My Brain Beef Hooked
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Say hello to Kyran Pittman. She doesn't know it, but this photo I took of her is being repurposed to illustrate a point: my brain, it be all broked.I went to the BlogHer '08 conference in San Francisco.
I put my face out in public attached to the Schmutzie name for the first time.
I got on stage to do my part in the BlogHer Community Keynote on the first day of the conference in front of hundreds of people.
I met a large number of wonderful people whom I had never before met, social anxiety be damned. I kind of like people more now.
I forgot to eat regularly, and then I forgot to take my psych meds regularly, and then my brain got all creative with the who'sthatwiththewhatnow?
Still, I had one of the best times of my entire life.
And then, I went through three different airports to catch two planes to transport myself back to a city of less than 200,000 people, a fabulous spouse, three cats, and a beige cubicle that I am paid to occupy for 40 hours every week.
KERBLOOEY!
This calls for some chicken wings and a locally brewed ale to help with the processing, methinks. Oh, and also to celebrate the Palinode's birthday today, because he's all old now and needs to keep up his strength.
Labels: the here and now, the photographs
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A New Cellphone, Cat Play, And American Money
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
The Palinode brought home a little gift today for my trip to the BlogHer '08 conference: a cellphone.
I have never owned a cellphone, and, though I am loathe to admit it now that I actually giggled and cuddled the cellphone against my cheek two hours ago, I have been a bit snobby about it. I have said things like cellphones give you cancer and why would I want one when I'm already annoyed by the telephone at home? Yes, I was one of those. What a git.
If I count this as one of my cameras, I think that brings the number to something like six. I hate the number six. I'd better get another camera, pronto.
On a completely unrelated note, do you know what I have discovered? If you stick sheets of that sticky lint roller paper to the bottoms of a cat's feet, the cat makes crazy karate moves and then stomps across the floor like it's goosestepping in snowshoes. That totally beat my other option tonight, which was to pay $10 to go to a movie where I would likely have to listen to people chew their food.
Also, I would like to add this short note:
Dear United States of America,
Your money looks funny, like it was just pulled out of a vintage board game box.
How many bills would I have to rub on my gums before I got high on cocaine?
Sincerely,
Schmutzie.
Labels: the here and now, the photographs
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A Photography Gig, A Virus, And A Sore Butt
Sunday, July 13, 2008
I shot a wedding yesterday, but it hasn't hit the news yet, so I don't think anyone's found the bodies.
I'm kidding. My first official, paid photography gig was as the candid photographer at a wedding. There was a professional photographer there, as well, with a fancy-assed camera that had attachments and a battery pack who took the more formal pictures, and then there was me, who wandered around for TWELVE HOURS trying to remember if I had taken a picture of this or that stranger and figure out how to take a decent photo in a dim room under a disco ball while also trying not to collapse from the exhaustion brought on by Mystery Virus XC3908.
I actually quite enjoyed myself, despite contracting Mystery Virus XC3908 from a certain bridesmaid and setting myself up for having to go through a few gigabytes of photographs. The bride and groom were lovely people with lovely friends, and the entire wedding party made me cry at least once each with all the sweetness and sincerity going around. In a way, I wish weddings and funerals happened more often. The people at the centre of the excitement are always noted as being saint-like in their ability to love, give, and make others laugh. Rarely are we so generous.
I am working at keeping my tone light tonight, because Mystery Virus XC3908 is making me irritable. It is even irritating to write. These sentences keep traipsing along the page without enough periods and far too many words ending in -ing. It's the fever.
Oh, my booty, it is being severely kicked. In actuality, my butt hurts because I have done nothing but slouch into an armchair all day, which would be a fixable situation if remaining upright for the short trip to the kitchen didn't make the world tilt on its axis.
In short, I took hundreds of photographs, contracted a virus, and my butt hurts, which have all culminated in this. And still, I publish!
I like you.
Labels: the here and now, the photographs
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Curling Rink In A Quonset
Thursday, July 10, 2008
When I was a little kid, both sets of my grandparents lived in a hamlet of approximately 150 people. Being that this hamlet was in western Canada, it had a homemade, two-lane curling rink.
Between the ages of eight and twelve, I would sometimes sneak out of my grandparents' house after the sun went down and crunch through the snow to the curling rink down the street. It was inside a long, metal quonset. If no one was there and the building wasn't locked, I would sneak inside to look at the ice. Its appearance was soft, and I liked to run my fingertips into the divots that had yet to be iced over or melted out.
