Sunday, March 26, 2006

My cats are nuts- and yours?

Does anyone else's cats have spasms? I mean sudden millisecond entire body flings into the air from a standard sitting or walking position- and then everything is fine again.
How about the I-just-pooped full throttle laps? Do they feel that much lighter and freer, or are they running from the hideous smell?
I used to laugh hearing my neighbor yell at her cat- I felt like part of a club.
"Get down!" she'd boom. I was pretty sure it wasn't her husband up on the counter.

Saturday, March 25, 2006

The Apartment and the Procrastinator

Me- Hey, did you know the oven is grey inside?
Apt-Did you finally clean that thing?
Me- I've been wanting brownies. I almost tried cooking them in the microwave.
Apt-I remember the black smoke last time you turned the oven on.
Me- Yeah, I guess two years of turkey grease and overflowed casseroles aren't good.
Apt-I'm amazed you haven't lit me on fire yet.
Me- Whaddaya mean?
Apt- Smoking ovens, Christmas trees up until March... .
Me- I liked the lights!
Apt- That's a good thing- I think the strands were holding the branches on.

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Two year itch

I hate packing- long gone are the days I could relocate all my belongings in two car loads. I hate floundering in strangers' mystery dirt, fighting the heebie jeebies with elbow long rubber gloves, hip boots if I had 'em, an illicit love for my Dirt Devil rug shampooer (please don't tell the mop-we're most touch and go.)
I love our back/den/family room (in a walk through with piece meal furniture, how articulate can ya be? have you seen the living/dining/computer/library room?) Unable to find a square enough carpet stray at Home Depot I jimmy-rugged for two vertical country-blue and one horizontal (the front 1/4)aqua- with pressed board pine color TV stand, white book shelves, cherry end tables, black metal futon with blue sheet, raspberry armchair massacred by the cats, and cream walls- but I've played off the blue and bright and it incredibly works. There's a photo of a sunrise over the carribean in Cancun, our last full day there- off to the left the rays are gold caught in the clouds and a sailing boat anchored down. Sometimes I accidentally take a great photograph. I blame it on the camera.
Plus my walking routes. Best times to walk- sunrise and after supper. Summer mornings while the dew is still droplets and I can smell the roses I pass, stop 1 mile from home for something to drink and read on the last leg.
So this stuff is great but it's been two years and I'm ready to go- redecorate, make new walks, gain different views, chance more windows, better daylight, bigger closets, a change of sleeping and waking sounds, try gardening another soil and suncover.
The Big N is careful with money- something about savings and having enough. I tend to answer others' concerns with I don't know how I'll do it - but I will . I'll be fine. So in the argument of We can't afford that! Sure we can- it'll be fine! he tends to win. And I tend to sulk.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Wonder Lost

I have never tried typing with one edge of my butt barely on the chair but my kitten is kindly sharing her nap spot so I will try!
Oh, it's been a long five days of wondering if I go through with this wedding.
See, one of the most fabulous words I've ever heard is 'wanderlust'. I get shivers of thrill when upon sighting a U-Haul. My dream auto is a mobile home. I dread packing but love to move somewhere new. Stagnation is my biggest discomfort and fear. I want to live in different states, work different jobs. Is that ADD or being unfocused, noncommital?
Or is it wanting to sense what I can because, as far as I know, I'm goin' around in this life just once.
But I love my fiance. And what's more impressive, he loves me. Unconditionally. (I ask what god he pissed off in a former life to get this gig.) He is willig to move, some. I will still travel and travel alone is good for the spirit.
The wedding is in 15 weeks. Last week the bridesmaids finished dress needs and the order went out and I dropped off my wedding gown for alterations. Then I had an anxiety attack. Just a little one. I think this was me going over the premarital cliff.
I've had major support lines - thank you Mom, Jason, Kelly, and Jen-and am slowly calming down.
15 weeks - Holy cows!!!

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Talented Kitty

My fiance asked, did Annie do that?
Yes, I said. While I was sleeping she dragged this giant purple towel from the laundry basket, draped it over the chair, and made herself a tent. (She made a lot of noise hammering in the pegs, said my friend.) Wasn't I surprised when I got up and saw it!
He just smiled wryly.

Sunday, March 05, 2006

I'll have the C cup with fries

My stepfather once told my mom how nice it would be to go to the Bar and Griddle Factory for lunch.
Maybe-
except it's the Bra and Girdle Factory.
Stuff get so much funnier misread!

http://www.sleeplittlekitty.com

2:30AM. Me and a bowl of broccoli and bags of wrinkles under my eyes. Fiance snoring in the bedroom. At least he was when I gave up on sleep two hours ago.
http://www.mum.org/catrules.htm This was cute! If you think kitties are adorable and amusing when being persnickety.
My little grey tabby, Sylvia, and I met six years ago. She was a kitty who'd grown up on the streets of Asbury Park and was picked up by a family run pet shop in Sea Girt. The day I met her was her third day off the streets. Her spay stitches were still fresh. Hers was the second cage I looked into- she let me snuggle her , I fell for her face, and two days later she came home.
It's difficult, literally, to remember our first months together.
The Sylvia I know now is the kittie who spent a week lying on the bed and staring at the floor the first time I went on vacation and left her (at home with my live-in boyfriend whom she knew well.) This is the kitty who leaves my side just long enough to nibble, drink, and litterbox any time I am sad, or sick, even if the sick lasts for days. The kitty who climbs on me for snuggles, keeping all her nails tucked in, even if she has to teeter on the side of my leg.
But in the beginning she would have none of snuggling. She'd climb up my leg for her food. If I got down to play with her she'd swat at my face claws extended. All this was okay.
I assumed she had never lived in a house with a human and that my getting down to play was to her an attack. If she hit my face I backed off and we tried again later. In baby steps we learned each other.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Oops!

I changed a phrase in my first post from rotting muscles to rotting mussels-a little difference there!

The Graceless Me

I've been around people with a grace so honest and smooth it's brought tears to my eyes. Me? I'm the type to knock your sandwich on the floor and step on it when what I wanted was to help. The girl who calls out the answer to the other team in Charades. One of my two historical moments among my friends was asking So how's Katie? to the man just dumped by his girlfriend of three years. Eliza Doolittle at high tea with the Queen? Yes, those anti-social skills would be mine! I'm quite familiar with the silence that follows a guffaw; I've caused many.
Harold once gave me his dog doo analogy. You step in dog doo and lift your foot to scrape it off, but stumble and put your other foot in it then step in it again with the first foot while trying to clean the second, and so on. I remind myself of this story when I have made a mistake and the harder I try to fix it, the worse and worse it gets.
Have you ever had a day you're so tongue tied or clumsy it becomes fun because of the crazy situations and phrases your befuddled mind creates?
How much more tantalizing are headlines when you read them incorrectly? The governer did what with four crayons and a sheep?


Do you know aside from the getting married part of my wedding day I am looking forward to the cake part the most? Actually, to the icing part. I hope the cake will be good but to me cake is a crap shoot. Sometimes the cake is really worth eating- but the icing is always good!
One more good thought for the day- Maybe it's a 2-for-one special.
I grew up and lived most of my first 28 years within 3 miles of the beach (dried seaweed and rotting mussels are two of my favorite scents). Other favorites of the beach? Watching this skinned peach globe of a sun skirt the edge of the ocean and rise upward lighting the boats and the sea in pinks and golds.
Feeling the urge and the fury of grey rushing waves in my wind burned sand stung flesh standing counting lightning bolts traveling swirling skies up the coast.