Life on the Funny Farm

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Sunday Social - Mali

Next one down on my siggy line...

Anne,
Wife of Fred for 23 years
Mom of:
Patrick (16)
James (16)
Rosie (14)
Bella(14)
Julie (13)
Daniel (12)
My children around the world:
Milly in Taiwan
Eun Hae in South Korea
Felice in Hong Kong
Nadya in Germany
Obrin in New York
And our critters Blue, Sunny, Cindy-Lou, Annabelle, Fiona, and Sophie; Mamfy, Mali, Milky and Punkin; Nick; Frog 1; Charlie and Dizzy; Minnie and Alice; Elfie, Frex, Crope, Tibbit and Ozzy; Genevieve, Pippin and Finnegan; and a dozen or so chooks.

I'd like to ask God why He allows
hunger, poverty, and injustice
in the world,but I'd be afraid
He'd ask me the same thing ...

Is Mali.

Mali came to us in a desperate state about 2 1/2 years ago. Instead of re-writing her story, I'll just cut and paste what I wrote about her back when we found her:

Over the years we have crossed paths with many stray critters. Some we have kept as our own, others we have found loving homes for.

As of Sunday, a new little stray has entered our lives. A sweet tabby kitten we have named Malishka, which is Russian for baby girl.

That afternoon I was sitting on the deck in the late afternoon watching the kids in the pool when I heard a plaintive, repeated meowing coming from our driveway. When I looked down, I saw this pathetic little half-bald kitty looking up at me and crying pitifully. As soon as I opened the gate to walk down the steps toward her, she ran away. Luckily, she didn't run far and she stopped and let me pick her up. It was all I could do to keep from crying out when I saw the hundreds of fleas running all over her bare back and belly.

I took her inside and gave her a bath with some itch-relief pet shampoo, then applied a vial of Frontline to her.

Despite being half-starved and half-mad from all the fleas, she was incredibly sweet and quite the purr-train. We gave her some food and water which she gobbled right up, and made a bed for her in a pet-carrier with a litter pan and a water dish.
Next morning, she still had some fleas, but there were hundreds of dead black dots in her bedding. A step in the right direction. I called the SPCA and reported that we had a found kitten staying with us, but it's now two days later and I haven't heard back from them.

I guess we have a new pet.

Well. Julie does. We've decided this can be her kitty, and she's beyond excited.
Julie went with me today to take her kitten to the vet. We've learned that Mali's about two months old, she has worms, but does not have feline leukemia or HIV. We also learned that she's very cute.

We already knew that.

Sunday Social - Mamfy

Mamfy is our oldest cat.

When Rosie was about three years old, we went to a friend's house for a playdate. When we got there, a little kittie walked over to Rosie and started winding herself 'round Rosie's legs, purring for all she was worth. We mentioned the kitty to my friend, and she said,
"If you want that cat, you can have that cat. She was dumped off here a few days ago."

And I said, of course, "No, no, no, no thank you. We already have two cats. I don't think so."

You all know how this ended, don't you?

Yeah, we walked back out to my truck when the playdate was over, and little kittie made a bee-line straight back to Rosie again.
Rosie's little eyes made a bee-line right for mine and she pleaded in her little girl voice if she could't pweese pweese have da widdle kiddie.

Melt. Puddle.

It worked on her then and it still works on her now.

I'm pathetic.

So she named her Samantha, only her little girl voice couldn't say Samantha. She called her Mamfy and we called her Mamfy and all these years later she's still called Mamfy.
Mamfy, Mampy, Mampers, Mamps.

And she always has crusty eyes and she always has a hair-ball sounding whoormph thing goin' on and she sheds like it was what she was born to do and she does it with the passion of a zealot.

And she still winds herself 'round Rosie's legs and purrs like nobody's business.

Sunday Social - Punkin

Tecnically, she's not next on the list, but I happen to have a picture of her ready to go, so I'm making her next.

I got her shortly after we first moved to this house, which would make her coming up on seven years old, I guess. I think we had two cats at the time, but I saw an ad for free kittens and one of them was a calico and, well, I've always had a thing for calicos. Turns out a homeless mother cat had a litter of kittens under someone's shrubs, and the woman of the house was kind enough to try to find homes for the wee ones once they were old enough.

And this little kitty I took home was soooo pretty and sooooo sweet.

And then one day I took her to the vet for shots and stuff. They took her to the back to draw blood and I'm sittin' in the waiting room mentally admiring the wonderful qualities of my many well-behaved animals when alls-a-sudden I hear this God-awful caterwauling from the back and I think to myself, my God. Who is making that terrible racket? That's horrible. I think I may have even giggled condescendingly at the thought that someone else's critters weren't as well behaved as mine.

I think you know how it ended. It was Punkin. As it turns out? Calico cats are kind of crazy. They're also always female (little trivia for you there). Calicos can be sweet and loving one minute and demons from hell the next. And that's pretty much Punkin in a nutshell.

We finally had to relegate her to being an outside cat b/c she took to marking her territory, occassionally going apesh** on someone's arm, and terrorizing the other cats. However, the outside thing didn't work out so well b/c she 's the only one of our cats that figured out how to use the dog door, so now she just sashays in whenever the hell she feels like it.

And she is a demon.

But she's sooooo pretty and sooooo sweet.

Ah well. What's a mother to do?

Sunday Social - Fiona

She's the newest canine in the group.

She's sweet.

She's awful.

She's a terrible, awful dog.

She's a lovey-dove lap-dog.

She's a terror.

She's a cute l'il l'il baby puppy.

She is exceedingly smart. She shamed all the other dogs in the obedience class.

She was a rescue dog, slated for euthenasia the next day. Probably a Border Collie/Lab cross.

She is a terribly mannered dog that has taken things from counter-tops, gotten on top of the table, chased the cats, gotten things out of the trash, chewed up stuffed animals and Christmas ornaments, ruined her Invisible Fence collar, gotten into the pasture and chased the goats.

We love her.

Sunday Social - Sunny

Next one down on my siggy line...

Anne,
Wife of Fred for 23 years
Mom of:
Patrick (16)
James (16)
Rosie (13)
Bella(14)
Julie (13)
Daniel (12)
My children around the world:
Milly in Taiwan
Eun Hae in South Korea
Felice in Hong Kong
Nadya in Germany
Obrin in New York
And our critters Blue, Sunny, Annabelle, Fiona, Sophie and Cindy-Lou; Mamfy, Mali and Punkin; Nick; Frog 1 and Horny Toad; Charlie and Dizzy; Minnie and Alice; Elfie, Frex, Crope, Tibbit and Ozzy; Genevieve, Pippin and Finnegan; and a dozen or so chooks.

I'd like to ask God why He allows
hunger, poverty, and injustice
in the world,but I'd be afraid
He'd ask me the same thing ...

Is Sunny.

Sunny is our infamous yellow Lab. She is Patrick's "Baby Dog".

We picked her out on a farm about five years ago. Well. More like she picked us out. I had a black Lab in mind. Never did care for the yellows. But all these pups were squirming and rolling all around us, and after a bit they lost interest and ran off in pursuit of something more interesting like a bug. All except this one. She stayed right by us, following us everywhere. And after a few minutes, we got the hint and scooped her up, paid the man and brought her home.

She was tail-waggin' hell the first year or so of her life. She ate everything. She chewed up hundreds of dollars worth of pool pumps and hoses. She ate the siding on our house.

She was lethal when she first learned to swim in the pool with the kids. In her enthusiasm to swim over near them, she'd generally end up scratching the bejesus out of their backs and shoulders. Kids learned to put their hands out when they saw her coming and yell, "Space, Sunny, SPACE!" and she'd veer off to the side at the last minute.

When she was about four, she developed an enormous hematoma in one of her ears and ended up needing surgery. That was fun. Nearly two years later the thing is still draining and smelling like death warmed over. We take her back to the vet now and again, each time more hopeful than the last that they will be able to give us a cure-all, each time just as disappointed as the time before. You can smell her across the room. We clean it, we ply her with ointments and drops and pills, but she will forevermore be stinky.

Every night she faithfully follows Patrick up the stairs and sleeps on the foot of his bed. She is completely devoted to him. They play this hide and seek game where we have her sit in another room while he hides, and then we ask her, "Sunny, where's Patrick? Find Patrick!" Then she goes absolutely berserk looking for him everywhere. She whines, she runs, she pants, she sticks her head out the dog door and looks left and right, then back in to run around looking in every nook and cranny till she finds him. When she does, and she always does, she dissloves into a puddle of wiggly happiness.

