In case you needed another reason to enter my cookbook giveaway

via Mercy for Animals
Enter here to win a copy of Party Vegan or Vegan on the Cheap.

For information about making a positive change for yourself, the environment, and animals, go here, here, and here.

Hot Chocolate knows what I'm talking about

The other day, Hannah blogged about her dream of being someone's miracle. I was totally blown away by how eloquent and heartfelt her words were, and it reminded me that every single one of us twentysomethings (or whatever your age bracket is) can--and should--be a miracle worker. Most of us will never get a hospital wing named after us, it's true. But that shouldn't stop us from aiming to make miracles every day, no matter how small.

Helping those less fortunate than I am has always been important to me. As a small child, I felt so special when my parents gave me a quarter to put in the offering plate at church. When I was in elementary school, I donated my "life savings"--everything that was in my piggy bank--to have Girl Scout cookies sent to the Gulf War troops. In high school, I volunteered as a Salvation Army bell ringer. (I'll be honest, I only did that to get the requisite amount of National Honor Society hours. The bells drive me nuts! But I do still drop my change in the red buckets when I see them at the mall.)

Now that I'm an adult, I often feel guilty that I have so much when others have so little. I can't always help solve whatever the problem is directly, and let's be honest, volunteering is not always appealing. So, I put my money where my mouth is. Jason and I are lucky enough to be able to give monetary support to a variety of causes, and I get to spend every day helping a cause because I work for a charity. We give a few dollars each month to my organization, and we also make a larger annual donation.

So far this year, we've also given to Cell Phones for Soldiers and Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières. Past donations have gone to Computers with Causes, the Lowell Humane Society, Massachusetts SPCA, and ASPCA.

I like groups like Cell Phones for Soldiers and Computers with Causes because they help me recycle my outdated electronics while also supporting a good cause. I always send our old phones to Cell Phones for Soldiers--they sell the phones to companies that refurbish them and the proceeds are used to send phone cards to U.S. servicemembers overseas. For me, getting a call from Jason while he's deployed makes my day, week, and month, so making it possible for another lonely wife to hear from her hero is a no-brainer. The next time all you fancy pantses get a new Blackberry or iPhone, send the old one to Cell Phones for Soldiers!

Do you donate to or volunteer with any charities or groups? Or, if donating isn't in your budget, what cause is closest to your heart?

P.S. Lots of health-related charities fund cruel and useless animal tests. Don't throw your money away on that! You can find humane charities at HumaneSeal.org.

P.P.S. And just to end on an upbeat note:

Happy birthday, beebeards!

Did you know that June is Jacob and Jasper's birthday month?

It is! They're five years old this month.

Since we don't know what day they were born, we consider the whole month their birthday. What we do know is that they are littermates and that some idiot person dumped their tiny, adorable kitten butts at the Virginia Beach SPCA soon after they were born.

We adopted them a little bit later, when they were big enough to not require constant care, in August 2005, when they were two months old.

Who could resist these faces?


Not us.

Fittingly, June is also Adopt A Shelter Cat Month. I would like nothing better for my boys' birthday than to know that somebody out there gave a homeless cat or dog a second chance at life.

So, please, if you're thinking about sharing your life and home with a whiskerface, adopt!

Three to four million cats and dogs must be euthanized at shelters every year simply because there aren't enough homes for them. Every animal bought from a pet store or a breeder means that a sweet, loving animal at a shelter faces being put down.

Don't be a part of the problem. Adopt!

I'm glad that I did.

Happy birthday month, beebeards!


Do you have any rescued animals? Tell me about them!

Crazy Eights

Brittany tagged me in a game of Crazy 8s:

8 T.V. Shows I Watch
These are just shows that are currently on the four main networks. This doesn't even touch MTV or Food Network or summer season shows. What can I say, my DVR gets around.

1. Castle
2. American Idol
3. The Good Wife
4. Glee
5. Lost
6. FlashForward
7. Bones
8. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

8 Favorite Places to Eat and Drink
To keep things interesting, I'm going to limit this to non-national chain places that I've been to in California. These aren't necessarily my favorite places ever, but they're decent places that I can go currently. In no particular order...