My favourite time was when there were already people inside the curling rink as I approached. I was often shy, even around people I recognized, so I would walk through other people's footprints in the snow to avoid being heard and press my ear to the quonset's door, if I dared. I liked to hear how people talked to each other when I was not around, when what they were doing had nothing to do with me.
The ice softened the sounds of voices ricocheting off the quonset's walls. The flattened echo made me feel as though I had been swaddled against a warm bosom, and the secret listening made me feel special, like I knew things that others did not.
I got a nasty sliver in the upward curve of my right ear from that door on the last night that I ever visited the curling rink alone. I heard someone coming close to it on the other side, and in my panic to turn away and run, my foot slipped. My head slammed into the door and dragged against the peeling wood as I plummeted downward. An older man's ruddy face appeared in the partially opened door.
"You okay, sweetie?" he asked, looking down at me where I had landed in the snow.
"Yeah." I took my mittened hand away from my ear and saw blood melting the snow on the woolen palm.
His sudden face through the door terrified me, and I pushed myself up and ran the couple of blocks back to my grandparents' house, my frozen, plastic-soled boots skidding out from under me on hard ice.
I couldn't bring myself to go back to the curling rink after that. I was sure that my secret listening was no longer a secret, and that, rather than being the privileged outsider, I was now nothing more than a stupid child to those inside.
Labels: the past, the photographs
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Sexy Volkswagens And A Deathtrap
Monday, July 7, 2008
I have been asked to be the second photographer at a wedding next weekend. The first photographer is the normal kind of wedding photographer who will pose them either stiffly or romantically in all the ways we normally expect a bride and groom to be posed in front of churches or pretty trees or on fake, little bridges. I am the second photographer who will take all the more candid shots where people are doing their normal people things rather than standing in typical poses against typical backgrounds. You know, stuff like when the flower girl has her finger jammed up her nose.That Girl and I walked all over town yesterday, scouting for interesting spots at which to shoot wedding photos. We checked out old buildings with weather-stained stonework, new buildings made of glass, alleyways, and a downtown park where goths, hippies, and punks smoke pot in between winters. And then, we came across a small car show on the street put on by the Regina Vee-Dub Club.
I was surprised at how many of them were pink.
There were also a lot of roof racks. I did not know that roof racks were even an option for Bugs.
And sun roofs! Is this a custom type thing? I obviously know nothing about cars, let alone VW Bugs.
This VW bus was barely six inches off the ground, which just struck me as profoundly stupid. You would maybe want to put only two small people in it and drive really slow in case you hit a pebble.
This one was just so freaking beautiful. I wanted to crawl all over it with my camera, but I was struck with social phobia, mild sunstroke, and a touch of confusion over my sexual attraction to the vehicle. I even walked around back and checked out the junk in its trunk.
I don't even know if this is a Volkswagen. It wasn't parked with the other cars. I didn't care what kind of car it was, really. As long it wasn't being too sexy for me, I was fine with it, and, thankfully, it wasn't being too sexy. Not that it isn't sexy. Just look at it. It's got style.
There is no reason for me to defend the limited sexiness of this car. It's not like it will find this post on the internet and weep over its inability to fully turn me on. I'll drop it.
<-- CHANGE OF SUBJECT -->
Okay, this is a change of subject, in a way.
When I was in my early twenties, I hung out with hippies, grew out my body hair, and new people who slept with pyramids over their heads, so it stands to reason that I spent some time in VW buses. There was one bus in particular that stands out in my mind, because it scared the ever-living crap out of me the few times that I consented to take a ride in it.
From the outside, it looked like any other VW bus, which is the only explanation for why the owner was never forced to take it out of commission. The only seats in the vehicle were the driver's and front passenger seats, which were equipped with neither seatbelts nor cushions to cover the seat springs. Makeshift seat covers were formed out of balls of secondhand sweaters, which did not necessarily save you from having your ass punctured by dirty metal. I usually chose to sit on the floor with the spare tire and a box of scrap metal.
The floor, despite its obvious perk, was not much better, because there was a largish hole in it through which you could see the asphalt speed by barely a foot beneath you. The driver pointed this out as being a plus, because he had lost the ashtray. I spent each of my rides in that claptrap, motorized death shell huddled up near the back and chainsmoking, only crawling toward the front occasionally to drop a cigarette butt through the floor. I was sure I would die.
