I am besides myself with worry, my darling baby boy, the 600lb gorilla in the room will be going under the knife tomorrow and I am just beset with worry. I know, I know that in most circumstances dogs and cats come out of spay/neuter surgery with no problem (in fact that is my experience) but I am just living that 1% of possibilities and I am worried to death. I will take away the food in a little while (nil by mouth after 12am) and no doubt that will annoy the life out of him, but in any event, he is for the snip tomorrow. May mother nature watch over him and keep him safe. I think that the entire thing will be enhanced by his "road trip with Daddy" tomorrow, I think he will so enjoy his trip in the car with Daddy that it will completely negate any negative feelings he may have about the entire thing, two hours in the car with daddy.... I bet that is Cueball's idea of bliss.

DH and I watched "Love Actually" over the weekend, brilliant movie IMHO, just brilliant, but the most brilliant part of the entire movie is the end, when they are at the arrivals lounge of Gatwick Airport and there are a miriad of people greeting each other, in the background "God Only Knows" is playing..... recently an advert has been playing on the TV with the same song.... God Only Knows..... if you look at that if you think for a nano second, if you just contemplate "God only knows" what I would be without my husband... "God only know" what I'd be without him... I am so grateful for my husband you would not believe.

It is the "holiday" season so the jewelry store adverts have begun, cue a parade of shallow women with shallow smiles on their faces saying inane things like "this year the biggest present under the tree.... *smirk* was in the smallest box" then there are lots of pictures of diamond rings and such. Then of course there is the "every kiss begins with Kay" implying that no husband on the planet is going to have a chance of having sex any time in the near future unless the christmas gift is from Kays. Now personally I am a more practical type of gal, my ideal gift usually comes from Lowes, and involves yard work or power tools, but then that is just me. I mean you can't eat diamonds, you can't even look at em on a regular basis and go "wow" the way you can with flowers or birds. I would much prefer vinyl windows as opposed to a diamond ring and I would much much prefer a really nice power drill combo to a pair of diamond earrings. Again this is why people are spending 110% of their income, they are trying to aspire to a lifestyle that is way beyond what they make and these adverts are just feeding into that. I read a letter once to an agony aunt where a mother was complaining that her daughter's fiance had spent "less than $10,000" on an engagement ring. WHAT? Come on, that $10,000 could be a downpayment on a house, could furnish an entire house, could set them up on the beginning of their new life and she was worried about an Engagement ring? How shallow is that. I mean really, I have seen people come in my office and they are dripping with diamonds, literally dripping with them, you quote them an attorney fee for their particular problem and they stand there in shock and go "that much?" I can pretty much guarantee that if I won the lottery tomorrow the last thing on my shopping list would be diamonds. I have always lusted after a nice Emerald, but as for diamonds you can keep em, Cubic Zirconia are just as pretty and an nth of the price. As it is my husband said after one of these particular jewelry store adverts "I know that's what I will buy you, a diamond ring" I was very clear in my response. "I have my engagement ring and my wedding band on my left hand, I have my favorite ring ever (an aquamarine and a diamond) and my mother's wedding band on my right hand, I am all ringed out, there is no more room, get me some new birdfeeders" Unlike all the shallow women in the jewelry store adverts if I wake up on Christmas morning and find anything in a jewelry box under the tree I will be mad as hell.... unless it is a carefully disguised power drill of course. As it is the only diamonds I want in my life are these, the diamonds in my sedum.

