Mailbox Monday (113)

It's been over a month since I've been able to link up with Mailbox Monday, but I'm happy to be back today.
From Goodreads
Stepdog by Mireya Navarro
I may not necessarily be a huge animal person, but even so think this looks like a fun. It's a memoir about a women to starts a relationship who finds the hardest part is dealing with her boyfriend's dog. Honestly, it sounds like an issue I'd potentially have myself. So even if I may not be dying to own a dog myself, I think I'll enjoy this.

What did you find in your mailbox this week? And would you consider yourself an animal person?

Springtime Fun

Every year I've been blogging I've posted the first time I've laid out for the year. So is it really a surprise I'm doing it this year? Granted this wasn't actually the first weekend it was warm enough to lay out, but it was the first time I've been able to take advantage.
It really looks like it's time for a new bathing suit, since this is the 3rd year in a row I've worn this one. Armed with magazines (which are ridiculously old, since I never make time to read magazines anymore), a book, and some snacks I spent a few hours outside.
I even had some company throughout when this little turtle decided to join me.
Have you had the chance to lay out yet this year? Or are you the type not to lay out, even if given the chance?

Disney World Vacation: Day 5

For our 5th day on the trip we headed back to the parks, this time to Animal Kingdom.
We started the day off with a Kilimanjaro Safari seeing hippos,
giraffes,
elephants,
and rhinos, as well as a bunch of other different animals.
From here I'll once again take the shortcut and list out the rides and shows that we managed to fit in.

It's Tough to be a Bug
Festival of the Lion King
Dinosaur
Expedition Everest-Legend of the Forbidden Mountain
Finding Nemo-The Musical
And of course, stopped to meet Pocahontas and Meeko.
By this time (around 2 or 3 I think) we had been on most of the rides we wanted to ride, so we headed back to the Magic Kingdom to meet Cinderella,
Belle,
and Sleeping Beauty again.
The plan was then to ride a few of the Fantasyland rides we missed, except the lines were all SO much longer than when we had been there before we only managed Snow White's Scary Adventures. But we did manage to catch a show at the castle on the way out of the park.
But we still weren't finished then, because that night back at our hotel we had reservations at Luau Cove for dinner and a luau.
For our first course they served us pineapple-coconut bread, pineapple, and a salad with a believe a mango dressing.
The main course was bbq ribs, rice, mixed vegetables, & bbq chicken.
And the night ended with a chocolate mousse volcano, with raspberry lava, and a pineapple sauce.
Did I mention it was all you can eat and drink? Let's just say no one went to bed with an empty stomach that night. I'll be back tomorrow with our very last day.

If you've ever been on a Disney World vacation did you only go to one park each day, or did you wind up hopping between multiple parks on a day?

Under the Sea

Isn't it funny how you can live somewhere practically your whole life and yet never do some of the biggest tourist attractions close by? Case in point, Long Beach's Aquarium of the Pacific. It opened in 1998, which is 13 years ago and yet I had never set foot inside. I was past the field trip going age by 98 which is part of it. And while they did host a prom or two, mine was at the Gene Autry Western museum. But that streak broke, this past trip home.
I had fun taking pictures of all the different various animals. And since I probably couldn't even tell you the names of all the things I took pictures of, here are a few of my favorites sans comments.







The last picture was actually taken as we were living the aquarium. It's the Queen Mary which is permanently harbored in Long Beach. It's the other big tourist act traction in our city, which I have actually been to.

Anyone else find that they've never done some of the big tourist action close to where you live?

Restaurants and Horses

We spent most of this past weekend at the boy's parents' house-sitting and feeding their horses. (This wasn't taken this past weekend, but one of the first times we house-sat for them.)
Overall the weekend was pretty uneventful except for when I feed on my own Friday night. Now I don't have arms long enough to just reach over and dump the feed into their "dish". So instead I have to reach my arms through the rungs to get the food low enough to I can dump it in. Which means it takes a little longer for me to give the horses their foods. And one of the horses (it was a "teen-aged" horse according to the boy) didn't quite have enough patience to wait. So instead it decided to eat my arm. Seriously! I was bit by a horse this past weekend. Luckily it wasn't too bad, and there's barely a bruise now.

