Just in case you were wondering, when someone says you’re “pitchy,” the simplest definition is that you aren’t quite hitting your notes. Usually, “pitchy” means you’re running a little sharp on some notes and a little flat on others – because if you were consistently sharp, or consistently flat, a good vocal judge would say you were sharp or flat instead of “pitchy.”

I know I just gave Idol judges possibly a little more credit than they deserve (“good vocal judge”), but whatever. They didn’t make up “pitchy” – I’ve heard it in singing for years.

Also, for what it’s worth, Pickler, if you support your upper register with lots of air, it’s far less likely to be pitchy. Note that good air support and shouty are not the same thing.

That is all.

I was just reviewing my last post because I thought I’d seen a typo, and noticed the part where I said that I am not made of money – one of those things my parents said that I swore I’d never repeat, and yet here I am.

But let’s suppose I actually were made out of money. That still wouldn’t solve anything, you know? Because if I have to peel dollar bills off of my body to pay for things, pretty soon I’m not going to have much body left. And where would I start? A leg? An arm? My torso? It kind of seems like self-cannibalism. Unless the money grows back, like skin and hair? Maybe? In which case if you weren’t spending enough money you’d get all gross with dead money built up on you and you’d have to exfoliate off the excess money and put it in a jar or buy a pizza or something.

I’m just saying.

I am in such a rut. There are things going on, and things I’m thinking about, but I’ve been having trouble motivating myself to do anything, or to write about anything.

I was at Family HQ for the weekend because Ginny had to have (yet another) surgery to deal with problems with the hardware installed during her first surgery after the accident. It was supposed to be no big deal at all, and then it was kind of a tiny big deal when her blood oxygen levels were too low and the hospital decided to keep her overnight, and then she came home the next day and now she’s recovering well.

Ginny’s actually not the most crippled member of the family right now – it’s Belle, our golden retriever who had the big emergency splenectomy a few weeks ago. Turns out her leg weakness was completely unrelated to the spleen tumor, and she still can’t really walk so much. The vet gave us a sling to use to lift her back end, because she can walk a little bit if she has help getting up, but it’s tough and it’s turning into this long drawn-out routine of testing and more testing and glucosamine and some kind of shot that starts with a “p” that I keep wanting to call prednisone but I know that isn’t right and on and on and on. That sounds really bleak, but seriously, aside from the not-walking she seems to be doing fine, and keeps acting her cutest at the vet so they’re all in love with her there even when she poops on the floor.

Speaking of poop, I would like to share that Abby very thoughtfully shat up the inside of her carrier on the way to my parents’ on Friday, and then barfed on their floor once we got there. And one of the kittens left me a nice barfy surprise on the floor downstairs this morning. I suspect they don’t like the last food I got them so I’ll be switching to a new brand as soon as we’re out of this one, and Abby totally pooped in the carrier, I think, because I did not make her use the litterbox before I left because I was in a hurry and it’s a long car trip for them. Still, that doesn’t mean it was fun, and anyone who says kittens are nothing like children can seriously just kiss my ass. I’ve taken care of lots of children in my day and it’s pretty darn similar to kitten-rearing.

About this food thing – I’ve been feeding them pretty high-quality food since they came to my house, although not the highest quality food on the market because, quite frankly, I am not made of money, and it hurts my soul to spend twenty bucks on a bag of food that lasts a week. I don’t spend that much on my own groceries. They’ve been eating ProPlan or Purina One and tolerating it well, but the last time I went to the store, they were out of both and I didn’t feel like driving across town to another store so I got the knockoff premium food and now we’re having the barfing problems. So no more knockoff premium food.

There is a website with an active forum that I often use for research on kitten issues, and I’ve gotten some really good information there, but I will never, ever register or post there, because a lot of the forum members are kind of nutso. For one thing, I’ve seen people go on and say “hey, my cat’s barfing up X Brand, what’s a better food?” and there will always be at least one person (usually more) who’s all, “You shouldn’t have a cat if you can’t afford to feed it the best food, and I make $12,000 a year on disability and I eat Ramen every day so that my Foofy can eat $50 cat food.” Or you’ll get the person who feeds her cat nothing but frozen dead lab mice and raw food she prepares herself every day. Some of those people get really self-righteous with these poor people who just asked a simple question and yes, Meow Mix is like feeding your kid McDonald’s every day, but if the person’s cat is healthy and the vet is okay with it then for the love of Pete GET A DAMN GRIP and quit insisting that everyone else stick to your standards in order to be a “responsible pet owner.”