1. Saddle Ranch Chop House, Universal City
2. Rock'n Fish, Los Angeles
3. Café Sierra, Universal City
4. Toshiko Japanese Cuisine, Hanford
5. Shine Café, Morro Bay
6. Taj Palace Cuisine of India, Visalia
7. Red Door Asian Bistro, Fresno
8. Thai Kitchen, Hanford

8 Things I Look Forward To

1. Five weeks from now when Jason is done with his current college class and has time to do fun stuff again.
2. The finale of Lost.
3. Seeing the number on the scale begin with a 1 again. Just a few more pounds!
4. Fitting into my size 14 pants again. And someday, even my size 12s.
5. My sister's wedding next year.
5. Finding and accessorizing bridesmaid dresses.
6. Any opportunity to be fancy.
7. Weekends.
8. Sleep.

8 Things That Happened Yesterday

1. I forced myself out of bed around 5:30 a.m., cleaned up the kitty litter boxes, started a load of Jasper's towels, and made Jason some coffee to take to work with him, as I do every weekday.
2. I worked from 6 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
3. I took Jasper to the vet.
4. I talked on the phone with my grandparents.
5. I wished my sister a happy birthday several times.
6. I took a nap in the evening.
7. Jason turned the air conditioning on while I was asleep.
8. I turned it off as soon as I woke up. It's still too soon!

8 Things I Like About Summer

1. Opening all of the windows and letting the breeze blow through the house.
2. The heat makes my cats even sleepier and lazier than usual.
3. So much sunshine!
4. Summer storms.
5. Fourth of July/our anniversary. We're coming up on five years together, four years married.
6. All the blockbuster action movies come out.
7. My birthday.
8. It is perfectly acceptable to play "Summertime" over and over and over.

8 Things I'm Passionate About

1. My husband
2. My family
3. Animal rights
4. Michigan State University
5. Charity
6. Recycling
7. the state of Michigan
8. My cats

8 Words or Phrases I Use Often

1. The F word. I am probably far more foul-mouthed than most of you think. But I usually only speak that way in front of my husband.
2. What do you want? (to a cat)
3. What are you doing? (to a cat)
4. You Ms. (to my sister)
5. All done! (to Jasper after injecting his insulin)
6. I love you.
7. Have a good day! (to Jason, every morning as he leaves for work)
8. How was your day? (to Jason, every day when he gets home from work)

8 Things I Have Learned From the Past

1. It's usually better to keep your legs closed.
2. Constantly walking into protruding doorknobs will leave nasty bruises on your forearms. See also: I've apparently lost all track of what my arms are doing when I'm walking about.
3. Liquor is quicker and tastes better.
4. Take home half of your dinner.
5. Take home dessert, too.
6. My passion is more important than my paycheck.
7. The coffee shop always smells good while you are there, but when you come home after a shift you will stink.
8. Water is better with a slice of lemon.

8 Places I'd Like to Visit
I'm going to list places to which I have never been. To see where I've already been, read my Where in the World Wednesday archive.

1. Disneyland
2. Hawaii
3. Alcatraz
4. Annapolis, Maryland (where my sister lives)
5. Sweden
6. Las Vegas
7. Williamsburg, Virginia
8. India

8 Things I Currently Want/Need

1. Want: a bowl of the nondairy ice cream in the freezer.
2. Want: a red purse.
3. Need: to vacuum the house.
4. Want: some cute new earrings to wear when I'm feeling fancy.
5. Need: to put away two loads of clean laundry from last weekend and wash all of this week's dirty clothes.
6. Want: some new art to fill up the last remaining blank walls in our house.
7. Need: to convince Jasper to use the litter box again.
8. Want: the scratch down the middle of my cleavage to heal. Thanks for that, Lola.

8 Bloggers I Tag to Play Along
You... times 8!

I might still add -Pitt to my last name, though.

If you've been reading this blog for a while or if you know me in real life, then you know that cats are kind of my thing. More specifically, rescuing them is my thing.

Our three cat children were plucked from the brink--Jacob and Jasper from the Virginia Beach SPCA in 2005, and Lola from the mean streets of Massachusetts in 2007. If we weren't renters, we would probably have more by now. As it is, we're only supposed to have two animals--Lola is our "secret" cat. Nobody tell base housing, OK?

