Fabulous Yoshi Stuff - AKA-Pimpin' My Cat

Hey everybody! Time is running out on the Yoshi Calendars. Canada Post's suggested deadline to get items to you by Christmas is December 10th. Do you need a fun office gift? Short on stocking stuffers? How about a hostess gift when you do your Holiday Party rounds?

AND! Introducing Yoshi Christmas Cards

Crush Your Cat's Head Friday-Oooops!

Um...yeah...about last Friday where I totally left you hanging without the weekly crush? My brain skipped a synapses or twelve and I totally forgot. I got all ferked up with the last crush being posted on Monday and I suddenly realized this weekend that I had forgotten.

Sorry.

And then my grand plans once again went awry. You remember how Yoshi boogered up my wonderful idea to video her freaking out over the fabulous catnip toy Leigh-Ann sent her. And then she loved up the baggie the toy came in. Well, I went over to my friend's house to see how her cat, Winston, would react to the nip. I wanted to video his joyful plunge into a catnip buzz to end all buzzes. I hoped that I would catch his writhing and moaning self for all to see.

Except the little shit snuck into my purse and stole the toy when my back was turned.

So no, I have no actual proof but I think we can all agree that the catnip toy was a huge success.

Keep an eye out at Wee Paws for 'From the Field' catnip products.

Grand Theft Catnip

Crush Your Cat's Head Friday-Monday Edition

Feeling much better thanks! And to make it up to you for my lack of Friday posting I offer you a video. The lovely Leigh-Ann from The Blog Pound and Wee Paws Animal Sanctuary sent Yoshi a wonderful catnip toy for her to try out and give feedback on. Things didn't go quite as planned.

Who am I kidding? Yoshi pulls this shit all the time.

Crush Your Cat's Head Friday-*drool*

Postponed due to superfabulousfeeln'goodwannalaydown migraine meds. Will crush Yoshi once spinning stops.

Weeeeeee!

Right of Passage

I was not so fondly recollecting all my past wounds and woes a while ago and suddenly came to a startling realization; I am half cursed. Not wholly, completely or utterly cursed but only demi cursed. Specifically on my right side. If something is going to go wrong with me it disproportionately happens to the right side of my body.

For instance:

-Back in my college grocery gal days I pulled my right lower back and sprained my right wrist. I also got carpal tunnel syndrome in my right wrist after a couple years. Most of this can be explained as I am right handed so that side of my body would suffer the most wear and tear.

-Same when I got attacked by the huge dog. It ripped a chunk out of my right forearm and right foot. Also logical as you’d think that is what arm and leg I’d use to protect myself first therefore being first in the line of fire. But the dog also bit my left arm and didn’t break the skin.

-Once I fell and sprained my right foot. I’ve never sprained my left foot or wrist or anything on my left side at all.

-Then about 9 years ago I noticed a lump forming under the right side of my jaw which was diagnosed as an AVM. Had that surgically removed with no problems and didn’t think much of it.

-Then I was diagnosed with breast cancer. You guessed it. RIGHT BOOB!

-Recently I wrote about how I got the eyelid herp on…MY RIGHT EYE!

-Just a couple weeks ago I had to get a bone scan due to right foot pain which turns out to be arthritis. I am a little young for it but since it is on my right side I am not shocked at all.

-I nearly forgot to mention that when I get migraine headaches it is always on the right side of my head. Always.

-Then last week I got a staph infection on my thumb. Wait for it…MY RIGHT THUMB. And from that pain and stiffness has been creeping into my other fingers. Serves me right for hanging out at so many hospitals and clinics.

What the frick is this all about? Do I need to sprinkle salt on my right side? Or Holy Water, perhaps? Do I get a half price deal for a shaman to bless my right side? Do I have to do something about the left hemisphere of my brain to benefit my right bits?

Anybody got a theory?

Crush Your Cat's Head Friday-Evoking Mange

Normally, my evenings are spent at home, in comfy clothes, working at my computer, harassing the cat or watching sleazy TV. Well, if you know me you'll be very surprised to hear that I spent my Friday evening at a friend's book launch party. Now this is not just any ordinary friend but the fabulous lady who is helping me with my anxiety disorder.

Over the years I've seen over half a dozen different therapist type folks and although they have tried to help I cannot help but remember the puzzlement in their eyes while I described my issues and symptoms. I found Anna through the internet on a site she mediates and even though the site was based in the UK she lives in my city. I emailed her and she agreed to take me on.

I can say with complete certainty that this awesome chick gets me. Really truly gets where I am coming from. I honestly believe that she gets me like NOBODY else on this planet does. If she were a guy I'd stalk her like my boyfriend, Henry Rollins. Instead I blurt out inane things and she laughs and nods her head because somehow, someway, it makes sense to her.

I cannot explain how much this means to me.

Actually I can. Tonight I crawled off the couch and shed my manky Pjs and not only showered AND shaved my legs but I actually put on a skirt. It has been a couple years since I've worn girl clothes. AND I wriggled into a pair of tights. Now that, my friends, is HUGE. I despise pantyhose type items with a passion. It has easily been over 5 years since I've worn tights. Maybe even longer. AND, this is epic, people, I put on make up AS WELL.

Not even when I saw my boyfriend, Henry Rollins, in concert last week did I put on tights and a skirt. But I did it for Anna because she is so cool.

I so rarely go out where there might be people which may require me to engage in social chit chat. I feel completely inept and paralyzed and sick and trapped. It's that anxiety thing I was talking to you about. But I knew Anna would understand if I lost my shit and started clucking like a chicken in the middle of her party so I sucked it up and got off the couch. The whole night I wore one of those deer in headlights sort of gazes and at one point a guy approached me and asked me if I was ok and told me that I looked lonely.

Lord.

Anyway, Anna has written a book and if you are at all interested in creating positive change in your life this may be what you need to read. She has helped me immensely and has been very supportive of my goals. She went with me to the hospital to calm me the hell down with my last surgery and visited me afterwards. She is never mad when I have to bail on an appointment when my agoraphobia is so bad I cannot leave my house or if I am too tired due to my insomnia. She has been a huge cheerleader of my Yoshi Calendar.

So I want to share the love with y'all and link you to Anna's 'Evoking Change' Blog as well as to where you can buy her book.

And how does this affect Yoshi? Well, when the mamma is happy, the kitty is happy. So Yoshi endorses Anna's book too.

Crush Your Cat's Head Friday-Extra Soft Crush

Thank you all for your wonderful comments about Yoshi's new 2008 calendar. I really want it to do well so I'll be pimping it in the upcoming weeks. So here it is AGAIN!-visit www.urbanbeast.ca for your Yoshi calendar. Sign-up for the newsletter to be notified of upcoming news and information.

Here is Miss Yoshi relaxing on her cozy new blanket specially picked out to disguise all her shedded fur left behind after long and vigorous naps. The texture of the fabric is delightfully described as Micro-Mink. All I've got to say is that those eeensy teensy little minks sure are soft.

Stereo Crushing. Self crush on her tail accompanied by an old school 'Kids in the Hall' crush from me.

The Yoshi Calendar is HERE!

This is the reason I've been so busy lately. I think you'll like it.

The website is up and running and the calendars are ready to be shipped. Please check it out and help support the SPCA.

Crush Your Cat's Head Friday-Pushing the Envelope

First of all my deepest apologies for neglecting you and your blogs. I have a lot on my plate right now and I am, frankly, not managing my time very well. Lack of practice doing all these new and confusing jobs. I've got business stuff going on and my dad's business stuff to help with along with my already copious doctor and hospital appointments to attend. Then I got this bitchin' cold which turned me into a whiny girlie girl. My energy is toast, my mood is grumpy, and I have so much to tell you but too little time and, well, ooomph to do it.

Anyway, that is why I've been such a blogging turd.

Enough about me and let's get on with the damned cat, shall we?

Today was a lovely sunny day and Yoshi was up where the sun was shining its brightest. That would be on my desk where SHE IS NOT ALLOWED! I was completely and thoroughly ignored and finally gave up shoving her butt off as I know warm sunny days will be few and far between over winter. Besides, she deserves it.

