Excuse: umm...my cat ate my homework?

I hate Tuesday mornings. Every Tuesday morning from 8am to 9am there is a leaf blower going right outside my window. This is a new experience since I moved to California, and I must say I just don't "get" leaf blowers. First of all, they are very noisy...they sound like a chain saw that isn't sawing anything down, and that sound drives me insane. Second of all, they simply aren't logical.

I can see the person who invented them going "yeah, we'll make this thing out of an old chainsaw (since we already cut down all the trees around here anyway) and we'll make it just blow leaves away from one area and into another, like out of Joe Schmoe's yard and into Sam Smith's yard. Then tomorrow, we'll blow those same leaves out of Sam Smith's yard and into Joe Schmoe's! Then back to Joe Schmoe's the next day! I'll never run out of work again...brilliant!" And, it is kind of brilliant. I am especially impressed that they managed to market such a stupid an inefficient idea.

Maybe there is just some weird attitude around here I don't understand. There is a woman who's job it is to wander around my gym and clean stuff all day. She doesn't seem to work very hard, but I don't blame her because I think her job sucks. She probably makes minimum wage and so y'know...she does a minimum wage amount of work. One day, she was complaining because the leaves from a tree outside kept blowing in the door. She said "I keep sweeping them outside and they blow back in." Ummmm...duh??? Leafblower mentality! Welcome to California.

Anyway, the last couple of days I don't know where all my time went, although an awful lot of it went to feeding China. Since she had lost another quarter pound at her last chemo appointment, I really need to work hard to make sure she doesn't lose any more and hopefully gains some. It gets time consuming because I have to shut her in the bathroom to keep Rodney from just eating all her high fat and extra tasty food (beef lung, yum!) Then to make it trickier, she will eat twice as much if I am actually supervising her and stiring up her food going "mmm...doesn't that look tasty? Don't you want some more?" I'm not sure actually saying it looks tasty has any affect, but stirring it up and giving it back to her will get her to eat some more. Now I've gotten extra fancy and when stirring the can of food stops working I give her something else, like veal babyfood. Of course, a whole jar of veal babyfood only has 70 calories in it, so sometimes I give her half and half instead...that has 70 calories in 2 tablespoons! Last night I gave her tuna, although that's a little low calorie and low fat. At least it's something more for her to eat.

I'm a little tired of my bathroom smelling like beef lung (it's pretty gross) so Sunday I ordered a rabbit hutch. That way I can put one of the cats in there (out on the balcony in the sun even, if it's nice) and separate them without yucking up my bathroom. I think it will be nicer for them, too. It doesn't arrive for a week, since it has to be trucked from New Jersey (there's some inefficient distribution for ya) but I can't wait.

Oh and of course Monday was salsa class night! I watched my salsa lesson dvd beforehand to figure out the whole 7-count, 8-count thing, and it's not a very good lesson, it goes on and on teaching you just the lead moves so if you are the follower you are learning basically the wrong thing and then to make it more confusing you are supposed to watch them facing you and follow along opposite. You know, like if you are doing an aerobics dvd the instructor would typically move his/her right leg and tell you to move your left, and you would mirror what they are doing, or else like our salsa teacher she would just turn to face the same direction that you are (with her back to you), but not this guy! He just faces you and expects you to reverse everything he does. Very confusing teaching style...we took a lesson from this guy in person at Club Kokomo, and he confused us then, too. But the important part....the important part is he says towards the beginning that salsa is 8-count, you just don't count the 4 or 8 because you are pausing. So it's like 1,2,3,pause,5,6,7,pause and Jinx is not crazy! So I am not as bad at salsa as I was thinking. And...class was really fun and I think I did okay but there was one guy, he's nice and fun and he is pretty good at doing the steps and has good rhythm and good leading skills, BUT last night the last time we danced he kept doing this boob graze during our "freestyle" dancing. And he didn't say anything or apologize, nor did he modify what he was doing with his arms so it didn't happen again. I mean, he must know he's doing it, right?

Oh well, whatever. I'm really enjoying salsa lessons! Our instructor is having a field trip/party/dance thing for Cinco de Mayo at a local restaurant and I really want to go, but my bf basically said last week that if we go to Monterey on the weekend we probably can't go to the Cinco de Mayo salsa thing so I had to choose. I chose Monterey, but I'm still hoping Cinco de Mayo could work out.

Today...I have just got to get some work done! After the gym I have no other plans beside feed China, so not much excuse.