Since I can't be the Angelina Jolie of cats at this point in my life, I do the best that I can to scoop up the wanderers I find and get them someplace safe, whether it be back home where they belong or the local animal shelter where they have a chance of finding a family.

One of the first things that I did when I got to California was rescue a lost kitten, and since then there has been a steady stream of whiskered faces for me to fret over.

It has been a while since I've had a success story, and actually, our friend Boots went missing soon after I was told to stop bringing her back to her own house when I found her out wandering. Stupid people.

I've been on the lookout for Boots ever since, but I don't hold out much hope. If she were able to come home, she would have already. I fear the worst.

I've spotted other cats in my base travels, though, including one lovely, cuddly boy who just barely slipped through my fingers a couple of months ago. When I first met him, I had to stop my car in the middle of the street to avoid hitting him, as he was just standing there looking around. He walked over to the sidewalk, but I could see that he was hobbling. I pulled my car over to the side and crossed the street to him, cooing and calling to him all the while. To my surprise, he came over to me and began rolling around on my feet. I could see that he had some scrapes on his body and was favoring one leg, so I picked him up and he just sat there in my arms. A man walking by confirmed that he was nobody's, a "neighborhood cat," as he put it. That gave me license to take responsibility. I decided to take him home for the night and take him to the base vet or animal control the next morning. Unfortunately, he had other ideas. I carried him over to the car without any protestation, but when I opened the door and went to put him in, he launched himself out of my grip and ran for his life. Although I drove through the nearby streets for a good while, I couldn't find him. I ended up going home and crying because I thought I'd left a poor, maimed cat to waste away out in the cold.

I learned my lesson that day: always keep a carrier in the car! And I have ever since.

I thought I might need to use it today, because I saw him again, ambling along next to the barbed wire fence that goes around the base perimeter. By the time I got the car turned around, he was gone, but I have hope--his injuries didn't do him in. I made several sweeps of the area, but didn't spot him again.

Later on during my afternoon errand running, I spotted another cat beside a building who looked strikingly like Darcie, except skinny and covered in mats. Of course, I had to pull over and make chase. And chase I did, because he was not having any of this "here, pretty kitty" business. I ended up losing him in an impassable patch of bushes.

So, while I didn't catch anyone today, I'm not feeling too badly. I know where to look next time I'm on the prowl, and I'm not giving up on these cats. They don't deserve a life on the street, and it's my mission to make sure that they don't have to suffer because of some irresponsible human.

In which I try to write meaningfully about Haiti... and fail.

I've been avoiding reading or watching coverage of the earthquake in Haiti. It's upsetting to me, and sitting there crying about it doesn't accomplish anything for me or for the people who are suffering.

And it makes me feel guilty to be sitting here in a cute little coffee shop in the coastal California tourist town Morro Bay, wearing a new sweater and boots, drinking a four dollar cup of chai after road-tripping it here in our Corvette yesterday, having dinner out, and spending the night in a hotel.

I think nothing of throwing away money on frivolous beverages while the people in Haiti don't even have water to drink. Think about that. Just pause and think. The last time you purchased a beverage, did you even think about it? Or did you just buy it, drink it (maybe not even all of it), and toss the bottle away without a second thought? Because that's what I do. Sure, I try not to waste anything and I recycle, but I never think about the possibility of not having anything to drink.

I'm privileged. That's what it comes down to. I'm incredibly privileged. There's not much that I want that I don't eventually get. Privileged and spoiled.

But this post isn't supposed to be about me. It's about the people of Haiti who need help. Desperately.

If you identify with anything I've said about privilege, please give what you can to organizations that are working in Haiti. I donated to Doctors Without Borders today, and there is a helpful guide of groups to support and those to avoid at Lifehacker. If you are reading this, you are probably equally as privileged as I am, so please give. It's as simple as skipping that daily $5 cup of coffee.

P.S. Go enter Classy in Philadelphia's giveaway. It's jewelry--you know you want to!

P.P.S. I recognize the irony of bloviating about the importance of charitable giving and then going right back to my materialistic ways in the very next breath, but think of it this way: if you win the giveaway you can give the money that you otherwise would have spent on jewelry to charity. See how nicely that works?

the mitten kitten

I'm in Michigan. It's cold. It smells good. Does cold have a smell? It does here.

