Cats + Sponges = fungus.

Sometimes when you do stupid things like clean your dishes with the same sponge you use to clean your counters, you boost your immune system. Other times, you unwittingly give yourself fungal infections. I wish I was joking.

So my rent-a-cats like going on every flat surface in my house, including my counters and table. I recently discovered that they were still doing this, and that the funny marks I'd been wiping up were pawprints. What I'd like to know is how the bleeding hell did I make it out of the jungle without bringing home something living on me and that was mildly parasitic, but come back to Cambridge and get a cat or two and suddenly there it is, it's a critter that just popped up like a daisy in spring. It's hanging out on my arm. I'm almost positive it's a fungus. I'm more than a little horrified. I've had a few spots for awhile now but.... eee........... this one in particular is making me unhappy. I mentioned it to a friend last night and they didn't look terribly impressed. What can I say, I'm a classy sort of dame.

I Hate Shopping of Any Kind so I Act Like a Jerk to Amuse Myself

I inherited a behavior from my mother. I talk at people at random. and at length. Also, I embarass my sister in public. I mean, I don't go so far as to sing opera (oh yes, my mother SINGS OPERA if you get pissy in the store) but I do use underwear as ammunition and make fun of ugly clothing. I believe there's a picture from my friend's bachelorette party when we're in Foxwoods and I'm making faces at a silicone bra stuffer- but that's another story.

On this particular occassion, my roommate succeeded in getting me out of the house to have a few beers with her and friends at one of my favorite watering holes. It was a lot of fun, the girls are such great people- and as usual, the evening was punctuated by some of my bad decisions. Bad decision (or awesome depends on how you look at it) number 1, having 5 Guinnesses (Guinni?) in 2 hours. Bad decision number 2, but possibly not bad, deciding that the 24 hour Shaws is the next stop. We needed frozen pizza and creamscicles.

Having already prefaced this story by outlining my random talking and inclination towards embarrasing behavior in public spaces, I guess we can get straight into it. The last time I picked up a frozen pizza was a similar occassion with my summer roommate whom I love. She made it clear to me, at the time, that the delux pizza had not only the most crap on it, but was the cheapest and therefore the best bang for your buck. I decided that this wisdom should be shared, not only with my current roommate on our current excursion, but the poor man sharing the frozen food isle with us at 1 o'clock in the morning. He had already made the unfortunate mistake of suggesting his usual pizza. Of course, I had to tell him that thank you for your suggestion, but my decision is made, and also better, and here's why. This was followed by a comparison of price, size, etc, and that, ok, so I usually institute a rule of not eating things that have more than 5 ingredients or things I can't pronounce, but in this case it's acceptable. My roommate went and got some margarine, which I also made a show of berating, because I was in "I hate stores" mode and told her that there was real butter in the freezer, and in droves, and proved my point as to why the margarine was bad by attempting to read off the ingredients that I couldn't pronounce. However, the guy in the isle, who was by now invested in the conversation/ordeal he'd unwittingly sucked himself into, turned out to be a nutrition and something something food healthy whatever grad student, and read the ingredients and said that actually, it was okay to eat this. You may or may not know that I have a really terrible obsession with I Can't Believe it's Not Butter but when I'm in this mood, it doesn't matter if I'm being hypocritical and also inappropriate. I swiped the margarine and told him to stop encouraging this behavior. My roommate eventually realized that this wasn't going to stop by my accord, and encouraged heading for the check out line with "I'm tired and I need to eat this pizza, we're going home." Probably a wise move because I wasn't going to stop being embarrasing unless somebody else said something. I mean, it looked like he had a thing for her, so my reasoning at the time was that if we stuck around, something would happen.

Continued Adventures in Rent-a-Cat Land

Things have lagged a little but it was because I suffered some temporary idiocy and thought I had scurvy but seriously, outside of 18th century pirates, who the hell gets that? Saw a doctor today and funny enough, not scurvy. Fell asleep in the waiting room of UHS but since there aren't backs to the chair, I woke up leaning on some poor guy wearing a flu mask. It was stellar. As always, there are new developments in rent-a-cat land.

1) Cats can poo at will and without limits. On that note, time spent in conversation in the general viscinity of the cat box is directly related to the number of visits a cat will make. The longer you talk, the more use the shovel will get and sooner.

2) The only food that may be consumed processually and directly from the fridgeration unit is ice cream because it can be eaten while standing and the carton may remain out of easily accessible cat reach as the freezer is rather high. It is nolonger acceptable to be lazy and assemble other food products in front of the fridge. Putting the bowl of Cheerios on the floor in front of the fridge to pour milk in it so that you only have to make one trip across the kitchen instead of two will not save you any energy because it will inevitably end up with curious cat face in it and you will need to get a new bowl anyway.

3) You may not think that the toilet is a wading pool, and you may be of the opinion that there aren't fish in it. but if the seat isn't down, nobody with 4 paws and fur believes you.

Pandora's Travel Mug

Somebody once told me that it gets easier. "It" must be the proverbial representation of life. While I'm really not complaining, and I like my life, that somebody definitely lied to me because I'll be damned if ANYTHING is getting easier. Every semester, I hear and then think in kind, this will be easier. Things will let up. Um, that's not true at all. My first year was mostly just figuring out how to acclimate. Then it was preparing for my major exams. Then it was making up for the fact that I just didn't "get it" (it being the transition) and had to make up for it- and what I'm finding is that things don't swap out for me, they just accumulate. So I'm not replacing one part of hell with another, I'm just getting a pile of things that will eventually, inevitably fall over. This semester, I get 4 classes, I get to teach 2, and write my proposal for my dissertation, and prepare for the exams (again). I'm not sure that I'm going to come out alive, but my advisor seems to think I can handle it and I respect him tremendously, so I'll put my faith in that if not in myself.

So anyway, I decided that what I really needed was some coffee. There's a travel mug on my desk. I haven't had coffee in a long time, at least not at the point where I drink it like I should have an IV- and I can't remember the last time I had coffee out of this mug in particular. I'm going to put it this way, if I could go back in time and stop myself from opening the mug, thereby preserving both my dignity and innocence, I would because coffee should, in my mind, never be a solid again after it's been ground and should also never breed critters. If Pandora had a modern day equivalent, that box would've taken the form of this mug. Oh yes, oh yes. it was that bad.