Why does youth plus boredom sometimes equals risking possible dismemberment and/or death? Oh, I forgot one key element of that equation: marijuana. I needed the pot to kill my fear that the van of some stoned, protein-deficient hippie whose name I could never remember was going to drop me through the floor and make road meat out of me.
Yes, I am aware that I could have chosen not to get into that VW bus, but I was much younger, underfed, and had just been diagnosed with a major mental illness. My IQ was under siege. At thirty-five, I get to be all smart now! I never ride in see-through vehicles anymore! I rarely smoke weird-smelling pot from strangers! I bath on a more regular basis!
Getting old isn't all bad.
Labels: the past, the photographs
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A Donkey Named Radar
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
That donkey's name is Radar.
I am not much for horses. They are nice to look at, but the way they look at me with their eyes makes me nervous. It feels like they can read me much better than I can read them, which means that they have the upper hand, which means that they I feel like I'm lunch.
The large brown butt on the right belongs to a horse that was not much for me, either. We stood a good distance apart and regarded each other, which was fine by me, because I didn't know if he was a biter or not. Also, their teeth look like people teeth, and I don't like to see them. I have dreams sometimes in which cats have small people teeth, and I always wake up in a sweat over it.
Radar, though, that little grey donkey, warmed up to me and I to him. As donkeys are wont to do, he had been rolling in what I pretended was nothing more than mud, so his coat was completely encrusted with something dry and greyish. He was dirty, oily, and had something gooey and sour-smelling stuck to his left ear.
It was love at first sight.
I reached through the fence and rubbed his forehead where a coarse carpet of fur sat between his ears. When I stopped, he breathed hot air out of his nostrils onto the back of my hand or flapped his loose, soft donkey lips on my knuckles.
I used to think that I simply did not like all horse-like animals, but now I know that I love donkeys. Or, at least I love Radar.
Labels: the pets, the photographs
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Manitoba
Monday, June 30, 2008
We went to a wedding reception in Manitoba
where there was a horse
and a portapotty with a mirror
and us in the long evening sun
on a road in the middle of nowhere.
Labels: the photographs
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Our Cat Might Need Therapy
Thursday, June 26, 2008
We lost Oskar.I do not mean lost, as in "died", although I had all the worst case scenarios running through my head while we searched for him last night. I grew nauseous over thoughts of him with his head stuck up a pipe in the basement of our apartment building or eviscerated by the lunatic dogs that are kept in a front yard across the street.
Oskar, practicing at being negative space, on a windowsill.
I mean that we lost him, as in "we could not find him anywhere in the apartment". The Palinode and I searched our closets and cupboards, the building's basement, the courtyard, and the area around the building several times. Each time, we would come back to the apartment and hear a distant scratching, which would start the hunt all over again.
The scratching was most audible in the bathroom, so I eventually got down on my hands and knees and called his name a few times. Scratch, scratch. It almost sounded like he was inside the bathtub. I called his name again. Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch. This time it was more frantic and right next to my head. He was definitely inside the bathtub, and not in it like when you have a bath, but really INSIDE it.
We pulled the board away from the one end of the tub to reveal the pipes, and there Oskar was, reeking of shit with pupils that filled his entire eye sockets. This was one fucked up cat.
As soon as we lured him out from the wall with food, he ran to the kitchen, into a cupboard, and disappeared. The freak had found a hole in the back of the kitchen cupboard that led under the bathroom floor, and the stench of cat poop wafted out around our cooking pots.
Oskar is a bit of a special case. When we brought him home from the humane society in the fall of 2005, it was apparent that he had been underfed and mistreated by his previous owners. He would do anything to eat and drink, including attacking hot salsa and cups of coffee. I had to stay with him for two days when he almost died from a respiratory infection. He spent a good part of his days then racing with anxiety and crying without seeming provocation.
Since then, he has learned that we will not try to kill him or starve him, but he has occasional setbacks. In all seriousness, I think he has a cat version of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. If he finds himself in a scary situation for too long, such as getting lost in the basement of our building, he turns almost feral. It takes him hours if not days to figure out that he doesn't have to creep around with his belly on the floor trying to scout out where the scary torturer is hiding. It is really very sad.
We figured that he had spent a day, and possibly days, skulking around under the bathroom floor, and it was obvious that his poor little brain couldn't do the math anymore. His fur was gritty from his tiny crawl space, and he smelled like he had been living in a litter box for two days, which I think is pretty much what he was doing under there.