Last night I sat down on the chilly streets of Ann Arbor and hugged a beautiful black dog close to me until her homeless guardian came out of the restaurant in which he was warming up. Her chattering teeth tapped a drum line beat. My heart broke a little right there on the sidewalk. I hope I gave her a temporary reprieve from what must be a difficult life.

Another orange cat was sitting at our door when Jason took me to the airport yesterday morning. He didn't want food, just love. We left him some food anyway. The kitty was still there when Jason got back, so he sat and petted him for a while before he had to go to work.

I can't save them all. But we did save my mom and stepdad's (as yet unnamed) kitty up there, who showed up at their door like she owned the place. And now she does.

Welcome to the family, Kitten.

kitteeeeeehn

I was sitting at my desk yesterday morning when out of the corner of my eye I saw a kitten dart across our yard and under my car. I hauled ass outside, bent over next to the car, and cooed at the kitten to come to me. She toddled right over and let out the tiniest, most adorable squeak of a meow that I've heard since my dad and stepmom's cat Nigel was a little one.

How do all of these cats find me? First the tortoiseshell kitten and Black Kitty at the fail apartment, then Princess and Orange Boy Kitty here in base housing. Not to mention Coco. So before today my tally was two cats whose homes I've found, and two I've taken to animal control. Not bad. There was also a feral cat at the fail apartment who I never managed to catch before we moved out, but feral animals are another situation entirely.

The kitten spent the rest of the day exploring the house and sleeping under the bed in the office. I ended up working overtime yesterdary, so I didn't have the opportunity to run her over to the base vet to check for a microchip. She had a brand new collar on, so I knew she must be someone's and was probably vaccinated, so I kept her overnight. Our cats--Lola especially--took great offense to her extended stay and kept me up past 1 a.m. with their hissing and growling. She didn't care, she just wanted to play. When I got up this morning and headed to the kitchen to make Jason his coffee, she came running after me from who knows where. She spent the day chilling with me in the office and playing an epic game of chase with Jacob. Today was equally as hectic work-wise, so I figured I'd make a point of taking her to the vet tomorrow. And honestly, I was enjoying her company and her kitten-ness.

But then Jason came home. He brought in the mail and a hand-written sign that he found at the mailboxes. Black and white female kitten, seven months old, purple collar... sure enough. He called the number and left a message while I jumped in the shower. When I got out he was still waiting for a call back. I was drying off when the phone rang. The person was right down the street and was going to come over right then. She lived next door, in fact!

Guess who it was, you guys. JUST GUESS.

If you guessed Crazy Navy Wife, DING DING DING, you're the winner! We found out her first name, too, so now I can think of more nicknames for her.

I made Jason answer the door and give her back her kitten (whose name, incidentally, is Boots, due to her white paws). CNW was all thank yous and we missed hers and her tone of voice was in normal lady mode, but I know the evil lurking within her could strike at any moment. I listened from behind the bathroom door. My neighbor is Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde.

My mom is probably going to say that I should try to be friends with her since she was nice this time and we have a fondness of cats in common, but it doesn't work that way for me. I don't cast my lot with people who can't be level-headed, civilized human beings all the time, and I'm not one to hand out second chances like business cards. Part of the reason we left Massachusetts is because we needed to surround ourselves with stable people. Trust me: being fond of cats is not enough to make a friendship or any other kind of relationship work.

Women & Cats

What's that you say? Why haven't I told you all about my trip yet? Well, here goes.

After getting approximately .2340976 seconds of sleep Saturday night, I over-caffeinated myself to the point of nausea on Sunday morning, so having to watch a bald man seated in front of me on the plane picking at a bloody, oozing scab on his head was quite sub-optimal.

Despite that, I arrived in Virginia without incident and hailed a taxi to my hotel in a very professional manner. I smelled bad, was dressed like a college student, and I think I had lipstick smeared on my face, but the hailing--lo! the hailing!--was my very best imitation of a regular business traveler.

I spent Sunday night holed up in my hotel room feeling very sorry for myself for no particular reason. Monday morning I got a grip on myself, dressed up like A Person Who Does Business and took yet another taxi to the International Headquarters of the Organization for Which I Have Worked for Five Years.

