Comments (2)

By kilax, November 28, 2015 5:13 pm

Wow, Helper Cat is so useful when it comes to packing up the house!

Or… supervising us pack up the house. Ha ha.

Because, you know, that’s the most comfortable spot in the house to lay… silly Data.

Comments (30)

By kilax, December 22, 2014 7:30 am

It just wouldn’t be the 2014 holiday season without some Helper Cat assistance!

Data just has to be in the holiday wrapping action. Sitting on paper as you try to wrap a gift, attacking ribbon and bows, jumping up on to the tissue paper on the table…

… and falling right off and getting stuck between the chair and the table. Ha! I wish I would have gotten a photo of that! He only acted embarrassed for a little bit before he came back to the table. 

(Actually, he loves those springs!)

Do your pets “help” you wrap gifts? Do you have much gift wrapping done?

I am very happy that almost all of ours is done! All we have left to wrap is our gifts for one another!

And I wrapped some very special gifts this morning for Steven’s birthday!

His birthday is today, but we are both working, so we went out to dinner Saturday night to celebrate and to see a holiday show… “A Klingon Christmas Carol.”

The show was the Christmas Carol story, told with a Klingon twist – it was about honor and courage. And! It was all told in Klingon, with sub titles! The space sat around 75 people, so it had a really intimate feel. I was actually really impressed by it – I can’t imagine memorizing all of those lines in a made-up language!

Comments (9)

By kilax, October 17, 2014 5:05 pm

Helper cat not only assists in wrapping gifts and hair maintenance (<—that explains a lot, right?!)… he ALSO helps make the bed when we have house guests*! How helpful!

Um…

Or… not. Typical Helper Cat shenanigans. 

My snister and her husband are coming to visit! AHHHH! They haven’t stayed at our house since… geesh. 2009? No way it’s been that long (corrected – the last time was in 2012)! However long it’s been, I am really excited they are coming!

Who was your last house guest?

I like that we live close enough to a big city that people come to visit us… then we make them stay in the suburbs, mauh ha ha. JUST KIDDING! It’s fun to go to the city with guests. 

Anyway. Back to Helper Cat. If only he could help do some other prep work, like cleaning the house… sigh. At least I don’t have to get it to Grandma Level clean! Heck! Maybe my snister doesn’t mind if I clean at all?!

*unless they are allergic

Comments (19)

By kilax, December 10, 2012 6:35 am

Sorry Helper Cat, I have some one else to help me wrap gifts!

Last week someone was bragging to me about how they have ALL of their holiday shopping done and ALL of their presents wrapped. 

Crap.

Uhh. Yeah. Despite early discussions of gift buying, it’s still a work in progress. Don’t worry! Panic mode WILL NOT be happening this year. But that person made me feel like I needed to step up my game. 

So Saturday was spent shopping it up at the outlet mall,

and Friday and Saturday night spent wrapping gifts.

Okay, okay, let’s be honest… I only bought presents for four people on Saturday – 80% of that bag haul is my mom and grandma’s.

And… my mom wrapped all my gifts for me! MUAH HA HA HA!

I texted her on her way out here from Iowa on Thursday, asking if she would help me wrap… and she did ALL the work. All I did was help get paper, ribbon and stickers out, and answer questions about which wrapping paper I thought looked the nicest. The only gift she didn’t wrap was her own.* 

Mom, please come back and wrap the rest of my holiday gifts that I have yet to buy. Or should I just mail them directly to your house for you to wrap?

How is everyone doing with shopping and wrapping?

I only have a few more people left on my gift list, and I have ideas on what to get them all, so I feel pretty good about it all! But I do dread the wrapping part. Ha ha. 

And in case you were wondering, Helper Cat did make an appearance…

Past appearances of Helper Cat here and here. 

*Slacker!

Comments (19)

By kilax, December 9, 2011 1:30 pm

Helper Cat, you are not so helpful sometimes. 

I guess Helper Cat feels a bit upset that I’ve already wrapped quite a few gifts this year and he hasn’t been invited to help. I put out a big stack to mail this morning, and he retaliated by killing one of the bows I had set out to attach to the gift. 

At least he’s stayed away from the gifts under the tree!

Comments (29)

By kilax, February 23, 2011 5:48 am

What would I do without Helper Cat there to assist me in the bathroom

and in the kitchen in the morning?

Surely, I would be at least 20 minutes behind schedule. Thanks Helper Cat!

Now, if only Helper Cat could help me get through all the unread items I have in Google Reader… yikes. It may take me some time folks, but I will eventually catch up with reading your blogs!

