It was a very full weekend! Friday night, while Rider was out at a performance hanging with some of the fanclub peeps, I got a TON done around the apartment. I got the new spice rack up in the kitchen, which enabled me to FINALLY get that room totally organized and finished.
I hung my new jewelry rack in the bedroom, cut and placed the privacy film on the bedroom window, and hung the curtain rod and privacy curtains. So the bedroom is now thisclose to being done. All I have left to do is run the extension cord to the TV and hook the speakers up to it, but I'm waiting on the cord cover to arrive from Amazon.
There was one kind of a funny thing related to the move and the TV. While we were packing to leave our old place, I pondered aloud about selling the bedroom TV since "we literally never use it." It was my TV from before Rider and I moved in together and is still in perfect condition—I'm not that much of a TV person and will barely ever watch something without someone else. But when I said that, Rider looked at me sheepishly and admitted that sometimes he uses it to look at porn after I fall asleep. I had no idea, LOL! That gives you some idea of how deep of a sleeper I am! We had a good laugh about that, and I said I'd order the proper wiring to get it hooked up in the new bedroom.
Anyway, TV aside, the bedroom is now in much better condition. The privacy film I got is like . . . translucent geometric iridescent rainbow? . . . it's hard to describe but gorgeous. I might as well just
link it since words fail me. So now we can have sex in daylight even though we live in a first-floor apartment in the city (which we took advantage of yesterday morning). Bonus is that it casts all these psychedelic rainbow designs on the ceiling. I love it! And we've all been sleeping better now that the blackout curtains are up, Tater included.
Speaking of Tater, he is so freaking cute! He will only sleep at night tucked under my right arm. I took him and my other cat, Mash, to the low-cost vaccine clinic on Saturday morning. Man, that place is hell on earth. I tried to get there right when it opened, since it was first-come, first-served, but Rider insisted on making me coffee before I left (delaying my leaving), and then once I had the yelling, complaining cats in the car and was on the road, there was an accident on the freeway and then a construction detour.
I ended up getting there 45 minutes after opening, meaning the place was already PACKED, mostly with barking dogs that further terrified my poor babies. There was a small indoor room and courtyard, with the wall of the courtyard lined with dogs. A spot opened up indoors just as I turned my paperwork in, so I sat down inside. Most of the large-dog owners were considerate and kept their dogs outside, but there was the owner of a huge, whining husky and a particularly moronic owner of a very anxious pit bull who did not think about the chaos their dogs were causing to the smaller pets in the room.
The pit bull owner had stationed himself very unwisely right next to the door, and his dog barked and lunged (with curiosity, not aggression, but still) at every passing animal. The pit bull's barking got the husky started howling, and the husky's howling made one lady's baby start crying, and my cats were crying pretty much the whole time, and I started crying a little because they were crying, and it was just a terrible scene. Eventually the dog and baby owners caught a clue and went outside. My cats stopped crying, and all the other cats and small dogs were visibly relieved. All in all, though, the ordeal took three hours. I was a frazzled wreck by the end.
Tater tested negative for anything bad, and he got his first round of shots and his deworming. They estimated him to be about 8 weeks old, which is also what I estimated. He'll have to come back for two more rounds of shots this year, and also for his microchip since he was too small this time. Mash got her booster shot. So they were cleared for face-to-face interaction, which is helpful because Tater would cry and cry if I left him on the other side of a closed door. Now he toddles around the house, and Mash watches him, skeptically, only hissing if he gets too close. This morning Tater pounced on her tail, which did not go over well.
I do still keep Tater confined to the bedroom when no one is home. He's so small that I don't trust him to reliably find the litterbox on his own. When I'm supervising him, I occasionally just take him in there and drop him in. If he has to go, he goes. If he doesn't, he climbs back out and resumes toddling.
Anyway, after animal-vaccination hell, I still had an errand to run. I needed to go to the post office and mail Kelly a little present I got her. Then Rider helped me clean up a bit before Oona and Toby were due to show up.
It was nice having them over—their first time seeing the new place and meeting Tater. We went to the movie not long after they arrived. I had a good time, though I ate WAY too many snacks. So much for weight loss attempts!
Afterward, we hung out at ours for a bit longer playing with the kitten, until Toby got sleepy and they had to leave.
Sunday morning, Rider and I slept in quite a bit, which was glorious. We had really hot daylight sex, then went to breakfast. I had an afternoon date scheduled with Cherry, so it was good to get some Rider time in before that.
Cherry actually picked me up, so she was able to come in and meet Rider and the kitten. Both went well. We went to an art museum and then walking around a garden. She shares my love of plants, so it was fun talking about the ones we recognized. We get along really well, and I am still quite attracted to her. Afterward, we went to a Mexican restaurant and split a HUGE plate of nachos.
I offered for her to come back to my place and hang out a bit, play with the cat some more, if she'd like to, and she was interested. She ended up staying till 10:30, just chatting and cooing over animals. She and Rider got along very well. When he went out of the room at one point to use the bathroom, she and I did a bit of kissing, which was fun. I'm definitely going to keep seeing her.
I guess now is as good a time as any to talk about her a bit. Let's see . . . she's a decent bit younger than me (28), smart, pretty, and has a ton of really interesting hobbies. She's currently finishing up her Master's and is seriously considering ditching out of grad school after that instead of finishing the PhD, just like I did, because she is burned out on school and doesn't particularly enjoy teaching. She's done a lot of traveling in association with her education, to places I'd never considered going—so that's really cool, hearing her stories about those places. She grew up in a state neighboring the state where I grew up, about 150 miles from me, but in a very rural area.
We have a ton in common in terms of interests, and I think we think alike to a certain degree. More than once yesterday, given the same stimulus, we said the same thing at the same time. It was pretty funny. She's been poly pretty much since she was 20 or 21, but she's currently single, to my knowledge. She's cool with the fact that I'm not looking for any serious relationships, though, because she said she's too busy for that, herself. She's mostly just looking for friends with benefits too. We had a whole conversation about that, where she said she thought my situation with Rider seemed cool—he and I both have a ton going on in our lives and just don't really have the space for handling more at the moment, but we're both free to explore to a certain degree. She did not seem to mind at all that whatever I found with her would be necessarily kind of a casual, occasional thing.
After hanging out at my place for a couple hours, Rider heartily approved of her, saying that she's "really cool." She liked him as well, saying that he seems like a sweet, chill, and emotionally open person, which he totally is. So yay for them getting along! I am stoked to see where things go with her. She's invited me to an event in a couple weeks that is being put on by a friend of hers—should be fun!
(continued . . .)
