Average Jane

Author: Average Jane

  • Average Jane’s Invalid Roommate

    My husband was supposed to go to lunch with me today, but when he called around 11 o’clock, I knew immediately that we weren’t going anywhere. He’d been starting to get a man cold the night before and it blossomed into a full-blown flu by late morning.

    Since I was at loose ends for lunch, I got food, sugar-free cough drops and Sprite Zero and brought it home for him. He took one cough drop and didn’t eat or drink anything all day long.

    I came home after work and made a big pot of potato soup. Finally he got up and ate some of the soup with crackers. He sat woozily on the couch with me as I watched "House" and "Psych," then retreated to the bedroom to go back to sleep.

    Needless to say, our weekend plans are all being cancelled one by one. If things had gone according to plan, I’d be watching a band play right now. Instead I’m in my pajamas watching "Best Week Ever."

    I’m sleeping on the couch tonight in the hope that it’ll help keep me from catching Germy Boy’s illness. Wish me luck.

  • Average Jane’s Unhappy Cats

    Velvet
    When we got our cat, Velvet, the shelter told us her story. She’d belonged to a family that got a dog and apparently decided they didn’t want a cat anymore. They tossed her outside and stopped feeding her, so she wandered through the neighborhood trying to get into people’s houses. By the time a kind-hearted neighbor finally took her to the shelter, she was malnourished and parasite-ridden. She lived at the shelter for seven months before she came to live with us, so her life was definitely anything but pleasant until recently.

    Upon her first trip to the vet, he estimated that she was about six years old, and he strongly recommended that we have her teeth cleaned because she’d already lost some teeth and the others were pretty grotty. I finally saved up the money (it’s expensive because they do blood work and x-rays and there’s anesthesia involved) and took her in yesterday.

    She did NOT want to let me put her in the cat carrier. I imagine that a once-abandoned cat is probably even less amenable to vet visits than the average cat. I managed to stuff her in without having to wake up my husband, but it was touch and go there for a while.

    They cleaned her teeth and removed a small growth from beneath her eye. The procedures went fine and I picked her up after work. She was still a bit groggy when I got her home, so I planned to confine her in my dressing room with food, water and a cat box until she shook off the effects of the anesthetic. So much for that plan. She made a beeline for the basement and crawled up into the ceiling the instant I opened the carrier.

    It didn’t help that Xena acted as though she’d forgotten who Velvet was in the nine hours she’d been gone. She got all brushy-tailed and hissy and "Stranger! Danger!" as soon as I brought the carrier in. Sheesh.

    All evening long I kept trying to figure out exactly where Velvet was in the basement ceiling, but I couldn’t see her anywhere, even with a flashlight. Our ceiling is partially sheetrocked, but large portions of it have been removed for various remodeling projects. It’s the best hidey-hole a cat could ask for.

    I finally spotted her this morning and got her to look at me. I gave her a catnip toy to try to wake her up a bit more and eventually she came upstairs and ate. Xena and Velcro both stared at her evilly as if they’d never seen her before.

    I hoped she’d stay upstairs and either go to sleep in our bed with my husband or lie in her window hammock, but she decided she needed to hide in the basement some more. Poor kitty.

    I predict that everyone will settle down today and be back to normal by this evening. I’m leaving for work and my husband’s asleep, so the cats will have to work things out on their own.

  • Average Jane Knows All About Green Eggs

    BoingBoing and several other blogs have picked up a story today about a hen in Mexico that lays green eggs – as if nobody’s ever heard of such a thing before.

    I’ve been familiar with multicolored hens’ eggs since childhood. We always kept Araucana hens, partly because the eggs are so pretty and partly because they and their roosters are very mellow and non-aggressive. Their egg shells range in color from an almost olive green to lighter green to pale blue. The insides are the same as any other egg.

    This photo shows a pretty good range of egg colors from my aunt’s chickens:

    Eggs

    It’s a little difficult to tell because of the boiling water, but there are green, blue, pink, brown and white eggs in there. Fun, huh?

    Part of me really wishes that I could build a chicken coop in my yard and keep hens for the eggs. However, it’s not legal in the town where I live. Add to that the number and variety of predators that I regularly see roaming the yard and it would probably cause me more angst than it’s worth anyway. I do enjoy farm fresh eggs, though.

  • Miscellaneous Thoughts from Average Jane

    I watched an episode of "Mythbusters" the other day in which they investigated the idea that turning a light on and off uses more energy than keeping it on. It turned out that turning on a light bulb only uses a few seconds’ worth of energy, so it’s always worthwhile to turn off a light when you leave the room.

    You see where this is going, don’t you? Now I’ve suddenly turned into our household Light Patrol Officer. It’s only taken a few days for it to rub off on my husband, though. Now when I get up there’s usually only one light on in the living room rather than the heretofore customary three.

    The only exception is our porch light, which I leave on all the time because it’s usually still dark when I leave the house and dark again when I get home. I’d get a light sensor for it (again), but the fixture is barely large enough to accommodate an outdoor CFL as it is.

