Lyn's Journal

Bah.
I got suddenly tired/sleepy this afternoon, for no apparent reason. I've been eating about as usual, getting lots of sleep and exercise, and at about 4:30, suddenly, bam! I wanted a nap. (This was a bit inconvenient as I was out shopping at the time.)

I did manage to doze off for a bit after I got home, but only for a short while before it was time to get up and go to T's birthday party, from which I have only just returned.

Which is why this entry is so boring. Sorry.

Jeopardy-style A&Q

ANSWERS:

1) The (closed) middle right-hand drawer of my dresser

2) The (closed) bottom left-hand drawer of my dresser

3) The (closed) middle left-hand drawer of my dresser

4) The (closed) bottom left-hand drawer of my dresser again.

QUESTION: Where have I found the kitten at various times today?

(I wish I were sure she could find her way out by herself, but given the piteous if muffled mews that helped me find her each time, I'm guessing not.)

Changing habits
Lately I've been making a habit of doing a serious workout (45 minutes plus, strength and cardio) five days a week. In theory, this should be making me buff, lean and strong. So far, it's mostly making me tired.

But hey, it's a good tired.

Farewell, Penny
Today

chikuru and I paid our final respects to Penny, the perennial kitten with the sad eyes, rabbit-soft coat, and insane compressed-spring energy -- at least until her final illness. I picked up her ashes from the pet hospital a couple of weeks ago. Yes, we did splurge on a private cremation with return of ashes; call me sentimental, but it gave me comfort to think of having her still with us in some form.

The ashes came in a tasteful black gift bag, which contained a dark purple velvet drawstring bag, which in turn contained a tiny polished wood box and a little brass plaque engraved with her name. I was impressed with the class of the whole thing, though somewhat less so when I discovered that the box was sealed shut. Um, what were we going to do with a sealed box of kitten ashes, keep them on the mantel? Bury the box whole? I mean, really.... Still, it was a very pretty box:

Fortunately, although the top was permanently sealed, the bottom was held on by screws, so we were able to open it so as to mingle her ashes with the soil of the rose bed as I had intended. We did so, and planted the little rosebush pictured above over the site. This pleases me; if the rosebush lives more than a week or two, Penny will in a sense become part of it.

Meanwhile, I buried the box next to the bush, with the lid above the ground as a marker. I know this won't last -- the wood isn't designed to wear well outdoors -- but it makes a nice temporary monument.

Yes, as a family we have done yet another thing backwards (a specialty of ours) : we have created a gravesite with a temporary marker and permanent flowers.

Oh, and the little bush is next to, but not shaded by, a larger rosebush. Since this more or less describes her relationship in life with her sister Nickel, it also seems fitting.

A Couple of Random Numerical Facts

According to the actual vet she saw yesterday, I was right the first time: Tuppence is about 6 weeks old.

The dialogue of the movie THE HAPPENING contains the words "happening", "happened", or "happen" at least 21 times. And it's a short movie: 91 minutes. (This translates to an average of less than 5 minutes between uses.)

Small Miracles (update)

According to the vet counter at Petsmart, our new kitten is (probably) female, and already 8 weeks old. This surprised us, but chikuru accurately points out that we've probably forgotten how tiny the last two were when we got them. We'll be calling her Tuppence, until and unless she turns out to be gender-misidentified.

And here, as requested, are photos.

Little Miracles

The Universe has handed us a kitten.

Nickel has been visibly restless and bored, so yesterday I started seriously looking into finding a new feline companion for her. That search ended abruptly this morning when a little girl came to me with a thoroughly adorable 5- or 6-week-old kitten in a brown paper bag and asked me anxiously if I could give it a home.

OK, so this isn't *quite* as coincidental as it sounds. The girl and her father had found the kitten abandoned beside Mopac(!) and stopped to rescue it, bringing it with them to the Austin Celtic Festival, where they happened to run into some acquaintances of theirs, who happened to be friends of ours who knew of our recent bereavement and who happened to have seen me helping another friend of ours to work a jewelry booth at the same festval... come to think of it, this is still sounding more than a little miraculous.

I wish I could say that Nickel took to the newcomer instantly, but she is still skeptical. Surely she'll come around, though -- this is too good a story to come to nothing.

Passion
It's amazing what you can accomplish when you have a real passion for something.

A little hackneyed, you say? Let's see if I can make it a little more amusing by adding another equally true observation: our cat has a passion for bathroom tissue.

It started with the usual kitten antic of unrolling the rolls all over the floor. We tried reversing the rolls. That took her about five minutes to figure out, then it was all over the floor again.

Then I got inventive. I made a little two-ring adjustable strap to fasten the roll so that it couldn't be unrolled. It could be tightened as needed as the roll became smaller, and human hands could easily shift it to one side when the roll was needed. This did defeat her for awhile, and I was very pleased with myself about the elegance of this solution.

Alas, there were two problems with it. First, humans forget, and cats are quick to take advantage of that forgetfulness. In other words, the strap would sometimes be left on the side, with predictable results. Second, our little feline genius soon discovered that even when she couldn't unroll it, she could claw the edges of the roll to a delightfully dramatic fluffiness.

We finally resorted to hiding the tissue in the cabinet under the sink. That worked for several days... then I found a mauled roll among the shoes by the front door.

I'll be childproofing the cabinets next week.

Another Shooting

There was a mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas today. At least twelve people were killed and many more were wounded. A cousin of mine posted about it on Facebook and expressed concern about a friend who lives there. "What's wrong with people?" she added.

But the sad fact of the matter is that, on a planet of six or seven billion people, it is statistically certain that some will be broken, and a few will be very badly broken indeed. We can look for early warning signs and try to avert individual incidents, but we can no more cure the whole problem than we can eradicate tornados and tidal waves. Crimes will happen; even horrific and senseless crimes will happen from time to time. It's a built-in hazard of the miraculous, fertile chaos that is humanity.

None of which is likely to comfort the wounded or the family and friends of those who were killed, of course. Sorrow is appropriate -- just maybe not rage.

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Where are all the trick-or-treaters this year? We only saw seven this evening, two of whom were brought to our party by their mother. Surely they can't have thought we weren't home; we had the entryway lights on and a skeleton hanging from the doorframe, and both our cars were in the driveway. OK, so the entryway lights were a dim red instead of the usual bright white, but still. Last year the doorbell hardly stopped ringing, and in addition to children in costume we saw parents with their own candy collection bags, assorted teenagers without costumes (but also with bags), and one young man who brought what appeared to be his grandmother. With her own bag.

What's changed?

The odd thing is that I'm hearing the same complaint from other people in other neightborhoods. There seems to be an amazing lot of leftover Halloween candy in various households. So apparently it's a trend, or possibly fear of the swine flu.

At least I bought candy that chikuru and I like. Or maybe that's a bad thing...

Wait, what?
For this year's Halloween costume, I attempted something I've tried several times before: to re-design an existing article of clothing based on my mostly non-visual imagination. In this case, the idea was to alter a tank-topped, ankle-skimming acrylic knit dress into a cute little mini with a diagonal hem. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but of course, I've been there before.

So, yesterday, in my usual seat-of-the-pants manner, I cut the full skirt off at roughly the right level, and proceeded to pin it up and hand-hem it (I am good at hand hems -- one of my few outstanding sewing skills). Late this afternoon, I finished up the hem and tried it on. The result startled me in three ways:

The length was about right -- neither timid nor frighteningly remeniscent of a reject from Star Trek.
The hem was not puckered in any way despite my hasty job of hand-hemming with an artificial fabric.
The result was exactly as I intended.

This confuses me greatly.

Smart squirrels?

I think I know why some people hate squirrels. You know these people: when a squirrel is mentioned, they wrinkle their noses, shudder, and mutter epithets like "tree rat". I believe, though, that this show of disgust is no more than a facade, and that the underlying emotion is ... fear.

It's not as implausible as it sounds. Squirrels are amazingly agile and athletic, and they've figured out how to use their forepaws as hands better than almost any other non-primate animal. How long can it be before they develop flame-thowers and grenades and try to supplant us as the dominant life form on the planet?

But they're not smart enough, you would say. You'd think not, wouldn't you? But brace yourselves, for I have evidence that there's more going on in those little rodent crania than they want us to think...

It was Shawn, our tame squirrel, who accidentally gave the show away the other day. You see, she showed up on one of our deck railings the other day and started looking through the window as she often does to see if one of us will come out with food. As it happened, I had left a little pile of pecans out for her on another railing four feet to her right. So, I caught her eye from inside and gestured firmly to my left (her right). And she...

...immediately looked over her right shoulder, saw the nuts, and hopped over to begin eating them.

Hey, wait! Why are you looking so disappointed? Don't you see that this is just the tip of the iceberg? Today, correct interpretation of hand gestures... tomorrow, who knows? Hey, quit wandering off! This is scary stuff!

Well, OK, it will probably be awhile before she comes up with a Unified Field Theory. For a squirrel, though, it was pretty damn impressive.

John D'Oh
Our next-door neighbors had a "Dead Guy Party" this evening. It seems that they (or he, anyway) have been working for years on an elaborate life-sized Halloween dummy. Said dummy was propped up near the door, and we were all invited to write suggested names for him on toe tags. Some of my favorite suggestions were:

Prometheus
Dead Bob (mine)
Leroy
Sunny Jim (chikuru's)
Herman (The Munsters)
Kenny (South Park)

Though he didn't look at all like Prometheus, Kenny, or Herman Munster. What he mostly looked like was a half-decayed Larry David. But Larry isn't dead and is still using his name, so that one may not take.

Catventures
Things my cat will play with:

Bottle caps
Bits of trash
Scissors
Loose clothing
Shoes
Socks
Curtains
A blob of congealed fabric glue
(if all else fails) Cat toys

Things my cat will not play with:

[Trick question. She'll play with *anything*. I haven't actually seen her play with a quark or a quasar, but I'm sure she would if she could get her paws on one.]

More on KA
A party interrupted by an invasion/attack as arrows fly. Escape by boat! Storm, shipwreck, rescue from drowning. Young twins (boy and girl) now separated and unaware of each others' fates, embark on their separate adventures. A beach with a giant sea turtle and other critters! A bonding moment over a campfire. A battle seen as though from overhead as it rages up and down a 50-foot wall, again with arrows and possibly crossbow bolts. Capture by the villain! Love and figurative flight -- escape. Love and literal flight! Reunion, victory, resolution.

The stage is as much a character as any of the players. It goes from a T-shaped dais to a sea in which people fall overboard and disappear, to a beach with real sand dunes, to a fantastical floating plane, to the aforementioned wall, to another T-shape, this time with a sinister industrial feel and wheel-shaped cages. And so on.

Cirque du Soleil is always impressive, but the combined pageantry and technical brilliance of this one make it stand out even among that company's works. I'd see it again in a heartbeat.

Quotes from Myrtle Beach Trip

M: We should hide the donuts!
Me: But not the box.

(M tells a story about one of the little pills that expand into a dinosaur-shaped sponge. I point out the possibilities of slipping that kind of pill into your date's drink.)
T: At least she'd know she's spongeworthy.[*]

R: All relationships end badly. The best you can hope for is death.

R: Right now, I want something to eat and something on my feet.
M: Ideally, different things.

M: I'm such a slave to fashion.
R: Yes, you avoid it at every conceivable opportunity.

[*] Seinfeld reference

Requiescat in Pacem

Penny (March - October 2009)

This has been my first experience with having to put a feline friend to sleep, and I'm not ready to talk about it here. She was a cuddly, feisty little sweetheart, and we will miss her.

Dream Philosophy

The other morning, I woke up from dreaming an aphorism. When I woke up, these were my first words to chikuru: "I just dreamt an aphorism." I then repeated it to him.

This afternoon, he told me that my dream saying was in fact a famous quote by J. M. Barrie. Now, aside from Peter Pan, I am not familiar with his work; I've certainly never read the speech from which it comes.

So how did it get into my dream? Three possibilities come to mind:

I read it somewhere and forgot until it popped up in my subconscious.
I made it up myself, but simply wasn't the first to do so.
Somebody mentioned it on the radio while I was 90% still asleep, and my brain fed it into my dream.

I'm going to have to go with #3, since the quote seems too memorable for #1, and too long and distinctive for #2: "God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December."

Yes, surely #3 -- but an odd experience in any case.

Home Again

Just got home again after a day of traveling. I'm much too tired to even try to write a longer entry about KA. I promise to do so in the near future, though I doubt I'll be as eloquent as I was yesterday -- sometimes one word says it all.

Vegas trip stats for a trip of 4 days, 3 nights:

1 Dim sum

1 normal (off-the-strip Vietnamese restaurant) dinner

3 fancy brunches

2 very fancy dinners, one of which I think would be listed as one of my top five meals ever. (Carnevino's at Palazzo.)

1 ride (X-Scream at the Stratosphere)

2 free shows ("Sirens of TI" and the Bellagio musical fountain display)

1 very not-free show (the aforementioned KA, totally worth the money!)

3 hours in hotel spa getting pedicure and then enjoying jacuzzi and other more exotic spa phenomenae (just me)

1 trip to Hoover Dam (just chikuru)

$15 gambling losses (just me again -- though actually I came out ahead, since I also milked $43 in real money out of our $50 slot machine credit.)

All in all, a very fine trip!

Wow.

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