Radical Wednesday

We had a nice prayer meeting, with only a few interruptions.... David fell out of his chair, (read more about that here) some mature people over the age of 10 were playing with.... shoes. Someone had an unfortunate case of the hic-ups, a stack of boxes were almost knocked over by someone, and another someone tried to steal someone else's keys. All during prayer.

I really enjoyed the meeting though, after we stopped talking about all the disturbing things going on in America, even more so than usual because Mr. M was there and brought his guitar so we got to sing. The M's don't come very often.

Then after the meeting, we were all standing in the parking lot talking (pretending to leave) and two of the *respectable* older boys found... a squished snake. Yep. And then? They picked it up. Yes, with their bare hands. Boys are so weird. And THEN..... the older one (you'd think he'd know better... being 19, right? No.) takes it over to his sister and wiggles it by her shoulder. She and I thought it was fake at first. *I* didn't believe that they were crazy enough to TOUCH it if it was real. So then we realized it was real and freaked out. AND THEY WERE STILL HOLDING IT. *shudders* That is soooo much worse than the typical chase-girl-with-a-frog trick..... UGH!

*shudders again*

~Lizzie

New computer....

Mostly. After hearing a homeopathic doctor speak about how the older computer monitors radiate 10 feet and the new flat screens only 3, my dad decided to get me a new monitor. And while we were at it, we figured we'd replace my old motherboard and CPU. And then my old power supply wasn't powerful enough for the new motherboard and CPU, and my old hard drive wasn't letting us reinstall windows. So I got a new drive as well. So I basically have a new computer, without losing all my stuff! It's really nice.

I had a whole bunch of opinions I was going to share about the Olympics.... but I'm just too tired of the whole shebang.

So, instead of the Olympics, you get to hear about the copperhead we found while walking around our neighborhood. (And yes, just in case anyone-who-remembers-all-my-previous-snake-issues was wondering, I have an unusually frequent encounter rate with snakes. Lucky. Me.) Anyway, as to my story.... we were just calmly walking... okay, calm really doesn't describe us.... never mind the adjectives. We were walking. And Sarah suddenly stopped with a surprised little squeak. I would have screamed. But Sarah merely squeaked. It was kinda dark, so we didn't really see it until Sarah almost stepped on it. And it was so dark that it was hard to tell that it had diamonds on it's back. But we did eventually determine that it had the pattern, and a diamond-shaped head. I immediately voted to kill it... not me personally, but one of the daring males in my family, of course. However, we didn't have any handy tools for such a task, and I guess the men were feeling not-so-daring, so there is most definitely a copperhead in our neighborhood. Thank goodness it's currently on an empty lot that's not really near our house. Otherwise I might be forced to freak out. Which you might think I've already done from this horribly long paragraph in which I only talked about this snake. You know, once I do so well just rambling on in one paragraph, I always wonder how long I could keep going. And then I completely run out of things to say.

Oh well. You'll thank me later. Actually, you're probably already thanking me.... never mind. Only a Monk fan would get that. Anyone? *ahem* Okay, I feel stupid. I should just go to bed... it IS 1 in the morning.

~Lizzie

Shadow

My sister's lovely little cat has been very industriously making herself annoying recently, so as a day-after-Sarah's-birthday post I decided to rant about her cat. As I type, my forearm is sticking to my desk because of some milk Shadow spilled. Excuse me while I go wash my arm and wipe the desk off. Again.

Yeah, so that story deserves a good paragraph. Daddy left a glass of milk up here on my desk when he was doing some work on my uncooperative computer. Shadow decided she wanted to drink and stuck her face into it (no, I wasn't watching..... I've just seen her do it millions of times. Usually to glasses full of water that are on the edge of a table/desk..... Yep. They fall and shatter. So I should be grateful, right? This time it was a plastic cup.....) until she didn't fit anymore, and then she tipped it over. So my George Muller biography is drying out, and I had to "clean out" a whole bunch of papers... lucky I didn't desperately need any of them.

Yesterday morning she brought in a black snake (again, INSIDE the HOUSE!!!!).... which was promptly trapped under over-turned trash-can (by Mom) and there he waited for Daddy to get home. A couple days ago, Shadow brought in a live bird and began tearing out its feathers under David's chair. Again, it was promptly trapped (this time in a empty yogurt container) and replaced outside. (Miraculously, it survived. We think, anyway. It disappeared after a few hours, while Shadow was locked upstairs.) She also brought in 3 rabbits last summer, plus innumerable mice and birds.

Then there's Shadows obsession with clean water. She has this nice metal water bowl. We even sometimes put ice in it (another of her obsessions). As soon as we give her clean water, she drinks a little and then puts her paw in it, and swirls the water all around (naturally dirtying the water with cat hair and such). Then she refuses to drink it.... because it's dirty. When her water is dirty, she licks the faucet to our filtered water (which is gross, because that's OUR water!!).

She also likes to jump onto shelves (usually ones that are mounted on the wall... and NOT with the weight of a full-grown cat in mind! Fortunately, Shadow is pretty skinny, so she hasn't broken any shelves yet, but they wobble precariously, and she usually knocks stuff off of them.

