September 1st, 2011
On my desk right now
-desk lamp
-my watch
-desk organizer full of pens, pencils, 3 pairs of scissors
-bottle of bubble stuff
-doctor’s requisition for an ultrasound of my neck
-notebook
-Niagara Arts and Literary Festival keepsake minibook
-Central Neighbourhood House brochure (I’m going to volunteer for them if I ever again have free time)
-sleeping kitten
-stack of academic articles written by my parents
-a sixpence I got in England, to be put in my shoe on my wedding day
-2 coasters
-phone handset
-laptop
-mixed cd Em made me
-photos from P&J’s engagement party (yes, actual hard-copy photos!)
-business cards and postcards I keep meaning to put up
-a cut-out comic strip from “Rhymes with Orange”: a man is standing in the library near the shelf labelled “Books on CD”–he turns to the librarian and says, “No graphic novels?”
-a London tube map
-an expired library card from the Thomas Fischer Rare Book Library
That was fun. What’s on your desk?
July 24th, 2011
And then you get the kitten!
There were a lot of things I needed to do and achieve in my life before I was ready for the responsibility of a kitten, so this moment was a long time coming. This is Evan. I promise not to blog about dccccccc=]]]]s[]p—–= him constantly ,jmk or indeed very much at all, but I just wanted you to know he exists. Because he just walked across my keyboard (x2) and that’s how we end up with the text junk above–if sometime I miss deleting that stuff, I want you to know I haven’t lost my mind.
But mainly because Evan is so awesome and I am so very happy to have him.
April 19th, 2011
Cats help
Today is not a good day. I sort of hate everything (not you) right now and just want to lie on the floor and think of all who have done me wrong. But I can’t, because I have stuff to do and making an enemies list will not help with that agenda, so I won’t. Instead, I will power through, with only brief bursts of cats for support. If you need some cat help, too, try:
February 13th, 2011
Kitten in Slow Motion
For anyone else who maybe had a crappy week last week, I bring you kitten in slow motion (via Mark). Not just for rabid kitten fanciers like myself, this is 121 seconds of pure sunlit joy, albeit joy experienced by someone who wants to eat a little fake bird attached to the end of a wire.
Hope it helps you cheer up, too!
November 21st, 2010
“You’re an asshole, Mittens.”
I think that is one of the most hilarious sentences ever spoken. It was so spoken by my father, when I was about 8 or 9. He had just rescued our cat, Mittens, from my clutches, removed the bonnet I had put on her, and sternly instructed me not to dress the cat in doll clothes any more. I remained blithe in my assurance that Mittens liked to wear clothes, and when I left the room, she hesitated only a moment before following me. “You’re an asshole, Mittens,” is what my father called after her–under his breath, obviously, due to young and tender ears. He just recounted the uncensored version for me yesterday–ha!
Note: I no longer put hats on cats, but sometimes I really want to.
July 27th, 2010
Moodily speaking
Various items of late have been contributing to my good mood–sunshine, Toy Story 3, nice friends, pizza, etc. I also got what probably the nicest massmail ever, and I thought I’d share it. It was from the guy who used to run CD Baby. I bought a cd from him back in the day (according to his records, 2003), not because I had ever even heard of CD Baby, but because it was the only thing that came up when I tried to buy Electroshock Blues Live album (they no longer have it; weirdly, they do have something by a band called Unagi, which came up in my Eels search!)
Point? What point? Oh, yeah, so apparently a couple years ago the founder of CDBaby, Derek Sivers, gave the company to charity and himself to other projects. Why do I know this? Because he sent me a really friendly massmail to tell me. I don’t think his other projects are going to make him the kind of millions selling music did, but they are pretty cool. Especially the Music Thoughts website, which has a “random thought” generator that is good fun. I am a sucker for random (as you regular readers will know), but unlike say, the random kitten generator, the random music thoughts actually make me feel a bit smarter! Ie., “The poem the reader reads may be better than that which the writer wrote.” (Brian Eno) This actually helps me! (ok, so do the kittens, but in a different way).
What else is good? Ooooh, new Meatloaf song! You can totally mock me after you listen to it–but you won’t, because it’s brilliant. I liked ML when I was a youth, too, and knew even then it wasn’t cool. Then a couple years ago, I got sucked into watched a Meatloaf biopick (stupid internet appears to deny all knowledge of said film) and he was clearly a guy I could get behind–and admit it! I mean, “I’m just a white boy/I play a guitar/I put my pants on/I drive a sh*t car.” Hooray for rock and roll!
You know, I think the main problem with my life right now is that I don’t have a toad. In my childhood, summers were full of toads–it seemed like every day I would come across one hopping through the grass and I would put it in a sandbucket and give it grass and rocks to eat and we’d hang out together, maybe with my brother if he was being good that day.
Inevitably, I would be called into the house for a meal or bed, and while the toad appeared content in his sandbucket world, my father would release the toad the second my back was turned. Of course, my dad likes animals and did not one to die due to my not knowing what toads eat or that they like freedom. However, my father never adequately explained this to me and for years I thought he did it simply to be mean and deprive me of toad-friends.
Now, there are no toads. Partly because I no longer live in a rural environment, and partly I think I just don’t see them because my eyes are farther from the ground than they used to be. And I’d really like to see a toad again. *Not* because I’m seeking to defy my father by keeping it indefinitely in a bucket, but because they are so fun, so patient and blinky and good at hopping, and their little bellies are silky when you stroke them (although FYI, toads excrete poison from their skin when they are frightened, so always wash your hands after stroking at toad’s belly). I would just like to hang out with a toad for a little bit, and maybe even my brother, too.
So really, can’t complain about things around here. Hope you guys are well too…and if you have any surplus toads, please send’em my way!
June 4th, 2010
Hypothetically speaking
If, say, someone were walking past the spot where she always sees a nice robin and she stopped to watch him this morning, only to notice there was a fluffy baby robin on the ground beside him and she thought she would watch the little robin having flying lessons, only the baby robin tried and tried to fly and couldn’t, and then tried to walk and couldn’t, and then the observer realized none of the brother and sister robins were on the ground and this baby robin was right under his nest and clearly something was wrong. And eventually the baby robin stopped trying and just curled up in a fluffy ball on the ground with his head down, so this person freaked out and went and got a friend, a ladder, and some paper towel, and then the father robin freaked out because of all this action BUT he still came over to the baby and put a seed in the baby’s mouth which perked the baby up for a moment and also proved that he wasn’t the least favoured child or something and had been deliberately exiled. So if the human contigent then bundled the little fluffball up in a papertowel (so as not to transmit and nasty human smells), climbed the ladder and puts the baby back in his house, IS THAT BABY ROBIN GOING TO BE OK?????
Please phrase your responses gently.
UPDATE: We went back outside later and the dad robin was in the next feeding the runaway. I was so happy I briefly considered tearing up…but I never do that. So I just hugged R (who did the actually bird retrieval) and went about a much-better day. Whew.
May 4th, 2010
Smart cat
The cat I am cat-sitting is a genius! She has figured out what the sound of my alarm clock means! What it means is that I am going to hit the snooze button and lie there for 9 (0r 18) more minutes, not entirely awake but conscious enough for petting. At the sound of the alarm, she comes scrambling from the foot of the bed or, like this morning, the other room and positions herself by, or on, a hand. When I can feel her there (my eyes are usually still closed) I pet her, and she is happy.
April 28th, 2010
Insane conversation in my hallway just now
From beyond my apartment door: incessant meowing
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