Tummy bath

Clients who are signed up for a tummy bath should lie in this position. Breathe deeply and focus on relaxing, difficult though it may be.

Bringing a friend is permitted, so long as s/he is quiet and will not disturb your profound relaxation.

The tummy bather, who is very experienced and also well-versed in Thai* massage, will be with you shortly.

You'll find the tummy bath to be just the thing to ease all the stresses of your daily existence!

Of course, sometimes a bit of awkward maneuvering may be necessary to get those hard-to-reach areas...  The bather may find it necessary to shift his client's body position, sometimes assertively.

And if your bather should become tired from his exertions and decide to use your now-clean tummy as a pillow, well, just hold onto your friend's tail. We're not sure why, but this seems to provide some psychological comfort while you wait for the bather to wake up.

 

*While we consider our Thai-massage employee to be absolutely professional, please note that he may insist on referring to his profession by its former name, Siam massage.

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Trapped in the corner of the couch

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Heads or tails

Fennec hunts gnats. 

(That's kitty grass I grow for them. They eat a lot of it and get just as much enjoyment hunting the gnats that always seem to appear from nowhere.)

I can't really make heads or tails (or legs) out of Gadjo's position here...

(While, meanwhile, Rumi is being a Tribble.)

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These plums were on my kitchen counter the other day, and they just stopped me dead in my tracks with their beauty. I was in a hurry, but had to go get the camera.

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Fennec as bread loaf

 I love it when cats sit like bread loaves.

But what's really killing me is this:

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Look at this sweet face! This is Bruce, who lives a few buildings away.

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Gadjo as Vishnu

Comfy way to take a bath? I guess so, if you're Vishnu.

Rumi's face is killing me here.

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Brave? Crazy? Woman doling out dog treats in the park the other day. There were seventeen dogs there at one time, for a few minutes. (Note Mojito's tail is blurry... tail waggies...)

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Gadjo as grizzly

Gadjo on top of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, which is a couple of feet over the sink. He jumps from the counter up to there.

Wondering if he can get any higher or go anywhere interesting from there...

(I also love how you can see the seams in his cat suit. He doesn't realize that I actually know he's a monkey [or a mini-grizzly] in a cat suit.)

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Tranquil evening at Coot Lake.

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Bathus interruptus

Splish splash, Fennec taking a bath...

 ...gets distracted by Rumi passing by behind him...

...and falls asleep in this position. (Stayed like that for about half an hour.)

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I wish I could say this is a new abstract painting of mine!! but no, it's a photo I took of a birch trunk.

 ...and then there's this creepy-looking thing. About the size of a small dog, I walked by it and was certain I had just seen a sloth on the ground. In Colorado. 

A closer look revealed it to be what I think is a broken, abandoned wasp nest.

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Cute fuzzies to make up for the spider pics

Poor little squished Gadjo...

Do you think Fennec cares?

He does not.

 I love Rumi's arrangement of limbs here...

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It's kind of scary, what people ask Google...  Do they think Google is the man behind the curtain? The oracle of Delphi?

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And now, for fun, here are some of the recent internet searches that led people to my blog:

images of 6 bananas on a plate

flowered sheets

dog miss you

my calves

factory wall

don't kiss me

men in lungi nude [!]


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Dark lady

So, the other day I noticed this was living two feet from my front door, and very close to where Mojito hangs out on my little porch area:

I am an extreme arachnophobe, as it happens. (By the way, that white thing is some extra-long twisty-tie thingies. They fell into her web when I was staking tomato plants in my containers, and I declined to attempt to retrieve them.)

I started thinking it looked a lot like a female black widow (Latrodectus hesperus). I'd had one in my art studio in my former house. (That was not a good day.)

I put the camera on zoom and got as close as I dared, took a pic, then went to my computer to see what I could see.

When I purposely overexposed the photo (below), the red hourglass abdominal markings became very obvious. 

Ugh!! 

I kept Moji off the porch and tried for a couple of days to find someone who might catch and relocate her. I detest spiders, but I don't think any part of nature should be killed unnecessarily. (Well...maybe mosquitoes.)

No takers. (Perhaps no surprise there.) So I got a dog-park-neighbor-guy to come kill it for me. Ironically, it turns out his profession is pest control, and he's seen plenty of black widows. But when he saw mine, he stopped in his tracks and said, "Whoa...that is big."

So now that she has shuffled off this mortal coil and become an ex-menace, I can brag about how I had the biggest, most badass black widow around.

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Now we are desperately in need of some fuzzy cuteness, aren't we?

This is the puppy a friend adopted recently. His name is Hoshi:

Legs-up napping.

Rumi's not stuck, in need of help--he was just nonchalantly hanging out like that all afternoon.

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Sleepyheads

I realize I have far more photos of my cats asleep than awake. Two reasons: my apartment is not super bright, so the flash usually is necessary, and they close their eyes against that. Also...I just love the way they sleep!

I realize, too, that I haven't shown any art in a really long time. I haven't been doing any. What with the legal stuff and work and the fact that I'm still really struggling to figure out how I can make the small "studio" at all functional, I have done nothing. I miss it. One of these days, I promise you'll once again see art on my blog!

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com