Happy Raturday

Welcome to a new weekly blog post I'm calling, Raturday! I've seen Caturday and while that's really cute, I think the rats needs some photo time so everyone can see how cute these little animals are. I've gotten permission from Rat Logic's fb page to share their pictures on my blog. So get ready to smile because these are cute. 

*click pictures to enlarge*

Happy Mother's Day

I wanted to wish all of the mother's out there a very happy Mother's Day. 

Weekly Rat Facts: Cage Accessories

Scribbles and Flower needed new houses so I opted for fleece cubes to accessorize their cages. 

So I bought this one for Scribbles. 

And this one for Flower. 

They are pretty cute and soft and look comfy. Now while Flower loves hers and sleeps in it all the time now. 

Scribbles has yet to stay inside it for more than a few seconds. He sleeps under it, beside it, in front of it. But not in it. Silly boy. I might put a cardboard box in his cage and see if he likes that, all rats seem to like that for some reason. 

Freebie Friday!

Welcome to another edition of Freebie Friday, where I tell you what free samples and full sized products I received in the mail and how you can get them too. Someone asked me why I do a 'Freebie Friday" each week, so I'll tell you.

A while back I listed all the free samples and wins that I had received that previous year and so many people didn't believe that I could have gotten so many free things. So I decided to prove it by taking a picture every week and sharing the sites that I found the links to the freebies at. So now you too can get great free samples coming to your mailbox each week.

  You can find links to samples like these at Hey It's Free and Freebie Shark.

This week  received: 

Suave shampoo and Conditioner

Colgate tooth brushes and toothpaste

I also received a couple of Kindle books from blog contests.

This is an entire book set!

How To Build A 10 Year Old, A Dog House

You probably know by now that I live in an apartment complex. The doors are pretty close together and we have some courtyard space in front of our doors. The BBQ at the bottom of this picture is directly in front of my door and that is mine. But my next door neighbor, I will call her door slammer...went all out and put the chairs, flower pots and...dog house out in the courtyard in front of our doors. This picture was taken directly in front of my door. She thinks she is going to grow tomatoes, cantaloupe, strawberries and other fruits in those little pots. 

Yeah it looks nice and I wouldn't even be bringing this up but she went and got a dog house and spent all night, up until 3am building this thing outside for her 10 year old daughter who is coming to spend some time with her this summer.

See that dog house in the back? Yeah, doesn't that look like something a 10 year old girl would like? Not! I know every little girl wants a dog house to play in, right? lol 

I don't know what this woman was thinking. No kids or even dogs have gone in it. she might as well crawl in it and take a nap herself and we just found out that our apartment manager plans on adding more small rocks to the courtyard and putting in some cement slabs in the middle so people can put their BBQ's on them. So door slammer will have to move all her stuff anyway. Maybe she can set the dog house up in her apartment for her boyfriend? lol 

I just can't make this stuff up...

Chatabout.com

I think I told you all about Chatabout.com a couple of month's ago when I found it. I added it to my master list of sites that I use *just click the link to see the list*. I like to tell people about great sites they can use to make a little extra money online when I find them and this is a good one. 

A few weeks ago I cashed out enough points to get a $25 Amazon gift card and it only took me 20 days to do it. 

You get points for doing really easy things like making comments, sharing news articles on twitter and facebook, asking questions, taking surveys and answering the daily poll. I average about 100 points per day but it does take a while but it's totally worth it. 

500 points will get you a $5 gift card. 

2500 points gets you a $25 gift card. 

I waited until I had enough points for a $25 gift card so I can show others that it is possible to get that much and it only took me 20 days. I did some of the bonus activities like signing up for free accounts on other sites and that sometimes got me as much as 85 points.

So do you think you would use Chatabout now? 

Want to sign up? Here's a link for you. 

Happy Cinco De Mayo

*click on picture to enlarge*

No, this picture has absolutely nothing to do with Cinco De Mayo, but I had to share it when I saw it on fb because as you all know...the Scottish accent just does it for me. I've never hidden that fact from anyone. That, coupled with this picture and what it says just had me giggling like crazy this morning.

Happy Raturday!

*Hades*

Welcome to a new weekly blog post I'm calling, Raturday! I've seen Caturday and while that's really cute, I think the rats needs some photo time so everyone can see how cute these little animals are. I've gotten permission from Rat Logic's fb page to share their pictures on my blog. So get ready to smile because these are cute. 

*click pictures to enlarge*

A couple of these appeared on Rat Logic's page but I made all of these meme's myself using pictures of my own rats. Enjoy. 

*Lucky*

*Flower*

*Scribbles*

*Flower*

*lucky*

*Lucky*

*Jasper*

Understanding HIV

Recently my husband had an anniversary. He passed his 21st year of living with HIV/AIDS so I thought I would take that opportunity to write a couple of articles about HIV. I always say that he is living with the disease instead of what people used to say, that people with HIV are terminally ill. Thanks to the medications people with HIV can lead long, healthy lives for 20, 30 and even more than 40 years. No longer do we fear that our loved ones who have the disease are going to get sick and die right away because the medications that are available are really good at suppressing the virus in the body. 

Weekly Rat Facts: Scritches and Other Rat Related Words

If you ever wonder into a rat forum or see rat owners talking about their rats on fb or twitter you might see some words that make no sense to you, like pancake, scritches and heart rat. We rat owners have several words to describe our little friends and I've written down the most popular ones with an explanation in one of my new articles. 

Rats 101: The Unique Language of a Rat Owner

Freebie Friday!

Welcome to another edition of Freebie Friday, where I tell you what free samples and full sized products I received in the mail and how you can get them too. Someone asked me why I do a 'Freebie Friday" each week, so I'll tell you.

A while back I listed all the free samples and wins that I had received that previous year and so many people didn't believe that I could have gotten so many free things. So I decided to prove it by taking a picture every week and sharing the sites that I found the links to the freebies at. So now you too can get great free samples coming to your mailbox each week.

You can find links to samples like these at Hey It's Free and Freebie Shark.

This week I received: 

9 boxes *3 flavors* of Triscuits Thin Crisps

A serving and dip dish

10 Triscuit Tote bags

10 Coupons for a FREE box of Triscuits

This box was from House Party.

In my box were 3 boxes of Cinnamon and Sugar, Wasabi and Soy Sauce and Sour Cream and Chives flavored Triscuits, also a serving and dip dish.

Did you receive any freebies this week?

Review of V8 VFusion 100% Juice

Hubby bought this because he likes V8 juice and he likes fruit juice and we have been seeing commercials about how great this tastes and how it gives you a full serving of fruits and vegetables. So he wanted to try it. He poured a glass and took a sip...all I can say is the face he made was not one of delight. 

He handed me the glass and asked me if it tasted bad or if maybe it had gone rotten. That's right, it tasted so bad to him that he actually thought it was rotten.

So I bucked up and took a sip and it was the most foul thing I've tasted in a long while. I took another sip because I knew it wasn't rotten or hadn't gone bad but what was it that made it taste so bad? So I took another sip and realized what I was tasting..there was the banana and strawberry but there was also a taste of tomato juice. That's right, just picture pouring tomato juice all over a banana and popping that succulent edible in your mouth and you might understand how this just doesn't work at all.

Some say it's like sunshine in your mouth but for me it was more like a tornado destroyed my taste buds.

And kids are supposed to love this stuff? Doubtful. 

A To Z Blogging Challenge: Z Is For Zoomania

Zoomania- meaning...a passion for animals.

If you've been visiting my blog for very long, you already know I have a passion for animals. They're just too cute not to. Am I right?

Let me share some of the reasons I like animals...especially rats

They wear hats for you.

Celebrate their birthday's with you and share their cake. 

Pose for Easter Pictures.

Wear Santa Hats.

Give you Christmas Presents.

Play Santa for the kids.

Snuggle with their duckies.

Love kids.

I can't think of any better reasons. 

A to Z Blogging Challenge: Y is For Yawning *rats of course*

If you like rats, then this post is for you. Is there anything cuter than a rat yawning? Probably not, so with permission from the owner, I've shared some of Rat Logic's pictures from their fb page. Enjoy. 

A To Z Blogging Challenge: X Is For Xylography (‘the art of engraving on wood’)

Now wood engraving is wonderful and I think it can be beautiful but every time I see a piece of wood these days I can't help but think of an article I read a while back titled,  Plaster, Wood, and Sand in My Grated Cheese?

I don't think an article has ever effected me the way this one has. After reading this and finding out all the gross things that are in my pre-shredded cheese, I haven't bought anymore pre-shredded cheese again and I guarantee that you won't want to either. 

Frankly, I was skeptical so I looked on the back of a package of shredded cheese I had in my fridge and started Googling the different ingredients and sure enough...wood, sand and plaster in my cheese. 

A to Z Blogging Challenge: W is For Waxing Horror Story

So this is one of the funniest stories I've ever read. I have no idea if it's true or not since I found it on a joke site but I had to share it with you...

The first thing you should know is that hair removal is not my friend. The particular talent of removing unwanted hair has eluded me.
True story.

All methods have tricked me with their promises of easy,painless removal - the Epilady, the standard razor, the scissors, the Nair, the EpilStop, and now.....

'The Wax'.

 My night began as any other normal weekday night. I came home from work, fixed dinner for my son and we played for a while. I then had the thought that would ring painfully in my mind for the next couple
hours: maybe I should use that wax in my medicine cabinet. I set up my boy with a video and head to the site of my demise, um, I mean bathroom. It was one of those cold wax kits. No melting a clump of hot wax, you just rub the clear strips in your hand, peel them apart, press it on your leg (or wherever) and ignore the frantically rising crescendo of string instruments in the background. No muss, no fuss. How hard can this be? I mean, I'm not the girly-est of girls but I'm mechanically inclined so maybe I can figure out how this
works..........................You'd think.

 So I pull one of the thin strips out. It's two strips facing each other, stuck together. I'm supposed to rub it in my hand to warm and soften the wax (I'm guessing). I go one better: I pull out the hair dryer and heat the SOB to ten thousand degrees. Cold wax, my ass.

 (Oh, how that phrase will come back to haunt me.) I lay the strip across my thigh. I hold the skin around it and pull. OK, so it wasn't the best feeling in the world, but it wasn't bad. I can do this! Hair removal no longer eludes me!

I am Sheera, fighter of all wayward body hair and smooth skin
extraordinaire!

With my next wax strip, I move north.
 After checking on the boy and verifying that he was, in fact, becoming one with Bear and learning all about smells, I sneak into the bathroom for The Ultimate Hair Fighting Championship. I drop my panties and
 place one foot on the toilet. Using the same procedure, I then apply the wax strip across the right side on my bikini line, covering the right half of my vagina and stretching up into the inside of the right ass
cheek. (Yeah,it was a long strip.) I inhale deeply. I brace myself.
RRRIIIIPPP!!!!

I'm blind! Blind from the pain! Vision returning. Oh crap. I've managed to
pull off half an inch of the strip. Another deep breath. And RIIIP!
Everything is swirly and tie-dyed? Do I hear crashing drums? OK,
coming back to normal again. I want to see my trophy - my wax covered
pelt that caused me so much agony. I want to revel in the glory that
is my triumph over body hair. I hold the wax strip like an Olympic gold
medallist.

But why is there no hair on it? Why is the wax mostly gone? Where
could the wax go, if not on the strip? Slowly, I eased my head down, my
foot still perched on the toilet. I see hair - the hair that should be
on the strip. I touch. I feel. I am touching wax. I look to the
ceiling and silently shout "nooooooo!!" And realize I have just begun
living my own personal version of "The Tar Baby."

I peel my fingers off the softest, most sensitive part of my body that
is now covered in cold wax and matted hair, and make the next big
mistake - up until this point, you'll remember, I've had my foot on the
toilet. I know I need to move, to do something. So I put my foot down
on the floor. And then I hear the slamming of the cell door.

Vagina? Sealed shut.

Ass? Sealed shut.

A little voice in my head says "I hope you don't have to potty anytime
soon. Your head just might pop off." I penguin walk around the bathroom
trying desperately to figure out what I should do next. Hot water!
 Hot water melts wax! I'll run the hottest water I can stand and get in and
 the wax should melt and I can gently wipe it away, right? Wrong. I
get in the tub - the water is slightly hotter than is used to torture
prisoners of war or sterilize surgical equipment.

And I sit.

Now the only thing worse than having your goodies glued together is
having them glued together and then glued to the bottom of a tub. In
scalding hot water. Which, by the way, does not melt the cold wax. So
now I'm stuck to the tub.

I call my friend, C, because she once dropped out of beauty school so
surely she has some secret knowledge or trick to get wax off skin. It's
never good to start a conversation with "So my nether regions are stuck
to the tub." She doesn't have a trick. She does her best to suppress
laughter.

She wants to know exactly where the wax is on the ass - "Are we talking
cheek or hole, here?" she asks. She isn't even trying to hide the
giggles now.

I give her the run-down of the entire night. She tells me to call the number on the side of the box, but to have a good cover story for where the wax actually is. "You know that if we were working the help line at
 XX Wax Co. and somebody called with their entire crack sealed shut we'd just put them on hold then record the conversation for everyone we know. You're going to end up on a radio show or the internet if you tell them the truth.

"While we go through various solutions, I have resorted to scraping the
wax off with a razor. Boy, nothing feels better to the girly goodies
than covering them in wax, sticking them to a tub in super hot water and
THEN dry shaving the sticky wax off!

In the middle of the conversation (which has inexplicably turned to
other subjects!) I find the little, beautiful saving grace that is the
lotion provided with wax to remove the excess. I rub some in and start
screaming "It's working! It's working!" I get hearty congratulations
from C and we hang up.

I successfully remove all the wax and notice, to my dismay, that the
hair is still there. So I shaved the damned stuff off. Hell, I was
numb by that point anyway. And then I put the box of wax back in my
medicine cabinet. Never know when a mustache might start to come in.

Tonight, I attempt hair dying.

A to Z Blogging Challenge: V is For Visiting Other Blogs

If you like visiting other blogs and reading book reviews, then I have a couple for you. 

I reviewed this book for I Smell Sheep and you can find my review at their link. It's one of my favorite series and authors. If you like paranormal romance and/or shifters, this is a must read. 

if you're looking for a little vampire action in your romance reads, then this could be the book for you. I also reviewed this for I Smell Sheep. So if you like reading book reviews just click the link to take you there. 

So do you like visiting book related blogs or reading book reviews? 

A to Z Blogging Challenge: U is For Unusual Rat Behavior

Seeing a picture of my little hairless rat, you might think she has a skin problem or her cage mates pulled all her hair out but she's just hairless. 

But the fact is some rats will do what is called, barbering to other rats. This means that they will clean them so much and so roughly that they actually pull their hair out. They will even do it to themselves. The most common reasons are mites or other parasites.

You can find my article about barbing below.

Unusual Rat Behavior: Barbering

A to Z Blogging Challenge:T is For Twitter Wednesday!

Welcome to another Twitter Wednesday, where I pull some of the funniest tweets from my Twitter feed and post them here for you to read. As always I have left off the names and @'s so no one gets mad. :)

Stop buying your kids playstations and xboxes and maybe they won't be fat asses. 

kids need two things...food and clothes...everything else is extra. 

I tell my wife that she is the love of my life and I tell my girlfriend she is the best sex of my life.

I can't sleep and I need to!!!! Ack gonna write until the words make no sense 

That's right!! Retired hop-scotch champion;)

Sometimes I feel like spelling everything wrong.

I just dropped a frying pan, into the garbage can. It went right in, I didn't even have to grow a fin.

It's amazing how religion can take brilliant, kind people and direct them to do terrible things and lose empathy.

If a man is standing in the middle of the forest speaking, and there is no woman around to hear him, is he still wrong?

I will tell the truth on Thursday instead of Tuesday cuz I'm rebellious like that

I'll jingle you like the keys in my pocket. Yes?! That's my analogy

You can attack the premise. You can blow the premise into smithereens. And people will still be talking about the invalid conclusion.

As I leaned against the wall in the elevator, it occurred to me that an ass is just a pillow attached to your backside. And I smiled.

I think, therefore I’'m dangerous.

My tweets are la creme de la crap.

Complimentary drinks are like all other drinks, except they tell you that you look good before making you feel great

Hallo fast website! Excellent can keep hold of my sanity now whilst I edit the epicness that is my website :D

I thought I was the perfect parent--and then I had kids.

I mainly go to airports for the strip search

You're hostility makes me laugh. 

I take my irresponsibilities very seriously

I propose a toast to the booze for making life seem tolerable.

All aboard!! Choo..choo!! Shkka..shkka..shkka. Help me!! C'mon!!!!

Passing out a lot of insincere "good mornings" today.