What do you use to keep track of the blogs you read (Google Reader or other/nothing)? When you travel and fall behind on reading blogs do you try to catch up or just “mark all as read”/skip the posts you missed while you were gone?

I always try to catch up – yeah, that’s me, commenting on the thing you wrote over a week ago!

Comments (19)

By kilax, December 21, 2010 6:30 am

Whoa, blog post overload! Ha. Sometimes I have nothing to say… sometimes, I have a lot to say.

Need assistance wrapping gifts? Just call “Helper Cat” to the rescue!”

Helper Cat specializes in eating ribbon,

Mom, please excuse the cat slobber on your gift!

and generally looking clueless. Um… that is all.

Helper Cat is not ever supposed to get on the dining room table, but if that is where the presents are, that is where Helper Cat has to be. It’s a rule Helper Cat is willing to break.

We are FINALLY done wrapping gifts.

Oh wait. I still have to wrap Steven’s. And he has to wrap mine. Wah!

Are you done wrapping gifts? Shopping?

Have I already asked those questions? Am I losing my mind?

Comments (9)

By kilax, August 12, 2016 8:18 am

We moved the house project party to the basement on Wednesday and Thursday so we could replace one of the joists we had been jacking up. Why take a break from all the attic work, when we are on such a deadline, to do this (note: we asked our contractor to move his ceiling install date back another week – no way we’d have all the work done by August 15)? Because we’re concerned if we replace the joist later, it will crack the new ceilings that will be installed on our second floor. Jacking up this joist has been affecting the second floor, so no reason to risk cracking something that is brand new.

It was a nice change to go work in the air conditioned basement, and not have to wear a face mask the entire time! And to have space to move around without stepping on plastic. Woo hoo!

The first thing we did was move as much out of the way on the floor as possible, since we knew we’d have to somehow get a long (16′!) joist in to the basement.

Part of the workout area before

And after. Good thing I did my indoor ride during lunch break on Wednesday!

We also moved weight off the joist from the floor above in the kitchen (sigh, now, basically every room in our house is a disaster zone):

Moving the fridge and stove away from the joist

Doing that exposed the opening to the kitchen floor, and Helper Cat checked in to see how things were going:

We started removing things around the joists that would be in the way when we tried to install the new one.

Steven put me in charge of using the angle grinder to cut off nails. SCARY! (Since we’re going to put two joists where there was one, we had to remove these nails to get the second joist in.)

There were quite a few things we couldn’t move, and would have to work around. Eek!

Then we built a support to push up the two joists on either side of the one we’re replacing to make space to get the new one in. That didn’t work, so we switched to plan B, and used the jacks (we thought the other method would be quicker – nope!).

And after that, we tried to get the joist out. HA! It had about a zillion nails in it. So we only got a bit of it out Wednesday night.

We resorted to cutting it, after the prybar and hammer wasn’t doing too much!

We had been prying against the sub floor so much I was convinced our office floor tile was going to be all smashed when we went upstairs. Surprisingly, it wasn’t! We put up a temporary support, and called it a night.

On Thursday evening, we got back to work. Steven started cutting apart the joist and taking it down,

while I set up to use the angle grinder to cut off the nails from under that joist… only to find the angle grinder wouldn’t turn on. Some wires had disconnected! While Steven worked on fixing that, I scrubbed down the subfloor where the joist was attached – it had some mold (the entire basement flooded at some point in the past few years, which probably caused it) – ew.

Luckily, our friend Troy arrived right as the angle grinder was fixed. Yay – he got tasked with cutting off the nails. Steven and Troy like using that thing, but there is something about sparks flying in my face that I just don’t enjoy!

Steven and I then set up in the garage to cut the new joist. As we were going downstairs to check the measurement one more time, Troy was finished, so he helped Steven cut the two new joists and I took on the important task of ordering dinner. As I was about to leave to get dinner, I saw them walking around outside with the joists so I went in the basement to bring them in – yay for basement egress windows – getting the joists in was really easy!

Is that a joist or are you happy to see me?

While I was out getting dinner, they got the joist almost in place (after bringing the saw inside and cutting it a bit shorter lengthwise), but couldn’t get it to stand up – the joist we were replacing was squished to 8-7/8″ and the new one was 9-1/4″. They tried everything, but it was a no go – and all the pounding cracked the new joist. Oops.

So after dinner, they cut a notch in the sill plate, and cut a new joist.

The joists rest on the sill plate on the east side of the basement, and hang on a joist hanger on the west side

The first joist went right in! Well, after some finagling above all the conduits/wires/ducts/etc.

After they checked that the first one would stand up (it did!), they laid it flat to get the other one in. This is when I was really grateful Troy was there to help – he is really strong (and patient!), and that is what this job needed. I was the gofer and documentarian, and could have done this part of the work, but, let’s be honest, I was happy not to be. Ha! The more hands, the better (we’ve been very lucky to have friends and family help us during this past week)!

Once they were both in, they stood the first joist up to glue it to the second,

then start nailing them together.

One board was warped, so they had to be really careful as they put it together that they didn’t make it permanently curved. That involved manipulating it as much as possible by hand (and with hammers, etc.), and also, letting the jacks down on the other side of the wall, and bringing them over to support the new joists from below while using the baby jack to push the joist upright. This also involved using a laser upstairs to see how level it was becoming.

It worked!

After that, Steven hung the other side on a joist hanger, nailed it in place, removed the jacks, and it was finished!

East side of new joists

West side of new joists

West is on the left in this photo, east is on the right

East is on the left in this photo, west is on the right. Don’t mind the mess – my stuff is spread out a bit since we can’t use the second floor!

Hooray! The floor on that side of the house is more level now, and the basement door shuts again!!! And surprisingly, no floor tiles cracked during all the jacking.

The only thing left to do is cover a hole under the stove (where Data was peering through) and one that goes outside. Oh, and we have to replace the joist on west side of the house at some point (that will be part ii!), which has even more stuff in the way. Hopefully Troy can help again!

Comments (8)

By kilax, November 25, 2011 5:40 am

For the holidays, do you tend to buy one big item for people, or a bunch of little things? If it’s a bunch of little things, do you try to have a “theme” to tie it all together? Which would you rather receive (one big item or a bunch of little things)? What type of “theme” gifts do people get for you?

Recycled picture from last year’s Excited to Give post

Recycled picture from last year’s Helper Cat post

This year, it seems like I am picking up a lot of little gifts for people. And the only theme that the gifts have is “things Kim thinks you would really like.”* I do know people who will try to theme your whole gift – and get other people to go in on the theme too. For example, they give you a set of golf clubs, and have your parents get you a golf bag and tees and balls, and somehow convince your spouse to buy you golf lessons at the fanciest course in town. Then you open the gift and say “Thanks! I can’t wait to use this in four months when there isn’t a foot of snow on the ground.” Anyway, some people really get in to that.

The funny thing about that completely hypothetical situation is that I often buy Steven gifts that he cannot use until the spring. Like last year’s formula car driving Groupon. I’m going to try not to do that this year, but darnit, why does his birthday have to be three days before Christmas?!

Anyway, I digress. I actually think the themed gifts can be done right, if it’s a theme you are interested in! Like diamonds. Or cashmere. Okay, that’s obviously a joke. We all know a I don’t have that fine of taste. My major theme seems to be running/exercise. And sometimes Star Wars.

*Except for one person I already warned that almost all of her stuff seems to be cat-themed. Sigh. Oops!

Comments (44)

By kilax, September 6, 2018 6:23 am

We said goodbye to Data on Tuesday. Our veterinarian was extremely compassionate and made it as easy as possible for us. There were even a few laughs among the tears. We all took a shot for Data after. I love our vet. That helped – their compassion and care.

We ate dinner out. Arriving home, the house didn’t feel extremely different without Data there because he’s been so ill and not himself, holed up in a room for a few months. That helped – that it didn’t feel like a big change.

We took his food and litter box out of our bedroom, and cleaned the carpet and the sheets and blankets, then played with the kittens and Khali and had a few laughs. That helped – the distraction and joy of their shenanigans.

We got in to bed early, and I started thinking about all the fun memories with Data. THERE ARE SO MANY. I put his name in the search bar on my blog and was laughing about some of his antics as I went to bed. That helped – looking at photos of him during healthier times, and remembering all the joy he brought to our lives! Gosh, I’m so glad I shared all those stories here!!!

During the day, I had reached out to my family and friends to let them know what was going on. I received thoughtful texts and emails all day. That helped – their care and thoughtfulness. I’m glad I let people know what was going on, instead of holing up, myself. The outpouring of love, along with people sharing their stories and normalizing it for me – yes – really helped.

I don’t think it’s quite sunken in that he’s gone yet, though.

We adopted Data (via proxy, ha) on February 12, 2005 in Ames, Iowa. Here’s his adoption story! He lived with us for over thirteen years – and he lived with Steven longer than I have! We think Data was about fifteen years old. He lived a happy, long life with us, and brought us so much joy and entertainment (!!!)!

It’s helpful for me to think about my favorite Data stories as I mourn, and here is a long list of them, in chronological order (of when I posted about them).

Thank YOU for your compassion and love. It means so much to me!

Continue reading 'Favorite Data Memories (RIP, Data)'»