I am so glad I took this trip. Being around colleagues / friends / compatriots / people who understand me was so refreshing, and training a group of people you'd need two hands to count made me realize that my job, while completely unglamorous and easily forgotten, is actually very important. I know things! Things that other people need to know! Things that are skills, even!

But more important than my "I matter" epiphany, I also got to see this. It's the ladies' room door on the floor where I was working. The grate at the bottom of the door is missing to allow the entry of smaller, furrier parties. And yes, there is a corresponding "men & cats" room down the hall. One must maintain a good sense of humor in my line of work, and having cats milling about does help. Sadly, there were not any wandering whiskers out and about during my visit, as they've all not-so-sadly gone home with people.

I did get to see some little darlings whom I would have smuggled home in a split second if I didn't think Jason would have immediately put me on a flight back to Virginia. I don't know their story, but whatever the case, they're definitely better off now. The mama kitty is the one peeking around the edge, and the pile of fluff next to her is made up of some of the orange and white kittens who dominated my tweets last week. I'll put up a video or two of them in another post, but suffice it to say that I may have spent more time finding reasons to leave my desk to go watch them than I spent doing actual work.

Yes, people, I get paid for this.

In between kitten-observing sessions, I managed to have dinner dates with coworkers three times, and go to an impromptu seven person pottery painting contest organized by one of my bosses. Could my job get any cooler? Probably not. I'll tell you later what I painted, but I will say that it necessitated me assuring everyone that I am not, in fact, an alcoholic. I don't know quite how our masterpieces will be distributed to us now that we've returned to our various corners of the country--we neglected to remember that none of us live in Virginia--but in my case I think it involves said boss coming to my house. Which would actually be pretty awesome.

I think I'll give you a kitten video now, because they are just that cute:

No one talked about cheese.

It's my policy not to talk about my job. It's generally better that way because most people do not understand my line of work. AT ALL. And that is why I so thoroughly enjoy being around those who do understand it.

Still, I was nervous about my trip to Oakland to spend a day in the office because what if the people didn't like me? What if it was totally different from what I was used to when I worked in the office in Virginia? What if I slipped and mentioned how I sometimes eat cheese on purpose accidentally? Worst of all, what if I couldn't find anything to wear?

Well, all of my worries were for naught, because my day was AMAZING. I loved my coworkers, and they loved me (and my outfit, which was totally cute and got compliments for matching the organization's logo). No one talked about cheese.

Plus, Jason got to come along and keep me company in my hotel room. It made up for all of those work trips he took without me before he reenlisted in the Navy.

Ok, so it totally didn't make up for the time he went to Jamaica without me. But it's a start.

The weekend's big excitement was buying three Rubbermaid trash barrels for our beverage container recycling. I even made labels for them today. Don't laugh--I take my recycling very seriously! Ask my mom, who used to have a corner of her garage in Michigan monopolized by recycling bins that we'd have to haul to the township drop spot whenever they filled up because there was no pickup. That was 5-10 years ago, though, so the trash company may do curbside service by now. When I moved to Virginia after college I brought most of my recyclables to work because there wasn't a bin at my apartment, but there was at the office (and Virginia doesn't do bottle refunds, boo).

Here in California, they recycle almost everything curbside (even little towns like Lemoore!), and the bottle return rules are different than other states (like Massachusetts and Michigan) that have bottle deposits. Instead of having in-store centers where you put the cans and bottles one by one into a machine that counts them by piece, Californians must take their beverage containers (including plastic water and juice bottles!) to stands (usually in grocery store parking lots) where they're weighed and you're paid accordingly. You can also do it by piece some places, if the workers can be bothered to count them.

Now that I have my lovely bins we'll be able to wait until the barrels are full to schlep them into town and receive our handsome reward for being eco-friendly (last time we got a whole $2.20). I had been throwing the empty beer bottles and pop cans into a plastic bag in the back seat of my car. This concerned Jason to no end, but I thought the clinking at stop signs was rather musical.

This afternoon I battled the ant hordes for a while (in anticipation of trash pickup tomorrow), shoveling loose dirt into the trash barrel so they have nowhere to live. I struck gold, taking out two nests of them along the front of the house. I also sealed up a crack in the wall inside the garage that they had been using in their to- and fro-ing. They still haven't dared come back into the house. I like to think that they fear me now.