Also this weekend, my dad will be happy to hear, the boy and I went to the restaurant. Its the first restaurant my parents and I ever went to in Baton Rouge back when I was finding an apartment. My parents split and order of crawfish, which they loved and have wanted to go back ever since. The problem was we had no idea what the name of this restaurant was, or even its location.

But now I can tell you the restaurant was Sammy's Grill. I have no pictures since I forgot my camera at home, and didn't think of using my phone until after the food was gone, but I'll probably be back in about a month when my parents are in town. But to share, I started off with crab bisque (which had surprisingly huge chunks of crab). The had a fried oyster po-boy and finished up with a slice of red velvet cake. It was as good as I remembered the first time, and I'm glad to be able to "rediscover" it.

~Shoshanah

I Miss My Ants

Yes, you read that title correctly. I miss the ants back in California. They're the type of ants you find in ant farms. They dig there homes underground, steal food at picnics, and are basically a nuisance. They are annoying but yet they're harmless. And silly me I thought that was how all ants behaved.

Then I moved to Louisiana. And the ants here are not the same. We have fire ants here. They're still black (although we had red ants back in California that were just as harmless), but they build their homes in mounds of dirt above ground. Unlike the herbivore California ants, they are carnivores and they bite you! Seriously! I had no idea ants bit before I lived here. With each bit they leave a bite of acid behind and you wind up with something similar to a mosquito bite. (Except you can pop them like a pimple! Sorry if that was too much info for you.)

During the two summers I was a camp counselor I would wind up covered in bites. Most often from just walking in the grass, but there was definitely a time or two I accidental sat in an ant pile. Now that I have a more normal 9-5, thankfully the ants bites are less. Except for when one decided to crawl up and bite me as I was laying out on my lawn chair in the back yard.

I complained to the boy, and now we own a nice bottle of ant poison. It smells awful (I guess that's why its poison?), but now once a week or so we spread it out on the ant piles. We definitely have less than we used to, but hopefully we can get rid of them for good.

What kind of ants do you have where you live? Do you think I'm crazy for not knowing ants bite? Or do you think its crazy that ants DO bite? And did you ever have an ant farm as a kid. I didn't, and I'm going to guess there's not a lot of people who did. But feel free to prove me wrong!

~Shoshanah

To The Birds

Normally in the mornings I leave the house while the boy is still asleep. But the other day (which really means a few weeks ago, but this it's taken me this long to blog about it) the boy had to leave before me. I was up and getting dressed while he left the house, but seconds after he walked outside my phone rang.

"You need to get outside right now!" the boy almost screamed on the phone. So even though I was practically half dressed I ran out front. And what did I find when I was out there?
This baby bird just hanging out on the roof of the boy's car. The bird clearly didn't want to move, since it waited for me to run into the house so I could have a quick photo shoot. It was a little eerie that with us so close the bird didn't move once. I thought it was because it was still just a baby, and wasn't able to fly yet. I didn't think we should touch the bird (although according to the boy the stories of mommy birds abandoning their babies because they smell like humans aren't true). So instead I made the boy grab a towel from the house.

Luckily as the boy approached with the towel, the bird got a clue. I guess it wasn't as much as a baby as I had thought, because once the boy got close it flew away on its own. And now that we had no fear of harming any animals we were both able to head out and start our day.

~Shoshanah

The Tale of Miss A. Nonny Mouse

When I was younger my parents bought me a book of poems written by A. Nonny Mouse. It seems that Miss Mouse (who was an actual mouse of course!) had written a large number of poems. But somehow throughout time people stopped crediting her for the work and instead said the poems were written by someone called anonymous. And poor A. Nonny Mouse faded off in obscurity.

But speaking of Miss A. Nonny Mouse, lets talk about anonymity in the blogosphere. First there's some bloggers who we're on a full name basis with. So much so that I could give you their name and most of you know automatically what blogs I'm talking about. Need some proof? Anyone know who Heather Armstrong is? Or Ree Drummond? Or even Kelly Stamps?