Then she likes to stand on my keyboard, which makes it make annoying noises, like "bonk, bonk, bonk" over and over..... plus she likes to stand on it while I'm trying to type, obscuring my view and usually messing up my typing. She also likes to scratch on the side of my computer, and her claws catch in the cooling fan and make a scalp-tinglingly HORRIBLE noise.

She tries to open doors, which is disturbing because the door handle jiggles loudly and very redundantly.

And last, but not least.... during thunderstorms, she likes to create blood-curdling meows and pace/jump on my bed and crawl all over me. The thunderstorm doesn't wake me up... she does. I don't think she understands that she's SARAH's cat.

Here is a picture of Shadow:


As you can see, she is a black cat, but she is most decidedly blonde.

And after all that..... we love her anyway. *shakes head and smiles*

~Lizzie

Amazingly enough.

The snake that was under our piano came out this morning. He must have been really hungry. Anyway, we caught him and dumped him in the woods outside. I can't believe he was in our living room for 9 days! I really thought he was dead.

Except for that slightly disturbing occurrence today was exactly the kind of not-rushed and lazy fun that every Saturday should be. I didn't really enjoy the rain however, even though I'm glad we're getting it. I didn't get up til 9, Sarah and I dropped Joel off at baseball practice and then went shopping. We got back to pick him up, watched a practice game in the rain (I got wet.... and cold..) and went home, had lunch, went to Comedy Cafe, came home, watched The Transporter and now I'm going to read Emma.

I'm sure you were all desperate to know how my day was. Unfortunately, I can't think of anything more interesting to write about, so that'll have to be it for now.

~Lizzie

My mind took a sudden unapproved vacation and my eye is pitching a hissy fit.

My mind left me and went on vacation (I should have liked to go! But was I invited? Certainly not...) and my eye is .... well, something's wrong with it. I don't think it's allergies, because it's only one. But my tear duct has been clogged, and thus, all the fresh tears have no where to go and it's like constantly crying out of one eye. I've been afflicted with this for almost 2 weeks now, and the area around my eye has become very red and sore. It's quite frustrating, and I'm beginning to think that I may have to take some drastic (and also yucky and boring) health measures to get rid of it. *sigh*

April Fool's has been almost completely uneventful for me (a pleasant surprise!) *glances around in nervous anticipation of someone proving her wrong in the last few hours* This year, *I* was NOT the one who got sprayed by the sink. No one put toothpaste on all the light switches (I'll forever have nightmares about that year.) And I was only the victim of one joke. Daddy informed me that they'd gotten the snake out from under the piano because it came out to get a mouse that one of the cats brought in and couldn't fit back under the piano. I was just getting ready to ask him how the tiny little snake managed to eat a mouse when, "April Fool's!" was announced.

I really like this nice warm weather... I wish it would just stay that way already!

~Lizzie

I'm now recovered.

At least, enough to explain what happened. It was very traumatic. I walked in the house from swim practice Thursday, and 2 of our cats were sitting and looking somewhat interestedly at something. If you know our cats, that should alarm you. Interested-ness in them is never a good sign. Since they regularly bring us birds and small rodents (yes, IN the house! That's what we get for having a cat door.) I started looking around suspiciously. And then I noticed the snake.

Believe it or not, that's not the traumatic part. This is the third snake that made it inside our house alive. One of the previous snakes that made it inside was about a foot and a half long and was coiled in the middle of my bedroom. (Whenever I tell the story of the black snake in our room, Sarah likes to demonstrate how loudly I screamed when I almost stepped on it, and then how fast I jumped on my bed. Fortunately, that can't be demonstrated over the internet.) So a fairly small garter snake in the living room wasn't a big deal to me.

When it decided to head for our 114 year-old upright piano that's only about an inch of the floor, I got broom duty. We opened the front door (we enter our house through the garage door thankfully, or we probably would have stepped on it) and tried to "encourage" it to leave. Touching it with the broom didn't work well. It just coiled up and stuck it's head up at us. It reminded me of the little "ankle-biter" dogs, who bark ferociously and try to chase you. As if you aren't 10 times bigger than them.

I did get somewhat tired of holding a broom between it and the piano while we decided what to do. Mom called Daddy and he was on his way home from work, so we decided to wait for him. After all, he's the one who yanked a black snake out of our blue bird house (saving the eggs!) with his bare hands.

But then, as if the crazy snake knew we were hoping he'd just sit there, he started challenging the authority of my broom. He slithered directly toward it! I smacked him in the face, and he stopped. He was next to the wall. I was sitting as far away from the wall as possible, but still blocking the path along the wall to the piano with the broom. So he sat there for a few seconds, and then came directly AT ME! Way too quickly for my taste. I really regretted sitting. I jumped up, ran and screamed.

Just then, Daddy came in. He put a paper bag in front of the snake (who apparently was scared by me jumping up and running and was still just sitting there) and then the snake quickly slithered off.... under the piano. He's been under there since Thursday. Yeah, I know. We should try to get him out. We've been pretty busy though. I think we're going to try to get him out tomorrow.

I think my pride is wounded. That tiny little 6-inch snake came right at me... and I was scared to death. *sigh* Why wasn't he scared? I could have stomped on him if I'd been wearing shoes. Hmph.

~Lizzie