Remember when you were a little kid, and the best thing about a sleep-over was getting to camp out in the living room? Well, I’m here to tell you that you can do just the same as an adult.
I say this, because I am writing to you from our second bedroom, comfortably wrapped up and floating on an air-mattress, with the kitten between us purring like a jack-hammer. Why are we camping out on a tiny air mattress when we have a much more expensive air mattress right in the next room? (AKA: Sleep Number bed?)
The vet told us we have to keep Princess Roid Rage under wraps for the next 10 days while her sutures heal, and for that we need to keep her low to the ground. We’ve moved everything out of the second bedroom that’s over 6″ tall, thinking that this would keep our newest addition happy. Unfortunately, two things happened last night: A) She figured out if she cries long enough, we will capitulate, and B) She likes to cliff-dive off of our bed. This made for swelled stitches this morning, which don’t seem to bother Jawsie in the least, but scare the hell out of her parents. (Editor’s note: Ed is still holding out hope that I will start to refer to us as “her people” or “her humans”. He got to name her Jaws? I get to name him Dad. That’s the gig.)
Fast forward to tonight, and we are camping out in the cat’s room (this statement is as ridiculous as it sounds, I know) to make sure that our wild child keeps her paws close to terra firma, and keeps our bleeding-heart wits intact (She’s like a cougar in miniature. She stands her ground and CRIES at me for getting anywhere near the door like I was murdering Santa. It’s ridiculous, but it gets me every time.)
So here’s to the start of the camping season, even if we didn’t need to drive a stake or burn a marshmallow to get started!
(Editor’s note: Realizing you’ve missed a blog post during Nablopomo, I’ve learned, is something like forgetting to take your birth control pill. You wake up quite suddenly - far earlier than is reasonable on a Sunday - then immediately rack your brain trying to think of when you took/wrote it, finally realize that you didn’t, swear under your breath, and get out of bed to go rectify the matter.)
So, I finally convinced my darling, handsome, exquisitely intelligent husband that it would be a good idea to add something furry to the household, specifically, a kitty. I have been trying to accomplish this for… hmm… about five years (also known as “Ever since we moved in”.) Luckily for me, I am persistent and he is in love with me, so yesterday I went down to the MSPCA at Nevins Farm in Methuen to see who all was looking for a forever home. I was all excited, went in, had some preliminary fact-finding conversation with the lady at the front desk, then headed in to meet my future fluffball. I checked out the “Colony Room”, which was sort of like the living room of a crazy cat lady’s house. There were probably 15-20 cats milling about, sleeping on chairs and in cubbies, some scrabbling with shaky-mice and being ultra-adorable.
One of the volunteers found out I might be looking for a lap-cat, and introduced me to Roger. Roger was probably the complete opposite of what I envisioned when I went in to look: A big, angora-furred Maine Coon, possibly 20 pounds (easily the size of a Thanksgiving stuffer, for comparison), and probably the most laid back lump of adorable I’ve ever met. The volunteer put Roger in my lap, and Roger immediately went back to sleep with little more than an adjustment of his head onto my knee. He was total lap-cat material.
Only one problem. Roger likes to shed. A lot. I think I’m still wearing some of Roger somewhere on me. I probably will find bits of him for the next few days. I knew I could never get a 20-pound shed-machine past the gates at Chez Cianci, so unfortunately, I had to leave Roger to find a forever home with someone else.
And here’s why it’s hard for me to go to the MSPCA.
I really wanted to take Roger home. You could tell he was a kind soul, and I completely wanted to scoop him up, take him home, and lavish him with jingly toys and chin scratches for the rest of his life. But being grown-up sucks. I had to actually use that practical part of my brain, the one I abhor. Roger is a giant: he could easily take up his own half of the bed, or his own 3rd of the couch, which just wouldn’t work for anyone in our small condo. We could spin his fluff and use it to clothe a village somewhere for a year. Roger was simply too big, and too fuzzy for us, and it broke my heart to realize that he just wouldn’t fit into our lives. I suppose in the end it’s better for both of us if he goes to a home where he will fit, both literally and figuratively. I know that my heart tells me that I want to take ALL of them home, that I want to quit my day job, rescue cats and write books with one cat in my lap, one sitting on my head, one brushing around my legs, and probably one sleeping on my keyboard… but we’ve only got so much room, and if we’re going to give a kitty a “forever home”, we have to be careful which kitty we choose.
So the hunt continues. It was a good, but hard, first day out looking around. It was all I could do not to run up to the front desk and volunteer at the shelter. After my degree is done, I fully intend to. By the way If you’re in the market for a lap-cat, and you’re not opposed to a little extra fuzz, then run down to Nevins and scoop Roger up and take him home. And let me know when you do.
What goes better with high-end chinese food and martinis than a little existential angst? Tonight Ed and I went to round up some grub at Feng Shui in Chelmsford, and somewhere along the line, we stumbled face first into a conversation about the calamity of extraordinary circumstance, that cosmic set up comic flubbs that ordain we should exist as we do right now. We talked about intelligent design, the alternate forms and functions our world could have, and before we signed the credit card slip, the biggest question of all: Where does that leave us?
It’s a fairly well-known fact that although I generally dislike the term “atheist”, I don’t believe in God (or as Einstein put it, perhaps I believe in “Spinoza’s God” - the God *is* the world, not separate from it.) I have this conversation with my aunt every so often, and she is quite concerned that I’ll be spending my afterlife somewhere unpleasant. I try to reassure her that I would keep the heat in the house at a constant 85 degrees if I were allowed, so perhaps a warm climate might suit me. She’s not usually amused by this thought.
Somewhere in the conversation, we inevitably come to the place where she’s tired of arguing with me, and says “Just! Well… just… believe.”
I got to thinking about this concept tonight, while drinking a particularly good Choya plum martini. How does one “just” believe. Isn’t that like arguing with someone looking at one of those 3-D eye-trick pictures to “just” see the sailboat? Will impelling someone to belief, especially one so important as the belief in God, really garner the desired result? How can that possibly work? Can the individual forcefully will themselves to believe in the existence of a non-corporeal being who intervenes personally into the lives of his “creations”? Isn’t that sort of like lying? If I don’t see the sailboat in the hologram, does that mean it’s not there to be seen?
For someone who ditched the daily sojourn to church at the age of ten, I’m sot so sure that simple “fake it ’til you make it” belief is adequate for covering the great “how” of why we are here. I am fresh out of ideas on this one, but if anyone has an answer, I’m all ears.
As promised, a review of tonight’s Spinners Idol competition, which took place at the Skybox in Tewksbury!
Every year, the talent scouts of LeLacheur Park come out to the ‘burbs to find songbirds for the upcoming Lowell Spinners baseball season. I decided to mosey down and try my hand along with the rest, have a few drinks, and listen to Frances Scott Key’s best-known ditty (which was actually just a poem at the time).
First off, I was VERY surprised at the turn-out! I got there at 6pm sharp, and was *26th* on the list! There were another seven or eight who wandered in after me as well. Everyone settled in for a few hours of auditions, as the Thirsty Thursday crowd and the Bruins game 7 bandwagon rolled in. The place was at capacity when the first contestant took the stage, an adorable toe-headed kid of about 8 years old who reminded me of the precocious little scamp from “A Christmas Story”, right down to the water-slicked part in his blond hair. No glasses though. It would have been incredible if he’d been toting a Red Rider BB Gun (with a compass in the stock), but his mom probably made him leave it at home. He was a great ice-breaker for the crowd, and had the adorable factor going bigtime.
There were some truly talented people there! One kid played the Anthem on a trumpet, a trio performed in a surprisingly chipper 3-part harmony, and there were a few well-trained voices in the crowd as well. The judges had balanced critique for everyone, and even through forty auditions, remained upbeat.
So how did I do, you’re wondering? Well. It could have gone better, to be sure. During the first 15 seconds of “Fly Me to the Moon” (my first song), the Bruins scored a basket (kiddddiiiinggg) and the crowd went from zero to deafening. No worries, I ramped it up and boomed right over them. This earned some bonus points from the judges. The Anthem? Mehh not so much. The trouble started when I caught a glance of my very excited stage mother-in-law singing along with me. For anyone who hasn’t had this happen, it’s kind of the equivalent of having someone yell random numbers at you when you’re trying to tally a stack of change: you IMMEDIATELY forget where you were Not so bad. “O’er the ramparts” became “And the ramparts”, but the show carried on. I had a pretty manky top note as well, owing to the fact that I left my falsetto back in the music room in high school and never remembered to swing by and pick it up. No worries. Like any true Sox fan, I’ll just say there’s always next year.
In the end, a girl with a REALLY fabulous voice won the chance to sing at opening night, as well as some studio time to record a demo. She was second runner up for the past two years, and this year was the charm. So if you’re at opening night on June 19th, rest assured you’re going to be treated to not only a great ball-game, but a truly lovely serenade to kick the whole thing off.
I was walking down Market Street in Lowell today, to find that apparently, Dharma has rented some space in downtown Lowell and thought I wouldn’t notice!!
No… it’s not what you’re thinking. As much as I would be thrilled for a Lost ARG right on my own street, it’s not the Dharma Initiative. I guess I’ll just have to get to the Island some other way.
What is it then? It’s Dharma Buns Sandwich Company! Looks like a new kid is moving into town, a kid that loves Beat Poets and Crazy Primetime Television. I have to say, I can’t think of a better combination. Just as long as Hurley doesn’t own/run the place… I hear he has bad luck with food establishments.
Went to see Trek again tonight, Missy and I taking along our mom for a little post Mother’s Day outing. Mom loves to see those types of movies but I’m a huge she-nerd, and usually the first one in line, clutching my ticket and clamoring to see the sci-fi/comic book movie du jour. Missy likewise being of the sci-loving persuasion, we’ve often seen the really big movies early on. Trek had enough humor and Michael Bay-ish explosions to be replay-worthy, so I took another pass at it. Plus, seeing it in Imax was fabulous (love those “buttkicker” subwoofers).
We came out after two hours penned up in a dark room watching things explode in space, only to find that we too were about to explore a strange new world: The line to the women’s bathroom was non-existent. The line to the men’s room was out the friggin’ door and around the corner.
Missy was the first to pick up on this glaring unbalance in the force.
“Are *we* on a different planet now??”
A few others in the crowd, even one of the guys, commented on how thoroughly bizarre this scenario was. Either the men in the crowd collectively decided to hydrate the hell out of themselves in anticipation of the cinematic marathon - if you haven’t seen it yet, it clears the two hour mark without breaking a sweat - or otherwise, the women in the crowd were ridiculously (and sadly) outnumbered.
This brought us to another interesting conversation. Missy and I are both Nerdettes: that rare breed of western female that not only knows what a Tribble, a Wookie, and a Cylon are, we actually love the realm of sci-fi and fantasy, and seek it out whenever possible. We have favorite episodes of Trek and Stargate. We fight over who is the best incarnation of The Doctor (It’s totally David Tennant. Deny this and you are forever banned from this blog. Just sayin’.) We get most of the jokes leveled at the boys in “The Big Bang Theory”, and even take exception to a few.
According to Missy’s co-workers, this makes us somewhat akin to a blue rose. Those girls just don’t exist… do they?
Yes. Yes we do. Allow me to demonstrate.
I know that new comic books come on Tuesday, and that Million Year Picnic is the best little comic book nook in the City of Cambridge. I know that Adamantium hurts like hell on installation, but like fresh new ink, is way worth the suffering involved to get it. I know that Tattooine has twin moons, that TARDIS is short for Time and Relative Dimension in Space, on Barcelona the dogs have no noses, and that as one might suspect, anything batshit weird is bound to come out of Wales. I know that Daniel Jackson was totally right about the pyramids, and that sometimes you just have to burn out a ZPM to get the job done. I know PAX is not just the latin word for peace, but the English Acronym for PENNY ARCADE EXPO. I know you really need to be sure where your towel is at, and Vogon poetry will kill you if you let it. I know that Vorlons CAN in fact exist outside of their encounter suit, Daleks can’t exist outside of theirs, and that in some very special cases, spaceships can have babies. I know how to turn on the XBox, the TV AND the receiver, and how to play Super Puzzle Fighter like a champion (although it’s WAY better on original Playstation.) Don’t challenge me to a game. You don’t stand a chance, trust me.
Ed and I hate housework. We will put up with abominable conditions at times, simply in order to avoid it. Sink’s loaded with horrific dishes? Meh. There’s always paper plates. No laundry? Who says you can’t wear pajamas to work! We’re probably more flexible about the rules than I should be comfortable admitting in a public forum.
However, every so often inspiration strikes, and we find ourselves moving through the house like a cyclone on crack. This weekend saw the beginning of one of our cyclone sprees.
It all started on Saturday. We were butting heads over the amount of clothes I own that don’t get worn. Rather than put up my usual “shut up you’re a guy and you wouldn’t understand” argument, I got hit by the lightning bolt of domestic inspiration and started throwing things into goodwill bags willy-nilly. I then shoved our unused television out into the hallway, took pictures of it, and stuck it on Craigslist. (I got a nibble on it today. I hope to hell the guy takes it!)
Tonight, I came home from work, cooked dinner (a lottery-ticket move for me) and after nipping out for gourmet chocolate for dessert from the new market down the street, I came back, did the laundry, and REARRANGED THE ENTIRE BEDROOM.
What the hell is up with that?
The cyclone spree from earlier in the week led to a surplus of space in the bedroom. When I looked at it, something in my brain made a sharp popping noise, and I decided it was a good idea to start shoving furniture all over the place. You have to understand, moving furniture is a full-contact sport in my world. I will lay on my back, shove at a fully-loaded dresser with my head braced against a wall while sliding the thing across the room with my legs, ass, knees… whatever. I care not for how I look during these spurts of redecorative ecstasy.
Ed comes by a while later to find the bedroom in a completely different arrangement from the one he slept in only twelve hours previous, and his wife sitting in the afterglow of the furniture rampage, wide-eyed like a cat on the ‘nip. As a testament to how accustomed he is to my batshit crazy schemes and fits of fancy, he sticks out his bottom lip, nods approvingly, and says, “Wow! Cool!” He admits he is very excited about the bed being up against the wall again. I’m waiting to get clobbered at some point during the night due to disorientation, but we’ll see how that goes.
My blog posts are starting to resemble rebel-party communiques, written in the dead of night by the feeble illumination of my computer screen, usually after writing a paper of some variety, grocery shopping (which got done at 9:30pm!) and finding a few spare moments to bust chops with the love of my life.
I just climbed into bed and ducked under the covers to read a few pages of “Dexter by Design” when Ed whimpered in his sleep “Did you do a blog post today?”
“Damn it!”
I slinked from beneath the sheets and dragged myself back out to my trusty computer to rattle off a few lines. I don’t really have anything to talk about, so I guess time crunches are my topic of the night. I just passed in an annotated bibliography for one of my courses, and got the shaking finger of disapproval from the electronic upload site because It was “Past the due date” at 12:09am. I emailed it to the teacher directly, with a few wise-cracks about burning the midnight oil to draw his keen eye away from my penchant for late-night cramfests.
So, in the spirit of cramming everything into my day at odd angles, like packing for a vacation at gunpoint… I realized today that with the schedule I keep (full-time job, two classes, writer, and an apparent addiction ot Na:::Whateverthehellitis:::Mo’s, (Nanowrimo, Nablopomo, Script Frenzy… I think I’m going to start “National Pie Baking Month” for June.. what do you think?) that I often have to choose between writing and reading because there just isn’t time. Even writing this post is guaranteeing I wake up a shattered wreck in the morning… my co-workers know that talking before coffee = death. They understand.
Which brings me to my latest way of jamming extra stuff into my life. For a while I’ve been doing most of my “reading” by audiobook. I listen to them in the car for the morning and evening commute, sitting in my car snarfing a sandwich at lunch. I actually listened to my current selection tonight while grocery shopping. How’s that for multitasking!
I get no small amount of teasing my audiobook love… Ed contents he doesn’t count it as reading… Beth calls it “Ristening”… I used to get a fare amount of well-intentioned jibed that I didn’t make time to sit down with an ACTUAL book, and not do any of the other things I have to do. I got a fair amount of crap for being an English student who has no time for anything but assigned books. So this year I decided “Hell, you know what? They’re right!” and made my new year’s resolution to read/listen to a book a week this year, no matter what I had to do to accomplish it. I love to read, but got away from it in my working years because there just isn’t enough time. I’m not one of these people who can read two pages at a time and be satisfied. I read “The DaVinci Code” in a single eight-hour sitting. During my job-hunt last year, I was at home one afternoon and cracked open “Love in the Time of Cholera”, finally looking up five hours later realizing I was getting hungry. I’m a marathoner when it comes to reading, so I hadn’t been making the time to do it. But that changed this year.
What got me back into reading in a big way, was writing my first novel in 2007. I wanted to be a better writer, and nothing will hone your skills by immersing yourself in the writing styles of lots of other authors. I started saying to hell with the dishes and the laundry while I was writing, and then editing, and now that’s sort of carrying over into my reading goals for the year. My house looks like it belongs to that flaky writer chick from the remake of “The Stepford Wives”, and my fridge varies between a black hole and a science experiment- but damn, I’m on my 20th book of the year, I am editing at lunch, reading in the bath, shopping at the end of the night, and blogging way the hell after my bedtime.
Some people know how to turn a dollar into two. I can turn an hour into three.
As you could tell by my tweets earlier tonight, the Nano crew got stuck in a fairly substantial rainstorm in Boston while searching for tasty desserts in Faneuil Hall Marketplace. We came out of the ice cream shop, to find that possibly every storm cloud on earth had converged over the city, and was dumping inconceivable amounts of pretty bitter-looking rain down on our location. Sideways. I felt particularly clever for having worn my @&*#! t-shirt, because that’s pretty much what came out of my mouth as soon as I saw the deluge.
So we did the best thing we could. We stood around and looked at it, checked our stuff for its general waterproofness, and hoped to hell it would stop before too long. We were soon joined by a few other gaping compatriots, including a REALLY entertaining couple from the area, Mark and Stacey. They were joking about the rain and flirting like kids, and we all struck up a conversation while we waited to see an Ark float on past.
Mark is a New Jersey transplant, the look of a Jersey “tough guy” with a tan and a gold watch, a great sense of humor and an even better memory for pretty much every date EVER. Mark remembers who was born on your birthday, what major even happened on the year of your birth, what Stacey was wearing during their first date on January 10th (was it January 10th? My memory can’t hold a candle to Mark’s). He got all our names, what we do for work, what we’re doing here in Boston. I have no doubt that some day, he will be back in Faneuil Hall, jawing with someone else, and will remember all of our names, our occupations, our schools (Mark and I both happen to be Northeasterners). I hope he remembers my shirt. It’s a pretty great one.
Stacey can give Mark a run for his money. She’s got a great sense of humor as well, I don’t think she’s ever met anyone who wasn’t a friend five minutes into the conversation. We were trying to figure out who played Jack Shepherd on Lost (By the way Mark, you were right. It was Matthew FOX. I kept calling him Matthew Shepherd.. duuhhh… and Mark was like “NOOOO that was the kid who got killed out in the midwest!” Mark would kick my ass in Trivial Pursuit AND Jeopardy.. all at the same time). But Stacey came to the rescue! She pulls out her Blackberry, and off to wikipedia she goes to settle the score. She also pulled up Hurley from Lost, to prove that Randy looks exactly like him. (You really do Randy It’s okay though. Hurley’s awesome.)
Stacey heard we were writers, and wants to give me a story to ghostwrite. She said it’s “full of intrigue and drama” and I told her I’d drop her an email later to get the juicy details. See? Friends in five minutes flat!
I’m a proper Boston-area grouch who is used to dealing with fairly curmudgeonly people on the regular, and the rest of the group is too. Randy was the first to point out just how DAMN NICE these two were! We all walked away feeling like the 20 minutes waiting for the sky to sew itself back up was made better by hanging out with this pair. They were great!! Friendly, funny people who were excited just to talk and have a laugh.
We need to clone Mark and Stacey and place them at strategic locations throughout the city and state to teach the world just to have a yack with your neighbor and debate prime-time TV. They were good peeps!
First off: If you haven’t seen Star Trek, get off the computer and go see it. Right now. This will all be here when you get back.
So, I had to drop by Hacienda de In-laws this afternoon to pick up a package (the now hat-trick-incorrect pattern for the stained glass fireplace screen I am making for my Mom.) Dad was out in the garage, the one which has never housed cars, puttering around in between Harleys and hubcaps while the mutt kept diligent watch. He popped his head up from behind a pile of god-knows-what, eyes gleaming with the joy that can only come from being a middle-aged man swimming in a sea of motorcycle parts with no wife to pull him out of his revelry to attend to more practical matters.
“Heey.” He said inquisitively. I never pop in unannounced.
He showed me the new bike saddlebags he just got back, showed me how the guy couldn’t match the paint, mused on the possibility of leather covers to make everything blend together. My father-in-law is a stickler for detail. He’s the man who puts down towels over his floormats in the truck, and then vacuums around the edges of them with a dust-buster. This man can see a speck of dust from five hundred paces. So, when he starts eyeballing my car? I get a little cold in the extremities. My car usually looks like a down-on-his-luck hedge fund manager has been living in it (if only because of the plethora of electronics). Anyway, the eyebrow goes up, and he starts :::the prowl::::
You know the prowl… the steely-eyed observance of dings, dents, scratches. He goes over previous dents and dings that he’s lovingly pulled out. “I got that one pretty good, pulled it out good… buffed it out.” He passes a hand over the remaining scuff. He gets the movements of a craftsman when he looks at my car. He’d probably get vertigo if he saw the way I drove the thing…
Curb?? Tasty! Wall in the parking garage?? Boink!!
When he was satisfied my car only looked as horrible as it did the last time I was here, he moved on to other things. But for just a few moments, I got to see the man in his element.
I’m a writer, artist and degenerate internet addict. I have a day job only to keep the lights on and the internet working. I’m not always PG, but I’m always A+ (not to mention humble.) Please do not try to make me think before coffee. It will only end in tears.
Not so bad. “O’er the ramparts” became “And the ramparts”, but the show carried on. I had a pretty manky top note as well, owing to the fact that I left my falsetto back in the music room in high school and never remembered to swing by and pick it up. No worries. Like any true Sox fan, I’ll just say there’s always next year.
