Terror.

I just had a brush with death- my roommate and I tried to bring the cats to the vet clinic and it was, hands down, the most terrifying experience of my life. The female cat doesn't genearlly meow much, but she does a really convincing impression of a bear that's been kicked in the middle of a snow storm during hibernation. MRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRWWWWW. Boy cat was really reasonable and only presented moderate resistance (spread eagle across the door like a flying squirrel that didn't notice a window). After using the arm of the couch I had the carrier propped against as a monorail track a few times, I got him in and he didn't offer to punch holes in me which I appreciated- but girl cat was just having none of it. Letting her figure out that the carrier was where she was destined to go in the first time I tried to just pick her up and put her in sparked a reaction that was something akin to what happens to Edward Norton in the Incredible Hulk. After some negotiation that she was not at all interested in, we were asking the question: How many graduate students does it take to get an obviously angry cat armed with exacto knives into a carrier (without losing something vital, like most of the blood in your circulatory system after she gets done with you)? When I gathered the nerve to try and catch her as she ran past, I missed, and then caught her in the hallway, halfway up the wall (the WALL)- I really don't know how this happened, but like Houdini, girl cat apparently flies. By this point, I had on long sleeves and gloves and had to pick her up with a towel. I thought she was going to kill me! But we made it to the clinic on time, and the vet says it's not particularly uncommon for cats to show up in things like laundry hampers so I didn't feel so bad about the fact that the only thing we had big enough to get the cat into without getting killed was the kitchen garbage bin. When the vet asked her to after the exam, she dutifully walked into the carrier. It's safe to say that I lost a fair amount (all) of my dignity in the affair.

FIX YOU

I'm listening to the kind of music nobody in their right mind admits to listening to. It's rock music performed by a cello ensemble. While I love the rendition of Journey "Don't Stop Believin'" and "Sympathy for the Devil" what got me the most was this song I'd never heard the name of- Fix You. It turns out that it's by some band called Coldplay (yes, I live in a vacuum and had no idea). But this song... It rises in this subtle way from a rather unremarkable melody to an incredible chorus of harmonized voices. It's as though you can feel the resonance building in your skin, and then it breaks and something that you didn't know was in you is drawn to the surface. Depending on the time of day, it brings with it joy or weeping to the surface.

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.

Cat-r-wall

I had an amazing new adventure with my rent-a-cats today. Well, okay, mostly just the one. We're beyond Houdini though, this cat apparates through walls, Harry Potter style. That's right, this cat could probably kick Dumbledore's ass. I wish I was joking, because that would make my life less terrifying. Honestly, the cats are great, but I live in fear of losing them somewhere and then having to explain to the legitimate owners that "Oh hey, about your cat..." My cohabitation is more or less pleasantly cute and fluffy, punctuated by moments of extreme terror.

I decided to do laundry because it's been awhile, and the cat accompanied me down the stairs. Usually, it does no good to try and keep him away from the basement because he'll inevitably end up down there regardless of the measures I take. Why? Because he's Harry-freaking-Potter, that's why. Anyway, we have an arrangement where I let him play downstairs and he lets me know when he's gotten bored of it. I used to try herding him around to get him upstairs but herding a cat in a cluttered basement is less than fun, and certainly not easy. Also, if I stand around and wait for him to get tired of the dust bunnies on his face, this doesn't happen and he finds them SO grossly interesting that they multiply to spangle all of his whiskers.

He never "knocked" so I went for a run. When I returned, he was still not at the door, so I ventured down after him to try and convince him that playtime was over. This didn't happen because he wasn't down there. I tried poking through my neighbor's side of the basement... and tried really hard in a paranoid sort of way not to look sketchy. This was a challenge because there is no way, in hell, that you can avoid looking sketchy when you're going through someone else's stuff and get caught. I didn't get caught, and anyway, my efforts were to no avail. I noticed though, that the door to the neighbor's side of the house was open. I tried constructing a request in my head that was appropriate for 9 am. "Hello, excuse me, did you happen to see a large black cat apparate through your door? I've lost mine. Yes, you see, he walks through solid barriers."

I did not, however, actually have to knock on the door because he wasn't behind it. He was actually over my head. by roughly 6 feet. in the stairwell. Let me just explain that the walls of the stairwell are flat. there are no shelves, hooks, or wires. Apparently, this cat can also fly. About 20 minutes of coaxing and the majority of my dignity later, the cat still wasn't out of the ceiling and I decided taht this must be because he was stuck. I did the next logical thing and got a ladder. I got my camera first, perhaps not the most constructive idea ever. I set the ladder up National Lampoon style in the stairwell, and I'm pretty well convinced that if the neighbors had opened their door at any point during this process, they would have unhesitatingly called the cops.

Upon reaching the apex of this precarious situation, I looked up and discovered that there was, in fact, no cat. He was gone. And there I was, wondering what the hell I was I doing in a Ph.D. program when I couldn't even figure out how the hell a cat got into the ceiling (yes, I am fully aware of how insane that sounds). When I heard a meow. On the other side of the door I had just closed. He was sitting on the other side of it on the floor, looking as though he'd been waiting for hours for me to get everything figured out. I'm pretty sure that this is goign to cost me my sanity.