I think Susan's blog title is from a Britney Spears song, but you won't find that here.

Can anyone find a picture of Jillian Michaels when she was chubby?  Because I can't.

Oops, I lied.

Okay, who's becoming a little too obsessed with Jillian Michaels?

Moving forward...

I sat down (on the toilet, if you were wondering) and figured out how to get that fifth petal on those flower fridgies.  I think they go perfectly with our Pac Man and starfish and Marvel superhero magnets.  Which, if it weren't for Jesse, I wouldn't know the difference between Marvel and DC.  Fyi?  There's a big difference.

Anyway.  I can add "crochet" to my crafting resume.  Which I will have my mom type up for me promptly, after I apologize to her for writing on my blog about crocheting on the toilet.

In all fairness, I knit on the toilet too.  But not if there's some fancy pattern.  A washcloth, maybe, but not a glove.

Mom?  Is that resume done?

Okay, Suki:

Cinnamon:

This is a picture of Cinnamon on SUSAN's porch.  I've also seen Suki lounging there as well, but she has the wherewithal to flee the scene before photographic evidence can be made.

Well, this was nice and all but I have some Crash Bandicoot to play.

A little less knit, a little more crochet

So The Jilted Ballerina made a post dedicated to me, and in true wooing fashion, I did whatever she asked.

An improperly crocheted flower fridgie!  I left out a petal somehow, but oh well.  I guess I didn't need to point out my failure, did I?  She posted a video here, for those of you crochet illiterate like me, and she is a very good instructor.  And in the least creepy way to say this, she has very nice hands.

I tried over and over again to crochet with some cotton yarn that would have had great colors, but I suffer from S.H.W.L.N.T.S. (Sweaty Hands When Learning New Things Syndrome) and boy howdy, sweat-tee.  So I switched to that mystery green yarn and bam, the eggs are in the egg drawer.

Oh, and to clarify from my last post, my husband had to ask what a "crip" was, and I told him I was referencing bloods and crips (two separate gangs), and how the Fat Bridesmaid was wearing a dark bandanna, which I assumed to be blue, and then assumed she was a gang member.  I realize now not everyone knows these things about gangs in the blogosphere.  Which, why do I know these things?  I do not understand.  I can't tell you anything about Greek mythology or fractions, but I can tell you all sorts of gang history and zombie facts.  And hypothetically how to bargain for a beer in Mexico.

So on Saturday night and Sunday night I bamboozled Jesse into doing the 30 Day Shred with me.  On Saturday when I had done it twice, I was feeling AWESOME.  The next day?  HORRID.  Jeesh, Jillian.  I'm even cheating through some of it by taking longer than a 5 second break.  But I do have to say I'm feeling great throughout the day.

We installed our air conditioner units yesterday, which actually means that my dad came over and installed our air conditioner units yesterday.  Have I mentioned how handy my dad is?  He's awfully handy.  And he'll gripe about fixing something for you, but you can see that light in his eye when you ask him to fix a problem.  My father's name is Mark and he loves PVC pipe, pocket knives, and complaining about fixing things.   His dislikes are kidney stones and fixing things.

Thinking of fixing things makes Dad feel:

And let's welcome Nan to the vast following on my blog!

AAAHHHH RABBITS.

New followers, people!

Okay, first of all let's welcome Shelley.  She hails from I Miss My Sanity and blogs about her animals often.  Why are other people's pets so interesting?  They're not, you say?  Stop posting about my cats?  YOU KNOW YOU LOVE THEM.

Next is The Jilted Ballerina.  She's crafty.  But probably not like ice is cold.  She's set on getting me to crochet, and if you saw my computer desk right now, you would know she is winning.

Next up is what's her face.  I forgot her name.  How rude am I to call someone what's her face?  FINE, I'll go look it up.  It's Erin from the Mother Load!  It was love at first sight with this post.  Don't tell Jesse there are women who even pretend to do chores in a little black dress.  Although I don't know how hot scooping the litter box wearing high heels can really be.

Which, speaking of the litter box.  On Thursday something came in the mail.  Something horrible. Something that would....ruin my night.

Oh, Jillian.  I thought I liked you.

But what's the best is when I was googling for that picture, I came across this one of a girl after her first 30 Day Shred work out.

