Note to Self

When you leave for work in the morning, and you look back and think to yourself, "Hmm. Looks like the cats are really low on food...." you should walk back into the house and feed them.

You should NOT walk out and think that maybe now they'll eat all the food they've spilled on the mats, and save you the trouble of cleaning it.

No.

You should go back into that house and feed the cats.

Because if you don't......

FINNY WILL GET TAKE-OUT.

Dear poor rodent thing. I'm sorry my boy was hungry. I'm sorry he flattened you to a pancake. I'm REALLY sorry for the unsophisticated way I tossed you into the ravine.
I'm sorry for so many things.

But mostly I'm sorry I didn't feed the fucking cats.

Thoughts on a Friday

I made an iPod playlist called Girl Rock. (Not all girls rocking - but it was rock for this girl. This girl here. Me.)

Regina Spektor - Fidelity
Amy Winehouse - You Know That I'm No Good
Tegan and Sara - This is Everything (Live)
Indigo Girls - Romeo & Juliet
Lily Allen - Smile
P!nk - Stupid Girls (usually skip past this one - def a mood-specific song. Like where she's going with it, though. Wish more celebrities were going there, too.)
Outkast - Hey Ya! (because I've never owned and have loved it forever)
The Strokes - Between Love & Hate (this chorus is my motto)
Feist - Mushaboom (similar to the Regina Spektor, but came first and enthralls me)
Ani Difranco - Cloud Blood (again, lyrics on this one and how she plays with the combination of sounds blow me away)

The Regina Spektor song has a great chorus, where she plays with her voice while singing the line, "and it breaks my heart" over and over. The song is about love, but I hear this refrain and I think of Lauren, and it just so encapsulates (in a weird way I won't be able to explain to any of you, EVER) how I feel right now, and have felt since December 19, 2005, regardless of whether I'm talking about it or not.

You know, basically my whole life I've been heartbroken. I am constantly breaking my heart on people, things, trivial events that most people shrug off and go jogging over. And I realize how ridiculously sensitive I've been my whole life. Because when your four year old niece has a brain bleed that causes her to be unable to use her right arm (still not using it - everyone is worried) your heart fucking breaks for real. My brother is my brother and I am me. And neither of us has ever been perfect, or even nearly so. But my brother's genetics combined with my sister-in-law's produced what is as close to perfect (twice, because Camryn is a phenomenon, too) as I think I will ever see. And the fact that something so completely out of our control has happened to her, and that this something will make her life hard in any way, it kills me. It kills me and it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart.

I'm listening to it over and over and over and over and over. I don't know how many of you reading this know how I listen to music. When I hear a song that resonates with me, I listen to it over and over - hundreds of times in a row, until I know every lyric by heart, until I have so closely identified with the emotion expressed I may as well have written it myself. I listen to a song I like until I can pick it out in .35981 seconds of the first note.

I wish I wasn't such a complete idiot about HTML and could do fun stuff with my blog. I've attempted to alter the HTML code a couple of times with things I wanted to add, and am unbelievably unsuccessful. Which drives me batshit. I even have a book (admittedly not really talking about how to do things in Blogger) but STILL CAN'T FUCKING DO IT. I have seen songs uploaded and linked on blogs, but haven't the faintest clue how to do it.

I tried to figure out how to add something in the sidebar last night (with the book) and failed. Which sent me out to the couch with a big glass of wine - where I fiercely and quickly knitted a scarf for the cat.

Which, OHMYGOD. Please get me a life, STAT.

A girl that worked for one of my tenants knew I liked Tegan & Sara. She gave me a bunch of B-Sides, which thrilled me to no end, and one of the songs was the Tegan & Sara song above (but not live). I played it for my husband, and while he likes Tegan & Sara, he listened to this song, (the three times in a row he permitted me to play it aloud to him) and watched me listening to it, and said, "You're dark."

Is it bad that that brief statement gave me more pride than most compliments ever do?

It is true, don't be mistaken. It was just having it recognized, in spite of my often effusive and cheerful demeanor, that meant the most to me.

