Update on the April experiment

Still tracking the credit card offers for April.  Here’s the grand total so far:

• Pete: 7 (4 of which came on April 1st, by the way!)
• Heather 4

So between us we’ve gotten 11 credit card offers in the first 18 days of the month.  No wonder I feel like we’re innundated by them!!  My theory is that Pete is getting more because our joint credit card is technically in his name with me as a co-signor.  Even though that card is paid in full every month, it gets a pretty high balance in between so he looks like a good credit user (and possible money source for them).  I figure he must look more attractive to the credit card companies than I do.  Me?  The car’s paid off, I don’t carry a balance on any credit card, only student loans are outstanding.  I don’t look nearly as “sexy” to credit card companies.  Well, that’s my theory anyway.

Cat shenanigans

Fred, the ceiling cat, originally uploaded by heatheracarter.

We’ve been having some cat shenanigans going on in our house recently. Fred, our kitten, is about a year old and apparently she got some kitty smarts for her birthday! The little s**t has found a new place to play. While our backs were turned she figured out how to jump from the counter to the top of the refrigerator. Then – and here’s the kicker – she figured out how to move one of the ceiling tiles so that she can explore. (It’s a partial ceiling tile; not one of the full squares.) Her favorite new past time is moving the tile and then going strolling around on the top side of our drop ceiling.

One day we came home to find one of the big tiles laying on the floor. Hmm, confusing… but maybe the wind did it. The next day we came home and found a different tile on the floor and lamp from the kitchen laying across the floor. Hmm, very confusing… Then, a few days later we’re sitting in the kitchen together and in a flash she was in the ceiling. I thought I was seeing things until I heard her walking around in the ceiling. We were dumbfounded – and laughing pretty hysterically. We got her down, replaced the tile, turned our backs and – boom – she was up there again! Sneaky little s**t!!

Well, over the past few weeks we put a book on the tile (the complete “Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy” – no small book!!) to keep her out. It worked… for about 2.5 seconds. So we added a phone book to the tile and that kept her out for a day or two.

Today the story continued. I took the day off as a flex day for some time I worked last weekend. This morning I remember thinking to myself that it was strange that the two big cats were sleeping in the bedroom and the kitten was no where to be found. I went off to run some errands for three hours or so and came back. I opened the door and heard the pitter patter of little cat feet over my head. It was followed by a pretty pathetic meow. Oh crap, I though, here we go again. I looked into the corner for her usual point of access but the tile was firmly in place. Strange… I pushed a tile aside and she came right to me, looking pretty frantic. Pretty quickly she found a comfy place and fell asleep. I went out for a couple of hours to go grocery shopping and when I came back the tile was ajar again. Persistent little bugger!!

Well, now we have to figure out how to keep the damn cat out of the drop ceiling!

Why blog?

“That’s the duty of the old,” said the Librarian, “to be anxious on behalf of the young.  And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.”  They sat a while longer, and the parted, for it was late, and they were old and anxious.”  – Philip Pullman, “The Golden Compass”

A couple of days ago my dad asked me, although not quite in so many words, why I blog.  Being the Carter that he is, it sounded more like “You sure put things out there that I wouldn’t.”  Trust me, in Carter-ese that’s really “Why do you blog?”  (I love that my family has their own language!!  Turns out I’m bilingual! )  To which, of course, I promptly told my father he was old and blogs really aren’t something to worry about.  (Hee hee – love you, Dad!)  I’ve been thinking about his question since then.  So, why do I blog?  I think there’s a couple of answers to that:

• I’ve always been a good writer and, growing up, it was something that I enjoyed.  Years of papers for school quashed some of my enjoyment for writing.  Writing paper after paper after paper will do that.    I write at work but its not the same as personal expression and creativity.  Blogging has helped me to rediscover some of the joy of writing.  Turns out that journaling never worked for me when I’ve tried it in the past.  I think I’ve discovered why – writing by hand is too slow!
• I’m not afraid of my identity being stolen through blogging.  Besides, I watch my credit report like a hawk and, since I already have experience with my identity being stolen, I know how to jump on it.  Not that I WANT that to happen again, mind you!!
• My family and friends are all pretty spread out so I don’t get to see them as much as I’d like.  It’s been years since I lived with or close to my family.  I realized that one of the things I miss are the random, non-scripted conversations and sharing of thoughts.  Unfortunately, I’m not much of a phone person and I’m terrible at responding to emails.  Sometimes I really enjoy chatting but most of the time I’m closer to grumpy and monosyllabic.  Blogging is one way to share some of the random things that float through my head with the people that I love.  I don’t know whether y’all really want to hear them or not but I like to think that at least some of you do.
• I like reading other people’s blogs and thought I’d jump into the fray.    The blogroll along the side of the entries in this blog list some of my favorites.
• When I’m really processing something, I tend to need to talk or write it out; just thinking about it doesn’t usually get it worked through.  To save Pete from my endless processing and ramblings, sometimes I turn here instead.  Sometimes he gets it too, though!