Trials, tribulations, and sunshine

While my fiancé is out of town, I've been dealing with a cat who picked this week to develop a new habit -- he's decided that covering his business with litter isn't enough, so every time he goes, which is about five times a day because he's a super-cat, he completely covers his litter with his liner by pulling in the corners.  I'll leave the problems this can cause if I don't fix it before he has to go again up to my readers' imaginations rather than spell them out here. 

So today our cat woke me up at 6:00 AM with a litter emergency, and by 10 AM I'd dealt with litter problems twice.  The smell of cat poop was already permanently ingrained in my nose, and I was at my wits' end as to how to stop the behavior.  So, figuring a person can only deal with so much adulting on their own in one day, I called my parents and asked for their help.  Armed with the suggestion of a different kind of litter box liner which he couldn't pull in, I walked the 30 minutes to the nearest big grocery store... where they didn't stock the liner.  So I walked back the 30 minutes and at their suggestion dumped all the litter out. (This might seem as easy as picking it up and pouring it into the trash, but the box of litter is too heavy for me to lift, so I had to scoop it out cup by cup -- which of course was great for my respiratory issues. And smelled delightful.)  After dragging the garbage bag of litter to the trash room like I was hauling a body out, I put the whole box in a garbage bag so he couldn't pull corners in and filled it up... but I ran out of litter.  So I had to walk 15 minutes to the nearest store that carries his litter (which, in a change of fortune, had it in stock).  But the box is actually too heavy for me to carry more than a couple blocks.  So it took me twice as long to get home because I had to take five breaks along the way.  On one of those breaks I texted my fiancé to tell him he should start thinking of where he's going to take me to dinner when he gets back.  On another break, I sent him a text that showed him, a cat, and three lines of poop emojis -- ya know, to make it clear he'll be dealing with the litter for a while when he gets back.

I tell this story to explain why I needed some pretty in my day.  So here's some pretty (from my summer vacation), with a small side dose of cheerfully cheeky, to start the week... and to erase all the images of cat litter in my mind....