As if I needed another reason to love New Kids on the Block...

They went and gave me one, anyway:




These people should keep their day jobs, because they'll never make it as rappers. But I love the contributions from Jordan, Donnie, and Joe!

How do you measure a year in the life? Measure in love...

Today it snowed in Baghdad. I take it as a sign that this year is going to bring healing, cleansing things. A useful president, for one.

Everyone in the blogosphere's been posting their rundowns of 2007 lately. I too would like to do that, but I am far too unorganized and don't remember things in chronological order. Furthermore, I didn't send Christmas cards this year, so I don't have a "Dear Family" style summary of things that happened in the oh-seven (that I can tell both my 99-year-old great grandmother and my cousins' young, impressionable children) that I can adapt for the Interwebs. Alas.

Suffice it to say that a lot has happened chez Heidi Renée in these past months; events both nice and nasty that I may or may not write about retrospectively.

One such nice happening was that we finally pulled off having a wedding December 28, nearly a year and a half after being legally married. The planning was not smooth, some of the stuff that was supposed to be fun was ruined during what may have been the worst day of my life, and we spent more than anyone intended, but the actual wedding went off without a hitch and all in attendance had a lovely time (and managed to eat their vegetables).

Now that it's all over (except for writing the thank you notes, deities help us), I'm getting back into the swing of things work-wise and will hopefully be going back to full-time status in the next couple of months. That will get me back to having a steady income each month, which will give Jason some much-needed peace of mind about our financial future. Hey, he's the one who chose to marry a crazy activist. Everyone knows we folks are not in it for the money.

One of the causes of the dollar-induced duress was the arrival of Lola the dumpster kitty in October. For such a tiny (6.8 pounds in the picture, 7.2 pounds now), adorable, perfect little miss, she sure was expensive! Having her vaccinated, microchipped, and spayed, though, was a necessary expense, and we are quite a bit richer in spirit for having her around.

When we met her, she was living under my sister-in-law's dumpster (the kind you get when you're renovating your house, which they are) and eating scraps out of their trash. She had appeared from nowhere and no one knew anything about her. Being the crazy animal person of the family, everyone looked to me to take care of the situation. I had intended to take her to the local humane society, but you can guess how long that plan lasted when she ran up to me mewing and catapulted herself into my arms. Now we have three cats, and we couldn't be happier (despite the fact that we are violating the terms of our lease). Jacob and Jasper love her, of course--who wouldn't?

I haven't taken down my Christmas decorations yet. Everything still looks fine, and the cats love the tree, so it all stays. Maybe we'll take them down by Valentine's Day.

Things to write about in the future:

• My wonderfully sentimental husband's Christmas present to me
• Our post-New Year's Eve week of calzone and cheesecake
• Our new apartment
• Jason's Corvette
• More on the wedding
• Wedding gift show and tell

P.S. Name those lyrics in the title. Even my husband knows them. Oh yes, he's been well trained.

Obviously, channel 26 cannot be beat in terms of public access television.

Today I attended my third city council meeting on the subject of horse-drawn carriages at the beach, and I spoke against them for the second time. It was a long meeting. It started at 6 o'clock and I didn't get home until 10. The council voted to allow the carriage rides, as I suspected they would, but the mayor, bless her, voted against it for the second time. The first meeting, a month ago, ended in a tied vote, which means the item is defeated. Then the council decided to reconsider the item, seemingly because it is so controversial. At the second meeting, last week, they decided to defer the vote, hence today's blockbuster. I wore my huge "no to horse-drawn carriage rides" sticker proudly. Apparently these meetings are replayed on a local TV station. I'm not going to bother finding out which one, for two reasons: I don't want to know if I made any dumb faces, and what could compare to the school board meetings on the Okemos Channel? Obviously, channel 26 cannot be beat in terms of public access television.

Lately, Jacob has been jumping the baby gate and waiting right next to the door so he can run outside when I get home. This is the second night in a row I have had to pull him out from under a parked car. Hello, the gate is there so you won't get out, beebeard. Why can't he be like Jasper, and run away when I open the door?

It's so late, Jason might be home in not too long. I guess attending city council meetings is a good way to pass the time between when I leave work and when he gets home.