We have two black cats. The little sleek one with the gimpy leg is mine: Jasmine (aka the Jazzy-cat). Tang is our big fuzzy; she answers only to Monstro. We got them both as adult cats from the local no-kill shelter and they are a joy and delight.

The last time I got pregnant, Jazzy wouldn't get off of me. Any time I sat down, she'd be on my ever-reducing lap. This time, though, it's Tang who has been most aware.

They've both been through what I'm going through, so I think they're somewhat empathetic. Tang and Jazz both had a litter of kittens in the lives they had before coming to our homes. Tang's adoption paperwork included a report from her foster family that she was a very good momma. It doesn't surprise me -- she's the cat who would run to get me when baby Lex started crying.

(We got no such report about Jazzy-cat, leading us to believe that 1) she wasn't in a foster home when she gave birth and 2) her kittens probably met no good end.)

In a not-unrelated aside, Monstro and I keep a plastic shopping bag of unmatched socks under our bed. Every six months or so we go through the bag to find matches -- don't laugh, last week we found five pairs!

We thought to match up the socks because a lot of them have found their way into our kitchen as of late. At first, I figured it was Lex playing around...

...Until tonight, when Monstro and Lex and Mom and I were eating dinner and I saw Tang, carrying a black sock in her mouth. Then she dropped it on the kitchen floor and began crying over it.

As I type this (from my office, which is also in the kitchen), the floor behind me is littered with socks.

Poor Tang.

Please go to www.Hopeline.com and learn more about their mission, and why it's so important to help wrest them away from the clutches of the federal government. This 2.5 minute video will tell you more.

My housemate Alex killed himself years ago and not a week goes by that I don't miss him.

I've been tossing and turning since midnight, hotter than asphalt on a southern July, and finally at 2:30 Lex came to our room.

"Close your eyes," I told Monstro, who has to teach this morning at 7:30.

I located our boy and took him back to bed, picking him up. He was roasting.

"Too hot!" he said. No kidding. I took his temperature and it was 101.7. Then I took mine, and I'm a full degree-and-a-half hotter than I usually run.

So I put the boy in his crib, and put the fan on him, and left his door open, and turned on all the ACs in the house (with the big one set to 70 degrees on Energy Saver), and then picked up my pillows and blanket (wishful thinking that that'll be necessary). But before bedding down on the Futon of Torture, I just had to tell you guys about it.

Remember when we used to be up at 2:30 on Friday night/Saturday morning for FUN reasons?

Yeah... me neither.

UPDATE: No sooner had my head hit my pillow than I heard a cough from Lex's room, followed by a more pronounced "hoark." Ruh-roh. Went in to see his crib sheet covered in, uh, liquid. Stripped his bed and remade it, put him in the bathtub, washed him well, got him blotted dry, gave him some applesauce and children's ibuprofen and a new clean sippee cup of cold water, put him into clean diaper and jammies and took his temperature again. 103.2 for my troubles. Ugh. Gonna be a looong night.

Wait, it's 3:22. It already *has* been a long night. :)

... because we're going to be paying a LOT of babysitters so Monstro and I can go to the movies this summer:

The Dark Knight
Hellboy II
X-Files (!!!!!)

Lest you think I fritter away cash on silly entertainments, I think the last movie I saw in the theater was the last "Harry Potter."

So Grant Miller makes a weekly feature out of how people get referred to his site, and I don't have anything else to post about, so I figured I'd check my own referrer stats.

This month alone, 13 people have found me by searching "hated breastfeeding," three people clicked over from Myspace where someone ripped off the picture of Lex and his buddies around the piano he got for his first birthday (since removed per my request to Baberaham Lincoln -- thanks, Babe), and singles came over from Googling "Harvey Birenbaum death," "snakes on a plane coincidence" (for which I am #1 on Google), "project runway model tits" (for which I am also #1 on Google), and "filthiest movie ever." ("Pink Flamingos," in case you wondered.)

But my faaaavorite one out of all of them is the person who clicked over after finding a link to Motormouth on, of all places, the Transportation Security Administration's blog. Yes, someone linked to me from tsa.gov. Can you stand it? Go here and search for "throwing away water."

God bless you, Anonymous!

Oh, hey, here's another search for Harvey, and another three who hate breastfeeding, and someone else who found me by googling "TSA toddler food" in Canada.

...and another five who hate breastfeeding. God, I hope that goes better this time.

I saw that Fringes had posted Open Friday today and I was all, "How cute... Open Friday a day early." Nope. Today's Friday.

It's been another busy week -- Mom took possession of her apartment on Monday and so there's been a lot of shopping, hanging curtains, setting up her computer, getting her a TV via Freecycle, you know, good stuff like that. I've been spending a lot of money on her credit card, which has kind of transported me back to high school. :)

Lex and I spent a couple of hours over there yesterday and he totally made himself at home -- flushed her toilet, played on her bed, jumped on the loveseat. Typical two-year-old stuff. It was fun! I fed him lunch and then Monstro came to take the boy home for a nap, and Mom and I waited around for the Comcast guy for another few hours. I'm pleased to announce that he was massively flirting with me. Hey, I'm seven months pregnant; I'll take what I can get!!!

In other pregnancy news, so far, so good. Lex and I went to my doctor appointment this week so he could hear his baby brother's heartbeat. Except he threw a major fit in the waiting room and finally a nurse asked us to leave until it was time for the doctor to see me. No lie. Once it was time for us to be re-invited, my nurse told me that I was getting "props" from the back-room staff as to how I was handling his tantrum. Lex did get to hear the baby's heartbeat (and was pretty well-behaved for the actual office visit), but seemed more interested in the doppler ultrasound device. The doctor even let him press the "off" button! Good stuff.

Baby is great, and I'm still feeling stellar, though a bit tireder than I have been. Of course, this might have something to do with the fact that Lex keeps getting himself out of bed before 6:15 every morning. Naah.

Got a phone call the other day from my publisher, asking me if I want to write another book for them!

So I checked my BlogLines feed today and in 24 hours, I had 14 posts to read! Sheesh, people!

I've been insanely busy this week with client work, mommy work, and, oh yeah, my mom moved here on Tuesday. So yeah, sorry, not many posts until I can catch my breath! Which, seeing as I'm in my third trimester, probably won't be for another five months. :) Breathing, that is. I'll certainly post before that.

It was kind of a bust. Not a lot of folks came to the tag sale, and none of my "friends" came to hear me play, except of course for Monstro and Lex, my devoted fans, twice as many as "Flight of the Conchords" has got. I received many satisfying "Yay, Mommy"s from Lex, particularly after my rousing renditions of "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "Baa Baa Black Sheep."

Another little kid couldn't keep his eyes off of me -- turns out that the two songs I sang while he was around are special songs *his* mom sings to him. He gave me a dollar.

Another guy, a grown-up this time, walked past while I was playing the IZ version of "Over the Rainbow."

"Nice groove," he said. He bought a hose at the sale but didn't flip any cash my way.

All in all, I think I'm better off busking outside of the church 15 minutes before meetings are scheduled to start. More lucrative.

Oh, and Fringes, "Creep" doesn't really work -- it's totally out of my vocal range. But "Walkin' after Midnight" sounds pretty d*mn good, if I do say so myself.

And if those are two of the hardest words to spell, juxtaposed together, I don't know what are.

Tomorrow our church is holding a tag sale. I will be giving a ukulele concert outside the doors, so that people can throw whatever money they have left after the sale into my ukulele case. So far, playing outside of church meetings a few minutes before they commence, I've made five bucks.

I have many fabulous songs in my arsenal. Y'all come on down for some fine-pickin' ukulele jams! It will also be a not-to-be-forgotten opportunity to hear Motormouth sing, which I do very well but not often.

Have you seen the new Web site Card Hub? I checked it out last week and it's really neat. You can input your top requirements for a new credit card (low balance-transfer APR, introductory rates, rewards, etc) and it will give you a list of cards that you can compare between each other. Then, when you're ready to apply, you just click "Apply Now" and it sends you to that card's secure server.

I found a Discover Card with a 0% purchase APR until December and 5% cash back on gas, restaurant, travel, and other spending. Very cool!

It also has a Education Center that is about the most brilliant-yet-understandable clearinghouse of credit information that I've found on the Web. Like, did you know that if you carry debts with different APRs on the same credit card, the credit-card company uses your payments to pay off the lowest APR debt-loads first? Tricky b@stards.

Anyway, Motormouth says, "Check it out and tell your friends." The only thing you have to lose is your high interest rates!!! :)