Then there's other who make an attempt to stay completely anonymous. They go by an alter ego. They avoid posting any personal pictures. They make a point to avoid posting any identifiable facts.

But in general most bloggers, as well as myself, tend to fall somewhere in between the two. For example, you all know at least part of my name, but I've made a point not to reveal the whole thing. I do try to refer to the boy as "the boy," but I'm sure if you've been paying enough attention there's some of you who know what his name is. Although at times I think maybe it would have been slightly smarter to be slightly more anonymous from the start. After all, it might have been from to come up with an alter ego!

Its funny to think that 15 or so years ago no one had to worry about how much to reveal online, because it didn't really exist. It makes you wonder if 15 years from now we'll stop worrying again, but only because everything will already be online?

If your a blogger, what level of anonymity do you feel comfortable with? Have you ever felt a need to change it? And for fun, do you have any favorite poems written by A. Nonny Mouse?

~Shoshanah

Horsesitting

The boy and I are housesitting for his parents this weekend. For most people that would entail staying at the house, bringing the mail in, maybe feeding an animal or two. Well, I can tell you that we will be feeding an animal or two, but it won't necessarily be the animals you're thinking off. Here's a picture of me from the first time we housesat.
Yes, there are 3 horses in the picture with me. We're taking care of 5 this weekend, 3 "mom" horses and 2 "baby" horses. Have I mentioned before that I'm not really an animal person? I guess it shows just what I'm willing to do for the boy. Hope everyone else is having a great horse-free weekend! (Or horse-filled weekend if that's what you'd prefer.)
~Shoshanah

Open or Closed

I've written about some of the quirks that make me, me before, and I figured it was so fun I should do it again. So here goes.

I can not sleep the any doors in the room open. None. It doesn't matter if its the door to the closet, the door to the bathroom, or the door to the hall. Of course this is fun now, because they are currently FIVE different doors in the bedroom (3 into closets, 1 into the bathroom, 1 into the hall). Every night before I go to sleep I walk around the perimeter of the room, making sure all the doors are closed completely without even a crack left open.

And what happens if one of us forgets to shut all the doors? Well if I am in bed, I will normally ask the boy if he will get out of bed and close it. He always sleeps on the side of the bed closest to the door. Yes, another slight quirk. I don't care what side of the bed I'm on as long as its the side further away from the door. I think its so if any robbers were to break into the room they reach him first and not me. I mean it makes sense to me.

Then what would be the reasoning for making sure all the doors are completely shut? Well, I think it goes back to growing up with cats. All my life we had cats living in the house. Except for maybe a span of 2 months in 2nd grade, besides that, there were cats. And I hated having the cats in my bedroom, mainly because I didn't want them to ruin any of my stuff. (Can we talk about the year a cat peed on my Halloween candy?)

Of course that isn't the complete reason why I didn't want the cats in the room. See we had one or two cats that would see your toes under the blanket. Would see them and think to themselves, "That looks dangerous! I should attack it!" So you would be woken up in the middle of the night with bite marks on your toes. Yes, I do so how it could be fun to cuddle your kitty when you're going to sleep. But it is most definitely not fun when the kitty then doesn't let you sleep.

Of course you might now be wondering if we have any cats in our apartments. That's a definite no. And yet, I still can't get it out of my mind that if I don't make sure all the doors are completely closed, well.... who knows what might happen!

~Shoshanah

P.S. I'm so sad all of my shows are done for the summer. What am I supposed to do tonight then? I think in protest I won't be posting a Frozen Thursday post tonight. Of course, it could also partly be due to the half turkey, brie, and fig sandwich leftover from my lunch at Wholefoods today.

Cats and Dogs and Turtles O My

On Glamour's Storked today Chrissy asked readers their pets' names. I never felt like I had a lot of pets growing up. But I started listing them off, and wow! Maybe, that's why I'm not really an animal person. It's more of a been there, done that for me. So I tried to comment with my pets' name (which it wouldn't let me do. I would hit post and noting would show up... anyone else?). But I realized doing so each of them has a story behind how they go their name. So here goes...