Again, with the tangents. I know. But hey! Those of you that are actually checking in with this have all spent a great deal of time with me at some point in our lives, and if you could follow my train of thought then, I expect it isn't too shocking now.

p.s. Scarf! After the apeshit destruction of scarf #1, I knitted another one in four days that I actually made no mistakes on and was able to finish off and give to the Pope. He doesn't wear it, of course, but it is a passable scarf. Vindication.

A Plague! A Plague is upon me.

The four of you that read this will notice I've been gone awhile.
I got sick. AGAIN. For the second time in two months. Almost exactly a month from when I was so sick the last time.

This time my head was so stuffed up that I had free access of my nostrils for about the 3.2 miliseconds it took them to realize that that loud noise they heard was me blowing a quart of snot into a preciously too-small piece of tissue. I would honk out a liter, then stand there as my nose pressure instantly increased back to ridding my vocabulary of most intelligible consonants.

I couldn't eat in front of my husband, because the noises I was making in order to combine breathing with swallowing and chewing were abominable. Horrendous, B-Horror-Movie noises of something waiting in the wings that was dripping with slime and looked vaguely like that thing that exploded from that guy's stomach in Alien. (which pretty much describes my unshowered and honking visage to a T.)

AT THE VERY SAME TIME Seattle experienced Part II of why Global Warming sucks ass. We had another snowstorm, this one cheerfully followed by four days of temperatures so cold that all the snow and ice that was created on day one is STILL THERE. Today it is supposed to be warming up and I'm desperately hoping that one day of temperatures a squeak above freezing will be sufficient to melt four inches of ice and snow off that big hill I need to take to drive myself to work tomorrow.

I don't drive well in ice and snow. It scares the hell out of me.
Today I'm going to ask the Pope to drive me out of here, just to prove to me that it can be done, and I'll take a picture for you of the hill I'm talking about. On Friday, which was day two of the lingering ice and snow, there were 7 cars that couldn't make it up the hill stopped where they stood. Which makes two-way traffic on that hill very challenging. Especially the asshole who didn't even bother to pull over to the side, he just stopped in the right hand lane and walked home. Dick.

Gimme a Pop - UNGH!

There are some things I don't do.
I don't curl my bangs and puff them up with hairspray. I did try that, back inna day when it was so tres vogue, but my feather-fine muppet hair took 8 gallons of hairspray to stand up, and then promptly sat down again, 14 seconds later.
I don't talk on my cellphone in public. I rarely talk on the phone at all, actually, but never in public - especially crowded areas just BRIMMING with people who couldn't care less what I have to say to my close friends.
There are a lot of things I do not do.
Yesterday, I discovered one more.

Step Funk! with John. At my gym. John is an awesome instructor, he's subbed for my Pilates class and he is hard but funny, and I usually laugh through the class and go home ouching. So he told me about his new class and I said, "SURE! I'll try that!"

I have, in my not-so long life, tried Jazzercize for preciously 7 minutes. With the grapevining and the complicated moves, I was out of breath and out of pride in record time. I calmly rolled up my mat and stomped out the door (I was probably 23 when I tried it).

I thought a step class sounded fun, though. Stepping on and off something, hey, I do that every day! I could do that a hundred times in an hour.

FUN! Eff Yoo Ehn. FUN.

So apparently a step class is very much like aerobics, only you step up on things and then do the complicated moves like grapevine, the MAMBO move and Pivot, or as I like to call it, "the sure-to-completely-fuck-up-my-knee move."

(I'm pretty sure I'm developing a wicked bum knee. It clicks when I put weight on it to go up stairs or pretty much any movement that bends it. It doesn't hurt, yet, but it clicks increasingly louder. That grinding noise? Pshaw, they both do that.)

There were about 15 people in the class, a couple of whom I recall from the Pilates class, and they're funny and cool. And the gym is not at all about hardbodies. There are a couple, but they are typically grunting with enthusiasm in the weight room, while the rest of us softly rounded humans are sweating and beet-facing it on the cardio machines. It is a cool gym, I really like it. So the class was made up of all ages and body types, and yet STILL I was the only one who apparently can't keep it straight what foot we're starting on. RIGHT, Salome. Right foot starts until he says, LEFT. Dammit.

Oh, and the Funk! part? That's where you SHIMMY as you do the grapevine, and when you do the (ingeniously named) "walk-up" move - you POP! at the mirror. Apparently a pop is a sort of hip-hop triumph move. I have no idea. I don't POP! at anything. I get pretty enthusiastic sometimes, but I don't believe I have ever done a triumph, full body seizure POP! at anything. And part of me really wants to. Ya know. Stay current and all of that.

My POP! was sort of a half-assed rictus of movement, with an embarrassed grin, and several glances around to make sure I wasn't looking like a complete idiot. And Hey! I was. Grrreat.

To my credit, I lasted 17 minutes and one loooong drink of water until I quietly grabbed my towel and fled from the room. Only, FANTASTICALLY, I fled on a grapevine, and collided with the woman next to me, who had to be about 159 years old, and was grapevining and POP!ing to beat the band. Sigh.

To my further credit, when all I really wanted to do was go outside and smoke and kick things, I then went straight to the treadmill and walked fast on a steep incline (because running? Oh please....) for an additional 15 minutes, and then did my pull-ups and the dips on the Gravitron thingy, that is basically like my own personal medieval torture chamber - only it takes two days for the pain to be felt.

But because I was a quitter, I didn't reward myself in the steam room, which I love, and which I will sit in until I'm going to pass out, or until the magazine I illegally bring in with me (because God Forbid I'm left alone with my thoughts) starts to disintegrate.

Because I am a quitter. And quitters never win. But they do go outside and smoke. And then they go home and have a knitting fit and basically go apeshit on a poorly knit scarf.

The scarf story is my next installment in a new series which I will entitle:
I have good intentions, but basically I'm a ridiculous perfectionist who has hissy fits when I'm not perfect, and that's rough, because I'm so far from perfect, perfect can't call me on a cellphone.

Oh and my 17 minutes? Well, that has equated into two VERY sore calf muscles that are tender enough to make me walk funny today, and by tomorrow will basically have me immobilized, where I walk with sharp exhalations of pain and a wincing expression. Don't worry, all my work-mates are totally used to seeing me like this. Sigh.

Smells

You know how you can smell someone after they've walked through an area? Like a lingering of their perfume or pheromones in the air?

My engineers always tell me that they know when I'm at work because they can smell my perfume. "But not in a bad way," they'll say. "In a good way. You don't wear too much. Just enough in fact! Totally just enough." Flatterers.

Well, as the property manager in a building with approximately 600 people in it, one who is often running back and forth between my office and our engineering department - I smell a lot of people. Mostly they are good smells. There is the one lady who leaves the bathroom smelling like Fritos, which is totally weird, but not terribly unpleasant. There have been those ladies leaving the bathroom smelling quite a bit worse, so Fritos, while odd, isn't bad.

And then there is the lady who uses cheap soap. I want to buy her some good smelling soap and give it to her as a gift, so she'll stop stinking up the bathroom with the cheap soap smell, but alas, I've never seen who she is, and the Aveda lady would probably snag it if I left it there undirected.

Well, today (and this is a long, tangential post trying to get to this point) I walked into the corridor and strongly smelled.... dirt.

DIRT. Good, old fashioned dirt. And it wasn't the telephone lady, who smelled like minty gum. It wasn't the security guard (who smells like farts or some musky essential oil, depending on which guard it is) no it was someone else who smelled like dirt.

Like it smells when you garden and you turn up fresh earth. Slightly metallic smelling, but overwhelmingly natural and earthy. Dirt. There's just no other way to describe this smell.

And it got me wondering. When they get wet, do they smell like mud?

Because, eeew.

Pickles, oh my sweet hots.

CLP sent me spicy pickles from the homeland.
Thank you, Potterchick. I immediately opened one and ate three of them.

I'm having a frozen pizza tonight (EVEN THOUGH THERE ARE HEALTHIER THINGS TO EAT IN THE KITCHEN, OH RESOLUTIONS, I HAVE NO RESOLVE) and already I'm thinking about dunking pizza slices in the juice.

I love these pickles like no other pickles on earth.

Tony Packo's Sweet Hot Pickles & Peppers. Sooooooo soo good.

Best way to eat them:

Cracker
slice of cheddar cheese
smear of raspberry/honey stone ground mustard (served with them once, I've been looking for this kind of mustard ever since)
pickle

Eat like a tea sandwich.
Repeat.

www.tonypackos.com

If you've never had them, you MUST MUST get them. They are the best.

Happy 2007!!

Well, not really, but I won't get into that here.
New Year's Resolutions:

1. Blog More
2. Exercise More - at least 3x per week for at least 30 minutes each time.
3. Eat better. When the choice of really tasty or healthy comes along, pick healthy.
4. Have a better relationship.
5. Make efforts to make and retain friends that are local.
6. Care of my soul - do something weekly that nourishes me as a person, creatively or spiritually. I'm a complete wasteland, lately.
7. Cut out frivolous spending. With my brand new car payment, this should be easy to do.
8. Let Lucy sit on my lap more often.
9. Keep the house cleaner, and make efforts to improve the stuff I can improve with paint and elbow grease.

I went to a very mellow, low-key and friendly party last night. Alone. It was a disappointing start to a new year.

The end of the world is nigh.

I have joined YouTube and discovered that my digital camera has a movie feature.

Who knew?

Certainly not Finny.

I better get him an agent.

Thank You God

Lauren had her angiogram today and came through fine. She woke up and wanted butterscotch pudding (the hospital must have just restocked itself from the 100 previous puddings she's eaten).

My mom called and was effusive with joy.
The AVM is flat, like a pancake, which surprises us, because from all the websites and descriptions we thought it was a bulge.

The doctors are releasing her tonight into the care of her parents. My brother and sister-in-law are the greatest parents I've ever seen. With their loving guidance and gentle ways, Lauren will recover quickly. This I know.

They've recommended a type of radiation "surgery" called Gamma Knife. I've done research (oddly enough, I'd already heard of this while researching a potential tenant) and it is pretty spectacular. Beams of radiation are focused on one spot in the brain (precisely located within a fraction of a milimeter to the intended area) and are beamed from several locations outside of her head. Each ray individually is too weak to cause any damage or effect to the matter it passes through. The only danger comes when all beams converge, and this is focused on the spot the doctors want to "die." And it should die. There will be no incision, no hole in her skull, and no danger to the areas they would need to get past, to get to the center of her brain where the AVM is. Good news.

Only downfall, as opposed to surgery, which cuts out the AVM entirely, this procedure kills it, leaving it in her head. 2-3 years is the typical amount of time to know whether the Gamma Knife surgery has been entirely effective. But still. Her brain won't be poked at by surgeons, who, despite all their best efforts and technology, will still have to move areas apart and cut through areas to get to the AVM. The risks of which are astronomical. No matter how good they are.

Thank you, God. Thank you Grandpa. I know you were there, watching over and alerting us to the danger in her head. Thank you. Please stay with her until she is all clear.

In other astoundingly good news, Lolobird was up and walking yesterday!! (Another reason they are releasing her). She hopped all over the room when my mom was with her and was so excited to be moving around. She told my brother that she can't go to school yet until her legs are "fixed." She was scared at first, but then really really excited.

Thank you to all my friends who were so worried and praying for us. And my astounding company, who has been so supportive. I have the best bosses in the world.

A Broken Heart

On Tuesday, December 19, I received a call that instantly and completely broke my heart.
My 4 year old niece, Lauren, had been rushed to the hospital with what was discovered to be a bleed on her brain.
Turns out that she has a genetic condition known as AVM (arteriovenous malformation). It is a tangle of blood vessels located anywhere in the body, but more predominantly in the brain. That senator from South Dakota (Iowa?) who recently had brain surgery had an AVM.

They can rupture. Unless they rupture, you don't always know that you have one. You certainly don't routinely do MRIs on a perfectly healthy (and unbelievably precious) 4 year old girl.

Lauren's ruptured during naptime at daycare on December 19th. She woke up from her nap crying and unable to walk, move her right side, talk or open her eyes. They called my sister-in-law, who called 911 and Lauren was rushed to the hospital.

A few hours later, she was airlifted to Kaiser Permanente Oakland (from Sacramento Kaiser) where she was admitted to Pediatric ICU.

My parents caught the next flight out of Toledo to be by her side. The pope and I flew down on Sunday to see her.
She is talking again, although with some difficulty. She does not have full use of her right hand and can't stand on her right leg. Her smile comes and goes on the right side of her face - sometimes it is perfectly fine, other times she smiles and only the left side moves.

She knows she has an owie in her head and that is why she can't color with her right hand as she used to.

I can't talk too much about it right now, because I'm exhausted from the quick trip to Oakland and the visits by my beloved niece's ICU bed.

They need to do an angiogram (where they inject dye into the affected area) to trace the blood vessels and pinpoint exactly where the AVM is to help them understand the risks associated with the surgery. SURGERY. My 4 year old niece will have brain surgery in the next week. That is a fact. They will go in and try to cut this out so that it never bleeds again. All we know is an approximate location: deep in the center of her brain near her basal ganglia.

I'm posting this so that you pray for her. Please please send a prayer for her. She is the light of our lives. She is the most beautiful little girl that I have ever seen. She is the loveliest, smartest and most precocious little girl I've ever met.

This is Lauren:

Please keep her and my brother & sister-in-law in your thoughts.

OH MY GOD.

Tonight on my way home I realized that my lights weren't on.
No problem, right?

Wrong.

I was HALFWAY home. Which means I'd been on the freeway for at least 10 minutes.

OH MY GOD.

Typhoid Salome

I flew home and within 24 hours of being with CLP she came down with stomach flu.
The very same day she drove home, her mom was afflicted.

Right before I left, I transferred all various and sundry germs to my sister-in-law. Luckily, I had exactly the kind of medicine that would help her! The odds!?!

My sister-in-law promptly submitted said germs to my father's attention. Father is reviewing them now.

Before I even left Seattle, however, I gave them to my husband.

I cut a swath of sickness everywhere I went.
If I was still this potent on Monday and Tuesday, just imagine how many people in my tightly packed seminar in SF I felled? I am drunk with the power.

In other news, we bought a CAR!!!!!



In way old news, I'm really fat! Hey, there's me with a gorgeous new car. I'm really fat!

In our continuing story, my husband is really terrific, and so, so handsome.

That is all. I have storm pictures to post, but I'm currently smoking S's cigarettes, left here in August. And don't bother asking, that whole quitting smoking thing is going just fine. I haven't bought a pack in days.

Saloooooooooooooooooooooomeo

p.s. CLP, driving home from the dealership, I ran over a huge piece of someone's car. You'd have been proud. I'd been driving the car for a total of 10 minutes. :)

Donald Frederick Wilhelm

My grandfather died last Thursday at 5:45pm.
He was surrounded by my aunts and uncles and grandmother, who laid her head next to his as he was dying and said, "Thank you sweetheart. Thank you for so many wonderful years of love and friendship and for our wonderful children."

I flew home early yesterday morning and cried when I saw my mom. I cried when we got home and saw my dad and Uncle Bob. I cried when I saw my grandmother, but she won't let anyone cry over this. She says he is in a better place, and he had such a full life, we should not cry for him.

My aunt Joycie came in about an hour later, when she and I saw each other, we just stopped where we stood and burst into tears. We cried in each other's arms for a while. Everyone laughed and said they knew we were going to do that.

We have a showing today from 4-8pm and another one tomorrow from 2:00pm - 8:00pm. He will be buried on Tuesday.

My brother flies in today with his wife and girls.

We have collected about 200 pictures from my grandfather's very happy life.
My cousin PJ made a slideshow to play at the memorial home and showed it to us last night. My uncle Tommy couldn't hold back the tears, and everyone gathered at my grandmother's house cried themselves into headaches.

My grandma would tell us the stories behind all the pictures as they flashed up. She had told a story of how my grandfather wrote her a song and wouldn't play it for her until she agreed to go steady with him. He carried his violin in the backseat of his car for two years, ready to play it for her when she agreed. One night they were "necking" in his car and she told him she would go steady with him. He whipped out the violin and played her a song he called, My Darling Nancy. A picture of my grandpa leaning against a car flipped up on the screen and my grandma called out, "that's the car we were necking in!!"

My grandmother fell in love with my grandpa at first sight. She told us all that, but said that she still made him wait two years until she would go steady with him. Because she was a good girl.

My grandfather loved my grandmother with all his heart for all his life.

THE CATS HAVE FLEAS.

Excuse me, I have to go vacuum my hair.

My Trip

I recently flew back to Pasadena, CA, where I once worked.
I fly down there sometimes, as part of my job.

(which I don't think I will ever talk about here, except to say that I work for great people at an astounding company, and am generally happier with my job than most people I know. Now, no one is always happy at their job all the time 24/7, or else it wouldn't be a, you know, JOB.)

*Besides which, if you were totally thrilled with your job and chirping about it 24/7, I'll bet that your co-workers would beat you in the parking lot.*

It seems like I'll probably get back there at least once a year. Potterchick asked me about my trip and I said it was too long to write about in email, but that it was awesome. She said, "Well, you could always blog about it....."

And so here I am.

I left the office at 1:00pm for a 3:00pm flight. PLENTY of time, even to check my bag because I carried (GASP) 1 fluid ounce more liquid than is allowed to be carried on. *Note to contact lens solution makers - make them in 3 oz containers PUHLEEZE. (Either that, or have the decency to print something on the label. Something like this: 4 oz. is our smallest size! So don't bother driving to Fred Meyer, because we'll still be too big to carry-on!)

Thank God they took the bag from me, because I was primed and ready to optically disinfect everyone within a 5 mile radius of myself. At a moment's notice. For any reason, or no reason at all. Remember that about me.

Beautifully, the weather decided to cooperate in the best possible way.
It was literally pouring rain sideways, and every car on the freeway was crawling along in a bloodbath of break lights and trying not to hydroplane. I am also primed and ready to hydroplane at a moment's notice. Thank you Ford and your tiny, featherweight car.

I got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, which was good, because I spent that and then some trying to find parking. No parking. At the AIRPORT. Where people sometimes really need to, you know, PARK. I drove every floor of the garage for about 46 minutes. Actually, it was exactly 46 minutes, I know this because I had ridiculously downed a full cup of coffee prior to leaving the office and as every single minute of NO PARKING ticked off, my bladder was counting them down. Anxiously.

Finally, I gave up, already drafting my strongly worded letter to Sea-Tac Airport. You see, I had passed at least one FULL floor that was closed for construction, but of course, no visible signs of any construction were present. Just miles and miles of empty stalls, viewed by really pissed off parkers with no place to do it.

The lady at the ticket booth as I came out wanted to make all kinds of calls to people to tell them of my problem. My bladder strenuously objected to this type of courtesy and after much barking and loudly rolled eyes, she let me go without paying anything. To which, you're damn right I'm not paying anything!!

I quickly got away from the airport and stopped at a gas station. I needed to pee so I could think straight, because I was GOING TO MISS MY FLIGHT! And that was really really bad, for reasons which I'll elaborate on later.

As luck would have it, I no sooner stepped out of the unimaginably filthy gas station restroom when I gazed straight across the street at a VALET Park & Ride. Valet. Park, then ride! Sounded perfect. And it was. With no further ado, I cut across three lanes of traffic in a highly illegal move and was handing my keys to a valet while screaming, HOLD THAT SHUTTLE.

I made the flight.

I made the flight that landed me in balmy Burbank at approximately 6:15pm.
The second the bell dinged, I was up, out of my seat, and standing for the deplane.

I sprinted to the car rental place (Hertz, and I had a lovely experience, thank you so much, except for the fact that, Lady? If I rented the car off of Hotwire, you might assume from that that I do not want to - nor do I have the funds to - upgrade to the two seater convertible sports car. I much prefer my death from smoking. Thank you so much.)

I wrestled my bag off the conveyor belt, sped over to my co-workers' hotel, dropped him off, raced back to my own, checked in - peed, because there's NO WAY I can go 45 minutes without doing that, and then took a call from S.

That is part one of the trip. Veronica Mars is on and I've burned a pizza, so obviously I need to focus.

Finny. Master of his domain.

A random dog just sniffed up to the front porch.
Lovable, friendly, and apparently not adverse to cigarette smoke, he came right up to me and whuffed around thoughtfully.

I had the sense to look around for my erstwhile Finn, to make sure he was safe and sound from any harm. See previous post. I wasn't sure if I had to go all medieval on this nice dog, or if I could relax.

I glanced back inside the house and Finny was standing just on the inside of the glass screen door that leads into the house. I always leave this open, so I get let the kitties out if they want to join me. Lucy likes to sit on the other front porch chair and just hang with me. Finny is fond of walking down the roof and yowling at me in pride from just above my head. Leo? Well, he likes to take the opportunity to just have me let him in. You know, since I'm already standing right there and all.

So, there was Finny, standing and watching Mr. Random Dog. He was curious at first, then looked slightly alarmed, then looked MIGHTILY alarmed, and then finally, with just as much suddenness and humor as he did when he was a kitten and got spooked by you turning the corner in the condo, Finny puffed up at least six times his normal size and turned sideways.

After laughing softly so that my proud little guy couldn't hear me, I shooed off the dog and went inside.

Finny had retreated to the top of the couch, so he could worriedly look outside.

My proud warrior. The smartest one knows when he is outsized and retreats to the couch.

All Cats Beware.

So, my angelic*, darling*, wunderkind Finny got scratched.
In the face.
On the nose.
In a trajectory that, had he not darted or otherwise disengaged from the encounter, would have taken out his eye. His little white nose is scratched deeply.

(He won't even let me look at it too long, let alone take a picture, or else I would. I may yet still.)

So. Here's the thing. All you cats in the neighborhood? Be on the lookout.
If I so much as see you raise a whisker in my darling boy's direction, I will fuck you up.

My darling, never-bad-boy** does not deserve such treatment. And while you may get off a scratch or two on his innocent and loving face***, rest assured that his Mamacat is one serious bitch you DO NOT WANT TO MESS WITH.

I love cats, I love all kinds of cats, my undying love for the ever-bitching Lucy is an indication of this. I will pet any cat that I come across, and hunker down and call a feral cat until it throws itself at me, begging for domesticity.

But. I love MY cats more than any other creature on the planet. And one of you has seriously transgressed.

BOLO. That's all I have to say. I will not hesitate to come screeching at you like a crazy lady. I am that crazy cat lady. And a shout-out to the cat 'hood. That orange and white monster cat who is always in your yard? That's my baby Finny, and he may as well be Mafia.

Give him a wide berth.

That is all.
-Crazy Mamacat



*Finny is totally the LEAST angelic cat I've ever had.
** Finny is usually bad. Always loveable, but does things truly bad, I don't think he can help himself.
*** While his face is innocent and loving, Finny is by far the biggest cat in the neighborhood. I'm sure he was in some other cat's yard, doing something bad. Doesn't matter.

**The absurdity of this post just hit me. None of the cats in my neighborhood are online reading my blog. They're all looking at porn.

PICTURE FRENZY

So. I talk about Finny all the time.
And I know it bores you. BUT.
Loooooook at HIM! He's the CUTEST!
Get set for a Finny-a-thon.
Plus some other photos because I'm trying to blog every day, but tonight I don't have much to talk about. This is Finny being a baby. In a Pack N' Play, no less! He CRIED when I folded it up to return to my friend.













These are my beloved bookends.
What a wonderful Wednesday morning this was. Too cute. I was sleepy, and coffee was brewing, but I saw these two and HAD to take a picture. I love my boys. Finny & Leo. Leo jumped down moments later because God Forbid he be seen enjoying anything other than his dad's lap.

Look at my little guy. I was reading, and this was the evolution of our nightly loving.

I go to bed, he curls up next to me to have his face vigorously rubbed for an INTERMINABLE time, and then he stretches out and fully relaxes. Usually right around the point where I have to pee for the 80th time that day.

I LOVE THIS CAT.

Mr. & Mrs. Pope, as Mr. and Mrs. Kabuki Warrior and Geisha Wife. I had weapons tucked into my costume, lest you think I am some sort of docile hausfrau. I'm not.

Dear Midwestern Family.....

Please don't send me Democrat jokes. Regardless of how many times you send me the Ted Kennedy toasts to everything joke....(and let's be clear here. I read accounts of the drowning girl in his car, and I do think it happened and that Kennedy money bought him off, and I do think he's an intoxicated blowhard, I certainly wouldn't vote for the guy, but back off, it isn't MY STATE!) REGARDLESS of all of that, I am still strongly Democrat and wouldn't have voted for your Republican President (nor any of his bullshit RNC propaganda) even if someone had lit my eyelashes on fire.

ALSO - and this is specific: I got a forwarded email today about the fact that (GASP) Wal-Mart contributes 5% of certain purchases to the GLBT organization, which benefits (FAINT) homosexuals. This email urged me to BOYCOTT Wal-Mart for this unneccessary evil and to ask all my friends to do the same.

Listen. I would never have the temerity to dictate where my friends shop and I'll shop at Wal-Mart SPECIFICALLY now that I know they are supportive of alternative lifestyles.

I know it is often said, "Some of my best friends are......[insert whatever you want here]" But in this case it is very true. Some of my best friends ARE gay. And I love them. And I don't want them to ever get an email like this. Nor will I propogate this bullshit. I was extremely offended that someone who knows me (even ever so slightly) would ever DREAM that this was an appropriate email to send to me.

Look, I didn't come into your home when you were falling in love and tell you who it could be or why it couldn't be the way you just naturally felt. And I don't expect you to EVER come into my home and tell me any goddamned thing like that.

So, look. Midwestern Family. I love you. I think you raised me right. I think I grew up in a great place to grow up. And I just grew up slightly differently, and I'm so damn glad I did.

Because, hey? There are some really wonderful people out there, if you could just expand your mind a bit. There are some wonderful people out here, and I'm lucky to know them.

And I'd vote to give them benefits if they needed them. And I wouldn't send them to IRAQ, nor would I preach about my high moral standing while taking bribes from every oil company and evangelical special interest group with a check and a dripping pen.

So please. I respect the fact that you think the way you do.
Have the decency to return the favor.

And send some Tony Packo's pickles, next time you think of it. Liberals can't make spicy pickles for the life of them.

Newsical

I have other friends that blog, and I'm dialed into their websites on an almost daily basis. And they mostly blog about what they are doing. I'm a whole lot less tangible than that, so I thought I'd let you all know, how all things Salome are, and what I'm doing.

1. Getting UNFAT. Not dieting or quitting smoking yet, but have ramped up the workings out. Yoga on Monday nights, Pilates (mat) on Tuesday and Thursday. Today was my first Wednesday after this week of working out, and the only reason I didn't go to the gym and do SOMETHING was that I had no workout clothes. I'm feeling energized and enervated.

2. Thinking seriously about buying a new car. Toyota RAV4 or Honda CR-V are the shortlist.
I read a long article about car salesman today at edmunds.com and am fully prepared to go in and blast their methods.

3. Just went the hairstylist yesterday and went from really light blonde highlights to a very punky dark purply brown. More purply than I had asked for, but I think she reads my soul. Can still pass for normal human being gainfully employed at something that uses brain cells (i.e. not so punky that all I can be is a barista) but still has some edge.

4. Baked Pumpkin bread. From a box, but still. Give me some credit.

5. Read one book in two days (nights, too, because I was working both days). I haven't lost my skillz.

6. Yeah, that's about it.