Didn't want that posted on my ever-increasing in popularity blog?  Too bad.

Oddly enough, it looked a lot like my photo!

And who was totally not going to post that picture until that chick up there, who is apparently a crip, posted hers?

Okay, I assure you that my photo only looks better than the other girl's because of the lighting in the living room.  I was disgusting myself with the sweat falling everywhere.  Suki started rubbing up against my legs during my cool down and some sweat dripped down on her and who started to hate her owner?

Oh, I just realized that is the Fat Bridesmaid!  I don't think she would mind it so much anymore.  Way to ruin the embarrassment, Fat Bridesmaid.

Oh, that's right, I was speaking of the litter box.  I got up Friday morning and thought to myself, "Well look at that!  Only my arms hurt!  Even though I could barely walk myself to bed last night because my legs were shaking so much!"  And then I squatted down to clean the litter box and bam.

Jillian and I aren't on speaking terms.

However, last night I fell asleep at the rambunctious hour of 9pm, because, hello.  I'm a 23 year old partier who stays up until 9pm on Friday nights.  So this morning I got to hang out with Jillian again!  Lucky me!

Fortunately for me I'm making Jesse do the video with me tonight.  Because after we got up this morning, and I started exercising, who went back to bed?

**Edit - Please note those are JESSE'S legs in the following photo.  He was afraid they looked too girly and people would think they were mine.  He is like George Michael on Arrested Development when GOB needed "legs" for his saw-the-girl-in-half trick and he repeats "I'm okay with myself, I'm okay with myself."

Was it everyone but me?

Hmmm, Jillian?


P.S.
It's starting to finally get hot here in Portland.  I found poor Suki camping out in front of the fan.

She took my spot!

Go ahead and take the time to notice my TWO. NEW. FOLLOWERS!

We haven't seen slugs in about a week.  I haven't mentioned it because not thinking about it has been helping.  You know when you get some sort of infestation in your house (no?  You're not disgusting like me?) and suddenly every little fleck could be an ant (or FLEAS, barf)?  It's like that.  You remember from the horrible photos.  They were the same color as the shower walls so every time I go into the bathroom I open up the shower curtain, ready to go on a rampage.  But it's been okay guys, calm down.

HEY!  You.  Yes, you, stalking me.  I know who you are, and you should stop waiting for Susan to post regularly to come out of hiding and start following MEEEEEE.  Jesse and Cinnamon sleepily plead with you in the photo above.

IN THE MEANTIME (Jessica), craft night is resuming tonight.  Jenna will be joining Susan and I.  Okay, well, that's all there was for that paragraph.

Over here at Bye Bye, Pie, some of us decided to do Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred because we hate ourselves.  I say this even though I have not received my dvd in the mail, so I don't really know what I'm talking about.  But I did do some Dance Dance Revolution to "prep" myself, and HOLY COW WHO IS OUT OF SHAPE?  I don't talk about my weight on this blog, except for that little blurp to the right where I stated I weigh 120 pounds "give or take a few dozen".  Now, the give or take might be a little modest.  It's more like "add 80 pounds and cry a little inside".  But I don't get down on myself about my weight too often (I bet Jesse begs to differ with that statement) because a wonderful addition to that weight gain was a butt.  Because the women in my family tend to be, how you say, "top heavy".  As in, we were out with friends one time and I went to the bathroom and on the way back my friend's husband said to her "woooah, that chick has huge boobs" and she said to her husband "that's Katie!" and he said "don't tell her I said that" and hello internet, meet that story.

So, anyway, I might blog about it some.  But it's definitely not going to turn into a health blog because a few weeks ago my sister was reading a bio on some animator chick who said she loved peas and bacon and I said "So she eats healthy" which was surprisingly not said condescendingly.  To which Susan said, "One of those was bacon!  That's not healthy!"  And I retorted, "One of those things is never in my diet."  "Good point," said the defeated Susan, looking up at me while I sat highly on my steed.

Someone misses her Brittney :(

"His fahza, Dr. Evil." "His farger? What's a farger? I don't speak freaky-deaky Dutch." "Fahza, his dad, dad is fahza." "Oh, his dad. His FA-THER."

Approximately 59 years ago, my father was not a father.  He was more like a month or two old.  But even then, I knew.  Someday he would be my dad.

