Guess what else we did in the A/V room

Merry Monday, blogfriends! The mister and I spent this weekend enjoying each other's company. As many of you already know, Jason is deploying a week from today. It's only for about a month, but we're used to doing everything together, so every day we spend apart is a day too long.

I know, I give people toothaches with all this syrup. I'll try to include more angst, misery, and glass shards in the future.

Our activities this weekend included a baking lesson, vicious Wii gaming, and a trip to the A/V room.

Jason has a huge sweet tooth, and he's constantly asking for cookies. I don't like buying store cookies because they're terrible for you, not as delicious as homemade, and they're not (usually) vegan. Notable exceptions are Oreos and Newman-Os. I try to involve Jason in meal preparation from time to time, so I decided to teach him how to make chocolate chip cookies. For a kitchen noob, he picked it all up pretty quickly. I mostly just watched--he did the majority of the work. He looked adorable fussing with measuring spoons, and the cookies were delicious (I'll show you them on Friday).

We ate our cookies in the dual recliners on our new couch while playing Wii Monopoly. It's so fun, I want to play it every night! We even went out and got me my very own controller. Jason bankrupted me the first game of Monopoly, but I won a second game and then spanked him at Tetris for good measure. I can tell already that I'm going to be spending a lot of time playing Monopoly with myself while Jason's gone.

As an early birthday gift, Jason got me a machine that converts VHS tapes to digital files. We wanted to try it out before he leaves, so we fired it up on Sunday and converted one of my high school musicals. It was a success! While Jason is gone I'll convert my whole library of VHS goodies. Who knows, parts of them might just show up here.

In the meantime, check out how awesome I look in my feathery hat these days:

You can blame these pictures on Jessica, who asked for them.
I'll leave you for tonight with some pictures of Jacob enjoying his final roll on the ugly couch, which we handed over to another Navy couple this evening. When they arrived, Jacob was on it and Jasper was under it. I do feel a wee bit guilty for taking away their favorite resting place:

Some of us aren't ready to get rid of the ugly couch.

I took all of these today.





So far Lola is the only cat who will sit on the new couch. 'Fraidy boys Jacob and Jasper are still keeping their distance. That also means that it hasn't been clawed upon yet. I hope to keep it that way.

That hat is amazing and I will not believe otherwise.

Do you guys know what day it is? Do you? Do you?

For all you smart asses who rolled your eyes and muttered, "Wednesday, July 28th," well, you're right. But do you know what day yesterday was? "Tuesday, July 27." Right again. But what else was it? Huh? Got you there, didn't I?

It was my mom's birthday!

I dressed fancy for the occasion.
Ok, so that picture's actually twelve years old, but I do still have that hat, and I wore that pearl necklace at my wedding.

You're probably wondering what earth-shattering event made me miss posting on the actual day. Well, last week we bought a new couch. That's right, no more ugly couch!

We were told that it wouldn't be in for two weeks, but the furniture store called yesterday wanting to schedule the delivery... except they could only do it today. Otherwise, it could only be delivered... not soon.

Cue me panicking because I. Wasn't. Ready! The old couch was still sitting where the new one needed to go. I had five boxes of Goodwill donations stacked in the hallway in the way of everything. And I needed. To. Vacuum!

I know, at that point I got a little ridiculous. The vacuuming probably could have waited.

As soon as Jason got home, we made the 35-minute trek to the nearest Goodwill to hand over the goods. That done, my entire process got derailed when we came down with a case of hungry husband. What was I to do? I couldn't tell the dear man that we didn't have time to go to Olive Garden when he's going to be spending the next month sleeping in a coffin-bunk and eating boat food.

We pushed the old couch to the side when we got home last night, and I took care of the vacuuming this afternoon before the delivery truck came. On a side note, having furniture delivered to a military base can be a huge hassle, and less-than-bright truck drivers do not expedite the process.

But, all's well that ends well.

Before:


After:


Jason is supposedly giving the ugly couch away to a bachelor coworker. In the meantime, we have two.

Maybe we should keep it this way, though. My mom and stepdad are coming to visit in September (yay!), and that way we'd have a seat for every butt--including the furry ones.

But if you smell flames from the west, don't worry. We Spartans are experts.

My big kitty, the diabetic

Yesterday was Jasper's big day at the vet. I've mentioned previously that he has had problems with high blood sugar, so when we took Lola in for her checkup and shots last week, we took him along to have his blood tested again. Sure enough, it was high--over 400. So not good. The tests they ran this time determined that he is definitely diabetic--that the sugar in his blood stays high over extended periods of time, and is not due to anxiety as we previously thought (extreme stress can cause cats' levels to shoot up). So yesterday we took him back to have his first insulin injection and stay there for the day to be monitored and determine dosages.

I dropped him off in the morning, and we both went back in the evening to meet with our awesome vet to discuss the results and have a lesson in giving the insulin injections and testing his blood glucose level. It turns out that they are both super easy, and while I still feel slightly squeamish about the needles, so far I've been able to put my personal phobias aside to give him his twice-daily injections (on the other hand, I'm still putting off going to the hospital lab to get my own bloodwork done). It's just a quick prick in the scruff between his shoulder blades--most cats can't even feel it. We have a box of 100 tiny syringes in the kitchen cupboard and a tiny bottle of insulin (human grade, thank you) in the refrigerator.

We also got him some prescription food, which he'll actually eat--a suprise to me, because Jasper is notoriously picky about food. We switched brands after the recalls last year (the brand we used had certain products, though not the ones we used, pulled), and finding new, safe, foods that both Jacob and Jasper would eat was a challenge (we didn't have Lola then). Jasper wouldn't eat more than a couple bites at a time of Newman's Own dry food, and Jacob would only eat it begrudgingly after determining that a different kind wasn't going to appear. Then we used PetGuard dry food, which they liked enough to eat, but we had to drive an hour round trip to get it at Whole Foods. We finally struck gold when we found a little, family-owned specialty pet food store in Dracut. Now we keep all three cats fat and happy with Wysong Vitality dry food and Artemis Chicken and Evanger's Whole Mackerel canned foods. And by fat, I mean healthy. Jasper's weight problem is much more under control now--he's actually cat-shaped instead of blob-shaped! He weighed 25.9 pounds in February, and now he's down to 20.2 pounds--still a heavy cat, but a much more reasonable weight for his kitty height. Comparably, Lola weighs exactly eight pounds now and Jacob weighed 18.5 pounds at his last checkup in February. Jacob and Jasper are just incredibly large-bodied cats.

Between Jasper's supplies and my various prescription bottles and cut-up pills (I can't help it that they don't come in my dosage!) lying around in the kitchen and bathroom, I feel like I'm running a crack house.

P.S. I know you love the picture of two of my favorite men lounging on the ugly couch. Jason rocks the Xbox 360 headset.

P.P.S. I don't literally have pills lying around. I'm not THAT careless.

On the banks of the Red Cedar, there's a school that's known to all

Today I had the pleasure of watching my Spartans dismantle Northwestern in football. Take that, NU, for rejecting me back in the day.

I was totally shocked that the game was even televised here--thanks, ESPN2! I made Jason "suffer through" the whole thing--watching football, he says, is even worse than seeing New Kids on the Block. It's funny how his profound dislike for them has evolved into a healthy tolerance when presented with situations he finds less appealing than hearing or seeing them.

Sadly, I found out too late that the MSU hockey team was playing in Massachusetts yesterday (Amherst) and today (Boston). It's the only time they'll be here all season, so I'm bummed.

This living in another state thing really cramps my Michigan State sports fan style. I worked hard enough to get two degrees from the place, and what does that get me? A successful career outside of Michigan, yes, but leaving has its drawbacks: where am I supposed to wear my hockey jersey and my vast MSU hoodie collection? Somehow, sporting my green and white while Jason fights ogres on the PS3 is not nearly as satisfying as doing so with other people who bleed the same green that I do. I always yearn for the brisk air and crunchy leaves on campus and the smell of Munn Ice Arena when this time of year rolls around--I don't think that feeling of nostalgia will ever leave me.

As a follow up to Thursday's post, I found someone whose couch is uglier than ours, and theirs (like ours) also comes with its own personal shredder cat. All ugly couches should, in my opinion. Behold:


more animals

Just another day at the "office"

Jasper (white) and Lola (gray)


Jasper and Lola


Jacob, Jasper and Lola

P.S. Our couch is the fugliest thing ever.