Things that get my tits in a twist

I know... I know… You are going to say please just not another blog post about some kind of rant.  But I am sorry; I am going to rant because I am fucking piss off!  As most of you know I am an avid animal lover to which my ever expanding menagerie is a testament.  I love all animals.  Ok, that’s not entirely true.  I hate spiders, snakes and all worms with fur on them.  Well, technically they are insects and reptiles but apart from them I am like Noah but without a message from God or an ark.  I must also admit that I sometimes like animals more than I do people as animals have no malice, don’t start wars or are not responsible for gross violations of human rights.  This is why when animals are being abused, mistreated or neglected I lose my shit and this is exactly what happened this weekend.

You see this weekend hubby and I went to our local nursery to have a look at some plants.  In December last year hubby took out all the invader plants in our backyard and it now looks like a drag queen’s face who have been out in the rain smoking crack.  We decided to take out all the invader plants not because we had some kind of xenophobic plant attack but because the invader plants were taking over our back garden and killing all our other indigenous plants.  Invader plants are assholes like that and you should never ever trust a sword fern.  They are evil and very hard get rid off and difficult to kill!  So with our back garden looking sad and barren we decided that this weekend we will get some indigenous plants and start with our backyard’s rejuvenation.  Also, the plants that we need to buy must not look scrumptious to our bunnies and also not be poisonous to them either.  Quite a tall order I know.

When we arrived at our local nursery it was right in the middle of the heat of the day and they were busy watering their plants with their sprinkler system.  Good for the plants.  Not so good for us.  It is really difficult to do plant shopping when you are constantly being sprayed with water.  I was also wearing flip flops (don’t judge me) and I was busy getting grossed out by all the water puddles that were forming.  So I eventually told hubby that we should call it a day but first I wanted to have a look around the pet shop they have at the nursery.  This is where the problem started.

While walking around I noticed that the pet shop had their normal range of small rabbits.  All bundled into different cages separated by breed.  It wasn’t long before I spotted a bunny that looked really despondent and was kept separately in his own cage.  He was an adult French Angora rabbit and rather huge one at that.  He was sitting in his small cage with his back towards the outside; his cage littered with the feces of other animals that were there before him.  He had no hay (which is an essential part of a rabbit's diet and especially that of Angoras), no rabbit pellets but only what looked like dog food and water.  He looked depressed and when I acknowledge that I had seen him he turned to me and I could see he was also starved for interaction of any kind.  Rabbits are social animals after all.

Later that afternoon when we got home I told my husband that I cannot stop thinking about that rabbit.  Hubby also said that it upset him to see the rabbit being held in those conditions.  We then mutually decided that the next day we would rescue him.  Of course my husband’s conditions were that the rabbit had to be neutered and thoroughly get checked out by our vet to which I agreed.  On Sunday morning we returned to the pet shop.  Hubby warned me to not cause a scene or to go all PETA on their asses and that I had to be diplomatic which is sometimes hard for me as I suffer from foot-in-mouth disease.  After questioning the shop assistant about the rabbit’s history I learned that he was one year old and had belonged to a breeder who wanted to get rid of him because he was fighting with the other rabbits.  So it seems that if you are a rabbit at a breeder and if you do not behave or have served your purpose you are either killed or thrown away.  Great way to treat animals, ain’t it?

The sad part is that adult rabbits rarely get bought at pet shops or get adopted.  The general public always seems to go for the cute baby rabbits and the older ones are over looked.  The distressing reality is that when people buy bunnies as pets they know very little about them.  They don’t know what their nutritional and emotional requirements are or the fact that rabbits are high maintenance pets and are expensive to keep.  They are not suitable pets for children under the age of 8 and if you do want to keep them inside the house you need to bunny proof or else the bunny will destroy things.  When these people then wakeup to the reality that rabbits are more labor intensive than cats and dogs and more expensive to maintain they tend to want to get rid of them.  Some “set them free” and think that the rabbit will be fine.  What people don’t realize is that domesticated rabbits cannot survive in the wild and they will die.