We have now blocked up the hole under the kitchen cupboards and the one leading to the pipes underneath the bathtub, so we are hoping that he will soon regain his former stoic, if a little neurotic, composure. He is a lovely cat when he is well, but his fear of his former owner is so great that it sometimes gets the better of him.
On the bright side, he appeared to be almost normal this morning. I found him sitting on top of a bookshelf blinking slow cat eyes at me, which he does when he is happy.
Does anyone know the number of a good cat therapist, though? Because I don't know if the Palinode and I can handle having a roommate who goes wild and hides in the walls like a rabid bat.
I'm kidding. We'll keep him as long as he's breathing. I don't think anyone else would understand his, um, how shall I put this? His quirks.
Labels: the pets, the photographs
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Follow Me
Thursday, June 19, 2008
The above dog's name is Jack. I was actually as close as it looks I was to that snarling snout, but don't let her menacing nose-wrinkling intimidate you. She is sweet as pie.
Today, I am guest posting over at Sweetney, so click on over and read my post called "Timing Is Everything" at sweetney.com.
Please and thank-you. Mwah.
Labels: the metablogging, the photographs
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Max, The Once Baby Kitten
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Onion lying on Lula in the dark
Today is one of those days in which I am awash in a melancholic nostalgia. It is how I feel when I look at vintage black and white photographs and imagine that I know all the characters.
I keep remembering how grey afternoons used seem so long, like today's long grey afternoon, especially in this second-story apartment that I lived in. I would sit on the musty carpet in the bay window and let my cat at the time, Max, nurse on my buttons.
Not long after that, Max lost all of his sweetness and became a beast who attacked people's eyes and left bloody claw marks on my shoulders at night, but at that time, he was a gentle baby kitten who nursed on my clothing. He sucked the silk off the buttons on my pajamas, but I did not mind. He had this way of curling up on my lap and closing his eyes into his thick, grey face that made me feel very lucid and light.
Later, he lived with my ex-girlfriend, because she was the only one he did not attempt to maim or kill, and then even later, he was shipped out to a farm where everyone who knew him hoped that a coyote got to him, but that is not what I remember most. I remember him most as the kitten with thick fur who surely would have called me momma if he had been one degree smarter and not on the verge of going feral.
This afternoon, I feel like my memory of him: suspended in this blended middle of a calm that is not calm between two extremes. I could go either way, I could go anywhere, but I am staying firm and sipping coffee right here. It feels powerful and delicious to pull on both ends.
Labels: the here and now, the past, the photographs
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Wes Bentley Is A Laughing Buddha, or How I Got To Go To BlogHer And Remembered How Excellent My Friends Are
Sunday, June 8, 2008
That picture to the left there is one I took of Mr. Wes Bentley. You might remember him as Ricky Fitts from "American Beauty" or as Blackheart from "Ghost Rider". I remember him from the patio at a local pub where he hung out with us plebs and bought a round of beer. When the Palinode pointed him out and said That guy's a dead ringer for Wes Bentley, I said He sure is, and then it turned out that he actually was Wes Bentley, and we went back to our drinking, because in Saskatchewan, Canada, we tend to be fairly relaxed about fame. Mischa Barton of "The O.C." fame was at that same pub on another night, and I did not see a single person go up to shake her hand, but then, in that situation, I think her leopard print stretch pants were a little bit offputting.On Wednesday evening, I saw Wes again, and because I had neglected to thank him properly for the round he had bought the other night, I motioned him over as he walked by my table so that I could shake his hand. Really, I just wanted to shake his hand and apologize for not thanking him for the drink. Really.
Initially, I was under the impression that I was just looking up at him and saying Hey, Wes, thanks for that beer you bought the other night, and he was smiling along and thanking me for my thank-you, but then he looked down at my hand, which I then looked at, because if Wes Bentley is looking at something while I am talking to him, then I am also going to look at it. So there Wes was, looking down at my hand, and I was also looking at my hand, and MY HAND WAS RUBBING WES BENTLEY'S BELLY IN LITTLE, TINY CIRCLES. I do not even hug people all that often, but there I was rubbing a major film actor's belly. I paused what I was doing, patted his belly twice, and said I think I must just really like your sweater vest.
Just when my life was looking like it might be getting a little bit cooler, it was very much not. Or so it appeared at the time.