Mama Cat - Mama Cat literally had kittens on my inside the column in front of the house. Supposedly my parents had to actually dismantle it to get her and the kittens out. I can't really picture this, but I wasn't alive yet.

Kathmandu - He was one of Mama Cat's kittens

Fluffy - We got fluffy when I was in 2nd grade I believe. Kathmandu had just died, and the period before we got Fluffy was the only time in my life we didn't have pets. We got Fluffy from a girl on my soccer team, Megan. Her cat had just had kittens. She was nice, until she had kittens the week before the Northridge earthquake. Which brings us to

Conan (Named after Conan the Barbarian) - Conan was one of Fluffy's kittens. My mom decided to let Fluffy get "knocked up" once so me and my brother could have the experience of raising kittens. If I remember right she had 4 or 5. And we kept one of them, Conan. They were born when I was in 4th grade.

Tinkerbell - We found Tinkerbell one Thanksgiving in the alley next to our house. She was in a box with 4 of her kittens. We wound up keeping her and one of her kittens. My parents still have Tinkerbell. She's like an old lady now

Indy (short for Indiana Jones Cat) - One of Tinkerbell's kitten. He was orange and white. He wound up getting hit by a car, like most of the cats, be grateful I'm not listing how each of the cats died.

Nicky (short for Nickolas) - He is named after Nick Carter from the Backstreet Boys. Yeah, that was all me! Nicky and his 4 other siblings were born in the backyard of one of my mom's work friends. Unfortunately, their dog chased the mom away, and she abandoned her kittens. She gave my mom 2 to raise and raised the other 3 herself

Grizzly - Nicky's brother. I wanted to call him Carter (see above) but my mom and brother shot me down.

Nubi (short for Anubis) - My parents haven't had her that long. I think since last summer. I haven't really live with her, so I'm not sure of the story. I think she might have been a stray that my parents adopted. Currently my parents have 4 cats (Nubi, Tink, Nicky, and Grizzly). We actually had 4 cats at once most of my life (Fluffy, Conan, Tink, and Indy)

Moving on to the dogs...

Cicely - Cicely is an Alaskan Husky and is named after the town in Alaska where Northern Exposure took place. We got Cicely when I was in 4th grade when our neighbor's two huskies had puppies. My parents still have her, but she is also very old and going blind.

Clementine - My parents got Clementine when I was a Jr in college, so again I don't know a whole lot. I think they bought her from someone at a farmer's market. Maybe? If I remember correctly they named her after Clementine in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. She is still there too.

Philbert - Was a Turtle. We name him after the Turtle Philbert on Rocko's Modern Life. My mom actually found him in the middle of the street one day and decided to rescue him. Turns out he was actually a water turtle (Why he was wondering the street then remains a mystery)

Godzilla - was some kind of lizard. After my parents sold Philbert to a pet store, my brother bough Godzilla to fill the cage. If I remember right, once my brother went off to college they sold him too.

And that my friends is it. Kind of ridiculous isn't it. But I guess I do still enjoy them all when I'm home at least. Buying my own pets... that might be a while.

~Shoshanah

Horses and the NEW Apartment

So we started house-sitting as of last Tuesday. The Boy's parents left early Wednesday morning and were gone till late Saturday night. Leaving us in the charge of the house and more importantly the animals. 5 horses, 2 cats, and 1 dog. And I'm not really an animal person. Not that I have anything against them. My parents had cats my whole life. I think there was literally a time frame of 1 month when my parents haven't had at least 1 cat my entire life (at the moment they have 5). When I was in 4th grade we got our first dog. She is still alive, (old but alive) and when I was in college my parents got a second dog. I think it's the fact that since they were always animals around me there were something that was just there. Sure I enjoy cuddling with some of the cats when I'm home, but it's not like I really miss any of the animals.

Anyways so the way our schedule worked out was the Boy would feed the horses in the morning and I would at night. Of course I don't get off work till 5. And since his parents live pretty much in the middle of nowhere, it would take me 1 and a half hours to get to the house. So it was dark by the time I got there. Last time we house sit the horses were arranged so I could just drop the food into buckets over the fence. This time, not so much. I had to walk through the pen with the 3 moms in order to get to the babies. And one of the mom's was currently pregnant, so as you might imagine she wasn't in the best mood. And then there was the fact that the pens were pretty much mud pits, and since it was dark avoid puddles was pretty much impossible. Yeah, overall not so much fun, but I survived.