After speaking the shop assistant and checking out the French Angora up close we were told that we would have to speak to the owner before “buying” him.  We ran into a snag and to make a long story short, if all goes well, we will be able to fetch him on Wednesday.  Only then will we be able to access his health and determine what effect having been kept by an unscrupulous breeder has had on his physical and emotional health and determine what kind of rehabilitation he may require.  Luckily our cats and bunnies are all very chilled and I am sure they will help him become the happy bunny he is destined to be, instead of an animal whose sole purpose is to breed.

I sometimes wish that all people who consider themselves to be “animal breeders” would be required to obtain a license from the SPCA to do so.  Also, I wish that the SPCA could inspect all the animal breeders to make sure that the animals are taken care of properly and that their living conditions are acceptable.  There are so much animal abuse and neglect going on in the world and I don’t understand how people keep animals if they cannot care for them.

Lastly, I also wish that people who adopt rabbits would educate themselves about these highly intelligent animals before they get them.  Animals are not your property that you own.  They are not things.  They are living creatures which you cannot just throw away when you are tired of them or when they misbehave.  When you buy or an adopt an animal that animal is your responsibility and the way you take care of and treat that animal says a lot about who you are as a human being and the respect you have for life around you.

Till next time.

What Gay Guys Think About Vaginas.

Watch this video and you will see as it turns out, gay men have a lot to say about vaginas. If you love this, share it on your Facebook timeline.  Thank you vaginas!

I'm not denying that I'm difficult to live with.

This has been said by me innumerable times but for the sake of making sure nobody ever forgets it, I will say it again – my husband really deserves a medal for putting up with me.  I am no picnic to live with and should I have been accompanied with an instruction manual it would have come in volumes and would have read like an IKEA manual but without the illustration and it would have been printed in Chinese.  There are many ways one could sugarcoat this.  For example, I could say that I am complicated, emotionally complex and eccentric bordering on the ridiculous.  But that would just be blowing smoke up your asses.  The truth is I am one difficult bitch to live with and sometimes I do things that annoy the living hell out of my long suffering husband.  To help give you some perspective here are just a couple of my phobias, obsessions and eccentricities that drive him up the wall and why he deserves some well earned recognition.

One of the causes for my husband to be annoyed can be blamed on my OCD.  Not having to switch the lights on and off a 100 times or checking if all the doors are locked for hours at a time kind of OCD.  The type of OCD I suffer from is my germ phobia and the fact that I like routine and for things to be done in a certain way.  In this sense I am not that unlike our bunnies.  They too like routine and for things to be done a certain way and if you deviate from it they throw tantrums and are stubborn just like me.

This has caused me to hate spontaneity, to be weary of surprises and made me allergic to change of any kind.  I like things to be planned and organized or else the world will come crumbling down and we will all die.  Throw in a mild case of agoraphobia and you have the perfect storm that could kill a social life.  All of which drives my husband nuts.

You see for anyone to drag my ass out of the house for any reason other than for work or to buy life sustaining necessities is a daunting task.  I like our home and everything we need is there.  There really is no reason to leave the house other than for a natural disaster or possibly the apocalypse; even then I would be difficult about it because that too would imply impending change.  Besides, we only have one pet carrier and there is no bloody way five cats, two bunnies, a tortoise and a fish would all fit in there.  We would need a fucking Ark.  Also, do you even know how many life threatening germs are out there that could one day turn us all into Zombies?

So for us to go out is a rather big deal, but for some odd reason my husband does succeed in getting me out of the house sometimes.  We do go shopping in actual malls that are not on the internet, go to movies, visit friends, watch shows and also travel.  None of these things have killed me, yet.  But what annoys my husband is the fact that all these adventures are planned, even the “spontaneous” ones.

My OCD is not the only thing that drives hubby nuts, there also is my cooking.  I am a phenomenal cook, if I do say so myself, and I am also very talented at dirtying every single pot, pan and cooking utensil we have while I prepare a meal.  I never use the same tasting spoon twice because that’s just unhygienic.  I am also incapable of only cooking for just two people.  I blame the fact that I possibly lived through the great depression in a previous life and am now overcompensating by always cooking for an army.  So after I cooked a meal and dirtied as much as possible, I will also fill up all our Tupperware with leftovers most of which go to waste anyway. I know there are starving children in Africa. Don't judging me.