Since the Wes-Bentley-belly-rubbing incident of late Wednesday afternoon, I have had a windfall of excellent things happen, which inclines me to believe that Wes Bentley is a laughing buddha. Since rubbing his belly, I have been graced with the amazing generosity of others more than a few times:
When I looked back to figure out what I could have done to deserve all of this, it was pointed out to me that the only thing I have done that is different lately is rub Wes Bentley's belly. Since that embarrassing moment when I found myself stroking his sweater vest, I have been gifted with the promise of a laptop, realized my dream of registering for the BlogHer '08 conference with the help of all of you out there, and the Palinode and I have been honoured by our friends with a surprise party and gifts to show their appreciation of us after a difficult year.
Wes Bentley is a laughing buddha, I swear to you. He is a very slim, well-built, and blue-eyed laughing buddha, but a laughing buddha all the same. Would all of this good luck and prosperity be mine if I had not laid hands on that famous stomach? I think not.
Labels: the here and now, the photographs
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The Non-Fire
Saturday, June 7, 2008
I woke up this morning and wandered into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. For some reason, I kept the old, wet grounds that were languishing in the french press from the day before and added only one scoop of new grounds. I knew that this process was going to end up making terrible coffee, but part of my brain told me to keep going with it. I even promised myself that I would not admit to the Palinode that I was reusing the scungy grounds from yesterday's coffee.Sometimes, especially when I first wake up in the morning, my brain doesn't work properly, and I end up doing things that are both unreasonable and unnecessary. This is how I have ended up with different kinds of deodorant in each armpit or transporting a rock from my street across town in my pocket on the way to work. It goes something like this: one day, my brain says You must butter only the edges of your toast this morning, and then I do just that, eat only the edges, and throw away the middle. Oh, were you looking for an explanation? THERE ISN'T ONE. I'm just crazy before ten o'clock.
I was in the middle of this making of the really bad coffee for no good reason when the fire alarms in our apartment building went off. I thought Well that's fecking annoying, and checked the hallway to see if the red fire alarm light on the wall was flashing. It was. I figured that that was as good a time as any to put on some pants, and after that, I thought that I should probably wet my hair, because it looked really screwy, and then, hell, why not pat on some foundation to even out the old complexion? I wouldn't want to look like I'd just crawled out of bed while standing on the front lawn in the rain waiting for fire trucks to show up.
Somehow, trying to look decent in what might have been a burning building made sense to me at the time. For someone who lies awake at night freaking out because, OH MY GOD, WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE ONE DAY, I was insanely calm about the fire alarms blaring right outside my apartment door. When death is remote, I can barely breathe with the thought of it, but when death might quite possibly be a reality, I am armed with a bottle of foundation so I can look good for the neighbours. I think I need to have my priorities recalibrated.
Eventually, the Palinode and I managed to make our way down to the stoop, and because we are so very smart, we stayed there for a while rather than heading out to the sidewalk. We are fire retarded.
After standing out there for fifteen minutes, the lot of us realized that fire department was not responding to the alarm. We were all under the impression that public fire alarms alerted the fire department directly, but not so in this case, so someone decided to call 911. We were all also under the impression that a 911 operator would stay on the line to talk to you, but we were wrong on that front, as well. 911 put us on hold. On hold! Now we and the other tenants in the building feel secure in the knowledge that both the fire department and 911 are looking out for our well-being, at least after all our stuff has been engulfed in flames.
Finally, two fire trucks showed up. There was no leaping to action from their vehicles to attack the fire, carry out victims, and save the day. There was definitely relaxed loping to our front door and pausing to talk with bedraggled tenants.
The firemen walked through the building, asked some questions, and found nothing burning anywhere. That kind of bummed me out a little. After standing in the rain for half an hour, I wanted some sort of climax, but the whole thing kind of came off as one, long, damp denouement.
I just complained about how our building was not on fire this morning. That thing I said about getting my priorities recalibrated? I should get on that.
Labels: the here and now, the photographs
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The First Honestly Beautiful Saturday Afternoon In 2008 In Pictures
Monday, June 2, 2008
One of these things is not like the other.
That_Girl rocks the hotness.
In an alternate universe,
she is a six-year-old kid at the pool.
This is his alternate universe.
La femme fatale is felt up from a distance.
No tiny bicycles were swallowed
by butts in the making of these photos.
She is a cute-ay patoot-ay.
The Palinode blows bubbles. He is also a cute-ay patoot-ay.
He impersonates a mad scientist/swimmer/six-year-old
with hypertrichosis.
Yes, looking at ketchup can be a religious experience,
especially when you've been drinking in the hot sun.
I think my camera is in love with her.
And her.
Wes Bentley is here doing a movie. He sat with us through
the afternoon and bought a round of beer. I pretended
not to be the loser taking photographic proof.
Labels: the photographs
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Snack Food: Tastes Great, Makes You Fat
Friday, May 30, 2008
I had my first physical exam recently since my hysterectomy last summer. I did not mention the exam here before I went, even though I was worrying about it, because, eventually, some law-of-attraction stuff would have crawled into my comments and e-mail inbox to tell me to think positively lest I attract cancer to myself.
At first, the Law of Attraction thing sounds wonderful. It sounds like an empowering idea and one with which I do not completely disagree. I am no expert, so excuse me if I get this a bit wrong, but I am given to understand that the main tenet goes something like this: "You get what you think about, whether wanted or unwanted. The Law of Attraction is neutral".
Under this law, we are all walking magnets attracting things into our lives, both good and bad. On the surface, when I am told that I have the power to attract the good and possibly lessen my chance of having the cancer return, that sounds great, but when you dig deeper, that same seemingly encouraging message tells me that I am also likely at fault for my prior experience with cancer, because if I am responsible for attracting the good in life, then I am also responsible for attracting cancer, child abuse, and my plantar wart (no bare feet for me this summer!).
That message becomes less warm and fuzzy when you look at its flip side, doesn't it? It makes me wonder what I was doing when I attracted this pernicious HPV of the foot. Maybe my distaste for all feet other than my own - because mine are the only beautiful pair, don't you know - translated into the uglification of my own cute toes.
That Law of Attraction philosophy is not just unicorns and rainbows, which is fine, because that's how things are in this universe we call home, but when I am told that I should plaster a smile on my face and look on the bright side when dealing with the loss of a major body part, I am reminded of the zealot of a director I had who lead the children's choir at church who said, at the funeral, to the wife of a man who had died after a long and painful battle with cancer: It's too bad that he did not believe enough.
I think we do attract a number of things into our lives, but I also believe that there is chaos, which, although it does have its own kind of order, affects us in ways over which we do not necessarily have direct control. You could read that as my being unwilling to take responsibility for all the factors that affect my life, but then I would have to knee you in the groin with my mind.
If I have twisted the Law of Attraction out of shape in any way, let me know. Send me a book about it. Educate me. Because as it stands right now, it sounds just like other overly simplified theories of How Things Work of which I've heard. If you steadfastly pluck at Truth through the linguistic employ of a theory without conditions for proof, you enter into extremely unstable territory that demands of you to take leave of rational explanation for the comfort of the because-it-just-feels-right defense. It's great snack food for the ego.
Labels: the miscellany, the photographs
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Onion's Got A Hidey-Hole
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
That cat to the left is Onion. He is approximately just over two years old, revels in being molested with kisses, and is fifteen pounds of fairly stupid.There is not a thing he does that he ever figured out on his own. If we did not already have another cat, Oskar, when we brought Onion home from the pound, he would now be the most foul-smelling cat unable to figure out how push a door open with his head. (He still doesn't know that he can push unlatched doors open with his head and instead stands patiently while looking at you with one eye peering around the edge of the door). Until Oskar schooled him in the true uses of his tongue, Onion was quite content to lick the entire bottom foot of our kitchen while leaving his own body to develop a distinctive stench. We had a very clean oven door back then and one stank-ass cat.
Now, thanks to Oskar, we have a clean-smelling Onion, but it has been a trade-off, because Onion has picked up a few other things from Oskar, like how to open our kitchen cupboard doors and crawl into our cooking pots and get on top of the bookshelf and JUMP UP ONTO OUR FREAKING TOWELS AND BEDDING ON THE HIGH SHELVES IN THE BATHROOM CUPBOARD.
Do you see all of that hair stuck onto the variety of things that Onion is pushing out of the cupboard in the second photograph? Yeah. So did I right after I returned home from the gynecologist's office yesterday afternoon. Isn't it funny how you can go from Hooray, the doctor says I don't have anal polyps! to What the bloody hell am I supposed to dry myself off with now?! Until I can trek out to somewhere that sells hardware for keeping Onion-who-thinks-everything-Oskar-does-is-gold out of our clean towels, I am choosing to pretend that our cupboard is really a cat fort. It's a cat fort lined with my red velvet curtains that are now little more than the world's largest lint brush, but still a cat fort. Hairy bedding? What hairy bedding?The more I think about it, the more I think that Onion's legs are more trouble than they're worth.
Labels: the pets, the photographs
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To A Wedding We Did Go
Monday, May 26, 2008
We went to a wedding yesterday, and it only took us a forty-five minute taxi ride across town and back and a blood pressure raising fare to get there late. We ended up watching the wedding from the door when we walked in during the middle of the ceremony. Thanks Google Maps! The meter was soaring up to some ridiculous dollar amount when the cabbie finally turned it off out of pity. No one needs to spend fifty dollars on a Sunday to not go to a wedding that Google Maps said was twenty-three dollars in the wrong direction.
The last half of the ceremony was lovely, as was the food, the venue, the cake topper pictured above, and the other guests. The place was filled with babies, though. It was rife with them, which meant that I ended up with drool on my hands and cupcake mashed into the knees of my pants. I felt like a big weird freak for a little while there and spent some time eating compulsively with my butt parked in a corner, because all these women were talking about their babies' height and weight and development and when they were thinking of making more babies and saying boob a lot.
It is pretty easy these days for me settle into a bit of a blue funk crossed with a strong urge to flee when surrounded by women who appear to perform femininity so easily and whose lives revolve around the results of their having healthy uteri. I am passing through all the first anniversaries of tests and the diagnosis and the hysterectomy, and my emotions keep having their way with me. I am ready to be done with this, but the world keeps throwing babies and television commercials exhorting me to have a happy period in my face.
After inhaling half a platter of pork bits in lettuce boats and several skewers of mushrooms coated in pesto, I managed to calm down enough to stop counting all the exits and relaxed into some fine conversation with friends I had not seen in a long time and who had managed not to have procreated in the last three years.
Let's just say that I've still got some issues.
After the wedding, the Palinode (the handsome figure pictured above) and I went out for drinks with another couple, and after they dropped us off at home, I immediately trekked out again and set about getting spectacularly smashed while playing pub trivia and inquiring after the particulars of Towel Day. My quest was met with much success (for me) and also much hogging of the bed and obnoxious snoring (poor Palinode).
I did come away from my experiences yesterday with the discovery of a new talent, though. I found out that I am really good at working grubby toddler cupcake muck out of expensive dress pants. You cannot even tell that several toddlers made a beeline from the children's cupcake bar to my knees yesterday with fists of blue icing softened by body heat and spittle.
I can be called a talentless hack no more! My chest swells with this newfound confidence.
Labels: the body, the photographs
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More With The Cats. I Can't Help Myself.
Friday, May 23, 2008
This was the first instance in which Onion and Oskar,
the two adult males on the right, were able to get within striking range
of the new kitten without her attempting to hiss them to death.
From her original starved state, she has already filled out a bit. It's a
relief, because when she first landed in our apartment, her hip bones stuck out.
And this is the evidence of what is to come. One day the little runt will grow up like this Oskar here, and she'll shed kitty litter from dirty feet on our books, too. Ain't cats sweet.
Labels: the photographs
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The Skinny Kitten Story (In Which I Am Both A Liar And A Kitten Thief)
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
The above photograph was taken on Wednesday night. There is an awfully skinny, freaked out rag of a kitten inside that pet carrier, and the other two cats (Onion on the left and Oskar on the right) are simply awfully freaked out.
I do not know exactly why, but the story behind how that skinny kitten came to be shoved into a pet carrier in my living room is one I am uncomfortable telling, which, really, if you look back at my recent story about my vibrator, which was written at my parents'-in-law house *, does not intuitively make sense. Of course, I owned the object in question in the vibrator story, but I do/did not own the object in question in the skinny kitten story.
Let's get one thing clear before I go on. I feel that I must confess to the climax of the story before the lead-up, which is really going to kill all of the suspense, but so be it.
A couple of friends and I stole the cat. To be honest, it was not solely my idea, but when faced with leaving a shivering kitten with a messed up large man who was trying to sell her for beer money at a pub or making off with her down the street, the decision seemed pretty clear.
I think I will just keep moving backwards from the middle of the story, and when I get to the beginning, I will jump ahead to the point pictured in the photograph above, just so's we're all clear on how this thing's going to roll.
Anyway, I was holding this kitten, and she was shaking so hard that her whole body was making a sound from her vibrations. This was not a purring sound. This was a racket of bones and muscle from a starving animal who was terrified of being carried down the street and handed to strangers. This means that I fell in love with her immediately and decided that I had to keep her for my very own, because this is how I come to choose all my pets. If an animal is scared, abused, starving, overweight, or rejected by others of its kind, I take them home, and, on one occasion, I even named a mean, outcast zebra finch George.
I want this kitten, I said to him. How much will you give me? he asked. How much do you want? I asked. Twenty bucks, he said. Then, he put on this little display in a babyish voice to impress me with how much he loved this little kiddy widdy, and he made me promise that I would name her Muddy. I said that I would knowing full well that I wouldn't. I lied.
Before that is kind of blurry in my memory, because last Wednesday was a normal Wednesday like many others before it, and it only became a point of focus when a large man messed up on drugs, alcohol, or both walked up with a terrified kitten on his shoulder. I noticed that one of his eyes had drooped more than the other since the last time I had seen him around, and that is when I started remembering everything.
I think I wanted to steal the kitten from the moment I saw it, even before the stealing-the-kitten plan fell together with my two friends and we found ourselves speed-walking up the street and around the corner as part of the ruse that we were going to take money out of the bank to give to the cretin who was trying to sell a kitten for beer money. We believed that the kittens-for-beer industrial complex had to be brought down, and that meant theft of a kitten. We were like modern day Robin Hoods, only our goal was not to steal from the rich and give to the poor but to steal kittens from the intoxicated and keep them for ourselves.
And this brings us to this second photograph of the skinny kitten in the pet carrier, into which she was shoved so that the large males of the house could check out what the hell was going on without having their eyes gouged out.
Alright. I just said the eye-gouging bit for dramatic effectrf8t cccccccccccccccccuy7x. (The new kitten just hopped across the keyboard, so I thought I would leave that part in. Translated, that says OH HAI, I TYPES GUD. SEE?) This new kitten is more of a hisser and a yowler. You are more likely to get spit in your eye than anything else.
And that black bit up there? She is tiny. Just look at the Palinode's jeans pocket for proportion.
Oh, and another thing? You will notice that the kitten is sitting next to the Palinode. They like each other, and he has not shown any noticeable amount of animosity toward me with regard to the spontaneous addition of a third cat to this family, even though we live in an APARTMENT and do not have two or three floors over which to distribute all the critters. We just love crowding them into five rooms like a badger exhibit at the zoo.
We are still trying to name her. The Palinode says David Tennant! I say No! The Palinode says A. A. Ferret, as in Actually A Ferret! I say Absolutely not! The Palinode says Beef Texan! I say Wha-huh? I figured that since we had covered animal (Oskar, a human name) and vegetable (Onion), we should probably cover minerals to round the trio out, but names like Boron and Astatine just do not float our respective boats.
In short:
I tried to draw up a chart to illustrate the complexity that is the kittens-for-beer industrial complex, but I ran out of paper somewhere around the Caspian Sea, and then I spilled coffee on the part about kitten-smuggling in northern England and its ties with indigenous groups in Yucatán, so you will just have to research it for yourselves.
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* I put one part of a sentence beginning with which inside another part of a sentence beginning with which, which must be wrong, and then in that same sentence I put to myself the difficult task of having to indicate that the house belonged to my parents-in-law with an apostrophe that I am not entirely confident about. Are you confident about the apostrophe in "my parents'-in-law house"? Part of my brain wants to tell me that I am right, while the other part of my brain tells me that I'm fucked.
Labels: the pets, the photographs
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Tipping Point? Even Keel?
Saturday, May 10, 2008
I'm not sure what it is. I am either okay with the present state of things in my life, or I am on the verge of collapse. It could be one or the other.
It could be neither and instead be nestled somewhere in that infinite array of greys between extremes. I'm not good with the shades of grey, though. I seem to prefer throwing myself out onto one ledge or the other.
I suppose that I could just stop thinking about which it is and go on with getting myself cups of coffee and meeting work deadlines and knitting the partners to the lonely, single arm warmers I've created, but that would be dull. It feels like waiting without knowing that there's anything to wait for.
It might just be I that am less than dynamic lately.
Maybe that's it. Maybe I am standing at the midpoint on a seesaw, waiting to see which way I'll tip.
I could never do that as a child. Stand at the midpoint on a seesaw, that is. Other kids did it, and they'd balance for awhile like they were surfing before making the brave run down one end of the plank to leap onto the ground. Fear scaled my desire down.