That's my mom and dad.  He was already working towards being a dad there, for the ultimate goal of having kids until they had the perfect one (me) and then stopping to raise said children.

Hey Dad.

You're not nearly as grumpy as you're made out to be.

And I know the term is like a million years old now, but I totally caught you taking these photos of yourself in true Myspace fashion.

Dad has had the privilege of being mentioned in a few childhood stories on my blog.  For some reason, my mom hasn't, because she never threatened me to eat a moldy sandwich and never told me to eat my diarrhea. But he is the one who told me it's not what you want that makes you fat, it's what you get.

When I was in high school we lived in a "mobile home" (do not say the word trailer to my dad) and Cinnamon used to get stuck on the roof all the time.  Stupid cat.  I would (dad would) get out the ladder and I'd have to get up there and stupid Cinnamon would be so happy to see me he'd start rolling around and rubbing against my hand but never letting me grab him to get him down.  He is still there today.

Okay, that's a picture I found online.  The only basketball hoop I had fit over a trashcan.

Less than a year after moving to Portland, my parents decided to move to the same area, because it is the best area in Portland.  A year after Jesse and I got married, Mom and Dad moved into these ADORABLE duplexes.  So, uh, we moved there too.

One day my dad called me and told me to come outside.  I came over and stood by him in front of his house.

"You know," he said, "when you moved away and took all your stuff, I never thought we'd be living this close to each other and that you'd drop in on us and bring over your friends from high school (Brittney lived across the street at this time) and that YOUR CAT WOULD BE ON MY ROOF."

And, sure enough, there was that cat.

He is still there today.

So, thanks, Dad, for being my dad and for not being a weirdo or anything.

Baaaahhhhh (sorry to be so frustrating)

I have nothing to talk about.  Let us proceed with the post stating otherwise...

I came home from work the other day to this:

Had Jesse disintegrated?

"My apartment is infested with koala bears.   It's the cutest infestation ever.   Way better than cockroaches.  When I turn on the light, a bunch of koala bears scatter, but I don't want them to.  I'm like, 'Hey... Hold on fellows... Let me hold one of you, and feed you a leaf.'  Koala bears are so cute, why do they have to be so far away from me. We need to ship a few over, so I can hold one, and pat it on its head."

Mitch Hedberg

So, Amy had to be all, "Slugs aren't so bad, I've had to kill three scorpions so far in my new place."  Indeed, Amy.  Indeed.  It's too bad Amy and I stopped being friends, isn't it?  No one likes perspective, Amy.

I never had an issue with slugs.  It's kind of like raccoons.  I never had a problem with those adorable little faces.  But?  When they move in under your house and have babies?  And eat all your cat's food?  And make the most HORRIFIC NOISES?  They lose their cuteness.  And talk about a not at all stressful time for my parents. 

Brittney and Bracken moved away from us  :(  Which means Brittney has to update her blog regularly so I know what the heck is going on in their lives.  Because I'm apparently extremely nosy.

Okay, here's pictures I took of Cinnamon when he fell asleep on the couch.

Hairy toes!

And then he woke up and looked very jarred.  See the spread toes?

And then I didn't think Suki was going to let me in to my own house.

"Sorry, but a toll is a toll, and a roll is a roll, and if we don't get no tolls, then we don't eat no rolls."

Remember that line?  Robin Hood: Men in Tights?  Which was way more entertaining than the real Robin Hood?

"I opened up a yogurt, underneath the lid it said, "Please try again" because they were having a contest that I was unaware of. I thought maybe I opened the yogurt wrong. ...Or maybe Yoplait was trying to inspire me... "Come on Mitchell, don't give up!" An inspirational message from your friends at Yoplait, fruit on the bottom, hope on top."
Mitch Hedberg

Iron Maiden is for the infestation

A while ago Jesse and I were at Target and we saw this little "you are Iron Man" mirror thing in the toy section.  It had Iron Man's body on the mirror and you put your head where his head should be.  I told Jesse to squat down.  Now, Jesse has this long torso.  Like, really, really long torso.  Homeboy is mostly torso, and a smidgen of legs.  He won't be happy with me when he reads my description of his body.  His shoulders kept appearing in the shot, because if you can believe this, they only made the display tall enough for kids.  He was getting all frustrated with me saying over and over again "Lower.  No, lower."  And he got up in a huff and had me do it.  He said to me, "You need to grab my head and put me in place, like this."  And he proceeded to shove my head further into my neck in front of the children and their parents in the toy aisle.  You can see how excited I was to still be a Target shopper.

Next up was Jesse, and I delightfully shoved his head into the right spot in the mirror.  Can you tell by these photos that we were SO DONE trying to be Iron Man and Maiden and just wanted to get out of the store, but no, we must finish what we started?

Good times with the Bray folk.  Come and knock on my door...

Okay.  You guys.  That was what I was going to write about today.  But do you know what happened last night?  DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED?  Of course you do.  You see where this is going.

They're baaaaaaaaaaack.  Suki was ready for her nighttime snack of licking water in the tub and as I leaned over to turn on the water I was like, SLUG.  SLUG.  SLUG.  And Jesse came in and SLUG.  Four of them this time.  We think they're coming in from the window.  I'm still not 100% convinced that's what it is, but it's either that or the drain and I have to sleep at night somehow.  I just wish our stupid bathroom had a fan.  Can you put a makeshift fan in the bathroom somehow for when you take showers and you don't want mold all over your ceiling?  Please advise.

We did decide, however, this was a good time to clean out the drain following my good friend Martha's advise from this book.  She tries to kill you slowly with chores.

First we put in baking soda.

Then white vinegar which we repeatedly said "It smells like feet" until we were no longer amused with ourselves.

Then it foamed.

Then you stopped caring what we were doing to our drain and clicked to another website.

Then you pour boiling water down the drain.  Turns out?  Boiling water just fogs up the camera and makes all my followers go "thank goodness she stopped posting photos of this nonsense."

And then Suki got VERY, VERY ANGRY that we were not letting her in the tub.  Note the ears.  I gave her some treats in hopes she wouldn't pee all over my stuff while I slept.

Well, on a lighter note, my cats are still cute and annoying:

So, what's new with you?  No slugs in your perfect little world?  I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT.

Just kidding, I do.  GO ON.

Oh, one more thing, unless you want to get depressed with your cleaning skills, don't take lots of pictures of your shower with the flash on.

Portland, we have a problem.

Jesse and I are going to Comic Con next month with some friends.  Yes, I know, you should be jealous, yadda yadda yadda.  What I'm trying to say is we are paying off one particular credit card right before we go so we can rack it up at Comic Con.  So, I'm trying to save some money.

I am in love with the Clorox toilet wand. 

DID YOU HEAR ME TOILET WAND?  I said I love you.  But you are not as cheap as other methods of toilet wandiness.  Six replacement wands are something over $4.  But a container of Comet and a new toilet brush?  Just over $2.  And it cleans the tub.  Not the toilet brush.  I guess you could use the toilet brush to clean the tub, but please don't invite me over to shower at your place.  Because, you know, those shower invites.  All the rage.

Jesse and I got back from Grants Pass on Monday and I cleaned the bathroom with my new Comet cleaner.  I was scrubbing the bathtub and pulling down all the junk we keep in the corners of the tub to wipe underneath them.

I pulled out my face wash.

And I was greeted by the newest resident of the Bray household.

Okay, so that's a picture I found on google.  My face wash is not a leaf on cement.  But his cousin was in my bathtub.  Well, his slightly thinner cousin.  Sorry, tubbo, you were the best I could find online.

I would have taken a photo but I was too busy asking Jesse, "Do those look like eggs?"  I even said, "Poor little slug" as Jesse flushed him down the toilet and we (he) wiped off his disgusting eggs from my facewash.

Fast forward to last night.  Jesse is in the shower, doing the thing where he has a song in his head but only sings like every 5th line.  I'm on the couch flipping through a Pottery Barn catalog looking at ideas to rip off when Jesse shouts "BUUUUH!!"  I RAN to his side, meaning I flipped through a couple more pages, said "What is it, honey" and when he couldn't hear me I dog eared the page (amidst a sigh) and mosied into the bathroom.

"There's a big ole slug in here and I think it's pooping."

I popped my head in the shower and while Jesse's sight was dead set on the slug in front of him and his MILLION DEMON EGGS that had just come out of his butt, I noticed another on the rim of the tub and another in the window.  I calmly told him to turn off the water and REMOVE YOUR PERSON FROM THE DEVIL SLUG TUB.

