How was my X-mas

After eating an early supper with my grandfather, I went to the house of a family that I usually have holiday meals with. Since I was full and they were just getting started with their meal, I stayed in the kitchen drinking wine with the youngest kid (8 y/o), who took it upon himself to eat his food away from the group (which I can dig). Of course, he was not drinking wine WITH me. But it was totally groovy because this was one of those kids who can carry on a conversation with adults, and we don't have to lower ourselves to a pre-opposable-thumbs intellect-level. Not to forget to mention that he is very classy and well-behaved in general. Last year, there were some little girls who had just moved here from Poland, and one of them took a liking to a stuffed kitty (not a REAL stuffed kitty, o/c!), and Ian just offered to let her keep it, and picked out some of his other toys for that group.

After they were done eating, people came down from upstairs (they have a 2-family; it's Ian's great-grandmother's apt. on the first floor, and Ian and his parents live on the second floor) and some folks hung out in the living room and others sang songs in the dining room (guess what? I stayed in the living room! DUR!). There were about 5 other kids from ages ~12 to ~15, and they were all like little 30-year-olds (ok, two were more like 20-year-olds), and eventually the oldest ones went outside to hang out with the neighbor's teenagers.

Everyone knows I have "cats not kids"; even when they don't remember my name, they know I'm the one with cats. I had to answer "cat bingo" questions - such as:

Can you remember all their names?

How much does it cost to feed them?

Do they all stay in the house?

How many litterboxes do you have?

I usually take mercy on these folks and volunteer answers to the questions they REALLY want to ask, but are too polite to do so (never the case with Breeder Bingos):

How does your house SMELL?

Are the cats neutered / vaccinated?

Don't you have a life?

How do you afford the vet for all of them? (Sometimes they ask this with the food question).

What does your husband think? (He was not with me; he worked a double yesterday).

But I NEVER, EVER get asked "when" I'm going to have baybees of my own. Most of these people already know that I inherited a house with 20 or 30 cats from my mother, and that my whole (very small) family is involved with a local, genuine, 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization. Besides that, they are not very breederific, and two of the teenagers were actually step-children of one of the relatives of the people that live there.

So, it was a nice time, and I got some of the Polish holiday-food to take to my grandfather today. All that snow is gone from my porch, and most of it has melted off the driveway (it's 50 or 60 degrees outside today). My truck has about $5500 worth of damage so far - they usually find more when they open it up and start working on it, but it was rated in "good" condition to begin with (because of low mileage and working 4wd, and other things), so it isn't totaled. But if it IS, I'm sure to make money on it 'cause I paid $7500 (I got a really good deal - KBB says that a truck like this is $9000 for dealer trade-in in POOR condition).

That's about all for now!

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"I have learned that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everyone off is easy and fun as hell"

:eatu

Sounds like you had a nice time! You're lucky to still have your grandpa. And I LOVE Polish food! I'm from an area of NE PA where there is a high concentration of polish/lithuanian/ukrainian immigrants who came here to mine coal. Lots of festivals in the summer with GREAT homemade food.

I'm not surprised of the bingos you got. We have 5 cats; at one point we had 6; and we always get the same questions. I just don't get it. We also get asked if they are declawed and when we say no, we get asked if our house is destroyed. LOL We've also been asked if the cats have rabies. (rollseyes)

I wonder if anybody asks the Duggars the same questions????

My Christmas was spent at my mom's; hubby and I being avoided by bro and his famblee (we're STILL not speaking). Later in the day, they left to go visit wifey's grammy; their dog was left home (which is fine). He's a busy guy, always into something. They live in the house attached to mom; we hear a pile of noise for about 5 minutes straight, after dashing next door, we get in the house to find their pit bull/basset hound mix with his head caught in one of the leg holes of the youngest kid's high chair. He was flailing around, strangling because the quilted cover for the chair part was bunched up against his neck choking him. Even after pulling the cover out, we could not get his head unstuck. After dismantling the chair, freeing doggy, he was most grateful. If we hadn't gone over, I think this scenario would have had a MUCH different ending.

The Polish National Catholic Church was started in Scranton, PA because the immigrants wanted to have their Mass said in Polish, but the Catholic Church wouldn't have it. They also want/allow their priests to marry because they believe it's better for counseling family issues if priests have a clue what it's all about. We have one in our neighborhood; the priest is from Poland, and he was a regular Catholic priest over there for a while, but left because he wanted to get married and have kids. They all came over here a few years ago. I only go to that church on certain occasions, and it is more of a cultural thing for me, not a religious thing. When they start handing out the communion wafers, I go to the ladies' room and take a piss.

I feel so strange talking about this on this board!

As far as the cat-bingos are concerned, I don't mind answering them because most of the folks at that party do have cats, just not so many. One of the kids was talking about how people call their house the "cat-house", and I was all like, "I have more cats than everyone here put together!" That was really what started the bingos, so I guess I brought it on myself. But like I said, nobody ever asks "So when are you and Steve going to start having KIDS?"

Kudos on rescuing the poor dog!

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"I have learned that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everyone off is easy and fun as hell"

:eatu

I am so glad that the dog rescue had a happy ending! There are few things that I consider more sad than an animal who is trapped or "stuck", ESPECIALLY if they are in pain. One of my kittens somehow managed to scale a wall a while back and I found her dangling by a claw from a dream catcher, it was so pitiful. I am quite sure her paw would have been seriously injured had I not happened to have heard her cries. I too, get the "cat bingos" because I have so many (27 at present). I have heard all of the ones mentioned, but I also get (which I think is strange, under the circumstances), "How can you STAND having so many cats?" I suppose it would be like asking the Duggars, "How can you STAND having all of those kyds around?", when it's pretty obvious that they like having them or they wouldn't have so damned many. I guess they think that having all of these cats is some involuntary thing, that they just showed up, and that no matter HOW MUCH I pet them or how regularly I feed them or take care of them, they just keep showing up against my wishes.

Hm, interesting details about the Polish Catholic Church; I hadn't known that.

I grew up near Toledo, OH, which once had a significant Ukrainian population; I remember the first time I had cabbage rolls in a restaurant and thought they were sooo good. I made golabki (Polish stuffed cabbage) not long ago and we gobbled that up. Yum. DH has a Polish background and loves anything with sausage, sauerkraut (sauerkraut soup!), and lots of mushrooms. It makes me wonder if one's cultural or ethnic background predisposes people towards certain traditional/national "families" of flavors or types of cooking...

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clematis
I made golabki (Polish stuffed cabbage)

You spelled it right too! Except there is no button for the little thing across the letter "l" and the little thing under the letter "a".

For the uninitiated, "golabki" sounds like "gou-womp-kee".

Kim, you are the first person I met online who has as many cats as I do. I actually "own" over 40, but 10 or 15 of them live outside. I was steady at 26 for a few years, until the "black family" (7 kittens) came in 2007 and I ended up having to keep 6 of them 'cause only one had a good disposition and we had too many friendly ones that were hard to get rid of. Then, this fall, my aunt moved and I had to take some of her ferals. I'm still in the process of absorbing that group because I can only take them 2 or 3 at a time from our cat-lady who is holding them in her garage. Ann, the cat-rescue-lady, has a whole separate area attached to her garage that lets out into an enclosed, fenced-in yard for all the cats with chronic URI, FIV, and other conditions which make them unadoptable. My aunt's cats are staying in a holding area (a smaller room) attached to that garage. The main part of the garage has cages for the ones that are waiting to go to the vet for the first time. She has other ones that are allowed in and out of the garage (they live there) and still others that live in or go in and out of the main house. Her husband bitches about them, but what is he going to do, she's a nurse and makes fives times as much money as he does. They have 2 human kids too, one is in high-school, one is in college. She is ALWAYS helping people with their cat-things when she is not at work, and she does things with her kids too, I don't know how this woman functions on so little sleep.

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"I have learned that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everyone off is easy and fun as hell"

:eatu

Oops, I was pronouncing it wrong, though, just reading it from the recipe: "go-LAHB-kee"; thanks for the info PP. So good, and very nutritious too. A good example of a recipe that is way more than just the sum of its parts. Sounds like a pretty good holiday overall, and I hope the truck is fixed soon.

Sounds like you had a lovely Christmas, poofy. It's nice that your family knows how you are and doesn't bug you about the kids. Although, all those cat questions seem kinda grating... Ah, but you're used to it! Those kitties are very lucky to have you.

It isn't my real (biological) family, so I only see these people once or twice a year. I see the people I KNOW more than that, but these are THEIR relatives. This is a friend of my late mother's, who was also my Sunday school teacher, and I used to play with her older daughter, who now lives in Florida.

On golabki: There are 32 letters in the Polish alphabet; there is no q, v,or x, and one of the "extra" letters is an L with a slash across it, similar to the £ but slanted diagonally (higher on the right side, lower on the left). This is pronounced like a cross between "L" and "W". The single, plain "o" is pronounced like "o" in "who". The "a" with the tail is pronounced sort of like "aum". Anything with the little tail adds a kind of -m or -n sound, depending on whether it's an "e" or an "a" and what letter comes after it. If anyone saw "Borat" (my grandfather said they do speak Polish in some parts of Kazakstan) with captions or subtitles, they put "Chenquieh" instead of "dziekuje" (with a tail on the first "e"), which is wrong on more than one level, but sort of sounds correct (jen-KOO-yeah). "J" sounds like "Y" in "you" and "Y" sounds like "eat" and "it" (without the "T"). The "J" sound like in "Jump" is made by "dz". I can't remember what all the different kinds of little dots floating ABOVE certain letters do.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~atpc/learn/tools/pl-alphabet.html

[I noticed that auto-linking is disabled]

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"I have learned that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everyone off is easy and fun as hell"

:eatu

Ł? If you're using Windows, you can use the charmap.exe program (windows/system32 folder) to copy and paste LOTS of special characters.

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Stephanie
Ł? If you're using Windows, you can use the charmap.exe program (windows/system32 folder) to copy and paste LOTS of special characters.

Right-you-are!

But I am using an iMac.

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"I have learned that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everyone off is easy and fun as hell"

:eatu