    My next training initiative for my husband involves the proper use of a chip clip. When he closes a bag of potato chips, he’ll fold it over and put the clip at a jaunty angle on one corner, leaving a large area through which air can get in. Even when I put it on the right way, he’ll open the bag and replace the clip his way. I wonder if I can get some subliminal message CDs to play while he sleeps?

    Finally, I am seriously tired of the cold weather. I know it’s only January, but I’ve had enough already. Unfortunately, we have at least two more months of this to go before it warms up for spring. Did I mention that my gas bill for this month was $100 more than the one for December? Grrr.

    Well, I’m starting to ramble and I think I just heard Velcro yakking in the kitchen, so I guess I’ll go clean up cat puke and get ready for work. You’re jealous of my life, aren’t you?

  • Average Jane’s Going to BlogHer!

    I have about five minutes before band practice, so I figured I’d check in to report that I’m officially registered for BlogHer ’08. Naturally, I didn’t want to break my 100% streak, so this’ll be my fourth one.

    I know Liz is going. She’s the first person I met when I arrived at the very first BlogHer Conference in 2005. I’m rooming with Rita again, as I did at Blogher ’06. We’re planning another late Saturday night wind-down watching nature shows in our room.

    Are you going to be there? Let me know!

    If you’re attending any other social media conference(s), let me know that, too. I may very well attend more than one this year. I have a short list, but I’d like to hear what everyone else thinks is valuable.

    One of our guitarists is here…gotta go!

  • Analyze Average Jane’s Handwriting

    I was tagged by Bea to participate in this, so I’ve quickly thrown together a photograph displaying my horrible handwriting.

    Pangram

    1. Choose a pangram of your liking.
    2. Write it on a piece of paper and sign it with your blog name or online handle.
    3. Take a picture and post it to the flickr group, your blog, myspace, facebook or all of them.
    4. Link back or trackback to Logtar’s post.
    5. Tag five people.

    I’ll let y’all tag yourselves for this one. I hate to put any pressure on people at the crack of dawn on a Monday.

  • Average Jane Thinks About Cooking

    As I wrap up another ridiculously busy week, I’ve decided to use today’s blog post to encourage any of you who enjoy cooking to enter Pensieve’s Snackalicious Super Dishes recipe contest.

    It’s for any recipe that would be a crowd-pleaser at a Super Bowl party. I entered my Pomegranate Salsa recipe because I love it so, even though it’s already getting a little difficult to find pomegranates at the grocery store. I’ll bet Whole Foods still has ’em, though.

    That’s all I’ve got for now. I’m headed out for a coffee-free Coffee Morning, followed by another busy day at work with a welcome break in the middle because it’s our monthly Indian Lunch Club day, in which a group of my coworkers and I visit a delicious Indian restaurant with an extensive buffet. Why am I still sitting at the computer in my freezing home office? This sounds like a day worth starting immediately!

  • Average Jane’s Freedom from Caffeine

    It’s been almost eight months since I gave up caffeine. That’s got to be a record for me, but I don’t see myself going back to it again this time.

    It’s really freeing to not be addicted to anything. Caffeine was definitely an addiction for me – I can tell because when people find out I’ve stopped drinking it, they say stuff like, "Wow, and you drank a lot of coffee!"

    We won’t even mention the amount of Red Bull I drank.

    I know I’m saving a ton of money, too. No longer do I find myself drawn into coffee shops only to walk out $5 poorer. And Red Bull costs at least $2.00 a can, even in cases.

    I’m also much happier with the beverages I do drink, particularly because the coffee at my office was terrible.

    The most interesting thing about my caffeine cessation is that it turned out I didn’t need it the way it made me think I did. I was convinced that I couldn’t be happy, productive or energetic without a little caffeinated intervention. It turns out that I pop awake in the morning and go about my day just fine with water alone. Best of all, I no longer have that daily headache and energy dip around 2:30 p.m.

    I still love the way coffee smells, but I don’t have any urge to drink some. Like an ex-boyfriend whose redeeming qualities were outweighed by his negative ones, caffeine and I just weren’t meant to be together. 

  • Average Jane’s 5-Minute Update

    Band practice didn’t materialize yesterday because one of our guitarists had to work. We eventually got together just to chat a bit and decide how we were going to proceed with finding a bass player. (Our previous one didn’t work out.)

    We have an audition set up for next Tuesday, so we’re hopeful that that’ll be that. I’m sure it won’t be so simple, but I like to be optimistic.

    That’s really the only thing that’s happened since I last posted, unless you count making sloppy joes for dinner and sleeping. Sometimes my life really doesn’t warrant a blog post.

  • Average Jane’s Tribute to Heath Ledger

    Wow, what a shock about Heath Ledger dying at 28! Sounds like an overdose, too, which is even more unfortunate.

    Here’s my review of A Knight’s Tale that I wrote in 2001. Heath was definitely the best thing about an otherwise weird movie.

    R.I.P., Heath.