Fat, happy, wiggly, stinky.....

Sunny.

Friday, February 3, 2012

Sunday Social - Patrick

Next one down on my siggy line...

Anne,
Wife of Fred for 23 years
Mom of:
Patrick (16)
James (16)
Bella (13)
Rosie (13)
Julie (13)
Daniel (11)
My children around the world:
Milly in Taiwan
Felice in Hong Kong
Eun Hae in South Korea
Nadya in Germany
Obrin in New York
And our critters Annabelle, Fiona, Sunny, Sophie, Cindy-Lou and Blue; Mamfy, Mali and Punkin; Nick; Frog 1 and Horny Toad; Charlie and Dizzy; Minnie and Alice; Elfie, Frex, Crope, Tibbit and Ozzy; Genevieve, Pippin and Finnegan; and a dozen or so chooks.

I'd like to ask God why He allows
hunger, poverty, and injustice
in the world,but I'd be afraid
He'd ask me the same thing ...

Is Patrick.

He's my first born. The one who brought us kicking and screaming into the world of parenting.

And I kicked and screamed for a good long while. When he was a baby I got to experience the neonatal jaundice and three day hospitalization of my firstborn. I got to experience a colicky baby and a horrific entry into the world of lactation that ended three months after it began.

When he was a toddler/preschooler I got the joys of learning to cope with the tantrums and opposition and "high energy" and "difficulties with transitions" of a boy who would later be diagnosed with ADHD, but meanwhile I had to run around thinking I was doing everything wrong and feeling exhausted every minute of every day. Good times.

Sigh.

But now? He's 16. Starting his junior year in high school. At about 6' 1", he's taller than his Dad. I've had to crane my head back to look sternly into his eyes for nagging purposes for some time now.

And he's still oppositional and distractible. But no longer so much with the high energy thing. Or the tantrums. We have learned to deal.

And you know what? He's amazing. So sweet with his little sisters. So dang smart. Remember how I said Fred is like the smartest person I know? Well, Patrick can usually beat him in Jeopardy now. And he's my go-to person if one of the youngers has a math question that's out of my league (read, from fractions onward) or a question about a word spelling. Or pretty much any academic question. Period. Don't even try to play him in chess.

He can debate the hind-end off a mule, though I'm not sure when that particular skill would ever be needed. Still, good to know it's there.

He's awesome with the dogs. Did some agility training with Blue, and Sunny is pretty much velcroed to his leg. She follows him everywhere, she sleeps with him every night. She goes absolutely insane when he plays hide and seek with her until she can find him. Then she finds him and goes more insane.

Generous as a little boy, still generous as a young man. And kind. And compassionate.

His future? He has no clue. Nor do I. Though he aces every test without cracking a book, he has this little problem with the whole homework thing. As in he usually does it, but the turning-it-in step gets missed more often than not. As a result, his grades tend to hover somewhere between the sewer and the toilet. But alas, we are finally realizing it is his battle, not ours. With any luck, some college somewhere will accept him after he graduates and he can move on to higher education, but who knows? He'll do alright in life.

Like I said, he's a good kid.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Transitioning

I've decided.

I'm pretty sure I've decided.

To change my blogs around.

The evolution went something like this:

Bringing Borya Home (public): started to to track my adoption journey and to provide updates to friends and family.

Life on the Funny Farm (private): Sometime after James and Julie had been home with us awhile, I thought it would be a good idea to put most of the family matters on a private site, so Funny Farm was born.

BBH Gets Popular: As I got more into the blogging thing, and learned more about SEOs and increasing traffic and all that nonsense, I started posting more and more on BBH and less and less on LOTFF.

BBH more general than when it started: Though it began as an adoption blog, and that continues to be a topic of discussion, it is much more general than that now. Seems silly that a blog titled Bringing Borya Home has less to do with Borya now and more to do with our crazy lives in general.

Ergo and therefore: I'm going to switch over the blogs. For now I will spend a few minutes here, a few minutes there, going back through LOTFF to switch over names and remove any references to our private personas, rearranging tabs and pages and maybe the graphics, and when it's all set I will turn it public and make it the place I will post going forward.

It just makes more sense to me.

Hope you all approve.

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