A Crazy Cat's Life

When Hurricane Irene hit New Jersey in late August of 2011, we thought we were safe.  We live on high ground, nowhere near a river or stream.  However, the ground had been so saturated with water from previous storms that we were not going to be immune from flooding.  The one room we lost was the living room.  Water came up through cracks in the foundation and we had a good 1/2" of water in there.  Immediately after the storm, we did have a cleanup crew come in and remove all of the damaged materials but we did not have the time nor the resources to fix everything up. Fast-forward to now.  To be honest, I've been sick of not having a living room.  We can't have people over to visit and I truly miss watching my hockey on our sole big-screen TV.  Bear and I decided it was time to start working on it, especially since I'm off for half of the summer. Now don't get me wrong here.  Bear and I are NOT doing the work ourselves.  We're too ol...

...to get off my ass and do something constructive. Extended vacations are never a good thing for me.  Why?  I don't know what to do with myself half of the time.  Usually, my longest break is the Christmas/winter break of four weeks.  Then, I spend two weeks recuperating from the hells of the semester and then the rest of the time prepping for the spring semester.  This time around is not so easy. You see, I was supposed to teach the entire summer.  Supposed to .  As I mentioned in my last post, enrollment is down everywhere.  I think it has to do with the terms of financial aid changing or some other BS thing.  Anywho, my first summer class was cancelled due to low enrollment.   I knew it was going to happen but was rather surprised when the Dickmeister let the exact same class held after mine run with only one more student than what I had.  We have a minimum at Rich Kids' College for a class to run.  Trust me. ...

My semester is finally over, final grades are in, and I'm ignoring any whining e-mails from students wondering why they got X grade in my classes.  It is now time to sit back, relax, and enjoy the summer.  If it wasn't so early in the morning I would have a nice froofy alcoholic beverage in my hand in order to celebrate but I will do that later today. A few observations from this lovely--note the sarcasm--semester.  Rural college was a pleasure to teach at.  The students were, for the most part, good and attempted to do all the work.  Out of my four classes, only a small handful failed and that was simply because they did not do the work.  Overall, though, these kids have a great work ethic.  Heck, I even had one class where everybody passed, which was a miracle as that's the hardest class I teach!  My boss here, Hippie Chick, is just phenomenal.  She really went out of her way to help me with some problems this semester.  What's bette...

I apologize profusely for being so sporadic with my entries but it is the end of the semester hell and I have very few brain cells that are functioning at the moment.  To give you some idea of what my schedule is like, here was yesterday: 5:45am - Alarm goes off.  Hit the snooze button a few times. 6:00am - Curse the gods (I'm an equal opportunity curser), get up and get ready 7:00am - Leave for one college 7:45-9:30am - Hide in the college library to write a final 9:30am-12:30pm - Teach 12:30-2:00pm - Drive all the way to the town my other college is at (yes, they are that far apart and this is without traffic) 2:00-3:00pm - Therapy (hey, I am a Crazy Cat Lady for a reason) 3:00-6:30pm - Hide in the college library while putting together the lesson for that night's class that I thought I had already done but actually didn't and grade all the late papers that came in. 6:30-9:30pm - Teach 9:30-10:00pm - Figuratively hold student's hand to let him/her know that...

The other day I was going through something online (either another blog or Facebook) and saw a link to an old cartoon I used to watch: Chip 'N Dale's Rescue Rangers.  I was a big fan of the "Disney Afternoon" back when I was in college.  I literally scheduled my classes to make sure I always had the afternoons free to watch my cartoons.  Sad, I know. A couple of people always ask how I started calling my kitties "Fuzzies."  It goes back to that silly cartoon.  In one of the episodes ("Bearing Up Baby"), a little boy gets lost in the woods and he refers to Dale as "fuzzy."  Then he comes along a bear and calls him "big fuzzy."  Silly, I know, but for some reason that stuck in my head. (go to about 4:58 to hear the little boy doing the "fuzzy") Anywho,about a year and a half later, I went with my friend to look at some kittens for her.  The owner had a slew of cats, I mean dozens all over the place and none of ...

...and I spent it inside doing lesson preps and writing exams. *sigh*

There are some days when this is very fitting: