And then there were four

We put Zoe to sleep this morning. She was 15 and so thin and wasted - it had been a very long time since she was able to do more than eat, sleep and growl. Her whiskers were falling out. She still hadn't grown back the hair on her paw from where she was shaved last summer after a blood sugar collapse.

We were with her while she died. The vet will normally put a catheter in and then administer the drug while you are there with the pet, but her veins were in such terrible shape and her blood pressure and circulation were so bad that they couldn't get a catheter in.

We ended up having to hold her down while the vet injected the drug directly into a vein in her thigh. She struggled but she didn't have much fight left in her. Pretty quickly her head started to droop and then her heart stopped and I could tell from her eyes that she had left us. I wish I could believe in heaven so I could believe that that's where she went. I guess I will have to content myself with knowing that she is the earth's pet now.



Oh Zoe. I miss how you used to groom my hair until it was soaking wet and disgusting. I miss how you wanted to be on my lap and purr even when it was 95 degrees out. I miss playing baseball with you - you had such good aim batting away toys. I miss you curled up on my chest, purring for hours while we both napped. I miss the funny little hairs between your toes. I miss your people-food-stealing mischievousness. I miss you. I know it's better that you aren't in pain all the time now. I know we made the right, kind decision. But it's still hard.



Update: I love this picture of baby Zoe and baby Dave. Kittens together.

Happiness is

singing along to Passenger Side while drinking whiskey with only the cats to hear.



This right here is made of awesome. I think it's actually better than the original - the video definitely beats Robert Smith clawing at the air and lying on the floor singing.



In case you are not familiar with the original.

In what may not be a coincidence, Simone is currently lying in my lap purring and biting my typing fingers. That's the signal that I have to go be a crazy cat lady for a while. Plus the whiskey needs a refill.

Spring

Finally on its way.

Um, ew. And etc.

After I finished listening to Jane Eyre I started listening to Sense and Sensibility. Marianne comes down with a "putrid fever", which sounds gross, and almost dies. I've read Sense and Sensibility quite a few times, but I don't think I've read it since before Google. I always wondered what exactly a "putrid fever" was, but until now I didn't have the internet to help me find out.

Turns out putrid fevers are also known as typhus. Jane Austen and one of her sisters nearly died of it, which is how she was so familiar with the disease. 'Hey,' I thought, 'typhus is what the pupils at Jane Eyre's school get. What is typhus though? Is it like typhoid?'. Nope. It's an infection (treated nowadays with antibiotics) that's spread by body lice. EW EW EW EW EW. That totally clashes with my image of that era in history as being full of well-clothed, well spoken ladies and gents - basically as I listened to the book I was picturing the Ang Lee movie with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet, so finding out that the characters and their author were all crawling with lice was kind of a shock. It makes sense, of course, given the lack of running water and central heating at the time, but still. EW.

Next I am going to listen to Dombey and Son. At least Dickens was upfront about the effects of poor sanitation (the graveyard description in Bleak House, for example.)

But back to Austen. Listening to Sense and Sensibility I realized that not only are admirable male characters rare in Austen (most of the good men are kind of waxwork models of piety and virtue, Mr. Darcy and Mr. Knightly being the exceptions), but that it's all about the inner lives and landscape of women. I guess I knew that already, but I was finally like, 'Oh! That's why lots of men don't enjoy reading her - she's not writing for them.' Well, duh, right? Except that as a woman, of course I grew up reading all kinds of books which focus on the male experience (David Copperfield, Treasure Island, Tom Jones, Boswell's Life of Johnson - the list is endless) - because those books are so much more common than the female-centered ones - so it never occurred to me to be bored by reading about the experiences of men. I'd have run out of books pretty quickly.

Moving on. I've been reading (really reading, I mean, not listening) Hilary Mantel. She is wonderful - very dark and very funny. I'm on my third of her books and I admire her writing tremendously.

In other news, all five cats are still around and I'm/we're still agonizing over Zoe. I posted a question about euthanasia to the blog of a vet that I really like. Here's his answer. Definitely not easy. I do think Zoe's in pain, though our vet didn't agree the last time we saw him, and will try the painkiller test on her.

Somehow it's 8:30 already and I still need to vacuum (we are drowning in a sea of litter), clean the catboxes, and do my taxes (argh). And get to bed early, 'cause I need to be in the office by 8 tomorrow.

Crushing

So I have been reading Sarah Vowell intermittently since Christmas when Dave got me three of her books as gifts. It was a good choice on his part because I totally love her. I was laughing on the T while I read it on the trip home. This paragraph just killed me:

The professor asked if anyone had read Camus. I, of course, had read L'Etranger in the original French, and raised my hand.* I mentioned the protagonist who doesn't care about his mother's death. Then I said that I often washed dishes with my mom. When she'd hand me a knife to dry, I would have the fleeting thought that it would be pretty easy to kill her if I wanted. I should mention that I usually sat in the back, so when I said this about a hundred heads whipped around to stare at me. What I should have said was, "But I don't want to kill her!" What I actually said was, "Oh, like you never thought about killing your mom."

How can you not love this woman? Plus I am always the one who ends up with my whole department staring at me like another head has shot up out of my neck. I work in marketing, which isn't quite as full of kids who were popular in high school as sales departments tend to be, but marketing is full of the kids who were the ultra cool ones wearing all black and smoking cigarettes back behind the gym. Thus they seem shocked every time when I come out with some amusing anecdote about that time my first husband went on a three day drinking binge and came home perched happily inside a garbage truck. My feeling is that it's a fucking great story and I tell it well; their feeling is that I've had some crazy wild life and it's sort of in poor taste to mention it. So it's always nice to read someone else who is okay with admitting their own humilations.


Speaking of the trip home, I had promised Dave that I'd leave work promptly at 6 so I could be home at 7 so I could see his face for a few minutes before he left to play a gig. I of course didn't leave work at 6 - I left at something more like 6:20, because I was shooting the shit with my boss, who I like a lot. (Don't get me wrong, I really like everyone I work with. They just all think I'm nuts.) As I walked to the subway, I uttered a little prayer that the trains would cooperate and I'd get home near 7 anyway and not at like 7:30, which would have totally pissed Dave off.

Then I wondered who I was praying to, since I don't believe in God, and decided that maybe I had proven that there were no atheists in foxholes. Then I wondered why I don't believe in God, and remembered that it's because I can't get past that whole bad-things-happening-to-god-people thing. Then I wondered if, supposing there really is a God, if I was going to hell for not believing. The trains did cooperate and as I pulled into my last stop I thought to say thanks just in case but then wondered if the perhaps-God who might have helped me out with the trains could hear me from underground. As if God's reception is limited like the T-Mobile network. And then I made a conscious decision to stop thinking about theological matters and listened to Sense and Sensibility on the walk home instead.


*I too read this in the original French and would also have raised my hand.

*headdesk*

How stupid can you get? Some family stole a bunch of stuff and boasted about it on national TV, then got busted. Jesus. It reminds me of the time my sister's credit card number was stolen online - they caught the thief because he had his ill-gotten gains shipped directly to his house.

When I worked in retail, we used to see shoplifters all the time. When I first started the job, I asked my boss how to spot them. "It's easy," he said. "They act in a suspicious manner." And they do! I guess if you're lazy and stupid and venial enough to think thievery is preferable to an actual job, it doesn't occur to you to try to act normal when trying to get away with it.

Not at all related to April Fool's

I think the baby snuggie thing is actually a photoshop disaster and not a detachable fleecy alien womb, but you have to admit the similarities are great:


The mom looks a lot happier about the situation than Kane.

hat tip to Pandagon for opening my eyes.

so totally worth it, though

one of the fucking cats flipped my display upside down again. Plus the modem was acting up so I had to reset it before I could tediously navigate my way across the upside down backwards desktop to get to Google. (ctrl + alt + UP arrow fixes it.) little furry bastards. lucky for them they're cute.

I am old and nerdy

moar funny pictures

We had to move the rosaries out of Pip's reach. He knocked over Buddha trying to get one. You'll be glad to know Buddha escaped unscathed.

Not a whole ton to say for myself lately. Well, there's been a lot going on (when is there not?) but I haven't had much time to write about any of it. Dave in 3 bands, though, so I see the amount of writing time in my life hockey sticking. He's off at practice now, in fact, but he left dinner in the oven for me. Good man. I was starving when I got home (god knows why, there is a plethora of free snacks at the office and I get through a lot of mini-bags of Cheez-Its in a day) so it was extra nice to walk in the door and be able to stuff my face without having to wait around while the ramen finishes cooking.

Listening to a Librivox recording of Jane Eyre and am really enjoying it. I've read Jane Eyre before, at least once, but I don't think I've read it in maybe 10 years. Long enough so I'd forgotten almost everything but the salient points of the story: poor governess, rich Mr. Rochester, mad wife in the attic, "Reader, I married him". That's kind of inescapable cultural knowledge about Jane Eyre - I probably knew that much going in the first time I read it. I'd forgotten how events unfold, though, and how much fun Jane's conversations with Mr. Rochester are.

Man, listening to this as an adult, though, I can barely hear the story over the warning sirens in my head screaming, "Get out of there, Jane! Mr. Rochester is crazypants!" I mean, he dresses up as a gypsy and lies to her, he misleads her about marrying someone else, he plans to entrap her in a fake marriage, then he tries to get her to be his mistress, and even after all that Jane's like, "Mr. R! I luffs him so!" That doesn't seem like such a happy ending to me. Her other alternative, the creepy St. John Rivers, is awful too. I don't think Charlotte Bronte had a very high opinion of men. I don't think she knew much about children either - Jane is a governess but her charge is just so boring and stupid.

Anyway. The litter box and some laundry are calling. If I can ever get Lucky off my lap. He's my internet boyfriend and always insists on being in my lap whenever I'm on the internet. I don't know how he knows, but he does.

Whole lotta grooming love going on around here.

in like a lion, indeed

I dyed my hair purple.




Me and my new hair with Zoe.


curly hair in the dining room.


Lucky. He is a pushy old customer from Brookline.

He's our FIFTH cat. Pip was number 4, which was already too many, and then we acquired a fifth. So the deal with Lucky is that he belonged to a blind friend of Dave's. Lucky was diagnosed with diabetes (he's 12 and overweight), so obviously his blind owner couldn't see to give him his shots. So Dave's blind friend found a home for Lucky with another friend of hers ... except that lady was diagnosed with alzheimer's and couldn't remember the shots. So Lucky ended up back at the shelter and since he's 12 and diabetic and overweight, he was probably going to spend the rest of his life at the shelter, except we are suckers and adopted him. Two days after we brought him home, he had a hypoglycemic episode and almost died. After a mere thirteen hundred dollars, though, he was saved, and now he's not diabetic. (For now. Cats are really hard to keep stable. Zoe's back on insulin, for example, but only a small dose once a day. And we've invested in a blood glucometer and checked her blood sugar this afternoon; we'll probably start monitoring them both regularly. If I can avoid any more $1300 emergencies, I definitely want to.)

So five cats is way too many, and it's also an expensive hobby, but Lucky is super sweet. I had food poisoning last week and was running a high fever and generally felt awful, and Lucky was super happy just to lie in bed with me. He totally spooned me. Lucky (totally misnamed, in case you hadn't guessed, but Dave's blind friend's cleaning lady found him in a dumpster when he was 3), anyway, Lucky is really easygoing and gets along with the other cats, apart from Zoe, who hates everyone. He and Pip wrestle - he's the only cat strong enough to kick Pip's ass. Pip is a big boy these days - he was 9.5 pounds at the vet last month and I bet he's up to ten now. We call him "muscle boy" because he's a brick shithouse.


Look how much bigger he's gotten since August.


Pip likes cat TV.


Dave took this photo of Simone. She is his favorite. Technically Simone is still bigger than Pip, but she's a lover, not a fighter, and Pip wales on her ass all the time. (Whales? Wails? I think it's a regional phrase and I've only heard it spoken, not seen it written. Google was no help.) The brown rug with circles is in the second bedroom, which is now "the dude room", god help us. So naturally a brown rug was an appropriately masculine choice.



Sometimes Pip can be sweet.


I like how they both have their tongues out.

We are going to see Trail of Dead tonight at the Middle East Downstairs, which should be a good show. The only problem is that their set doesn’t start until 11 (which ought to make work tomorrow sleepy. My plan is to shower before the show and do a roll and stroll tomorrow morning; I figure if we get in at 1, I can go right to bed and sleep until 7:30 tomorrow morning and leave the house by 8, which will make me feel wretched, but I will be functional tomorrow for work, at least. I grow old, I grow old, and will probably regret seeing the show tomorrow.) Oh, and we’re getting 6 inches of snow today and supposed to have another 12 tomorrow. Yay New England. In the meantime we are listening to Yo La Tengo - transferring vinyl to MP3s, puttering and doing housework, and we need to hit the grocery store if we want to eat next week. A nap before the show is also very likely. Life is busy.

and just for kicks, a couple of pictures from when we were out in New Mexico over Christmas to see my parents.


The sky is so blue out there.




Some kind of cactus flower.

Hippy dippy woo-woo crap

So, I've been doing yoga for a few years now and all yoga practices incorporate meditation in some way. It's my understanding that yoga evolved as a way to get the kinks out of your body so you could meditate without being disturbed by a leg cramp or something. I don't know how true that is ... but for me, anyway, I started doing yoga as a way to get more fit physically. Eventually I started to notice some mental benefits - exercise is always a de-stresser, of course, but yoga in particular puts focus on mental and physical discipline and awareness and integration of the mental/spiritual with physical.

My therapist has been suggesting for a while now that I incorporate regular meditation into my routine as an anxiety management technique. I have an anxiety disorder that I take meds for every day, and I have tranquilizers available for urgent situations, but I'm not content to leave everything to the pharma-psychology to manage itself. Plus I really believe that meds work much better in conjunction with cognitive behavioral therapy. Meditation is one example of a CBT technique that I use but I have many.

Anyway, at my therapist's urging, I gave meditation a shot but was never quite able to work it into my routine - given the choice between sleeping an extra ten minutes and getting up to meditate, sleep always wins. Then recently I was talking with a friend about my mental health stuff (my friend has some similar issues) and my friend mentioned that she meditates on the train in the mornings. And I was immediately like, oh, BINGO! because otherwise the time on the train is wasted - well, I read, but I can't really do anything productive - it's not a long enough journey to get the laptop out and it's too jerky and crowded to be able to physically write anything. The train is sort of the perfect place, because cell phones don't work, there's no internet, no point in getting the laptop out to work, and even though you're in the midst of a crowd literally pressing in on you physically, emotionally you are completely isolated.

So I just shut my eyes and meditate through a couple of stops (or all the way in), and it doesn't matter if I've got a seat or have to stand, and I'm not chanting and I just look like all the other tired commuters. The only time it's really hard is if people are having a conversation nearby that's loud enough for me to hear distinctly - I almost always end up listening to it rather than meditating, but I try to treat those incidents as a challenge and a way to improve my focus rather than just get ANGRY SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU STUPID ASS I DON'T GIVE A FLYING FUCK ABOUT YOUR STUPID LIFE SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP BEFORE I STAB YOU IN THE FACE. Although trying to improve my focus rather than get angry doesn't always work. heh.

I generally focus on the breath - I cannot just clear my mind and blank out, especially on the way to work in the morning, I have to focus on something neutral or else I'll just start making mental to-do lists for the day ahead. Zen koans don't really work for me either. I am not perfect at it by any means - most of the time, thanks to yoga practice, I can sink right into a meditative state, but I'll almost immediately realize that I'm thinking again, at which point I refocus on the breath. I try to just take note of the thoughts as they pass through, just to kind of check in, awareness-wise, but I let them keep on swimming by without picking up a train of thought and riding it to the end. I've worked out a couple of visualizations, too, but I tend to be super-visual no matter what I'm doing.

It's been very helpful for me in a number of ways. For one thing, even though I am trying not to think about anything, I often do end up solving little problems that have been nagging at the back of my mind for a while. For another, I don't have to be afraid of my brain any more. I used to read all the time when physically possible - book on the T, book on ipod for the walk to and from the T, book on ipod for housework and at actual work whenever the level of work was low enough to permit a book on tape. If I was stuck anywhere I couldn't distract myself with a book or TV, I was miserable and started to worry immediately. You know those middle of the night hamster wheel thoughts? I had those all the time, and I just blocked them out as much as possible. I don't know if I'm describing the situation well, but it was pretty uncomfortable.

Somehow with meditating, the worries are no longer what bubble immediately to the forefront of my mind, and it's surprisingly peaceful to be able to sit quietly rather than working myself up into a panic attack within 15 minutes (not quite that bad, but definitely going in that direction.) I enjoy it now, enough that I try to remember to meditate on weekends, too (especially useful if Dave is wearing his cranky pants).

Sorry that was so long. If you don't have a train ride, it might be a little harder to set aside time and space. On weekends I shut myself in one of the bedrooms. If one or more cats is in there with me, that cat will probably want attention, so I try to use that distraction as a way to improve my ability to focus and shut out any disturbances. (Don't really have face-stabbing inclinations with the cats, fortunately.) Sometimes if I'm really wound up while at home I'll light incense and turn on a little water fountain and focus on the scented smoke and the burbling water. I think the key anyway is not to expect too much from yourself and to incorporate it into your daily routine.

Unrelated: fishtank update. So another fish "disappeared", this one immediately after I'd cleaned the tank. Dammit! I think I have been accidentally killing the algae eaters when I vacuum the gravel - they like to hide and I guess I am just vacuuming too enthusiastically or something. I think I may also have found where one of the bodies is lying. Ugh.

WTF of the day

What is the deal with chamomile tea? Every time I try it I just end up thinking it tastes like hot water which has recently had straw in it. And we have this super-posh chamomile at work too. The CEO is a tea snob and brings in all kinds of loose leaf teas, which is an awesome perk, but even chamomile that's been like lovingly harvested by sixteen year old greek virgins using only the tips of their fingers to gently coax the head of the flower from the stem. It still doesn't taste any better than the powder in the twinings bags.

Anyway. Seppaku tossed me this link. How did I miss this meme until now? I played it over and over until Dave lost his temper, which made me laugh harder.

Annnd now I'm tired. I'm listening to this version of Anne of Green Gables, by one of my favorite Librivox readers. I really like listening to books on my ipod, it makes doing housework almost pleasant. And if the reader is good, it's a slower and richer experience to listen to a book than it is to read.

I read the book many times as a child, and it's quite a bit funnier than I remember. Very sly. On the other hand, there's a lot of honest-to-god treacle in there too. But it's interesting to watch as Montgomery creates characters and sets scenes and to see how the humor works.

One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish

So I keep tropical fish, and it's not something I write about that often because really, how much is there to say? They swim around, sometimes Pip makes a grab for sushi, whatever. Also I am not very good at taking care of them - I'm kind of slack about water changes and definitely not good about changing the carbon filter regularly and the tank gets a lot of sunlight from our windows where it's situated so usually the water is a little cloudy and maybe a little greenish. Just like tornado weather!

And also I do dumb shit like putting fish together which then eat each other. I've got some serpae tetras and they eat the fins of the little neons that are also in there. Every time I tell someone who knows about fish what's going on, they say, "serpaes aren't supposed to nip neons!" No shit, that's why I thought it would be okay to put the two together, but apparently not. The neons are practically finless by this point. Poor guys just roll all over the tank without their stabilizing fins. I should really flush them and but them out of their misery, but I'm not even a good enough fish owner to do that.

And I realize the above makes me sound like a pretty bad pet owner, but I have actually improved. When I first got the fishtank, I was obsessed with the water and everything being sparkling clean, so I would do 100% water changes regularly and would boil the rocks to get the algae and germs off of them. Mysteriously, the fish kept dying, no matter how clean I kept the tank. then I realized that part of the problem was that I was uncontrolled when I added water back to the tank - I used to just dump a bucket's worth in and it would create a little tsunami in the tank and the fish would be dashed against the glass sides of the tank and die of their injuries. Doh. Also a fish-keeping friend came over and was like, whooooaaaa, you have the cleanest tank I've ever seen, I don't think it's healthy for the fish, I think they need more algae and stuff to be able to maintain bacterial life which will in turn keep the pH balance in check.

So now the tank is kind of dirty and I clean it less often. It's grosser to look at but the fish do seem to be lasting longer.

Which brings me to my current topic. If you weren't already disgusted by my tales from the piscine crypt, here comes some more. In order to combat the algae problem, I bought some little algae eaters. I know I brought three of them home but a couple of weeks ago I looked and looked and could only find two. They hide so I kept looking over the next couple of days but could only ever find two. So today I changed the water and even changed the carbon filter, expecting to find a fish skeleton somewhere, but no. I don't know where the hell that third guy went. I guess the tank ate him. Maybe he's under the gravel somewhere and of his bones are coral made. Who the hell knows?

And now that I have metaphorically aired my dirty laundry, it's time to get the clean load out of the dryer and get on with the next load.

Rambling

Happy New Year. Uh, ten days in, that is. I'm a teensy bit behind. I like to think of it as being fashionably late.

So I kind of think New Year's Resolutions are bullshit, because they don't seem to work for me. But this year I accidentally seem to have acquired some. Nothing that ambitious - to write more fiction, to meditate more regularly, and to be better about dealing with my mail pile (I totally let it stack up and then end up spending three hours dealing with month's worth of crap.)

so far, so good: I'm meditating on the train on the way into work in the morning, I've been on top of the mail this week and I'm trying to use the time on the way home from work to think about my writing. The ride home from work is harder, though - I get pretty wound up sometimes and just want to relax with a book instead of trying to be creative. It's rewarding when I do manage it, though. Plus I have a couple of writer friends to email with about the writing stuff, so that helps keep me enthusiastic.

We spent Christmas in Santa Fe, visiting my parents, and I took - no shit - about three hundred pictures. Which of course is why I haven't posted any, since the thought of digging through 300 pictures seems like it will be an involved project. Also work has been crazy busy since everyone got back into the office this week.

Not much downtime this weekend, either - Dave and I went out with friends from my work for drinks and dinner last night (if work is dismayingly busy, the upside is really liking the people I work with). We spent this morning doing housework (the cleaner hasn't been since before Christmas and the place is filthy). This afternoon we're going to a rally against Prop 8. I think it will be challenging, since it's outside and it's about 20F here in Boston. Supposed to get another 8 inches or so tonight, which should sit nicely on top of the layer of ice leftover from the last storm last weekend. Remind me why I chose to move back to this climate? Boston would be a much better city if it was at the latitude of, say, LA. Then we're getting takeout and hanging out with friends tonight. Tomorrow morning would normally be yoga but I've got a brunch date with some old friends from high school. Tomorrow afternoon and evening are still free, I think, so I'll probably end up doing really scintillating stuff like laundry and cleaning the fishtank and cooking for the week. And I'd like to work in some yoga at home, too. And then the weekend will be gone and it'll be back to work!

Random Awesome

Frank Zappa, at home with his parents. via swissmiss, who curates an awesome website. There are more in the series here.

I also really liked how Eric Clapton's mom obviously got out the good silver for the picture. Touching, somehow.

Monday looms

But not yet! I still have a few hours. We spent most of this weekend completely unplugged and it was glorious. I love the internet, but it's also my job, so it was good to have some time offline.

I got some reading done.

See if you can spot all four cats!

Note also that the living room is trashed. I cleaned it yesterday but it's pretty much ruined again by now. We didn't really go out much, although we did have Thanksgiving at my sister's house, with my nephews and my other sister in attendance. My sister can really put down a thanksgiving spread. I was grateful not to have to cook the whole meal, although I made rolls and a fresh cranberry bread and that was our contribution to the feast.

Besides the normal weekend housework projects, I had time to do some mending which I'd been meaning to get to for roughly six months.


You can see I'm a lousy seamstress. I was originally working with white on white - at least then I don't have to look at my mistakes - but it was really fucking hard to see. So I switched to blue, which is fine since the stitching is on the inside of a pillowcase and won't be seen. I am a slacker. The only reason I mend sheets instead of throwing them out and buying new is that they're really heavy cotton and high thread count, plus since they're old they're really soft and silky. And also new sheets are expensive.


I also got the cats all fucked up on catnip and took pictures.

See if you can spot Pip's need to be neutered! He has no idea.

And now, back to the weekday grind again. Le sigh. I do feel better after the slow, four day weekend, though. Plus I made lasagna tonight (used the recipe from Cover and Bake, with a few modifications. Cover and Bake is done by the obsessive Cook's Illustrated people, so you know that the recipes will always work and be delicious, just as you know the recipe will take forever. And it did take forever, and it was delicious. And I made flavored basil oil, and also some chutney. So at least I have good leftovers to nosh on during the week.

Winter ramblings

Whenever this showed up on the windows of the house I grew up in, Mom would say that Jack Frost had visited in the night. What do you know, Somerville's on his route, too! I always thought he made gorgeous patterns.

And I know that this blog has become nothing but a repository of Simone and Pip pictures lately, but when they're cute as fuck, how can I resist?



He tried to sleep with me like that last night and ended up getting hairs in my already-sexy mouth guard.(I have bruxism.) In fact, I had headaches and neckaches all last week and was thinking that it was because of my new contacts, so I switched to glasses, but the aches remained. I'm thinking now it was probably the result of clenching my teeth all night long.

The contacts are a pain in the ass, too. I needed a semi-custom lens for my right eye because the astigmatism basically makes my eye lopsided, so the contact won't stay in place. So I have a special giant contact that is supposed to be more stable, except it's not all that much more stable. My vision is really a lot better with glasses, but I don't like the way I look in glasses (mostly 'cause I can't wear mascara.) So I'm wearing the contacts to work anyway, which is exciting since due to the movement of the contact, my right eye's vision correction changes constantly - sometimes it's good and matches the left eye, sometimes it's not so good and I've got one eye seeing things blurrily and one eye seeing things sharply. It's awesome to look at excel spreadsheets when you're seeing double outlines all day, I can tell you. But I've been reading Oliver Sacks and I know the brain is super flexible so I think it ought to be able to re-map so I no longer notice a difference in focus. My left eye is much more severe than my right, so in the years before I had glasses, I used my right eye for distance and my left eye for close up work. Not consciously, of course, my brain just did it. So I think it ought to be able to adapt to the one consistent focus and the one inconsistent focus. And it is starting to happen. But my eyes do get tired towards the end of the day, I have to say.

Random Yo La Tengo Songs for Monday

Stockholm Syndrome:


I apologize for the Final Fantasy video - it had the best sound quality of all the clips I could find on YouTube.





Mr. Tough


This song always makes me laugh because the vocals sound like Herbert the Pervert from Family Guy (below).

caturday love fest

I know it's Sunday today but I took these pictures yesterday. We've had such a nice weekend just hanging out. It's been so frigging long since we've actually seen each other for more than ten minutes at a time. I have bread that's gonna be ready to go in the oven any minute and we were lazy and took a nap this afternoon. I'm so relaxed. Wish tomorrow wasn't Monday, but oh well.



She's grooming him while he nurses. She's not producing milk any more (thank god) but he still latches on for comfort, even though he's not very small any more.


I like how she has her paw flung over his shoulder here.


LUV. WE HAZ IT.

Pink Hair and cat pictures

So, new hair:



It's red and blonde highlights really. I told the hairdresser to do whatever he wanted - he's been doing my hair for a while - and that I wanted something really funky. I'm pretty happy with the results.



Also, Simone likes orange juice, which is funny since cats are supposed to hate citrus. I guess no one told her. She still loves green olives, too. I was eating some this weekend and she kept begging and ate all that I would give her. Weirdo.



I think she's cleaning the OJ out of his mustache.



Pip was not really sure about the orange juice, but I think he might grow to like it, with time.



Pip is growing into such a big boy. He's just about Inty's size right now but with those big paws, he won't be for long.

Internet nerdation and more about the cats

This is fun: Google Street View easter egg on a Pittsburgh street. Google Street View, if you don't use it already or disapprove of it on grounds of invasion of privacy, is the ability to zoom in to a particular street at eye level. It's not on every street everywhere in the world, but their US coverage can be impressively good, especially in major urban areas. I think it's kind of a silly project, myself - the only use for it that I could think of is checking out the street in front of a restaurant you've never been to before. But hey, there are probably uses for lots of things that I haven't thought of, and Google does put out a lot of stuff because they think it's cool or interesting and they figure they'll figure out how to make money off it later - their acquisition of YouTube is a good example of that policy, although digital video fingerprinting technology might soon mean that YouTube could actually make a buck.

But, uh, enough about that internet tech stuff, I know you're all dying for me to talk about Simone's butt again. My blog stats show that apparently a lot of people do keyword searches for cat butt problems. Heh.

Anyway, so Simone went to the vet on Monday for an upper respiratory infection, which she's prone to anyway. They think that at this point, it's not a cold so much as a secondary bacterial infectin (I think that means she has a sinus infection.) The poor thing had taken to breathing through her mouth, which, since cats don't generally pant, was a sad sight to see - her pink tongue kind of lying there like a slice of bologna. So while she was at the vet getting diagnosed (and weighed - she's lost .8 pounds! Which means, hurrah, the diet is working!) - anyway, while she was at the vet they had to take her temperature, which she did NOT like and in fact squirted juice from her anal glands all over the place to express her displeasure.

I am a bad person but since Dave was the one who took her, I laughed my ass off when he got to that part of the story. I guess she stunk so much even in her carrier that everyone in the waiting room was wrinkling their noses while Dave paid.

But wait, the fun's not over yet! Since then she has been leaving slimy brown trails everywhere she sits. I am just thankful for Shout - I don't know what they put in that shit and it's probably toxic for the environment, but it certainly gets stains out of the duvet cover, which is good since I can't afford jack this month and replacing a duvet covet is not an option - nor do I want to sleep under a stinky stained one. Meanwhile, we are working to ensure every piece of soft furnishing in our house is draped in plastic sheeting. Just like Grandma used to do! And now she gets meds in the morning, plus a butt wipe, which doesn't seem to do much good - I'm torn between the advisability of getting a Q-Tip up in there or just putting her in diapers. Or maybe giving her back to the SPCA. "I'm sorry, this cat has a serious design flaw, I'd like a refund." Kidding! Sort of. She's pretty fucking gross. If she wasn't so sweet-natured and googly-eyed I would totally be mad at her, but how can I be angry at those (slightly crossed) eyes?







But there is hope ahead. I think the main problem with the anal glands is that she's so obese she's unable to reach down there and lick it off for herself, and since the diet is working, maybe in a couple of months she'll be thin enough to keep herself clean. It's sad to watch her try to clean her nether regions, she kind of reaches down and grabs pawfuls of tummy fat and tries to get them closer to her mouth but she's still like, three inches away. She reminds me of myself in yoga class, actually, trying to get into a twist when I've got too much tummy fat to really get into the pose properly. Too bad I don't have a beneficient owner to restrict my food - no, I have to exercise plain old willpower, which I think we've seen is not one of my skills. Le sigh.

Not political

I've had this theme song stuck in my head for a couple of months now. I loved Heathcliff.

new camera

I've been playing with the new camera for a couple of weekends now but I only just found the software (it was, um, in the box) and got some pictures downloaded onto the computer. Finally! Mostly the pictures following are of the cats and pretty colored leaves. I did not test the macro properties by taking a picture of Simone's snotty nose to share with you - the poor thing has a respiratory infection. Which means one of us has to take time off work to get her to the vet this week (totally kicking myself for not taking her yesterday.) She is all sneezy and sniffly, poor thing.




Simone in happier times - posing with a slice of my pesto bread



Pip's nursing face. Simone is no longer producing milk but he still suckles sometimes for comfort.


Zoe hasn't died yet, as you can see. The only reason she let Pip get that close to her was because she didn't notice him. She fucking hates him!


Inty sharpening her claws, not like they need it. I can really tell from this picture how much better the new camera is (it's an Olympus Evolt E-510. I'm not totally thrilled with everything about it but I'm still learning how to use it. Still, cameras can't replace eyeballs - I take a lot of shots that I think will be great because my brain is only paying attention to one thing, and then find that the picture inside the camera is a compositional mess. Also the camera isn't smart about depth perception and light balance the way my eyeballs are. So a lot of what I need to learn is the limitations of the tool, so I can drive it better.)


Even the projects near our house get pretty light at certain times of the day.


Cemetary near our house, where I often go for walks. A hobo lived there this summer but when I was there taking pictures recently, the hobo's hut seemed to have been demolished.


I don't know what the religious meaning of this statue is, but I really like the round cheeks.


Glorious reds.


Rip Van Winkle


Still jealous of the foot tattoos.


Sometimes Somerville is so beautiful that it breaks my heart a little.


I always sort of imagined that the thorny hedge outside of Sleeping Beauty's castle looked like this in the fall. I have no idea what this plant is but it's fairly common around here, and has evil sharp thorns. While I was taking pictures the plant totally tried to grab me. It probably wanted to drag me inside and scratch me to death so I could fertilize its roots or something.


Scary Mary. You see why I love Somerville so much? Not only are there Madonnas in bathtubs outside every other house, but people decorate them with shrunken heads and cobwebs for Halloween. What's not to like about that?