Cats and Selfies

I was pretty hung over this morning, but I managed to drag my ass out of the house to go run. 6 miles. 6 pretty slow miles. But 6 miles non the less.

While I was on the way back to my car, a cat crossed my path. Except it wasn't just any cat. It was a BIG cat. Like, a 40 lb cat. It wasn't until it registered that it didn't have a tail that I realized I had just seen a bobcat. 

The bobcat had seen me too. Once it crossed the path and was in the cover of the trees again, it stopped, sat down and looked at me. 

Do you see him?

Look closer.

So I stopped and took a picture of it. Then I took a selfie because, like the rest of my generation, I'm a narcissist. A couple of dudes crested the hill as I was taking the selfie and I got really self conscious that they caught me taking a selfie. I started running again and didn't warn them that there was a really cool cat just a few feet away. 

Bad selfie. Don't care!

That was the first bobcat I've ever seen. But not the first time I've been busted taking a selfie. 

Look What We Caught

James set a small animal trap under our back deck a few days ago. Our intentions were to catch a couple of the neighborhood cats. I normally don't have problems with cats-- I actually like them, but these particular cats have to go. They are on some kind of turf war over my yard. They keep pooping everywhere to claim territory. 

Both of the frenchies are shit seeking missiles and eat said cat poop. Of course, the cat poop is never solid cat poop. It's cat explosive diarrhea. I'm constantly wiping cat shit off the dogs' faces. I love those dogs, but if I could not do that chore, that would be super. Hence, we set the traps to catch the cats. For relocation. I don't want to hurt them, I just want them to poop somewhere else. 

Anyway, backstory aside,  I peeked under the deck today while I was winding up the hose and I was surprised to see a little face looking back at me. For days the trap had been empty. But we caught something today. And that something was pissed. We caught a medium sized opossum.  

The opossum hissed at us the entire time we had it. It was a silent hiss, but I could see the hate in its eyes and I knew he was hissing. That's how pissed off this opossum was that he had been caught-- he couldn't even articulate it. He was probably minding is own business last night when he caught the whiff of days old salmon in the cage and thought to himself, "Wow, that smells delicious! I should enter this wire funnel to eat it." And BAM he was trapped. 

James took him over to a neighboring corn field and dropped him off. I didn't want to kill the little pissed off guy. It's not his fault he's really stupid and got caught. The trap is going back under the deck tonight with more cat enticing food inside it. I hope I don't catch more unwanted critters. 

Evolution of my Epic Wound

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to climb a rope about 10 feet up and then fall off? I can tell you from first hand experience, that it is not recommended.

 

I landed on the mats underneath in an explosion of sand and water. I hear it looked pretty cool, but it didn't feel very cool. The only wound I sustained was some wicked rope burn on the palm of my hand. It didn't seem like much at the time, but it was one of the most painful Army wounds I've ever had.

 

Day of wounding



Day 2

Day 4

Day 9

Day 10

Day 12

Day 20

It took 20 days for the last scab to come loose and for all the new pink skin to be smooth.

 

Rope burn is not recommended. Falling is also not recommended. But falling and getting rope burn on a part of your body that you constantly move and bang around is FOR SURE not recommended.

 

PS Only a Medic would photograph the wound healing process and post it on her blog.

Mystery Illness Solved Through Science

I just recently got over an absolutely miserable cold. It lasted over 3 weeks and it seemed to go through drastic phases with wildly varying symptoms. When I started having strange new symptoms a week ago, I naturally figured my cold was going to take me through another fun phase. Yay.

New symptoms: itchy eyes, sneezing and extreme snot.

When you look at the symptoms alone, it screams allergic reaction. (Duh.) But since I had been sick for so long with varying ailments, my judgement was clouded and I didn't immediately think it was an allergic reaction. I suffered for about a week before I started to do some scientific research on my problem.

I noted I didn't wake up with these problems. They began in the shower and persisted through out the day. The most intense symptoms were in the shower. To include the snot problem. That was mostly uncontrollable in the shower, which doesn't make you feel like you had a very clean shower.

I started to think about how bad my eyes would itch when I would take a shower at the gym after PT at Ft Campbell. I never solved that mystery. I didn't really even try to solve that, I just accepted it. Now that I'm more hyper vigilant about science and it's happening again with the vengeance of 1,000 angry wasps, I decided to take this experience into consideration. I added this memory to my scientific data that I had collected.

The only thing that these two showering experiences had in common (other than the obvious) was the Herbal Essences shampoo and conditioner. My mom sent me the new Herbal Essences Naked shampoo and conditioner that smells SO GOOD like mint and lavender. But I am so very allergic to it! I must have been allergic to the other Herbal Essences shampoos too, but something about their Naked formula really triggered hate from my body.

 

Now that I know my problem, every time I touch my hair throughout the day, I notice the itchy eyes and sneezing return. And yes, I still am using the shampoo and conditioner even though I know I'm allergic to it. I'm too lazy to go to the FX and buy new stuff-- but I'm going to go tomorrow. I promise.

I did some Internet research and I read that a lot of people are allergic to this new Naked formula Herbal Essences has produced. Some of the complaints I read included raised rashes and itching. I'm glad my biggest complaint is snot. Which is still a pretty big complaint as far as I'm concerned.

Mostly, I'm just happy this isn't yet another phase of my epic cold. It's really over!

And I got to solve the mystery using science... I've become a bit of a scientist since I've been in Egypt. FYI.

Foot Treatment

I found this picture on Facebook and it intrigued me:
 

Looks relaxing.

 

I'm skeptical. This could be because I am biased. I have THE WORST Army feet. My feet are always cracking and peeling. Skin absolutely refuses to stay alive and healthy on my feet. James has nicer feet than me and he's with the Infantry. My feet are disgusting.

I figured I'd give it a shot. Put it to the test. If it didn't work, oh well, the only ingredient I had to go out and buy was vinegar. If it did work, then the skin sloughing party would at least be medically interesting.

So I mixed it all up. I tripled the recipe since this concoction is obviously for people with a normal amount of dead skin on their feet. I sat on the couch and dunked my feet. It smelled really... strong. Picasso didn't want anything to do with it and it kinda hurt my eyes to be so close to it.

 

Slightly less spa-like.

 

Stupidly, I started this experiment while James was out of the house and I didn't get a towel out beforehand. So I was stuck in the stinky water for way longer than the recommended 10 minutes. After about a half an hour, my feet started to dye blue from the mouthwash. No! Blue feet were not what I was going for!

 

I did what I had to do, I scooted on my butt into my kitchen while pushing the bin with my feet ahead of me. Slowly, as to not slosh this stinky liquid everywhere.

After I scooted all the way to the stove and wiped my feet off with the hand towel, I anxiously inspected my feet for signs of dead skin I could "wipe away".

Pffffffft. What a rip off. All I was left with was a bunch of blue dead skin all over my feet. I guess I'm going to have to go get a professional pedicure tomorrow and horrify the ladies with my gross blue Army feet.

They didn't picture very blue, but BELIEVE me, they're blue!

 

 

EFMB Fort Campbell: Nope

I'm not going to get into the specifics because broadcasting my failure hurts. I am not an EFMB badge holder. It wasn't in the cards for me to finish the 20k road march. My enemy won again.

 

I'll try EFMB again when I redeploy from Egypt next year.

 

Insert sad face here: