Lily and the Cats

This dog.  I can’t get over how funny she is.  She’s been super excited about the cats because they’re her size.  We’ve gotten her to stop barking at the cats for the most part, but today, I watched her follow Kairi without him knowing.  She walked with her nose to his tail across the bedroom and dining room before he noticed and jumped onto a chair.  Lily looked pleased; Kairi looked pissed.

Later, Lily put her paws up on Sadie’s stool to investigate the smell of catnip I rubbed on it last night.  Sadie was unimpressed.  She hissed and raised her paw.  I was hoping for an epic smackdown so the dog would learn her place, but in the end, Lily’s size beat Sadie’s anger, and Sadie jumped down to hide on the bottom shelf of the bookcase.

Tonight, I threw food for Lily to see if she would chase it like Kairi does.  Lily didn’t think there was anything interesting about it, except that the food made a funny noise when it bounced across the kitchen floor.  But Kairi thought it was awesome that we were playing his game.  He pounced on a piece of dog kibble and was about to eat it until Lily came lumbering along and scarfed it down.  I grabbed a handful of cat food and threw a piece for Kairi, who chased it in his happy way.  Lily saw this and figured the cat was trying to play, so I tossed a piece of food for her and she jumped after it, suddenly excited.  It was almost as if the cat and dog were playing a game together, instead of the truth that they were playing the same game separately.

I must’ve pushed my luck because I threw a piece of food for Kairi, but Lily chased it too.  She doesn’t have good traction on the kitchen floor; she slid into Kairi, backpedaling the whole way.  Kairi flipped out, hissed, puffed his tail up and ran away.  Lily cowered underneath the coffee table and refused to come out or even eat the kibble pieces I put next to her.  There goes that game!

The Lily Putian Chronicles: Day 3

See Lily.  See Lily pee on the carpet.  Pee, Lily, pee!

That’s how the last 24 hours have been.  Well, not really.  We’re still getting to know Lily’s schedule for eating, napping, and going outside, so it’s only natural that she wet the carpet once or twice.  Thank goodness it was our carpet and not our landlord’s!

Lily has become more comfortable with us by leaps and bounds.  Yesterday, she stayed in her crate for most of the day.  This morning, she was a party animal!  She bounced and pranced and played, barked at the cats, chased Sadie under the bed, crawled under the table, chewed her stuffed carrot for a half hour, ate the peanut butter out of her kong, and wiggled her butt too many times to count (okay, so it was twice).  She has progressed to walking inside the apartment building without hesitation, and walking inside our apartment with only a moment’s pause.  When you call, “Lily!” she looks.

Unless she’s chewing her bone.  Then all bets are off.

She has fabulous Yoda ears when she’s at attention, but when she’s relaxed, she folds them back against her head.

The cutest thing Lily does is when she wakes up, she needs attention.  Needs it.  There will be no coming out of the crate until Lily has her belly rubs, and woe to the person who does not give them quickly enough!  And by “woe,” I mean “sad puppy eyes.”  She does those well.

Coming into second place for the cutest behavior ever is that when Lily is happy, she prances.  And she pranced at me after Seth took her to go to the bathroom this morning.  I was out of sight for two minutes, then she saw me and pranced.  She likes me!  I think the feeling is mutual.

Is This Normal?

This was on the front page of Yahoo! today, and I thought it looked a little strange.  Then I realized that they called the president “Barack Obama.”  Not “President Obama,” or “President Barack Obama.”  Is that standard AP usage?  I thought the correct way to refer to the president in news headlines was to always put in the word president.  No?  Yes?

Adventures in Gluten-Free Dining

Seth and I were both grumpy last night.  In fact, it went beyond grumpy, straight into fugly.  We didn’t want the food in the house, we were hungry, our noses were running, and we were both tired.  It was a bad combination.

We decided to see if the sushi place down the street was gluten-free.  After all, sushi is just rice, fish, and seaweed.  And rice is on the good list.  I did a little research though, just in case, and it seems as though white rice is sometimes sprayed with a glutenous substance to add something back into it.  I don’t know.  So you have to ask to make sure you’re not getting glutenous rice.

Which I did.  And let me tell you, explaining about gluten while you have a cold to a non-native English speaker is a little more than confusing, for all parties involved.

We exchanged pleasantries, and then started talking about gluten.

“I just want to make sure that there’s no gluten in sushi,” I said.

“Gloopin?” the restaurant-owner asked, looking confused.

“No, gluten.  G-L-U-T-E-N.  It’s the binding agent in flour.  Sushi shouldn’t be a problem, but I just want to make sure that there’s no cross-contamination.  Like, for example, soy sauce has gluten in it, and sometimes white rice has gluten sprayed on it to prevent it from caking, and there’s also gluten in…” I trailed off, trying to think of the word “tempura.”  It must’ve been a combination of low blood sugar and high runny nose, because I couldn’t get the word out.

“You ask at the sushi bar!  You can see everything,” the owner said, and led us to the sushi bar.  He gave us two menus and retreated to the counter.

We perused the menus,  looking for some maki that could accommodate the migraine food allergies.  The owner must have been watching us, because after five minutes, he came over.  “Did you ask?” he said.

“Well…” Seth and I began, but then we talked to the sushi chef.

“I can’t eat anything with gluten,” I said, “That means nothing with flour.  I know sushi doesn’t contain flour, but I just want to make sure there’s no cross-contamination.”

“Flour?”  The sushi chef asked.  He looked baffled.

“Flour?” The owner looked confused too, then said, “Powder! Do you mean powder?”

Seth and I nodded vigorously.   “Flour is a powdery substance, yes,” we said.

“No, you shouldn’t eat the maki,” the owner said.

“The rice is a powder,” the sushi chef added, “it comes in powder.”

“You’ll eat the sashimi, or anything from this healthy menu, right here,” the owner pulled one of the menus out and flipped to the diet menu, “See?  Steamed.  No rice.  Or the sashimi.”

I made an involuntary face at the thought of eating a sliver of raw fish.  “No, thank you, I was really looking forward to this sushi,” I pointed to the maki.

“No, you should eat from the healthy menu, it’s good,” the owner said.  He smiled.  The sushi chef backed away from the counter, happy I think, to let the owner handle the conversation.  “Or sashimi,” the owner said again.

Seth and I had a conversation with our eyes (we’re getting good at conversing this way).  We decided that I wasn’t going to eat from the healthy menu because I REALLY wanted maki.  So we thanked the owner and left.  And then we went home and made gluten-free pancakes.

Maybe next time, we’ll have this conversation with the restaurant people when I’m not so hungry that I want to gnaw my arm off.  It’ll be a good time.

Booger Brain

I have had a cold for the past week.  It’s pretty gross.  I won’t get into details.  Since I’m not up to blogging, here are some fun things for you:

Today’s Daily Kitteh at Shakesville.  This is what my cats do sometimes.

Furoshiki! This is the technique of using cloth to wrap your packages.  It was the original reusable grocery bag, and I’ll be making use of this for my holiday presents from now on.  Just so you know.

A Recipe for Maple Creams by David Lebovitz.  Maple anything, and I’m there.

Super Stacker 2.  A game.  It’s fun.  The first one is better.

That’s it.