There were three!  TTTHHHHRREEEEEE.  I had uttered "Poor little slug" to the thin cousin while he laughed his way down that toilet.  "My children will be back to avenge me, you strumpet!" he gurgled.

You won this time.  One of those little beasts pooped some eggs out on the shower curtain liner too.  WE ARE LIVING IN THE JUNGLE.  The Slug Shower Jungle of Suburbia.

So do you think everyone in our house is just relaxed as pie to go into the bathroom?  Even Suki is like "nah, I'll just drink the water from the bowl you leave me every morning."  Why's that, Suki?  You don't want aqua a la slug?  You know, I don't think she's much of a huntress anyway.  Cinnamon keeps psyching me out, making me think he's done with that wild behavior of leaving me dead animals, and then he does something like LEAVE ME A HEADLESS BIRD.  Does he have to be such a...an animal sometimes?

And dear lord, where was the head?  That bird haunted me.  I remember when I opened up the door to let Cin in and I saw the dead bird next to him,  he looked at the bird, then at me with this look that said, "Are you going to thank me, or..."

RIP the good ole days.  (This picture was taken October 14, 2009.  We hadn't had Suki for more than a few days and after I got out of the shower she hopped right in and started licking the tub, much to my disgust.  I sent this photo to Jesse via my phone.)


OKAY BYE BYE

All quiet on the western front. (pull my finger)

I can hear you all thinking "I wonder how Katie's trip to Grants Pass went?"  Well, Jesse was there too, did you even think about that?  But I'll go ahead and answer you.

There was a parade.

BAGPIPES

There was much eating.

Let's not tell Melissa that the only picture I have of her on my blog is of her eating, shall we?

Which means that while we passed the time, Jesse passed some gas.

Seriously.  That guy.  He's lucky he's cute and I love him and that he's a great husband.  Otherwise?  Stinky.



And do you know there are NO YARN STORES IN GRANTS PASS? 

Woah, I just crawled back into my chair after the collective gasp from all of you sucked the air out of my lungs.

And there's Darin (Jesse's uncle), on the City Council float.  I took some horrible photos.  I got one that actually has the City Council sign, but he's not smiling, and in fact, looks rather grumpy.  The next one he is in the very far bottom left corner and the rest is sky.  So this was the one.  How the sky knew I wanted it to point an arrow at him with his name, I may never know.

Oh, and here's one of the joys of living in a small town.

Caveman Towing brought out the big guns and towed all of their trucks.  I think it was like 15. I don't know, I was too busy taking bad photos.

Jesse took this good shot though.  He also took a lot of horrible shots that I guess he doesn't feel like he ever needs to delete, ever.

One of the downsides of taking most of the pictures is that there aren't many of me.  Let me show you the two that were taken of me (that weren't of me with knitting needles in my mouth looking like a walrus, sorry).

Hey.  He tries.

So the cats didn't come with us this weekend, because we had a discussion beforehand about how Cinnamon thinks he's old enough to stay home alone and watch Suki.  The plus side of this was that Cinnamon, only out of necessity, actually buried some of Suki's poop instead of just letting it sit on top of the litter.  What was that sound?  Was that the sound of losing a reader by talking about cat poop?

Okay, is there some sort of correlation between how a cat has a litter of kittens (I almost typed a liter.  Do some cats have two liters maybe?  Certainly not a gallon) and how they use a litter box?  Jesse mentioned that to me and I found it hysterical.  But I'm also the person that never put any thought into the words pony tail and hula hoop.  (Did you know when you're using a hula hoop it's almost like you're dancing the...oh, never mind.  EVERYBODY ALREADY KNEW THAT.)

ANYWAY, back on target Katie (Steve), that above photo of Cinnamon is from when we had the GREAT ANT DEPRESSION OF TWO THOUSAND TEN.  The bottom shelf on the red bookcase back there used to be Suki's eating area until ants found it.  Then ants found the mario table cat food so we moved it in front of the armoir.  We wanted them to have a good view of Arrested Development and Futurama.

Should I keep him?

Yes [   ]

Yes, farting is part of better or worse [   ]

Were 'for better or worse' even in our vows?  I only remember me stammering.