As if my OCD and cooking skills are not enough I am also a hypochondriac at the best of times.  I am a relatively healthy person apart from being allergic to the world.  Literally.  I should live in a hypoallergenic bubble.  However, when I do get an ailment I tend to self-diagnose with disastrous consequences and for this I blame WebMD and the internet in general.

I have been convinced that I was dying from exotic diseases more times than I think my husband would care to count.  In contrast there were also times I thought I was fine but was in fact dying. Like a while back when I thought I was suffering from severe constipation on an island holiday and it turned out I had double pneumonia.  There was also that time when I thought I was having a heart attack and it turned out to just be severe heartburn.  I tend to get it wrong most of the time and all the while hubby had to stand by my side through real medical emergencies and the ones that were not so real.  Even that one time I thought I was infected with the Ebola virus and nobody wanted to believe me.  It would frustrate most people.

And then there are the animals, as you all know I love animals and as a result not only does my husband have to share our house with a person with OCD, impeccable cooking skills and a hypochondriac, he also shares it with our ever growing menagerie.  You all should know by now about my obsessive search for a gay donkey and most recently I fell in love with another animal called an Alpacas.  They are ridiculous animals with one fabulous set of hair.  I mean really, who could resist an animal with buck teeth and a jerry curl?  The Alpacas could just possibly trump the gay donkey, and I am so getting one, just don’t tell my husband.

Hubby has threatened that if I get one more animal that we need to buy a farm.  So in response to his threat, now every time I go to the pet shop to buy supplies I send him pictures of kittens, bunnies and reptiles.  You know, so that he is never sure what he will be coming home to that afternoon.  I know it’s cruel but I am doing this with a plan in mind:  If I desensitize him enough to the possibility of a new animal joining our zoo then when I do get the Alpacas or gay donkey he will not be that upset, although the neighbors might be.  I am aware that my obsession with our ever expanding zoo is a problem, but animals make me happy and we can’t naturally have children and God knows we try.  If Brad and Angelina can collect children then who are you to judge my animal collection?  Besides we are adopting a child and I suspect this might just cure me of my zoo obsession.  The universe works in mysterious ways.

As you can see, it is a miracle that I am not single.  Finding a person who would be prepared to put up with all this shit is very difficult and I got lucky.  Very lucky! The only real issue I think my husband has that he really wishes I would part with is my obsession with horror movies.  I scare the living shit out of him by means of the horror genre at least once a week.  I do this probably in an attempt to convince him that living with me is not as bad as being possessed by Lucifer, being tormented by entities, kept chained in a basement by a serial killer or being kidnapped by aliens.  I mean compared to that sharing your house with a zoo and a somewhat eccentric blogger who believes that the Zombie Apocalypse will happen isn’t so bad, now is it?

Till next time.

(PS:  The Zombie Apocalypse is real people.  It will happen.

PPS: And when the Zombie Apocalypse does happen, stay the fuck away from my house!  I will cut a zombie bitch.  I really will.)

Madonna's Lady Gaga Nightmares

Lady Gaga's rise to fame is tormenting Marge and she wants her gays back.

What’s in a name?

Visiting the Department of Home Affairs almost has the same appeal to me as getting an enema and then a colonoscopy.  I have never had a colonoscopy but I can’t imagine that it’s pleasant or pretty.  However, this is exactly what hubby and I needed to do a couple of weeks ago.  You see, we had to change our surnames for the adoption.  So now our surname is a double barrel and we are now officially, on the government’s computer system, known as Pierre LeRoux-DuPisani.  It’s a long surname and our poor child will have a very difficult time when he/she first learns to write his/her name.  I apologize in advance.  Daddy promise to start saving up for your therapy fund so long.  But getting our surnames officially crunched into one took us almost five hours.  Five hours of my life that I will never get back.