And I’m sorry, but if I’m eating Tuna Helper three times a week, and leftover Tuna Helper three times a week, and tuna straight from the can when I’m too lazy for Helper, then I’m not going to spend all of my money and time preparing homemade food for the cats. They’re healthy. They’re happy. They’re growing. And they’re starting to get their raw food from the bugs they’re catching and eating (ew ew EW).

I will, however, switch them to a brand that has fewer animal byproducts and grains and more pure animal protein.

Other things I’m thinking about:

• John McCain speaking at Liberty’s graduation, which is bullshit and makes me swing very close to the “hate” end of the McCain pendulum when I’d previously been in the “mild like to ambivalent” range. Also, our college’s commencement is on the same day as Liberty’s (and another area college has commencement the same weekend) so Lynchburg was basically already going to be a total clusterfuck that day and now that McCain will be in town, the extra media and spectator and security presence might well bring this town to its knees.
• The immigration reform issue and resulting protests and walkouts. I’ll be honest here and admit that I know very little about the issue, and I haven’t had much luck finding a relatively unbiased overview of the different sides. I’ve been reading the INS website and it looks like the current naturalization process is incredibly complicated, expensive, and slow, and I’m a college-educated native English speaker, so if I find the process confusing, I can’t imagine what people from other countries must think. My gut tells me that whenever a large group of people can get together and protest anything that it’s kind of cool and that there must be something to it, and my gut also tells me that people who are like “send those damn illegal furriners back where they done come from” are not getting the entire picture. Beyond that, I’m kind of at a loss, though, and I’m not ready to say more about it until I’ve learned more. I’m willing to admit when I don’t know what I’m talking about and I appreciate anyone who can point me in the right direction so I can make up my own mind.

Okay. I think I’m going to wrap up now.

1. Slept.
2. Played Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life until I got so bored with it that I left all my chickens out in the rain and stopped feeding the cows to see if they’d all die.
3. Slept again, some more.
4. Coughed, croaked, blew nose, et cetera.
5. Took my temperature a lot.
6. Looked at my throat in the mirror with a flashlight.
7. Changed Abby’s name to Dammitabby after she broke half the slats in my miniblinds.**
8. Got my TiVo, took a picture of it, set it up, enabled the thirty second skip, and set up all my Season Passes.***
9. Watched The People’s Court.
10. Forgot I now have TiVo and continued to watch stupid commercials about class action lawsuits and cash advance businesses.
11. Successfully set up the connections between the TiVo, the cable box, the VCR/DVD player, and the TV. This was slightly more complicated than I expected.
12. Laughed my ass off at the cats running around with Styrofoam packing peanuts stuck all over them and took pictures, which I will post soon.
13. Saw Dammitabby lying in her bed with her tongue hanging out (uncharacteristic!) and became convinced she had eaten a Styrofoam peanut and was choking to death. Ran over to her and grabbed her tongue, at which point she very lazily opened her eyes, gave me a look that clearly said, “Bitch,” and put her tongue back in her mouth.
14. Called various people in my life and begged them to go buy me some rainbow sherbet, which I kept calling “sherbert” because evidently I am four. By the way, no one did.
15. Read trashy romance novels.
16. Washed the same load of laundry three times by mistake.

I’m sure there were other things, mostly involving napping and checking my work email too often, but I cannot remember them now.

**My dad’s younger sister is named Jan, and family lore is that at some point in her life she actually became convinced that her name was Dammitjan because that’s what she was called all the time.

***I ordered the TiVo a couple of weeks ago, and I have been unreasonably excited about its addition to my household. So excited, in fact, that I actually made a list of all the shows I would set up for Season Passes once the TiVo arrived.****

****Okay, fine. I made that list on the toilet one day.*****

*****I’m only telling you that because if I don’t, my sisters will point it out in the comments, because they think it’s hilarious.

Bu-doop!