to find food "naturally."

ANYWAY subclause A: I'd told the neighbor all this about untraining them and that it would take a while, I wasn't going to shut them off overnight. He seemed to understand. . . .

but lately I notice that when I'm in the yard, even not feeding, he is in his window VIDEOTAPING ME (or photographing me). He turns off the lights on his second floor and I can see the red blinking dot on his camera/vid. I can only guess he's trying to "catch me in the act" and then. . . I don't know what he intends. Report me to Animal Control? Sue me for endangering his daughter's health?

Google is little use to me in figuring out "Is is illegal to feed wildlife in MA?" Especially on one's own property.

But I'll be finding a lawyer to figure out if it's not just creepy but illegal for him to be filming me! I sometimes want to flash him either a big smile or the middle finger. For now, him not knowing I know he's doing it gives me the upper hand. Or whatever.

Boy I want to move!

And still not having much to say that can't be more easily posted in less less time on FaceBook. Where I am "Roam Gloam" because FB won't let me use Roaming IntheGloaming as a name. Wankers.

I'm reading y'all. But don't have the psychic energy to comment. Nor to post my own.

shrug

Let me sum up, and add "So Say We All!":

"Years ago, before the show had even come out, a family member recommended the Song of Ice and Fire series to me and used the fact that George R.R. Martin isn't afraid to kill off main characters as a selling point. I respect that in a storyteller, but recently it's gotten to a point where I no longer trust where the story is even going. Is it fair for Martin and the showrunners to ask us to become invested in their characters only to punish us when we inevitably do? I honestly don't know the answer.

What I do know is that my GoT loyalties have become as flexible as Roose Bolton's.

As for the fates of the surviving characters (apart from Jaime, Brienne and Arya), I honestly could not give less of a fuck and — yeah — that goes for Dany and Tyrion as well. What can anyone expect? Punish us and call us stupid for caring enough and we're bound to stop caring entirely.

Look, I'll strike a deal. Martin and HBO can keep their red weddings and Theon torture scenes (really, I'm not trying to make anyone give anything up) and I will stay invested if — IF — Joffrey gets slapped across the face at least once for every terrible thing that befalls someone undeserving. Also, it's one thing to stay true to the books, but I would really prefer it if you didn't add additional fucked up shit like you did last night."

And I just stopped following GRRM's LJ page. Wanker.