Hubby and I decided to visit the Department of Home Affairs middle December.  Our rationale was that most people would have already gone on holiday and that Home Affairs would be quiet.  We were wrong and they were busy.  Firstly, we had to queue outside in the sweltering heat for an hour before we were eventually allowed into the building and as we turned the corner into their foyer I almost vomited.  It smelled like a sewerage pipe had burst and the stench of feces hung thick in the air.  I wanted to leave but hubby did not allow me to.  Secondly, besides the smell of human excrement, their air-conditioners were also broken and the place was packed to capacity with people.  So not only did the place smell like shit it was hot as hell too.

As we got the forms we needed to complete we learned that we also needed to have copies of our passports as well.  And as fate would have it these were the only copies we did not have.  The information officer nonchalantly told me that we could have copies made outside in a van.  Seeing as hubby’s handwriting is much better than mine (his is legible) we decided that he would complete the forms and that I would temporarily escape the smell of poo and have the copies made.  I have never had to have copies made by two Nigerians from inside a van that looked like it could double as a kidnapping and drug smuggling vehicle.  And I hope to God I never will have to ever again.  It was a rather surreal experience and they so overcharged me.  Van people are assholes.

After I got the copies I ventured back into the shitty sauna and hubby and I played musical chairs with strangers for a couple of hours.  I was appalled when I realized I forgot to bring wet wipes and hand sanitizer and was convinced that I would catch some kind of deadly disease.  So when we were eventually called to a counter by a guy with dreadlocks I was relieved as I thought our ordeal was almost over.  But it wasn’t.  We told Rastafarian dude that we wanted to change our surnames to a double barrel and we needed to also apply for new passports and identity documents with our new surname.  We presented him with copies of our identity documents, passports and marriage certificate and that was when his eyes glazed over.  I wasn’t sure if it was due to too much marijuana, confusion, the smell of shit hanging in the air or the heat.

Ganja dude then disappeared to seek out his supervisor and we were unwitting spectators to bureaucracy at its best.  After what felt like an hour he came back with an irritated looking supervisor who then barked at us “When did you get married? Why didn’t you do this then?” to which my then very annoyed hubby responded “Because we’re adopting and we are doing this now!” The bombastic supervisor gave us the stink eye mumbled something to Dope dude and left.  And with a few stokes on the keyboard our surnames were officially changed.  Don’t know why dreadlocks needed to call his supervisor for that, but at least it was done.  We are now just waiting for our new passports and identity documents and I think I will pay someone to collect it for us.

In other baby news, hubby and I also did some shopping for a stroller and car seats.  Do you even know how many different brands are out there?  For soon to be new parents this is an overwhelming experience.  I mean, you don’t want to buy a car seat that costs more than your car yet you don’t want to buy something that is not 100% save and of good quality.  I also never knew that car seats came for different stages.  There are car seats from stages 0-3.  Also, they don’t rate them by the baby’s age but with weight.  So what happens if you have a fat baby and bought the wrong car seat?  Luckily Google and my Facebook friends came to the rescue.

After much debate we eventually found the right stroller and a car seat that is perfect and suitable for stages 0 to 3.  And it didn’t cost us an arm and a leg.  So now we have bought all the big and expensive things.  The nursery is completely ready and we are also now set for travel.  It is quite a relief that we are this prepared already and that we would not have to scramble after we get “the call”.  Being slightly OCD, proactive and a lover of checklist sometimes do come in handy.

So at the moment we are as ready as we can be for the baby.  Now we wait.  What I found amusing from this experience were people on Facebook’s reactions when we changed our surnames on our accounts.  People freaked the fuck out and I don’t know why.  After several inboxes I eventually had to explain why we did it and people calmed down.  I also had to explain that both hubby and I will still continue using our original surnames professionally and the change of our surname was just a formality so that your child can share the same surname as us.  On the plus side, there are only two Pierre LeRoux-DuPisani’s on Facebook and it’s us.  Don’t we feel special…

Till next time.

Happy 2014 Y'all

I decided that my first blog post of 2014 should really be something profound, thought provoking, something worthy of an epiphany.  Then I realized that I am still slightly hungover from last night and decided fuck it.  So instead of a spiritual awakening I am giving a raunchy video from Andrew Christian called #suck.   Enjoy.