When to Just Say No!

Tonight, Nick and I escaped the house for a bit, and spent way too much time waiting for a meal at Pizza Hut. It took them 35 minutes from the time we ordered, to bring us our food. We sat and waited almost 10 minutes after finishing to flag down the waitress. There were 4 servers, and the place was certainly getting busy, but not -that- busy. Heck, it took them 2-3 minutes to seat us while 2 people were standing behind the counter doing nothing.

I found that tonight, I had no patience. After we left, we needed to get crickets for our leopard gecko, and located conveniently right between the pet shop and Pizza Hut was... Goodwill. Oh, how I love thee, Goodwill. With only minor grumbling, Nick went in with me. I found a wooden cigar box with a penciled on date of December 1963. It's in amazing shape, though there is a small crack in the back that I want to repair. It was $.99.

I also snagged a baggie of buttons still on the cards for $.59. I haven't counted them, but there were probably 15 cards with 2-6 buttons on each. Just plain, regular buttons, but I love buttons, so I picked it up.

They also had a set of matching jars. I kept calling them Apothecary jars, but I'm not sure if that's exactly what they are. Either way, SO many people in blog land have been using them to decorate with, and they're oh so cute! I saw one of them the other day, but turned it down at $1.99. Today, though, when I saw 2 of them, I caved and bought both at $1.99 each.

I also found a really cute pink baseball from a local hospital. It's adorably girly, and brand new. I am going to save it for Gilly's Easter basket, since we like to do Spring things for part of it,

Now... the "Just Say No!" part... at the pet shop, the local humane society has 2 large cages for cats and kittens up for adoption. We always OOO and AHHH over them, but we have 4 cats. Actually, one of them is from that pet shop, Giaa, our youngest. She is a solid black cat with just one tiny little tuft of white fur on her chest. We adopted her almost a year ago. She is about 17 months old.

Today, they had an older torti in one cage, a male. I'd estimate he was under 1, but probably not by a whole lot, maybe 10-11 months old. Nearly full sized, but still very playful. In the other cage... oh, so cute. A pair of young kittens, maybe 7-8 weeks old. So playful, and loving, and adorable, and I just wanted to pick them up, and take them home!

We sat there with them for probably 15 minutes. They were just way too cute, but with 4 cats already, we just do not need more. They were just oh so cute, though.

When we first got cats, we adopted 3 all at once from a local no-kill shelter. Aliex, Rajik, and Kirese, all who are now almost 2 years old (mid-March through mid-April birthdays, each 2 weeks apart). They are a great little trio of cats, and always piled all 3 onto my bed to snuggle and sleep wrapped up in each other during the day. Then, we found Giaa about 5 months later, and adopted her. Then, all hell broke loose.

Kirese really hated Giaa, Rajik was indifferent, and Aliex was mostly indifferent as well, though all 3 took turns growling and being all put out over it. We finally found out that to get them to accept her, we should use baby powder on all their bottoms, so their scents matched. We were at the point where we felt maybe it best to take Giaa back, because the other cats were not taking to her, and we didn't feel it was fair to upset all 4 cats over it.

Let me tell you- the baby powder worked amazingly, and within a couple days, we no longer had to keep Giaa shut in our room, away from the other cats.

However, we realized then that we probably would not be able to adopt any more cats until we no longer had these 4, which (if we are lucky and they remain nice and healthy) will probably be years and years away, likely through when all 3 kids graduate, since that's only 10 years away.

Speaking of... it's hitting me more and more that Raegan is only 4 years away from graduating. 4 years. In 8 months, she'll be picking out a formal gown for her first school dance. In a year, she'll be taking drivers training. It's just too much to wrap my mind around- I have an almost 14 year old daughter, and I don't even know where the time went.