Black Doggerel

Oh joy! Happy fun fireworks again! Oh, I do so enjoy watching my dog shaking like a leaf and trying to fold himself into non-existence every few minutes!

He came and plastered himself to my legs while I was in the bathroom and I gave him some Rescue Remedy. Note to self - don't do that while sitting on toilet. I had the lid off the bottle (because the lid incorporates the useful little dropper-thingy necessary to get the magic juice past his clenched teeth) and spilled about a third of what was left onto the floor, where every animal in the house except the one I wanted to give it to fought to lick it up.

I didn't let them - that stuff's like pure grain alcohol. The last thing I need here is drunk kitten zoomies. The flat's quite trashed enough as it is thanks.

Thank [higher power of your choice] I'm not likely to get any happy little candy-bandits on sugar-highs yowling outside my door tonight. There are advantages to being a mad single cat lady with scary loud dogs in an apartment block full of stoners, drunks and men who look like serial killers. I love this place.

The Hoover idea helped, but my hoover cuts out if it overheats (and then won't start again for several hours), so an hour after the first pyrotechnics, with the bangs still going out there like a fucking war movie, I've had to switch the bastard thing off so it can cool down and just turn my speakers up to eleven.

it helps a little. of course between the hoover, the aggressive rock music (I'm on to Iggy Pop now) and the fireworks the cats are all hiding so Spike has no distractions. He's a small trembling heap over by the door. He's two-thirds of his normal size, all except his eyes which have doubled. He's off his face on Rescue Remedy which is stopping him barking himself hoarse.

I wish to fuck Guy Fawkes had succeeded. Not because I give a shit about far-reaching political implications (or even have an idea what they might be) but because then it might have been considered in bad taste to set off fucking explosions all fucking autumn.

am going to hug my collie now. bastards.

Edit: Bonus! I found out where those maggots were coming from. Fucking Cassie and her obsession with covering food dishes. She'd dragged a pair of my trousers out of the wardrobe, covered a half-empty food dish with it and bundled the whole thing behind the door, where I completely failed to find it till now. Am not attempting to salvage either trousers or food dish.

I am so tired of cats and mess.

Am attempting to tidy up a bit before I start with the hoovering. I would usually hoover in the afternoon, but it will help drown out the fireworks. That was my excuse this afternoon for putting it off till this evening, and it's a good one, isn't it? It's even perfectly true - but still an excuse.

Thankfully, the cats are proving a big help with Spike and fireworks. While they're awake and active they distract him tremendously, and while he's still pretty bothered he's not as bothered as I expected. I wish to hell I didn't have to take him out after dark, though.

Hamish (Blade) kitten is getting fat. He still has a waist when you look at him from above, but only just, and when he rolls over - well, his belly is magnificent, tan and silver with darker, gunmetal spots and luxuriant plushy fur like a mink's, but it's also kinda huge. Not sure what to do about it. I generally feed all four of them from one dish, and they like to pick at it through the day - and none of the others are overweight. He gets plenty of exercise - hours of zoomies and swingball and hockey and wrestling - so all I'm doing for now is supervising the day-old chick feeds to stop him stealing anyone else's, which he does if given half a chance. I may be no lightweight myself, but I've never had an obese pet yet and I don't plan to start now.

Naamah Cat is on my lap getting in the way of my typing by playfighting with my hand. She's biting and clawing me surprisingly gently with her front end, but she seems to forget to pull her punches when she brings the back end into play. Ow.

Firefox update is still getting up my nose. I reloaded my bookmarks OK, but the actual bookmarking procedure has a bug in it which means I can only intermittently bookmark pages, and then without titles. I have found a new theme, though. It's not nearly as nice as the lovely black one I used to use but at least it's mostly monochrome and has a bit of texture to it. Am checking the themes page daily and no one has yet come up with a white-on-black theme that's 2.0 compatible. Bastards.

Won't be om IM tonight, or at least not till after I've hoovered and done the litter trays, and maybe not even then. I'm still in my incommunicado mood and anyway, weekend.

Everyone has done little reviews of the passing year and expressed hopes for the new one, and the same sentiment's cropping up everywhere - wow, that was crap, I really hope the next one's going to be a little bit better.


It makes me feel obscurely guilty about admitting that 2005 has been a stonking good year at Black Dog HQ, and I feel - no, I know - that 2006 will be even better. I'm sorry. I don't mean to be smug. If I have a New Year's Resolution (and I never do, on principle) it will be to try and spread it about a bit more. I love you people, I do.

In the meantime, I may be offline for the evening, because I'm seeing in the New Year the way I always do, huddled in the bathroom with a hysterical collie wedged in my armpit while everyone else in the world competes to see who's got the loudest pyrotechnics. But he has his Rescue Remedy, and I have yesterday's endorphin hangover and plenty of Bailey's... it's all good.

Happy New Year to all of you out there in LJ-land!

I am so FUCKING FED UP WITH FUCKING FIREWORKS, I can't tell you.

It's a fucking WEEKNIGHT. It's RAINING. But some prick is still letting off what sounds like a full professional display, and he's doing it about twenty yards from my flat. I've just had to spend half an hour on the floor in the hallway with a hysterical collie wedged in my armpit. I did hope shutting ourselves out of the lounge and shutting all the windows would reduce it a bit - if it did, it wasn't very noticeable. it sounded as though they were letting the fucking things off in the stairwell.

It's shredding my nerves as well, though not as badly as poor Spike's. When I heard the first one this evening I leaned out of the kitchen window and yelled "WANKERS!" at the top of my voice. I couldn't help myself.

I'm going to spend Saturday night at Mum's. Her house is more soundproof, has more muffling soft furnishings and isn't near any schools and churches that might be having displays - it'll still be bad but it'll be a fucking sight worse here.

I feel like I'm sitting out a fucking siege. I swear, I am getting very close to the point of going out and jamming a rocket up someone's arse, I really am.

Fucking wankbastard pissmonkey neighbours have been letting off sodding fireworks every fucking night for a week now. Tonight's performance is a. coming from somewhere within 100 yards of the flats and b. includes a lot of those shrill whistling screeching ones - which means I'm typing this with a distraught collie in my lap. And it's going to carry on like this till after New Year now. It's going to be a fucking long winter.

Please excuse and ignore earlier bout of whining. It's as resolved as it's ever going to get. Thank you to everyone who cared.

Happy New Year, everyone!!

I don't normally make New Year's resolutions, but I nicked this from captain_ice

In the year 2005 I resolve to: Masturbating at least twice a day. Get your resolution here

I'm sure I can manage that. *perfectly straight face*

Non-exciting but perfectly pleasant night at Black Dog HQ. Mum came down with bronchitis and Spike needs peeling off the ceiling every few minutes when there are fireworks, so I stayed home & drank sparkling wine and Bailey's with them, then went & watched B5 till I fell asleep.

A whole year lying in front of me to pick up and play with. I like it. *grins*

Let's make it a good one.