The only thing I really do enjoy about house-sitting it the fact that they get expanded cable. Which means WE. And of course their wedding programming. Bridzillas. Platinum weddings. Sooo addictive. Unfortunately his parents got back on Saturday night, and WE was only airing their wedding shows last week on Sunday. A whole days worth of shows, I could have been watching. Even though we stay till Monday (when we got to move to the apartment) I would have felt a little odd having them see me watch wedding shows. "Here I am dating your son, not engaged to him, and I'm watching hour after hour of wedding TV." Not so much...

Moving on to better news... the apartment! It all happened so quickly. First off we wanted a 1 bedroom apartment in price category A. However, we every complex that rented apartments in that category was full. Moving up a price set to category B, there were 1 bedrooms at several places available. But the complexes that had 1 bedrooms in A had 2 bedrooms in B. So we figured if were going to pay a higher price we might as well get more room.

We had marketing material for our complex so I came by Saturday, January 10, to fill out an application. We got approved on Monday? I think it might have been Tuesday, to move in the following Monday. So two days ago on my lunch hour I drove to the apartment complex and signed a lease! And since it was Martin Luther King Jr. day then, the boy's didn't have school. So him, his dad, and some friends spent the rest of the day moving furniture in. It's mostly stuff that his parents had kept in storage, so it isn't the nicest of stuff, and it doesn't really match, but it's free! We're not completely moved yet, there's still some stuff at the old house, but every day after work this week I've picked up a carload of stuff, we're making progress. Overall it's coming together.

We are kinda short on somethings. Like the fact that we have a dinning table and no chairs. I would LOVE to go to Ikea, but unfortunately the closest one is in Texas (Houston maybe?) and an 8 hour drive away. I think it's worth it! Hell, I'd go just for their Swedish meatballs. But the boy, not so much. So we'll see. I will post pictures eventually, once we're more moved in and unpacked! Hopefully, that will be sooner and not later!

~Shoshanah

Recap

So talk about my Golden Globes picks being WAY off. 8 out of 25. Yuck. At least I got the sucking out of me now, so I can dominate at the Oscars!

I was glad though Kate Winslet won both of her awards. Heath winning, wasn't really much of a surprise. Colin Farrell for In Burges was interesting. It definitely wasn't a typical Collin Farrell part, but he was good in it. I was kind of surprised since I've heard so little talk about that movie since it came out back in like what, the start of summer?

Also in TV news, the Bachelor, episode 2 was on tonight. I so love Jason. I think he's prob one of the best Bachelors so far. So let's see... I really like Megan. She reminds me of a lot of girls I went to college with. I was really happy she got the first rose, and said before hand I wanted her to. It was like she's freaking out so much already, it would calm her down a little by getting the first rose. I think the whole fight with Erika actually made her look good (at least on TV). She like talked to Erika one on one in the kitchen, and Erika was the one who had to involve everybody and make a big deal out of it.

Speaking of Erika, I really don't like her. She just comes off as an awful person. Probably partly due to producers (I mean giving her the last rose? A little obvious) So we'll see how it goes though.

I still do like Stephanie. Although she seems so much older than the other girls (and is too right?) and when her and Jason had their time together they didn't really click. But I guess they haven't really had their time together, so maybe on their date next week something will click.

The two girls that got kicked off. I can't really say I predicted it, but you could kind of tell during the ceremony. The teacher, I think Jason prob kept her last week since she quit her job. And this week realized there wasn't anything there. And Raquel, well, but getting into his limo it didn't look like she had a lot of patience. A bad move overall.

Moving past TV. I'm not sure when I'll be updating again. Me and the Boy are house sitting at his parents' house starting tomorrow for a week. Which means of course feeding horses. Now you understand the picture I posted, it's from the last time we house sat, last May. I'm not really an animal person, so I guess the fact I'll be feeding the horses every afternoon from Wednesday to Saturday says a lot.