As you know I hate advertisers with a passion. They are, not to put too fine a point on it, the bane of the civilized world, they are the reason that Americans spend, on average, 110% of their income every year. I am particularly disgusted by the pharmaceutical ads, which absolutely convince you that you have a problem that needs medication when in actual fact you probably don't. My favorite two right now are the "are you a man over 50 then it is time to take the "Avadart" quiz" whereupon they ask you alot of questions about urination which will no doubt result in you needing the said medication. What worries me about this ad is that one of the "warnings" is "this medication should not be handled by females who are pregnant or who may become pregnant because the risk of serious birth defects" Okay so what is this stuff radioactive or something? And, more importantly what about all the female pharmacists out there, do they have to wear gloves before they count out the pills? The second ad that annoys me is the Sally Field one, oh this is classic, just listen to this quote and think about it rationally for a second. "my girlfriend was telling me that she has to set aside time once a week to take her osteoparosis medicine, when I only take mine once a month". Lets break it down shall we "she has to SET ASIDE time once a week" to take a pill. Okay so lets analyse this, pour glass of water (about two seconds) take pill from bottle (another second) place pill in mouth and swallow with water (about three seconds), SO said girlfriend of Sally Field has an issue with SETTING ASIDE (I mean what does she do write it on a calendar?) approximately six seconds a week (okay lets go for a marathon session it takes a WHOLE MINUTE) to take a damn pill, ya know I would really hate to be a) Sally Field or b) Sally Field's girlfriend that ONE MINUTE A WEEK IS A PROBLEM? What on EARTH can one's life be like that one cannot afford a minute a week to take a pill, especially seeing as Sally Field is like, not to put too fine a point on it, unemployed for the most part right now. What about all those poor people who have to take pills every day, great gods, they must be just consumed with nothing but taking pills every day. What about those poor, wretched, harried people who have to *GASP* take pills more than one time a day? Oh the humanity of it, they have to take pills several times a day, or great googly moogly they have to take pills four times a day. Can we just imagine what their life must be like? Their entire day must revolve around those four crucial minutes in the day, my god they cannot walk, they cannot sleep, they cannot work, they cannot relax because every second of the day they are consumed with the fact that they must "SET ASIDE" four parts of their day to take a pill. If that ad isn't taken off the screens here real soon there is a large brick going through my TV. There really should be a law against drug companies advertising on TV, the only person who should be recommending a drug is a doctor, who actually knows what he is talking about.

I have spoken of this before. As you well know the self righteous cat belongs to the closed shop "the cats union" the cats union has various rules which must be complied with, failure to comply will result in the cat being drummed out of the union, and that can not be allowed to happen. Rule 1 of course (as all cat owners know) is "see box get in it" so you have purchased something and said something came in a box. You have unpacked said box and said box now sits on the living room floor prior to being taken outside to be taken away on trash day. Household cats will immediately feel the overwhelming desire to sleep in said box, it does not matter how small or how strangely shaped the box is the box MUST be slept in. My cat Nelson, my one-eyed, faux tom cat (ie he is fixed and he doesn't know it) takes this rule to the extreme in that he must sleep in just about anything. On Thanksgiving day I had taken the bread basket from the dining room and placed it on top of the cooker. (I had removed the bread you understand). When I returned to the kitchen Nelson was quite self-righteously asleep in the bread basket. In the same manner that "see box get in it" is complied with, Nelson is a "if a cupboard door is open said cupboard must be slept in" Nelson feels that the cats union will drum him out if he does not immediately climb into any open cupboard and first of all scout around to see what is in there and then fall asleep. This is really quite handy as what usually results is that Nelson becomes the animated equivalent of a feather duster and he normally comes out of the cupboards wearing a lovely mantle of cobwebs. While I was making dinner the other night I made the mistake of opening the cupboard where my canned goods are kept. When I came back into the kitchen after taking something into the living room I found this....



Okay now let us address this matter which appears to be me being ever so slightly, just a tad, maybe just a smidgen obsessive compulsive when it comes to my cupboards in that yes I know they are labeled. Okay so let me just explain. To begin with I went through Hurricane Floyd, my house flooded, every object I owned ended up piled up on any dry surface that there was, all my food was packed into boxes while the cupboards were ripped out it was, not to put too fine a point on it, total chaos. Secondly I have alot of visitors to my home, my mum, my sister etc. etc., I LIKE things in their place, I like things to be where they are supposed to be and where I can find them. Hence, the cupboards are labeled so my mum, my sister etc., know exactly where things go when we are putting away groceries, dishes etc., I am not OCD I am just organized.

You will also notice alot of strange foods in my cupboards, Heinz Tomato Soup for instance, Heinz Cook in Sauce...., I just love internet shopping.