Mocking my stern demands to, "GET DOWN!"

Outright ignoring me. Notice the defiant posture.

Perhaps the printer was ever toastier.

Groaning under her weight.

Settling in for the long haul.

Clearly, I'm not going to get any work done.

Nope. None at all.

Crush Your Cat's Head Friday-Retro Yoshi

Yoshi at about 6 months. Before years of hard living and a bad catnip addiction changed her sunny disposition into a dark and bitter fugue.

**Look out for Yoshi's calendar launch next week! I'll keep you posted.**

Spooky

This has been cracking me up for weeks. It never gets old.

An Update and a Physical Anomaly

My dad came home today from the hospital and is carefully lurching around on his own with his giant crutches. I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this but my dad is 6’5” and my mom is 5’3”. His crutches are literally almost as tall as she is.

Anyway, I got to hand over his briefcase and cell phone and he resumed his role as boss man of his business. Instead of his executive chair he is ruling the roost from the couch. I have taken a secondary role as his legs for the next month or so until he can get around on his own again.

Thanks so much for all your kind comments.

So while I cannot say I am stress free I am not at def-con 5 at this time.

In other news:

Presently I am going through an invisible stage in my life. Periodically I seriously wonder if people cannot see me because my days revolve around dodging vehicles and pedestrians who fling themselves in front of my car. I obsessively check to see if my headlights are burnt out because I just cannot believe how often I get cut off and swerved into. People fly out from dark alleys and from between cars while I slam on my brakes stopping only millimeters from their bodies. Trying to get service is next to impossible as sales clerks and wait staff walk by me like I don’t exist. People don’t return my calls or email. I could probably walk around naked and not get a second look. During these odd times I endeavor to go about my life as safely and self sufficiently as possible until my personal molecules coagulate back into a visible entity and I can get around again as a fully visible member of society.

Anybody else ever have this problem?

Craptastic

Quite the day yesterday. Here is what happened.

1. Photographed the Yoshi calendar on Tuesday. Wasn’t happy with a lot of the first shots so I stayed up all night worrying and got up uber early yesterday and re-shot the whole thing again. Yoshi was not amused but did just fine and was a little furry trooper.
2. So while busy returning the camera gear and putting together all the appropriate images for my graphic designer friend I get a phone call… My dad is in the hospital emergency room. He fell while changing a light-bulb.
3. I run to the hospital and there he is all sad on a gurney. He has broken his hip. Fuck. I hang out there for a few hours.
4. Start making all the appropriate calls. My mom is on Vancouver Island on a mini holiday helping a friend and I can’t get in touch with her. Rally my bro and sis-in-law to “Man The Bedside” while I do some business stuff for my dad and deal with his car, his cell phone and his clients. Dad is feeling ok with just a couple Tylenol 3’s under his belt. All the nurses love him already.
5. Run to my parent’s apartment to get some stuff for him, make more calls, and email another client.
6. Go through a couple hundred photos and burn a disc to take to my graphic designer friend.
7. Return to the hospital with magazines, chocolate and books and hang out to 11 pm. Totally forget to eat all day. My thighs will thank me later.

So poor dad is going to have surgery today to replace part of his hip joint. The docs say despite his age (the nurses keep on betting each other to guess his correct age without looking at the chart. Nobody can believe he is 77. Most guess in the early 60’s range.) his bones are strong and his health is great so he’ll heal up fine and be out of the hospital early next week. He is in good spirits and pissed off and bored already. My mom should be home today in the late afternoon.

So between hospital visits, running my dad’s business and doing the Yoshi calendar I’m going to be scarce around these parts. I’ll update when I can.

Gobble Gobble Gobble

I have been a very bad blogger and not posted for ages. This is for a very good reason. I’ve been working my fingies to the bone on tiny cat costumes for your near future viewing pleasure. The calendar is very close to completion. Tomorrow is the fashion shoot and I’ve started buttering Yoshi up with snuggles and compliments. So please, please, please pray for feline stable mental health and a total lack of divahood.

