…

I will write everyday. Just not here.

Toilet Training: Continued

Today is a historic moment. Today, Charlie did #1 on the toilet, with only a small litter box between him and the water below. 

Now I know there's a lot of people out there who'll be like, "why is she telling us this!" but I feel like shouting this from the rooftop, it's that exciting for me! 

Firstly, my room stinks right now. I know this is disgusting. I actually love neatness and clean places. I think my favorite thing in the house is a squeaky clean kitchen. The kind where you can see your reflection in metallic surfaces, and sit on the floor and read books. So having my room, not to mention my bathroom, stink is the worst part about having cats. I absolutely hate it! I've gone through cans of air freshner's in just a week, so I can't imagine living like this forever. 

Secondly, I have to get the litter changed every 24 hours, which involves either stealing sand from our neighbour's in-the-process-of-being-renovated house, or buying litter, which is just painful (paying for dirt, really?!). 

Therefore, this toilet training business seems very cool. Basically, the cat uses the toilet, and someone just needs to fluck afterwards. No stink, no mess, no litter. Awesome. 

All these websites I looked at, including a toilet-training support group for cat owners (I kid you not!), said it would take months and months. There are people who've been training their cats for years (yes, years!) and have not progressed much further than raising the litter box to the toilet's height. I was expecting I would still be at this when the entire tubbar came in for summer vacations, imagining the jokes (at my expense) not to mention the cats completely forgetting all they learnt during summer vacation. Not very motivating, I must admit. 

Anyway, after slowly moving the litter box to the bathroom, then moving it to the height of the toilet, and finally moving it on top of the toilet, I asked Baba to help me figure out what kind of bowl to put in the toilet (considering I need to cut holes into it's bottom later). 30 minutes ago Itook the bold step of putting litter inside the bowl and putting it in the toilet (disgusting to think about, but the only way to train the cat). Right after I did this, Charlie came strolling into the bathroom, jumped on the toilet, and after some persuasion, did his business in the bowl. Yay! 

Of course, Tyler hasn't accepted the new contraption yet, but as he has less issues with changes of the two I think he'll come around eventually. He probably needs time to digest all the food he ate today (both his and Charlie's) before he attempts to balance on the toilet seat. Fatty. 

Garfield on Pakistan

Toilet Training #1

Before I got the two kittens I went to every website/blog to better understand how to take care of them. Cats are a little (!!) more high maintenence than dogs so I knew I'd need to be prepared or I'd have two brats on my hand pretty soon. Anyway, the interesting thing that I discovered was that having a litter box in the house is NOT the only option as far as #1 and #2 go for the cats. That's when I started digging deeper into the whole "toilet training a cat" kind of blog posts.

Anyway, now that the kittens are here, settled in (including having approved the latest recipe for homecooked food) I figured it was time to take the plunge. With 4 blogs guiding me, I started taking the necessary steps to get them trained to use the toilet like we do (sans the book reading, of course). 

Today was day 2. I started yesterday by moving their litter box into the bathroom. Today the litter box is on top of my (closed) toilet. Once they're used to this, we shall progress further. The only annoying thing today was that they didn't know how to get to the litter box (there's a low stool next to the toilet they need to jump on first) so I had to pick them up after every few hours and put them in myself. After doing this four times, I figured I needed to get them to be more independent so using a toy, I made them jump to and from the litter box a couple of times. Hopefully there won't be any presents waiting for me outside the litter box when I wake up in the morning. 

Calvin and Hobbes...

...show why the economy stinks. 

Most religious countries

I would've thought Pakistan would be in there somewhere, but clearly we're all talk and no action where religion is concerned. 

Going Vegetarian

Having tried being a vegetarian before (long ago) I know how difficult it is. I love eating chicken, even more then that I love seafood. The thought of giving up chicken is actually less scary then not ever being able to eat shrimp, prawns or crabs again. Still, I'm thinking of going vegetarian. Here's why:

1. If you haven't already, watch "Meet your Meat". It's a 12 minutes documentary about how the animals we eat are treated, and absolutely horrible. I couldn't watch a large part of it. I know that that may not be how animals are treated/butchered in Pakistan, what with the whole halal thing, but I know that conditions are far from ideal, and I don't think that something we should support. 

2. It's healthier. Every freakin' vegetarian I know is really healthy. They have lots of energy, they glow (literally!) and what with the whole health thing I'm on, I wonder if this is the way to go. 

3. I don't eat a lot of meat as it is. I eat the occasional chicken when it's made in some nice form, not being a big lover of the general home-cooked meals. And I haven't eaten much seafood since I got back from Karachi. I'm thinking I won't even notice the change.

4. I don't want to eat Daisy. So you're wondering, who the hell is Daisy. Well, when I was a kid and read Enid Blyton, she had all these stories set on farms and there was always a cow named Daisy or Buttercup. I've always remembered that, and now (after watching Meet your Meat) all I can think is that I don't want to eat Daisy. 

So, I'm going to try and see if I can be a vegetarian. Usually I only tell people I'm doing something after I've done it (giving up soda, working out, eating healthy) so that no one laughs if I fail, but this is something I think I want to let people know about in advance so I don't get any shocked "you're what!" comments at the next family dinner. I'm going to try this for 30 days first, and if I feel like my reasons are valid after that then I'll keep going till as long as I can. 

WiFi

For all those who know me, my parents complete lack of knowledge about all things techy, and my complete love for all things techy is no news. When I moved home last year, I moved into a home with dial-up internet (horror!) which meant I could barely check my email. Anyway, that was fixed so we now have the PTCL connection which is pretty good, I can download tv shows and stay up-to-date with BSG and Gossip Girl, as well as follow news, play online games, and chat. Cool. 

However, we still didn't have wireless Internet. I work in the living room, which is ok during the day when no one is home, but then once everyone comes back from work the TV is blaring (usually on some annoying channel) so I take my laptop to my room. Since I don't have wireless, I have to keep coming back to the living room to check mail, send documents etc, which is annoying, and distracts me to no end (I end up watching news, or some show, and the living room is really cold as well) and so I finally gave in and got a wireless router.

Since the salesperson was confident I would be able to install it with a little help from PTCL, I didn't think much about it, but when I got home and got everything set up the PTCL customer services girl who took my call was far from helpful. She couldn't figure out why I kept getting random errors and bad connectivity, not to mention why I couldn't set a password and secure the network. Finally, I disconnected the router, waited a few hours for the customer services shift to change, called back, and talked to a guy who after 50 minutes of guidance said that the problem was with the modem they gave me back in August, so I needed to have it replaced. Pisses me off that every time I called up PTCL in the last six months to complain about a connection that was better than dial-up but far from stable, they'd say they were doing maintenance. 

Anyway, today they're sending some tech guys over to fix both the modem and set up wifi. Now I can work out of my warm toasty room without having to watch 'hum sub umeed say hain"!. 

Driving Update

Driving lessons are kinda boring now. We've taken to reversing on the track at the ITP office  (as that's where the test will be), so I see the same track everyday and it's really annoying. Test is on the 10th, yikes!, and the latest news is that we only get one attempt at reversing around the roundabout and parking and if we hit a traffice cone, we fail. There's also a theory exam before that. 

What's fun is that I can now drive the family car if one of my parents is there too, so I do that sometimes. I'm still not over my fear of accidents, but it's getting easier to drive with more confidence. I wonder why I'm learning to drive, the car isn't at home all day anyway...

Day 4,5: Chicken

A friend asked me why I didn't write about Day 4. I guess I didn't because I was still processing what had happened (don't worry, not an accident) and part of me really didn't want to admit that I was having trouble with this. Anyway, the lesson wasn't bad, I mean, to learn something you have to be challenged, so yesterday was like that for me, a pretty big challenge. 

To explain, let me tell you why I didn't learn to drive when I was younger and still at school. I started off with lessons, my mom teaching me, and I got the grasp of the basics pretty quickly, but the first day she took me on a main road (Zero Point), I choked and ended up causing a huge traffic jam, and the traffic cop pulled me over and told me and my mom off for letting me drive without proper instruction. The combination of my fear of accidents (and killing someone), and the incessant honking behind me is a recipe for disaster when I'm behind the wheels, so Day 4 was all about that. I had to go through a couple of intersections, and my feet would not press at the right time and time and time again the instructor had to take over. 

Today was different. Mostly because I'm a chicken. Every morning we have a choice of the order we drive in. There's four students, and we drive all the way to E-11 and back, so there is enough time for everyone to get 10 minutes at the wheel. Every stretch, however, has different intersections/round abouts etc, with the first being the easiest (just left turns), and the last being the most difficult (2 intersections). Yesterday, in order to learn something new, I took the last stretch, and I should have faced my fear and done the same today, but chicken that I am, I took the first stretch, something I already drove two days ago, which means I didn't learn much at all. Chicken.