There may be a vK1 Behind the Meowing documentary at the end of this as well.

Today is Canadian Thanksgiving and last night my brother, sister-in-law and I went to my folks’ house for a delicious dinner. Today was spent running some errands at a north shore mall. The young lady who helped me when I returned a sweater asked me how my Thanksgiving was going. I told her about my family dinner and asked her how her Thanksgiving had been but I wasn’t really sure if she celebrated the holiday as it was obvious she was Muslim since she was wearing a head-scarf. She told me that they don’t observe Thanksgiving Day as they gave thanks everyday.

How cool is that? I mean isn’t that what we should all be doing? Really taking stock every single day of what we should be thankful for and acknowledging it and celebrating? I suggest we all get off our apathetic asses and live more consciously and positively on a daily basis and not just think about these important parts of our lives only on special occasions. So let’s think about eschewing Thanksgiving all together and adopting this new outlook.

But then she was also still fasting for Ramadan and couldn’t partake in all the yummy parts of the season.

I guess that would be the not so cool part.

Never mind.

Crush Your Cat's Head Friday-Priorities

It appears that comfort is secondary when warm and toasty toesies can be achieved.


Extreme Crush Close-up

Crush Your Cat's Head Friday-Flirting With Disaster

Extreme Chair Diving is for Pussies

A Karmic "Kick Me" Sign

I must have been real real bad in a previous life because the nasty stuff keeps coming my way.

So as you read in my last post the nasty peeper wanted to be my Facebook friend. I emailed him telling his that he was a “disgusting pervert peeping tom” and that under no circumstances would I ever want to be his friend-even through Facebook. I told him never to contact me again and I then blocked him.

It just wouldn’t have worked to accept his friendship request and then call him out that way as he could delete very easily anything I said about him.

I also don’t want to engage him in any way.

I’m working my ass off on the upcoming Yoshi Calendar and things are going slower than I hoped. I will start two months earlier next year. And to add to that time crunch starting Friday workmen will be coming into my little apartment to scrape the ceiling, patch the cracks and then re-texture. Did I mention my dining room table, set up with sewing machine and glue gun, is about 4 feet from where the work will be done? Crap! I have nowhere else to work while they are doing this so I will have to work around them somehow.

And then to add insult AND injury to this I had a wonderful little appointment with my doctor today. Thursday night my right eye felt sore and I noticed a bug bite sort of thing right near the corner of my eye. I put antibiotic ointment…

**MRTL Style Tangent-I love the word ointment. It is such a great combination of sounds. Say it to yourself a few times. Try some different accents. See what I mean? End of MTL Style Tangent**

..on it but it wasn’t getting any better. So off to the doc I went today and he took one look at it and told me what was wrong.

Eyelid herpes.

Yes, I have a cold sore on my eyelid.

Fuck.

Frantically, I told my doc that I practiced safe eye-socket sex (I put my whole head in a baggie for that) and he assured me that it is merely something I picked up from life. So every public door I opened, bank machine I used, grocery cart I pushed, second hand store I rummaged through (for props for the calendar), elevator button I touched, and piece of money I handled over the last few days flashed before my eyes and I got a little queasy. Then he told me I might have been infected years ago and only now having an outbreak.

I knew I was a germ-a-phobe for a reason, washing my hands several times a day and using that antibiotic stuff too. For NOTHING!!!! Dammit!

I have to be careful the infection doesn’t actually spread to my eyeball because that would be bad. *Big Sigh* Seriously, what did I do in a previous life to deserve this? I was probably one of those guys who didn’t wash their hands after peeing and then handled food or something. Or brought small pox to the natives.

At least it wasn't cancer.

I feel like a Petri dish. Please still be my friend.

Inbox Surprise

This nasty little pervert fucker just emailed me with a friend request from Facebook.

Fanfuckingtastic.

Crush Your Cat's Head Friday-Dreary Day

There are no more sunshiny spots because of the rain and mom is busy and not paying attention to me and I am sad and cold and neeeeeedy. No amount of meowing around the house is changing anything.

Somebody is gonna pay...

Twisty and Kranki Do Vancouver

A few exciting firsts occurred on Sunday which made for a very special day.

First of all I met my very first fellow blogger for reals. I connected with Twisted Uterus who is in town for a vet conference. It was a fantastic surreal experience and very cool to meet her in person. She is a bubbly and enthusiastic lady and we hit it off right away chatting up a storm that didn’t abate the whole day.

I met her in her hotel lobby at 11 am and she graced me with a wonderful TU original pottery piece which I was honoured to receive. We walked through downtown to the beach where we hopped on a water ferry to Granville Island to do some mooching around.

Cherished Giftie

It was quite crowded but very festive with all the colourful produce and other goodies. Twisty took photo after photo which turned out beautifully (check out her Flickr set and you’ll see for yourself) and we checked out the other buildings which house local artists and crafts people. We tried on funky glasses (who wouldn’t allow us to take photos) (we both found frames we liked but didn’t buy. Hers=$375 and mine were $457!) and hats and browsed handmade paper and fabrics. We then checked out the local art college which I attended several years ago. We looked at tonnes of pottery and even a groovy glass studio. I had a nice chat with a young lady whose father has a hand-made shoe studio. I used to work at a shoe store where he made all the prototypes so I was familiar with his work. We gossiped about the olden days. Well what she knew of them as she was only 3 years old at the time the olden days were happening. I saw a dream pair of clogs which are made specially to your foot measurements for only $475. Clearly, I gotta get on winning that lottery.

Checking out the weird ass tomatoes.

The Cookie Hunter

Urban Hippy Political Correctness

Waiting for the yacht valet to bring 'round our ocean chariot.

TU and I decided that instead of eating out we would get some yummy stuff for dinner at the market and eat at my place. I had some homemade tomato pasta sauce in my fridge (thankyoujesus!) so TU got the yummy fresh pasta and prawns and I got the salad stuff and cheese. We split dessert with cookies and cinnamon bun bread.

The old house where I used to live is right by the water ferry so on the way back we stopped by for a quick visit to meet up with my human friends and Lulu, Xiola and Winston The Cat. Twisty got a poochy fix and had a cuddle with Lulu who showed us all that once again she is a super sweet dog. She and Xiola showed off by playing and wrestling complete with scary fake growling and tug-o-war.

Some rainy day Lulu Lovin'.

Covered in dog hair we checked out a very cool social housing project featuring restored Victorian houses complete with running brook and goldfish pond. Next door is the Dr. Peter Aids Centre and Hospice which prompted a lively discussion about healthcare and how important it is.

I got to scope out her hotel room which was very shmancy. While there I checked out some of her photos as well. She has a gorgeous coffee-table book/album made up with her work which totally inspired me. We also talked about dating/guys and are on the same page on that. Picky, picky, picky…

Finally we made it to my place and just in the nick of time as we were both starving and pooped out from all the walking. We cooked up a delicious dinner and scarfed it all down leaving nothing on our plates. This is where the second first-of-the-day came into play. I’ve lived at my place for 15 months and this was the first time I’ve used one of my rear burners on my stove thus illustrating to TU (and now you) that I am not much of a dinner party thrower and normally lead a Kraft Dinner sort of existence.

Yoshi surprised me by being rather friendly and show-offy right away. She tried to mooch food from Twisty and was quite bad in cute ways zooming around and playing with her playzen tuben. She was so social that TU did a risky thing and tried to pick her up. Yoshi let her do it (the third first-of-the-day) but then the vibe changed and the typical Yoshi bitchiness reared its ugly head. Of course we laughed all the harder for her attitude and picked on her even more.

That cat is about as cuddly as a cactus on fire.

Perhaps some hissing for you this evening?

Asshole Cat Extreme Close-up

I drove her back to her hotel about 10 pm after a really fantastic day. I feel like I’ve made a real friend and I hope I will get to hang out with her again. TU is a talented and fun chick. I had the best time and I hope she had fun too. Thanks for the great day, Twisty!